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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Sounds like Thanksgiving for some of us. Luckily my entire family hates Trump, even the ones who are on a church board.
New York Times: 'Trump Is Better': In Asia, Pro-Democracy Forces Worry About Biden
Key passages:
As President-elect Biden assembles his foreign-policy team, prominent human rights activists across Asia are worried about his desire for the United States to hew again to international norms. They believe that Mr. Biden, like former President Barack Obama, will pursue accommodation rather than confrontation in the face of China’s assertive moves. And their pro-Trump views have been cemented by online misinformation, often delivered by dubious news sources, that Mr. Biden is working in tandem with communists or is a closet socialist sympathizer.
Skepticism for Mr. Biden extends to those fighting for secular political rights as well. The president-elect's embrace of diplomatic custom will not work when only one side is playing fairly, they say.
"For Biden's policies toward China, the part about making China play by the international rules, I think, is very hollow," said Wang Dan, who helped lead the 1989 Tiananmen protests as a university student. "As we know, the Chinese Communist Party hardly abides by international rules."
One of the most influential voices spreading false narratives about Mr. Biden and the election on Twitter is Ai Weiwei, the Chinese contemporary artist who now lives in overseas exile.
In an interview, Mr. Ai said that he was not a fan of Mr. Trump. For his art, he has posed at Trump properties with his middle finger raised. But Mr. Ai said that by shutting off debate on his social media feed, he would be no different than an authoritarian government like China's.
"The Trump administration by far has done more to raise our issue [about Uighurs in Xinjiang] than all other countries combined," said Salih Hudayar, who was born in Xinjiang and moved to the United States as a child. "I'm very skeptical of a Biden administration because I am worried he will allow China to go back to normal, which is a 21st-century genocide of the Uighurs."
Foreign policy advisers to Mr. Biden say that it is unfair to presume that he will continue the Obama administration's moderate stance. It is, they say, a different era. The recent human rights legislation championed by the Trump administration has received broad bipartisan support.
And some Asian dissidents acknowledge that the antipathy toward Mr. Biden is driven in part by a deluge of online misinformation that paints the president-elect as a secret socialist or contends, without any proof, that foreign "communist money" turned the election against Mr. Trump. Such unsubstantiated claims have been repeated by niche online publications in Vietnamese, Chinese and other languages.
"These guys are utilitarian, and they believe that if Trump is waging war against the C.C.P. then he's right for them," Mr. Badiucao said. "That mentality fits the whole 'America First' ideology, where it's OK for other people to suffer if your goal is met, and their goal is overthrowing the C.C.P."
I wonder if he knows that Trump told Xi the concentration camps were a great idea.
In any case the article highlights again the most reoccurring issue of online disinformation. We really really really need to figure out the best way to combat that or we're in for more hurting in the next elections.
The Denver Post: Colorado's young voters turned out in record numbers, largest bloc in the state
Their share of the vote was 27% of all ballots cast, cementing them as the largest voting bloc in the state, said Nicole Hensel, executive director of New Era Colorado.
Both Democratic and Republican campaigns worked to engage younger voters in Colorado, particularly on college campuses, but only a third of voters ages 18 to 29 cast ballots for President Donald Trump, according to Tufts' data from Nov. 6.
And, as with other demographic groups, an urgency to vote against Trump affected turnout, Preuhs noted. In 2016, youth and people of color did not turn out in the numbers Democrats expected, so they tried to make a more concerted effort to reach them in 2020.
Asian-American youth, in particular, showed strong engagement this election, according to the Tufts data.
The Colorado Votes Act, passed by Democratic lawmakers last year, also added voting centers and drop boxes at every college campus, expanded voting in primaries to 17-year-olds who would be 18 by the time of the general election and increased voting access on tribal lands.
"We love to see record youth turnout and what we hope that translates into is a mandate for centering a youth agenda in the minds of our elected officials," Hensel said.
Re: Anti-democratic conspiracies in the open from the last page: Not just the electoral college, things like gerrymandered house districts. Courts: 'We can't do anything about politically gerrymandered districts!' Redistricting commissions: 'Oh great, we'll just be openly partisan and not even hide it!'
