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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
This.
If they were just pirates and looters, Republicans would be much less dangerous. Kleptocrats are bad but, like, wanting to lower rich people's taxes is honestly the least of the GOP's shittiness.
Wanting to control women's access to birth control and eliminate abortions isn't about profit. It's strictly ideological.
Putting Mexicans into concentration camps isn't about profit. It's strictly ideological.
Crusading against LGBT people's right to marry isn't about profit. It's strictly ideological.
I wish that the GOP were just a bunch of thieves and looters who were content with lowering taxes but held no actual opinions about race, class, gender, etc. Tragically, we live in a country where "Black people deserve to live" is a partisan stance.
There is real true evil at the heart of the GOP. Its name is bigotry, and it is rotting this country from within.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 12th 2020 at 10:23:33 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Even if the GOP was "just" courting bigots for votes...that's a bit of a Distinction Without a Difference. They're still enabling and empowering bigotry. Besides, the very fact that one is willing to pander to bigots at the expense of their victims implies that one is also bigoted in an "I don't care enough about these people to not pander to their tormentors" way.
Edited by M84 on Sep 13th 2020 at 1:28:21 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedAlso true.
The correct term for "Nazi Sympathizer" is "Nazi".
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Roger Stone to Donald Trump: bring in martial law if you lose election
The long-time Republican strategist and dirty trickster, who has a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, lied about contacts with Wiki Leaks during the 2016 election regarding emails hacked from Democratic party accounts.
In turn, special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate intelligence committee suspected Trump lied when he said he could not recall discussing the leaks with Stone.
Stone did not turn on Trump and had his sentence reduced on the recommendation of attorney general William Barr. But he still faced prison before Trump acted. His conviction stands.
Both men were in Nevada on Saturday, Trump holding campaign events while Stone sought to raise money for himself. He outlined his advice to Trump should he lose in a call to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars online show, on Thursday.
Citing widely debunked claims of fraud around early voting, absentee balloting and voting by mail, Stone said Trump should consider invoking the Insurrection Act and arresting the Clintons, former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Tim Cook of Apple and “anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity”.
Stone also said: “The ballots in Nevada on election night should be seized by federal marshals and taken from the state. They are completely corrupted. No votes should be counted from the state of Nevada if that turns out to be the provable case. Send federal marshals to the Clark county board of elections, Mr President!”
Nevada has not gone to a Republican since 2004 but is shaping up to be a crucial contest this year. Biden leads there, but polls have tightened.
Trump’s own rhetoric was not far removed from that of the man he spared prison. The president continued on Saturday to make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud. He and his campaign have also consistently claimed without evidence that “antifa”, or anti-fascist, activists represent a deadly threat to suburban voters that will be unleashed should Biden win.
Commenting on a Daily Beast report about leftwing activist groups planning what to do “if the election ends without a clear outcome or with a Biden win that Trump refuses to recognize”, Stone told Jones the website should be shut down.
“If the Daily Beast is involved in provably seditious and illegal activities,” he said, “their entire staff can be taken into custody and their office can be shut down. They wanna play war, this is war.”
Stone also advocated “forming an election day operation using the FBI, federal marshals and Republican state officials across the country to be prepared to file legal objections [to results] and if necessary to physically stand in the way of criminal activity”.
In an interview broadcast on Saturday night, Trump told Fox News he would happily “put down” any leftwing protests.
“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that,” he told Jeannine Pirro.
“We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that if we want. Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send in and we, we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that, because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes, within minutes.”
The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to use federal troops to enforce federal law. Last used in 1992, it was much discussed this summer, amid protests over racism and police brutality arising from the killing of George Floyd by officers in Minneapolis.
Ultimately Trump chose simply to send federal agents to confront protesters, most prominently in Portland, Oregon, a move which proved hugely controversial.
In his interview with Fox News, Trump discussed an incident in the city in which US Marshals shot dead a suspect in the killing of a member of a rightwing group.
“There has to be retribution when you have crime like this,” Trump said.
He also said protests such as those in Portland would lead to “a backlash” from the political right, “the likes of which you haven’t seen in many, many years”.
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Keith Olbermann once commented on Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables". He claimed that the people who support Trump despite his bigotry and not because of it are actually even more deplorable than the ones who support Trump because of the bigotry. He said that the only mistake Hillary Clinton made was assuming that only half of Trump's supporters were deplorable.
Basically, the kind of Trump supporter who goes "I'm not racist, but...I could really go for a tax cut."
Edited by M84 on Sep 13th 2020 at 1:54:17 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedI feel like ICE would be the best bet on that account. I'm pretty sure they'd fall lock-and-step with that kind of command. But one imagines the checks and balances would stop him before that.
Imagines.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I am bothered by the way the poll article a few pages ago was written and presented.
