Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[archer]

Breaking News: Supreme Court has ruled that basic intelligence tests for elections is discriminatory.

 

The judge said that it is unfair to block all Trump supporters from voting.

[archer]

Who is Trump’s favorite country singer?

 

Dolly Pardon

[archer]

Air Force One crashed on a farm in Nebraska

 

Panic stricken, the local sheriff mobilized and descended on the farm in force. When they got there, the disaster was clear. The aircraft was totally destroyed with only a burned hull left smoldering in a tree line that bordered a farm.

 

The sheriff and his men entered the smoking mess but did not find the remains of anyone, including the President. They spotted a lone farmer ploughing a field not too far away as if nothing at all happened. They hurried over to the man's tractor.

 

"Hank," the sheriff yelled, panting and out of breath. "Did you see this terrible accident happen?"

 

"Yup. Sure did," the farmer said, cutting off his motor.

 

"Do you realize that is the airplane of the President of the United States?"

 

"Yup."

 

"Were there any survivors?"

 

"Nope. They's all kilt straight out. I done buried them all myself. Took me most of the morning."

 

"Oh my God. President Trump is dead?"

 

"Well," the farmer grumbled, restarting his tractor. "He kept a-saying he wasn't... but you know what a liar he is."

[archer]

What's the difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden?

 

About 28 days.

[archer]

There’s a term for people like Trump.

 

But there’s not a second one.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

 

Groucho Marx sang the line in Duck Soup.

 

That movie is the closest thing to the Trump administration. Incompetent con man becomes president of a country, and throws it into chaos with the help of his crazed cronies.

[unclevlad]

This just in...Trump vetoed the defense spending bill.  House is going to have to come back Monday.  

 

This will be the first major test of whether the Republicans are still owned lock, stock, and barrel by Trump, or whether they'll draw the line in the sand.  I'm particularly thinking of the Congressmen who signed onto that last absurd lawsuit.  I'm also thinking this is going to be a VERY big deal for the Georgia Senate runoffs...especially if the Senate has to vote on this.

 

EDIT:  secondary thought.  This may be a threat by Trump...override me on this, kiss the pandemic relief bill goodbye.  At least without cramming the individual payments down the Republicans' throats.

[Lord Liaden]

Trump is publicly demanding $2,000 direct payment to each American, the amount the Democrats were asking for. There's no way the Dems in the Senate will vote to override Trump's veto if that's his (publicly-expressed) objection, and without them the Pubs don't have the votes. I also highly doubt most Pub senators will want to be on record voting against giving Americans in need more money.

 

IMO that's why Nancy Pelosi is calling for an immediate unanimous vote to amend the direct payment to $2,000. Either the Republicans pass it and people get more, or they reject it and suffer politically. For Pelosi it's win-win.

[wcw43921]

Government Report Warns Of Potential Violence And Foreign Interference During Georgia Senate Runoffs

[archer]

3 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Trump is publicly demanding $2,000 direct payment to each American, the amount the Democrats were asking for. There's no way the Dems in the Senate will vote to override Trump's veto if that's his (publicly-expressed) objection, and without them the Pubs don't have the votes. I also highly doubt most Pub senators will want to be on record voting against giving Americans in need more money.

 

IMO that's why Nancy Pelosi is calling for an immediate unanimous vote to amend the direct payment to $2,000. Either the Republicans pass it and people get more, or they reject it and suffer politically. For Pelosi it's win-win.

 

Trump has also been saying that he'd veto the bill unless it rolled back the 230 legislative protections which sites like Facebook and every forum depends on in order to stay functioning.

 

So there's really no telling what he'd actually be satisfied with.

[Lord Liaden]

Agreed. But the rock he announced he's standing on is the increased payments, and that's where the Democrats can fight and win. If the Republicans give on that it'll be much more problematic for Trump to veto it again, and much more likely Congress will overturn it.

[unclevlad]

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Agreed. But the rock he announced he's standing on is the increased payments, and that's where the Democrats can fight and win. If the Republicans give on that it'll be much more problematic for Trump to veto it again, and much more likely Congress will overturn it.