Facepalm.
Re: Asian impression of Trump as a strong leader. Most people and press don't look at the inner workings or behind the scenes of what's going on in another country. They report on what the country leader says and maybe some big actions they implemented if it directly affects their own country. Their analysis won't go much beyond "Trumps says he's tough on China and he put tariffs on them."
This isn't just an Asian thing. How many laypeople in the US know about the inner workings of Iran or China or India etc. The are given a first impression of them thru their press and don't go much further. It doesn't even have to be misinformation. Just lazy reporting is enough. I've listened to Chinese talk radios from time to time up here in Canada and they pretty much take Trump's "America First" and "Tough on China" talking points at face value. I get more in-depth political analysis from browsing reddit than from them.
Edited by nightwyrm_zero on Dec 1st 2020 at 8:45:32 AM
I think they perceive Trump as a president who is a loud and does things,with Biden they're convinced he'll be president 'Do nothing' out of a desire to avoid rocking the boat,thus remain friendly with China
What they overlook is that Trump is President 'Do little' and little good came out his bluster,regurdless how loud he was,but then again,things like diplomacy don't matter to people that.
have a listen and have a link to my discord serverSo... we're probably not getting another round of stimulus checks.
But for many, that $1,200 check has already been spent. Now, as coronavirus cases surge, a group of more than 120 economists are urging lawmakers to approve another round of checks, arguing that they are "one of the quickest, most equitable, and most effective ways to get families and the economy back on track."
Congress has already allowed some relief programs to expire, like the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses and the $600 federal boost to weekly unemployment benefits. But others end this month. If Congress adds any stimulus to the general spending bill, they may prioritize pushing back those deadlines.
This is misleading. The bill passed by Democrats in the House included additional stimulus checks. The one pushed by Senate Republicans doesn't. I'm sure there are individual Republicans who would support checks, but that isn't getting past Mitch's desk or getting the support of the wider GOP caucus.
Giuliani and Trump discussed a preemptive pardon for Giuliani.
Why a pardon? Rudy Moody hasn't been charged with anything yet.
Hence "preemptive", probably. Also, from the article:
Edited by sgamer82 on Dec 1st 2020 at 9:17:18 AM
Hence the federal criminal investigation should not charge Rudy Moody until Donnie Twitterfingers is out of office.
Ayooooooooooooo, I saw the Electoral College mentioned. Imagine being a progressive and thinking the EC is a democratic or remotely useful institution in 2020, where a Republican has won the popular mandate only once in the past 28 years, but won three presidential terms.
Needing an institution to foist an unpopular President onto the nation so dilapidated Midwestern states feel important is political hostage-taking.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Dec 1st 2020 at 1:34:14 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Fired cybersecurity chief hints at legal action after Trump campaign lawyer said he should be shot – "I've got an exceptional team of lawyers that win in court, and I think they're probably going to be busy,” he said.
From the article:
Edited by speedyboris on Dec 1st 2020 at 11:17:14 AM
Saying things like
is dangerously indicative of promoting violence against democratic institutions, especially when poll workers have already been getting death threats for doing their jobs.
So, let's hang an anchor from the sun... also my TumblrDid anyone notice that the National Review Editors made a thing against Trump's election complaining?
This is not the kind of assurance presidents of the United States typically need to make, but it was noteworthy given Trump’s disgraceful conduct since losing his bid for reelection to Joe Biden on November 3.
Behind in almost all the major polls, Trump stormed within a hair’s breadth in the key battlegrounds of winning reelection, and his unexpectedly robust performance helped put Republicans in a strong position for the post-Trump-presidency era. This is not nothing. But the president can’t stand to admit that he lost and so has insisted since the wee hours of Election Night that he really won — and won “by a lot.”
There are legitimate issues to consider after the 2020 vote about the security of mail-in ballots and the process of counting votes (some jurisdictions, bizarrely, take weeks to complete their initial count), but make no mistake: The chief driver of the post-election contention of the past several weeks is the petulant refusal of one man to accept the verdict of the American people. The Trump team (and much of the GOP) is working backwards, desperately trying to find something, anything to support the president’s aggrieved feelings, rather than objectively considering the evidence and reacting as warranted.