The actual statements in the tweets the article was based on were:
- Biden maintains a lead in Wisconsin and Trump's three best pick-up opportunities, among likely voters MN: Biden 50, Trump 41 NH: Biden 45, Trump 42 NV: Biden 46, Trump 42 WI: Biden 48, Trump 43
- The polls suggest that a lot of the Trump law and order pivot succeeded... but with a big catch. —Voters split on whether law and order > COVID to their vote —They say Biden *supports* defunding the police —They say Biden hasn't done enough to condemn violent riots, by a lot
- The big catch: despite all of that, Trump still doesn't really even lead on average on law and order or violent crime. That's probably in part because they think Biden's better at unifying the country, handling protests, and think Trump encourages violence
- Taken together, Biden's up 6 across the four states—which were about 1.2 points right of the country in '16. So I'd say it's basically in line with the national polling, which currently shows Biden ~ +7.5
The way it's presented in the article and in the thread feels like it's a cherry picked version.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanIt really shouldn't be surprising that "law and order" is backfiring on Trump. He's already run through his bag of tricks to solve it, and neither name-calling nor authoritarian-style anonymous abductions have had any real effect. Most undecided voters should be able to look at the situation and ask, if Trump really is the person to bring back "law and order", why isn't he doing it already?
Regarding voters wanting Biden to condemn violence, is there anything on how well that would go coupled with pointing out that the violence is almost unilaterally from the police side?
Or would that just make things worse? I don't just mean words, I mean like ads and stuff of all the videos of them blatantly attacking people.
x3: Which suggests the "thoughts?" we should be having on that article are the very ones you suggest, that the conclusions and slant of the article, and the way they were presented, is a bit suspect. Although the more nuanced take that law and order is working, just not the way Trump wanted it to, does still seem to be accurate at least.
That said, I'm glad the poster in question didn't intend to troll, and would only suggest that rather than "not doing it anymore" (i.e. not posting polls and articles) they should be mindful of how they present information to the forum or how that information is itself presented in the source material. I'd also like to mention that I had in fact hollered a mod about this issue some days ago, and when nothing seemed to happen I wasn't sure if the issue had been dealt with or not. So when it seemed to crop up again, that's why I mentioned it publicly. My sincere apologies.
@ DrunkenNordmann: A lot of people have been concerned about that very possibility with Trump, and it should be remembered that it was Stone who was greatly responsible for the Brooks Brothers Riot in 2000 that led to ending the Florida recount and Bush Jr. "winning". So there's certainly precedent for this happening, just that Trump's authoritarian mindset makes going to the Insurrection Act/martial law more likely for him.
That said, I've read articles showing the Dems are prepared for it and aren't going to roll over this time—from Biden having tons of lawyers to contest any legal actions Trump and the Republicans take to progressive groups organizing people to come out in protest in large numbers, whether to defend the election committees and ballot counters or to use nonviolent means to shout down the right-wing agitators.
Which means November is likely to be...very interesting.
Edited by Ingonyama on Sep 13th 2020 at 3:40:55 AM
Not to lull anyone into complacency here, but I feel that it's worth pointing out that Trump has spent the entirety of his term making enemies of the intelligence community, the Secret Service, and the military (the last, most famously and recently with his disparaging them as "losers" and "suckers"): in other words, pretty much everyone who he would need to make a declaration of martial law amount to anything other than a final temper tantrum at the end of playtime. Even the bootlickers who have been chugging the Trump-Aid would be too busy running for cover - both literally and metaphorically - to do anything to help him, especially once the former point becomes clear.
(yes, something resembling optimism from me, I'm just as surprised as you are)
Edited by Reflextion on Sep 13th 2020 at 7:50:35 AM
Someone did tell me life was going to be this way.There might be law enforcement following those orders, but they would be outnumbered by state law enforcement in a lot of cases and it might very well break the Godzilla Threshold for the Joint Chiefs.
Though as.... personally amusing it is to imagine ICE getting the business end of an M1 Abrahams and a bunch of grumpy Green Berets, let's hope it doesn't come to that.
Remember Trump is at his bone a coward, I doubt he has the nerve for an outright coup attempt.
My main worry is Barr for now.
Edited by 3of4 on Sep 13th 2020 at 2:10:59 PM
"You can reply to this Message!"To be honest, it is kind of an odd situation to be in when you lose but you still have to run the country for three months.
Why isn't the transition the day after the election?
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times![]()
While I don’t know the original rationale, the reason it’s still like that is just another case of refusing to change a flawed system because of “founding father worship.”
Edit: though one day’s notice is definitely a bit short to move people in and out of a place of residency. There’s probably a middle ground.
Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Sep 13th 2020 at 8:21:57 AM
My musician pageIdeally you have the three months for the outgoing admin to finish up what needs finishing up and make everything orderly for the newcomers as well as the incomers forming an administration and cabinet.
Also note that I til the EC votes there's also a lag of a few weeks + Holidays which eat about a third of December
"You can reply to this Message!"Yeah, I imagine the transition period is to make sure the incoming president has his cabinet, exec. branch picks and such decided and is ready.
Politico:
Bloomberg to spend up to $100 million to beat Trump in Florida
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg announced Sunday he would spend as much as $100 million in Florida to defeat President Donald Trump in his must-win state.
The infusion of cash comes as polls indicate a tightening of the race between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who are deadlocked in a recent Marist Poll, and as Floridians start voting by mail at the end of the month.
Biden's support among Hispanic voters is in double digits yet remains relatively low for a Democrat who wants to carry the state according to surveys of Latinos in Florida and Miami.
To that end, "communicating with Hispanic voters will be a key part" of Bloomberg's effort, which will primarily focus on digital and TV ads, according to a press release issued on behalf of his Independence USA political committee.
I recall there had been some grumbling about Bloomberg not giving the support he promised to Democrats/Biden when he dropped out.
Edited by nova92 on Sep 13th 2020 at 5:31:38 AM

Edited by sgamer82 on Sep 12th 2020 at 9:03:14 AM