Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[MrWolf]

Someone in RL wanted me to sign a petition to support the Green Party.

 

IN THEORY I support multiple parties.

 

Not this year. 

 

I don't want to split the Democratic vote and can't see, ahem, a lot of Trump supporters jumping ship to the Green Party.  I mean, maybe there are some.  Benefit of the doubt and all.

 

That said, if there were a split of Trump voters to a third or fourth or independent party, I certainly would personally be pleased... 

 

$.02

[unclevlad]

10 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

That said, if there were a split of Trump voters to a third or fourth or independent party, I certainly would personally be pleased... 

 

A little too late for that to happen now.  If Trump should lose decisively, OTOH, seeing the Republican Party fracture badly isn't out of the question, but election rules make it basically impractical.

[Matt the Bruins]

I think whatever trickle of voters from the Right go for RFK Jr. rather than Trump (or choose not to vote at all if the brain worms take him out before Nov. 6)will be all of that we'll see this cycle.

[Old Man]

17 hours ago, MrWolf said:

Someone in RL wanted me to sign a petition to support the Green Party.

 

Nice to see the Russians haven't given up yet.

[DShomshak]

Just heard on BBC Newshour, former US ambassador to the UN, Kurt Volker, offers analysis on Ukraine's incursion into Russia. Host asks the inevitable question about whether this could cause Russia to escalate. Volker notes that at every stage in the war, Western leaders have fretted about Russian escalation, maybe to going nuclear, and they're doing it now, too. Volker's opinion: Putin has had numerous opportunities to escalate, and threatened to go nuclear many times. He hasn't. Therefore, Mr Volker suggests, he won't this time, either -- because, for whatever reason, he can't.

 

Well, I'm pretty sure that moral restraint isn't the reason he hasn't gone nuclear...

 

Dean Shomshak

Edited August 14 by DShomshak

[Pattern Ghost]

If the condition of his armor and vehicles is any indicator, I doubt nukes are a serious threat. Probably were parted out to fund someone's yacht years ago.

[Cygnia]

Losing Makes Trump Crazier, and Being Crazy Makes Him Lose

Quote

Trump’s campaign brain trust is begging its candidate to focus on this message. “They’re pleading with him to adopt a new ‘hard-hitting’ stump speech to define Vice-President Harris as liberal and weak, advisers tell us,” Axios reports. “And praying he’ll stop the recidivistic pull to simply improvise haphazardly.”

But Trump doesn’t want to heed this advice. He has been consumed by a mix of envy at Harris’s popularity and grievance at his own displacement. He has been complaining at the unfairness of the Democratic Party choosing to nominate a candidate Democrats like instead of the one he prefers to run against and fantastizing openly that somehow Biden will take the nomination back.

Trump gave a rambling press conference, perhaps intended to drive the campaign’s message about Harris and Walz but predictably lacking any focus. When Trump was attempting to describe a Walz policy that turned the state into a refuge for teenagers seeking medical transition, a potentially dicey issue for democrats to defend, he managed only to blather incoherently that Walz was “heavy into the transgender world.” As National Review’s Philip Klein observed, to his dismay, “Anybody who isn’t already familiar with the Walz record is likely thinking, what the heck is he talking about?”

Over the weekend, Trump began claiming wildly that Harris’s large crowds have actually been an elaborate hoax concocted through artificial intelligence. Behold the full lunacy of this message:

Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she “A.I.’d” it, and showed a massive “crowd” of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane. She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the “crowd” looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake “crowds” at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING - And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!

Trump is literally claiming Harris spoke before an empty room, created a false impression of a large crowd, with the participation of the national media that reported on the event as it occurred. He then bootstraps this ludicrous assertion into the charge that Harris is stealing the election and “should be disqualified.”

The most important thing about this Trump claim is that it confirms once again that he is both completely demented — the fake-crowd theory is less plausible than the notion NASA faked the moon landings — and totally unwilling to abide by the democratic rules of the road. It has become tedious to say so, but supporting his candidacy, even if you prefer his policies on taxes or regulation, in any way is deeply irresponsible.