Almost nothing that the Trump team has alleged has withstood the slightest scrutiny. In particular, it’s hard to find much that is remotely true in the president’s Twitter feed these days. It is full of already-debunked claims and crackpot conspiracy theories about Dominion voting systems. Over the weekend, he repeated the charge that 1.8 million mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania were mailed out, yet 2.6 million were ultimately tallied. In a rather elementary error, this compares the number of mail-ballots requested in the primary to the number of ballots counted in the general. A straight apples-to-apples comparison finds that 1.8 million mail-in ballots were requested in the primary and 1.5 million returned, while 3.1 million ballots were requested in the general and 2.6 million returned.
Flawed and dishonest assertions like this pollute the public discourse and mislead good people who make the mistake of believing things said by the president of the United States.
Elected Republicans have generally taken the attitude that the president should be able to have his day in court. It’s his legal right to file suits, of course, but he shouldn’t pursue meritless litigation in Hail Mary attempts to get millions of votes tossed out. This is exactly what he’s been doing, it’s why reputable GOP lawyers have increasingly steered clear, and it’s why Trump has suffered defeat after defeat in court.
In its signature federal suit in Pennsylvania, the Trump team argued that it violated the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution for some Pennsylvania counties to let absentee voters fix or “cure” their ballots if they contained an error while other counties didn’t. It maintained that it was another constitutional violation for Trump election observers not to be allowed in close proximity to the counting of ballots. On this basis, the Trump team sought to disqualify 1.5 million ballots and bar the certification of the Pennsylvania results or have the Pennsylvania General Assembly appoint presidential electors.
By the time the suit reached the Third Circuit, it had been whittled down to a relatively minor procedural issue (whether the Trump complaint could be amended a second time in the district court). The Trump team lost on that question, and the unanimous panel of the Third Circuit (in an opinion written by a Trump appointee) made it clear that the other claims lacked merit as well. It noted that the suit contained no evidence that Trump and Biden ballots or observers were treated differently, let alone evidence of fraud. Within reason, it is permissible for counties to have different procedures for handling ballots, and nothing forced some counties to permit voters to cure flawed absentee ballots and others to decline to do so.
Not that it mattered. The court pointed out that the suit challenged the procedures to fix absentee ballots in seven Democratic counties, which don’t even come close to having enough cured ballots to change the outcome in the state; the counties might have allowed, at most, 10,000 voters to fix their ballots, and even if every single one of them voted for Biden, that’s still far short of Biden’s 80,000-plus margin in the state.
The idea, as the Trump team stalwartly maintains, that the Supreme Court is going to take up this case and issue a game-changing ruling is fantastical. Conservative judges have consistently rejected Trump’s flailing legal appeals, and the justices are unlikely to have a different reaction.
Trump’s most reprehensible tactic has been to attempt, somewhat shamefacedly, to get local Republican officials to block the certification of votes and state legislatures to appoint Trump electors in clear violation of the public will. This has gone nowhere, thanks to the honesty and sense of duty of most of the Republicans involved, but it’s a profoundly undemocratic move that we hope no losing presidential candidate ever even thinks of again.
Getting defeated in a national election is a blow to the ego of even the most thick-skinned politicians and inevitably engenders personal feelings of bitterness and anger. What America has long expected is that losing candidates swallow those feelings and at least pretend to be gracious. If Trump’s not capable of it, he should at least stop waging war on the outcome.
TL;DR, greatly conservative op calling Trump a whining idiot who is making the obviously heroic and freedom-loving republicans look bad.
Edited by Aszur on Dec 1st 2020 at 1:35:14 PM
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes![]()
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This is the same kind of strategy Donnie Twitterfingers comes up with after he says something offensive or cruel: backtrack and say you were either joking or being sarcastic. People should not fall for this tactic over and over.
Edited by clemont107 on Dec 1st 2020 at 2:31:21 PM
"Wow, no Mega Togekiss in Legends Z-A. Or any non-Froslass new Sinnoh Mega Evolutions. Round of applause, everybody." - Dawn