 

That's on the pandemic relief bill tho.  Repealing the social media protections was one of his demands on the defense spending bill.  

 

And it's a surprise to no one, I figure, but he continued his pardons...Manafort, Stone, and Kushner's father.  

[Cygnia]

An Oscar Winner Made a Khashoggi Documentary. Streaming Services Didn’t Want It.

[Cygnia]

Inside Trump and Barr’s Last-Minute Killing Spree

[unclevlad]

Something pointed out in an article...

 

Trump can do absolutely nothing...not sign the funding bill, not sign the relief bill, but also not actively veto it.  It dies on January 3rd because the Congress that passed it, is no longer in session.  Which means the whole process has to start over again.

 

One point I've seen that is really being played out...the process between election day and inauguration day is a farce now.  Fine, it made sense when horseback was the fastest mode of travel and information exchange.  It no longer does, and we're seeing the damage.  Fine, leave 2-3 weeks to allow recounts, but there should be a new Congress seated the first week in December, and Inauguration Day should be the second week.  The date has been changed before;  prior to 1933, it was actually in early March (!).  BUT, unfortunately, that date's fixed by the 20th Amendment, which set the dates at which the terms end.  Changing it is thus...fat chance.

[Starlord]

Millions of jobless benefits ran out yesterday while Trump plays Golf instead of signing the bill.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

One point I've seen that is really being played out...the process between election day and inauguration day is a farce now.  Fine, it made sense when horseback was the fastest mode of travel and information exchange.  It no longer does, and we're seeing the damage.  Fine, leave 2-3 weeks to allow recounts, but there should be a new Congress seated the first week in December, and Inauguration Day should be the second week.  The date has been changed before;  prior to 1933, it was actually in early March (!).  BUT, unfortunately, that date's fixed by the 20th Amendment, which set the dates at which the terms end.  Changing it is thus...fat chance.

 

That may indeed be practical, but there are many logistical issues involved. Until the election results are finalized and official, an incoming new President and his officials can't be given access to classified information and channels. The new team has to be acquainted with their offices. There will be briefings with, and maybe shakeups for, the military staff, intelligence services, and embassies around the world. I don't know whether or not it would be practical to get all that done in a month.

 

The only reason this process is a farce now, is because the outgoing President is a clown.

[unclevlad]

6 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

That may indeed be practical, but there are many logistical issues involved. Until the election results are finalized and official, an incoming new President and his officials can't be given access to classified information and channels. The new team has to be acquainted with their offices. There will be briefings with, and maybe shakeups for, the military staff, intelligence services, and embassies around the world. I don't know whether or not it would be practical to get all that done in a month.

 

The only reason this process is a farce now, is because the outgoing President is a clown.

 

As long as the election result isn't contested, those briefings normally start LONG before the results are finalized.  Changes don't have to be made immediately either, to most of those offices, or can the ones that are really bad (DeVos, for example) and use subordinates.  

 

Granted that Trump is a disaster, and his most positive action is doing nothing.  Still:  how much major policy gets executed during a normal transition?  We have about 6 weeks of dead time to begin with;  it can't hurt to cut that back, IMO.

 

[BoloOfEarth]

53 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

The only reason this process is a farce now, is because the outgoing President is a clown.

 

Hey, now, be nice!  Some clowns are good people!

[BoloOfEarth]

35 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

Granted that Trump is a disaster, and his most positive action is doing nothing.

 

I'd say that would normally have been the case, but in this particular case doing nothing is actually more harmful than either signing the bill or vetoing it.  At least with either of those actions, things can still move forward. 

 

I really hope the Democrats can play up the results of his complete incompetent inaction to good effect in the Georgia runoff elections.  I truly, deeply hope Trump being the **** that he is results in the Republicans losing both Senate seats - and that this is fully realized by the Republicans who've been kowtowing to his every whim the last four years.

[Starlord]

Once Trump is out of office, I challenge all major media outlets to please stop giving him a voice and stop covering every tiny, little comment, outburst or tweet he makes.