There is a long-standing pattern to Trump’s relationship with his political advisers. Sometimes they are able to wrangle him into presenting a quasi-normal face to the public. Eventually, he breaks from their constraints and reveals his derangement to the public. The advisers inevitably agonize over his failure to listen to reason but never seem to question their own underlying goal of handing the world’s most powerful job to a madman.

The old Trump strategy for defeating Biden seems to have depended on maintaining a lead. When Trump was ahead, he was capable of making rational choices that allowed him to maintain his lead. Now that his lead is gone, so is his willingness to do the things that enable him to win.

Losing campaigns often identify their failures and make a course correction. Trump’s campaign is instead spiraling into a mental breakdown.

 

[unclevlad]

Paul Krugman has an opinion piece in NYT, on how Trump's tossing out a "communist" label onto Harris.  His point is...well, not much is working, so let's trot out the trite, jingoistic labels from the 80s.

[Pattern Ghost]

Must be rough when the incoherent old man shoe is on the other foot.

[BoloOfEarth]

8 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Must be rough when the incoherent old man shoe is on the other foot.

 

Those "incoherent old man shoes" are not just on *both* of Trump's feet.  There's one in his mouth as well.  

[unclevlad]

Speaking of that...the latest deranged comment.  NYT lead paragraph:

 

Quote

Former President Donald J. Trump claimed without evidence on Sunday that his rival in the 2024 presidential election, Vice President Kamala Harris, had used artificial intelligence to doctor or create an image of a rally that showed a large crowd in Detroit last week.

 

[Cygnia]

Musk claims there was a DDOS attack on X — but The Verge is told there was not.

Quote

Elon Musk’s “conversation” with former President Donald Trump got off to a rocky start. The interview, which was hosted on X Spaces and scheduled to begin at 8PM ET Monday night, crashed immediately and didn’t begin until 42 minutes later.

Those who did manage to get into the Space, including several Vergestaffers, said it kicked off with lo-fi techno playing from Trump’s account for roughly 30 minutes.

18 minutes after the conversation was supposed to begin, Musk claimed that X was the target of a “massive DDOS attack” that had made it impossible for the Space to proceed as planned.

The rest of X appears to be working normally, however, and a source at the company confirmed to The Verge that there wasn’t actually a denial-of-service attack. Another X staffer said there was a “99 percent” chance Elon was lying about an attack.

So, Muskmelon shares TFG's delusions too...

[Cygnia]

News outlets were leaked insider material from the Trump campaign. They chose not to print it

Quote

At least three news outlets were leaked confidential material from inside the Donald Trump campaign, including its report vetting JD Vance as a vice presidential candidate. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what they received.

Instead, Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post have written about a potential hack of the campaign and described what they had in broad terms.

Their decisions stand in marked contrast to the 2016 presidential campaign, when a Russian hack exposed emails to and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. The website Wikileaks published a trove of these embarrassing missives, and mainstream news organizations covered them avidly.

Politico wrote over the weekend about receiving emails starting July 22 from a person identified as “Robert” that included a 271-page campaign document about Vance and a partial vetting report on Sen. Marco Rubio, who was also considered as a potential vice president. Both Politico and the Post said that two people had independently confirmed that the documents were authentic.

“Like many such vetting documents,” The Times wrote of the Vance report, “they contained past statements with the potential to be embarrassing or damaging, such as Mr. Vance’s remarks casting aspersions on Mr. Trump.”

