USA Politics (redux)

Started by bhodges, November 10, 2020, 01:09:34 PM

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Todd

Quote from: Florestan on November 12, 2020, 11:08:18 AM
Btw, any news yet of those storm troops which were ready to wreak havoc on the Election Day by intimidating voters and quite possibly even shooting some of them?


Didn't you hear, no one actually voted.  Everyone was cowed into staying home by the huge, roving bands of thugs dead set on stopping the vote.  The election was fake.
The universe is change; life is opinion. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People would rather believe than know - E.O. Wilson

Propaganda death ensemble - Tom Araya

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: Florestan on November 12, 2020, 11:08:18 AM
Btw, any news yet of those storm troops which were ready to wreak havoc on the Election Day by intimidating voters and quite possibly even shooting some of them?

You say that as though it was something that the liberals made up, when in fact T***p himself said, several times at his Nuremberg rallies, that he wanted that to happen. Clearly no one took him seriously enough that they didn't come in and help vote him out of office.

8)
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Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Karl Henning

Mona Charen: "The day after the firing of the secretary of defense who resisted the use of troops against peaceful American protesters is probably not a great time for the secretary of state to joke about a transition to a "second Trump administration." If he was in fact joking. Welcome to what the Republican party is in 2020—a threat to democratic order.

I've had conversations in the past few days with people who disliked Trump enough to pull the lever for Biden but still believe that the Republican party itself is sound and will snap back to normal now that Trump is defeated.

I'd like to believe that, but the auguries are not good so far. The party's leaders have closed ranks around Trump, repeating the lies and conspiracies he's spinning about a stolen election. They are laying the predicate for the next four years—the stab in the back. Trump didn't lose, he was robbed. Biden is not the president, he's the usurper.

You really couldn't have asked for a more open-handed Democrat than Joe Biden. He has made every effort to soothe the bitterness of our politics and attempted to unify the country. Someone on CNN said he had "slammed" Trump for failing to concede, but that's wrong. He said it was "embarrassing" and wouldn't burnish Trump's legacy—which is about the mildest way to describe what Trump is doing."
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Gurn Blanston

Quote from: Todd on November 12, 2020, 11:10:39 AM

Didn't you hear, no one actually voted.  Everyone was cowed into staying home by the huge, roving bands of thugs dead set on stopping the vote.  The election was fake.

I personally received this email yesterday, directly from Lara T***p herself.
QuoteThis Election isn't over yet and it's imperative that we keep FIGHTING for every single LEGAL vote to be counted.

President Trump is putting together an exclusive group of his most reliable supporters, the Election Defense Task Force, and he needs YOU on the team to FIGHT BACK against the blatant voter fraud.

We cannot allow the Radical Left to subvert our Elections, which is why it's so CRITICAL that you step up right now.

So you are probably right, Todd, the election WAS fake!  :o :o :o 

She wants me to send them my life savings. You think I should go ahead and do that? 
Signed: Dazed and Confused  ::)

Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

Karl Henning

Quote from: Florestan on November 12, 2020, 11:08:18 AM
Btw, any news yet of those storm troops which were ready to wreak havoc on the Election Day by intimidating voters and quite possibly even shooting some of them?

There were in fact incidents of voter intimidation. Are you sure you want to try to laugh it off?
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

drogulus


     Biden Can't Stop America's Democratic Decline

A few years ago I developed a moderately cheering theory about the effects of four years of U.S. President Donald Trump. The thought came to me while I was covering the French presidential elections in 2017. Very few French voters seemed to be attracted to Emmanuel Macron's Anglo-American brand of liberalism, but they voted for him in overwhelming numbers against Marine Le Pen because they felt called to defend so-called republican values against her populist nativism. The French had a collective memory of their own brush with fascism during the Vichy era and the 1930s. So, too, the Spanish, who kept their own right wing firmly in check. Perhaps, I thought, Americans' own problem was historical complacency; if so, Trump could provide a kind of homeopathic remedy which would inoculate them against the full-blown disease of authoritarianism without making them gravely ill.

I was wrong. The democratic catharsis that I hoped this election would produce did not happen and is not happening. I need not recite the evidence, as so many others have, including Foreign Policy's editor, Jonathan Tepperman. It is enough to say that my medical metaphor got it backward: Trump exploited a preexisting condition of contempt for democratic norms and then made it vastly worse.


     The thesis is that neither party will be able to overcome the other until the system collapses and MechaTrump rules over the rubble.

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on November 12, 2020, 11:12:25 AM
You say that as though it was something that the liberals made up, when in fact T***p himself said, several times at his Nuremberg rallies, that he wanted that to happen. Clearly no one took him seriously enough that they didn't come in and help vote him out of office.

8)

     Trump didn't succeed so he didn't try, or something like that, or stuff.

     
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Todd

Quote from: Gurn Blanston on November 12, 2020, 11:16:39 AMShe wants me to send them my life savings. You think I should go ahead and do that? 


No, absolutely not.  You should go ahead and send it to me, and I will spend it judiciously on good causes.  I will send you a PM with my bank account info.
The universe is change; life is opinion. - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

People would rather believe than know - E.O. Wilson

Propaganda death ensemble - Tom Araya

drogulus


     We should agree on crediting Trump with his efforts. If anyone thought Trump would succeed in stealing an election by accusing the other side of stealing it, they have been proved wrong by events, usually the best proof. It's not a new thing that Trump doesn't get what he wants most of the time. Life is very unfair to him.
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Gurn Blanston

Quote from: Todd on November 12, 2020, 11:21:34 AM

No, absolutely not.  You should go ahead and send it to me, and I will spend it judiciously on good causes.  I will send you a PM with my bank account info.