[archer]

1 hour ago, BoloOfEarth said:

 

I'd say that would normally have been the case, but in this particular case doing nothing is actually more harmful than either signing the bill or vetoing it.  At least with either of those actions, things can still move forward. 

 

I really hope the Democrats can play up the results of his complete incompetent inaction to good effect in the Georgia runoff elections.  I truly, deeply hope Trump being the **** that he is results in the Republicans losing both Senate seats - and that this is fully realized by the Republicans who've been kowtowing to his every whim the last four years.

 

From what I've read, the Republicans aren't waking up to the fact that Trump was a disaster for the party.

 

After the McCain and Romney losses, the Republican leadership did like a deep dive forensic analysis of why they lost and what they could have done to better reach out to groups which didn't vote for them. That hasn't happened after the Trump loss despite the fact that he lost by a wider margin than either of those previous two.

 

Trump got more votes than any other Republican candidate in history. The Republicans made impressive gains in the House considering that Trump was widely unpopular and that blame for COVID was (correctly, IMO) laid at the feet of Republicans by the voters.

 

They're, seriously, looking at that and telling themselves that their loss was only due to COVID and that Trump has showed them the key to winning in future elections.

 

If the Democrats manage to pull off wins in both Georgia Senate seats and Trump doesn't pull off a coup to stay in power, I'd expect the Republicans to tell themselves that they lost those two Senate seats because of Trump's mixed messaging about whether his supporters should vote for those two Republican candidates. And that the Republicans aren't going to look at Trumpism as a disease or the Trump family as being the outcasts they should be.

 

They're going to tell themselves, "Oh well, Trump himself went off the rails a little bit at the end. But on the whole he was great for us."

 

I've never made any formal study of logic to know all the names of the various logical fallacies which can be made. But there's a very common one where people look at an end result then use that to justify the decision which led to that result: no matter that anyone else can look at the decision to see it was objectively bad, because the decision didn't end in catastrophic disaster, people will see the decision as being good.

 

Trump was deservedly way behind in the polls. There was a surprisingly heavy same-day voter turnout compared to what was predicted because a lot of people who had told pollsters that they weren't going to vote did. And that same-day turnout was overwhelmingly pro-Trump.

 

So rather than the Republicans losing catastrophically like it looked like they certainly would, they pulled off some gains in the House, did okay in the Senate considering the number of seats they were defending, and Trump's loss wasn't so embarrassingly bad that he couldn't spin it to the faithful as a virtual win (which says more about the mentality of the faithful than anything else IMO, but the opinions of the faithful are important to the Republican leadership). 

 

That's kind of like the stories you hear about people who have jumped out of an airplane without a parachute and survived: it's not a good idea to try but it's tough to argue that the person who did it successfully isn't alive.

 

The Republicans, by all accounts that I've read, are determined to look at the 2020 election results and see their strategy as something which should be embraced and duplicated. That's disappointing as hell, to say the least. But unless they come to reverse themselves and see their better-than-expected results as a loss, they're going to continue to convince themselves that they're doing the right thing.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Starlord said:

Once Trump is out of office, I challenge all major media outlets to please stop giving him a voice and stop covering every tiny, little comment, outburst or tweet he makes.

Are you nuts? The man is a ratings goldmine. 

[Ragitsu]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

The man is a ratings goldmine. 

 

Iron pyrite mine, more like it.

[Lectryk]

24 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Iron pyrite mine, more like it.

Tomato, tomahto; still huge ratings. 

 

Even if Twitter follows through and bans his account, you think the media won't report on whatever the Right-verse settles on as a platform for the rants he goes on? 

Fox/OAN/Whatever will most likely have an embed with whatever after-Presidential office that exists, and Trump has huckster so deeply in his dna he does not know HOW to keep his mouth shut.

And, his loyal followers will echo his sayings/pronouncement/whatever so much that even if by some miracle he is directly muzzled by the entire world media, his drivel will still get out.

 

I fully expect to spend the rest of my life to be hearing something from Trump directly or reported on.