 

[Cygnia]

Why Trump flew to campaign events on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane last weekend

Quote

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign flew in a blue Gulfstream jet formerly owned by sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, using it to travel to several campaign fundraisers over the weekend, the Miami Herald has confirmed. Trump, enroute on his own private plane to a campaign event in Bozeman, Montana last week, unexpectedly landed in Billings because of mechanical problems, a campaign spokeswoman said. He and part of his staff then flew on a small charter to Bozeman for a rally Friday night. The next day, he switched to another larger Gulfstream with a serial number that matches a plane once owned by Epstein, his former neighbor in Palm Beach, the campaign confirmed. “The campaign had no awareness that the charter plane had been owned by Mr. Epstein,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the charter was commissioned by a vendor that has often been used by the campaign. “We heard about the former owner through the media.” Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in 2019 — accused of sexually abusing more than 100 girls and young women over decades. Epstein was subsequently found dead in his Manhattan jail cell a month later. His death, which was ruled a suicide by the Manhattan medical examiner, has long been a source of conspiracy theories. Trump’s use of the plane is likely to add to public scrutiny surrounding his relationship with Epstein, even though no evidence has surfaced that Trump was involved in Epstein’s crimes.

 

 

[Cygnia]

[unclevlad]

Dunno, Musk has been doing a very good job of self-destruction before linking to Trump.

[Pattern Ghost]

The problem with Musk is that he actually has as much money as Trump pretends to have.

[Cygnia]

Kamala Harris is taking power back from the press corps

[Cygnia]

The big question touching a nerve this election: "Can my husband find out who I am voting for?"

Quote

"Can my husband find out who I am voting for in the Presidential Election?"

Olivia Dreizen Howell, the founder of a website to help women get back on their feet after a breakup or divorce, tweeted last week, "We've been getting this question a lot," so she followed up with some facts. As the Washington Post confirmed with experts, the answer is simple: "No; it will be public record that you voted, but not how you filled out your ballot."

It's a useful reminder that secret ballots remain secret, even from nosy spouses. But that doesn't explain why the original tweet from Howell went viral, racking up over 8.5 million views and 14,000 retweets. As the comments under the post suggest, most people were envisioning a specific scenario: Thousands, perhaps millions of women, saddled with Donald Trump-voting jerks for husbands, who yearn to give their vote to Vice President Kamala Harris this November. "I think 'secret voting' by MAGA partners is a more widespread issue than most people think," one woman replied. Another man wrote, "As a poll worker, I have had to deal with husbands and fathers who want to join their wives or daughters in the voting booth to 'make sure they vote the right way.'"
 

 

[Cygnia]

Netanyahu’s office denies call with Trump about the Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal

[Cygnia]

New College of Florida tosses hundreds of library books, empties gender diversity library

Quote

Hundreds of New College of Florida library books, including many on LGBTQ+ topics and religious studies, are headed to a landfill.

A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college's library collection.
 

 

[Iuz the Evil]

https://apnews.com/article/ucla-protests-jewish-students-judge-rules-573d3385393b91dae093a8a8f0861431
 

Federal judge ruled this week that campus protestors may not block access to campus to Jewish students (protected class issue). This creates increased obligation for UCLA to ensure that protests are peaceful in nature and do not harass, intimidate or bar students from facilities. UCLA is expected to appeal this.

[DShomshak]

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/15/nx-s1-5077493/walzs-or-walzs-the-apostrophe-debate-takes-the-stage-today

 

Happy Apostrophe Day! I would have posted this in the general news thread except... the examples are about the Democratic candidates. Nothing about Harris' and Walz's positions, but I thought I should play it safe and post it here instead.

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

On 8/11/2024 at 4:28 PM, MrWolf said:

Someone in RL wanted me to sign a petition to support the Green Party.

 

Speaking of Third Party candidates, there's this:

 

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/15/nx-s1-5075038/montanas-libertarian-candidate-for-senate-says-gop-is-a-sending-message-to-drop-out

 

Much other political news on ATC today, including how Kevin McCarthy is funding a relatively moderate primary challenger to Florida's Matt Gaetz, and how many Evangelicals have merged their churches into the Cult of Trump (to be fair, some other Evangelicals find this trend disturbing), but the former seemed less important and the latyter isn't really news anymore.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Starlord]

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-medal-honor-remarks-spark-anger-veterans-miriam-adelson-1940135

 

Just keep on imploding, dips#!t.