:D

8)
Visit my Haydn blog: HaydnSeek

Haydn: that genius of vulgar music who induces an inordinate thirst for beer - Mily Balakirev (1860)

vandermolen

Quote from: Brewski on November 12, 2020, 10:43:57 AM
;D

Like many (I suspect), I have already found a photo of that Four Seasons Total Landscaping garage door, to use as a virtual Zoom background.

--Bruce

Brilliant!
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

vandermolen

Quote from: Todd on November 12, 2020, 11:05:00 AM
It was already moved up to January from March in the 30s.  We just need another Constitutional Amendment to move it up any further.  As it stands, it could not be earlier than the first day of the first session of a new Congress since under certain circumstances Congress would have to choose the president.  There is a lower probability of this being changed than the Electoral College being abolished.
Thanks for the explanation re. dates. I realise that it's not that straightforward.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Karl Henning

Quote from: drogulus on November 12, 2020, 11:25:54 AM
     We should agree on crediting Trump with his efforts. If anyone thought Trump would succeed in stealing an election by accusing the other side of stealing it, they have been proved wrong by events, usually the best proof. It's not a new thing that Trump doesn't get what he wants most of the time. Life is very unfair to him.

By a 7-million margin, the voters want President Biden, and not to give a second term to the wankmaggot dotard, but the election was not the repudiation of Trumpism for which decent Americans hoped.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

drogulus

#152
Quote from: Gurn Blanston on November 12, 2020, 11:05:48 AM
Whilst that is all true, the question at hand was that a non-American was saying that he felt he could see that Americans don't want to pay taxes. The fairness argument is a lot more on point than some esoteric income leveling policy, which in 69 years on this planet, I have yet to see brought forward by anyone in everyday life. The 2 issues are:

  • Fairness
  • Irresponsible spending by the government

No one I have spoken to (amazingly, really) has ever said a word about income leveling. Not that they shouldn't, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't contribute substantially to the reluctance to pay taxes expressed by some. Just sayin'...

8)

     No, I don't expect people to understand how taxing and spending levels income as esoterically as I do. There's no danger of that. It would be good if people understood just a little that what people want in terms of fairness, when it's done, does what I describe, not in a future world but in this one. IOW to the degree that a policy, the present one or a future one, satisfies ideas of fairness it will be because it does something along the lines I describe, growing incomes and the economy.
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Daverz

Quote from: drogulus on November 12, 2020, 11:20:56 AM
     Biden Can't Stop America's Democratic Decline

"[...] if one half of the country continues to regard democratic processes as a sinister means for empowering the other half."

Um, no, only one party regards democratic processes as sinister.  (Sorry to pull out one sentence from a long article, but that one just bugged me.)

drogulus

Quote from: Daverz on November 12, 2020, 11:39:07 AM
"[...] if one half of the country continues to regard democratic processes as a sinister means for empowering the other half."

Um, no, only one party regards democratic processes as sinister.  (Sorry to pull out one sentence from a long article, but that one just bugged me.)

     It doesn't say both halves have to think the same way. It's a belief one half has about the other. It could be true that both halves are symmetrical in believing the worst about each other, but it's not a necessary condition.
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Karl Henning

Quote from: drogulus on November 12, 2020, 11:50:50 AM
     It doesn't say both halves have to think the same way. It's a belief one half has about the other. It could be true that both halves are symmetrical in believing the worst about each other, but it's not a necessary condition.

I do not think it is about any such symmetry.
Karl Henning, Ph.D.
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston MA
http://www.karlhenning.com/
[Matisse] was interested neither in fending off opposition,
nor in competing for the favor of wayward friends.
His only competition was with himself. — Françoise Gilot

Mirror Image

Quote from: vandermolen on November 12, 2020, 10:37:25 AM
Yes, as an outsider surely this is an argument for not having such a long gap between the election itself and the new President being sworn in. Personally I admire the way that Biden is dealing with it by, apparently, just getting on with the job and good for George W. for referring to Trump as the 'former President' and congratulating Biden.

Well, it's obvious that Biden won the election, I mean it's beyond absurd at this juncture that former president Trump is acting exactly like how he described the Democrats were acting in 2016. When he signed up for the job, there was always the possibility of losing re-election, that's just the way it goes. He's upset that the votes didn't go his way, but what he has failed to do is thank all the people who actually supported him during his campaign and, quite frankly, I don't think he gives a damn about them and, thankfully, it shows. He has all the markings of a lame duck and will have to accept the reality that he's no long commander-in-chief.

Daverz

Quote from: drogulus on November 12, 2020, 11:50:50 AM
     It doesn't say both halves have to think the same way. It's a belief one half has about the other. It could be true that both halves are symmetrical in believing the worst about each other, but it's not a necessary condition.

Ah, yeah, sorry, reading comprehension fail there.  I'm glad you guys caught it.  ;)

Zeus

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on November 12, 2020, 10:36:07 AM
Is this total spending or only govt spending?
If the healthcare spending decreases in a subsequent year, does the mark still proceed rightward or retreat leftward?

That's gotta be total health care spending.  And, since time is not given its own axis, any line could move backwards in any given year.  Interestingly, most lines progress upward and to the right fairly smoothly from year to year.
"There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love. There are simply different ways of doing it." – Emmanuel Radnitzky (Man Ray)

drogulus


     The Pope just congratulated Biden for stealing the election.
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