Sure. If Pres. Trump wins the election he will be like other second-term presidents having nothing or not much to lose. So he might be pretty ruthless to his political enemies.Originally Posted by Seshmeister
Sure. If Pres. Trump wins the election he will be like other second-term presidents having nothing or not much to lose. So he might be pretty ruthless to his political enemies.
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HA!
And yes, that's really him!
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Funkmonkey (08-20-2020)
And yes, that's really him!
Wow, this goes on the Menagerie of Interesting Things thread. LBJ says he varies 10-15 pounds a month. So it appears he needs pants with enough extra fabric to be resewn to match the changes in his size... wait for it .... per month.
And if LBJ needs an extra inch in the crotch for his nuts, well damnit, LBJ gets an extra inch for his nuts all the way back to his bunghole.
Yesterday as spotted by Luke Skywalker
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Yesterday as spotted by Luke Skywalker
The incessant self-marketing is getting old whether it's Presidents Trump, Obamba, Luke Skywalker, and just about every politician.
jacobinmag.com
It’s Fine to Feel Like Shit About Joe Biden and the DNC
By David Sirota
It is always hard to get back from some time away — the email backlog, the pile of bills, the untended to-do list, and the inevitable aggravation from the home appliance that somehow no longer works, even though it was running smoothly before you left.
But heading home to Colorado last week from a family trip to Michigan was more than hard. Driving back during a pandemic, past a heartland destroyed by storms, toward a cloud of wildfire smoke, and into the final weeks of this dreadful election — it was downright crushing, to the point where I find it tougher to bounce out of bed, harder to force a smile, and wondering whether during a crazy time, I’m the one who’s gone insane.
I’m wondering, because this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. I’m told I should be bouncing up in the morning, uplifted by the Democratic convention and its promise of a new era soon — seventy-five days. But at least for me, watching the cable TV snippets, the convention speeches, and the celebratory Twitter dunks has left me with that feeling you get after eating junk food — full but not nourished; bloated, tired, and vaguely nauseous.
I’ve worked on a lot of Democratic campaigns, wins and losses. I’m literally married to a Democratic elected official. Over twenty years, I’ve put in an almost embarrassing amount of time working to support the Democratic Party. So these feelings are somewhat new for me, and I don’t think I’m having them just because Democratic officials decided to turn this year’s convention into a promotional platform for Republican icons who attacked unions, laid off thousands of workers, promoted climate denial, endangered 9/11 survivors, and lied us into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
I’m also not glum just because the Democrats’ presidential standard-bearer is often an uninspiring mishmash of incoherent here’s-the-deal colloquialisms that mean nothing.
I think the despair is deeper — and it has something to do with the now-yawning gap between social expectation and reality.
Right now, if you are following politics at all, you are asked to feel chipper and energized. We are expected — no, required — to conjure 2008-level enthusiasm during this even darker time than the financial crisis, all so that we can move into a new, glorious moment of Hope™.
But pretense is the necessary ingredient for authentic enthusiasm, and there is no pretense anymore. Everyone, on all sides of this situation — and I mean literally everyone — knows that politics today is pantomime. You may not say it out loud, you may not like thinking about it — but I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, because somewhere deep down in there, everyone senses the fraudulence at hand.
This is a moment of apolitical crises — that is, crises that aren’t just manufactured by and confined to the political soundstage, but instead life-and-death, out-here-in-the-real-world emergencies in the realms of money, biology, and ecology. We’re facing an economic and environmental collapse in the midst of a lethal pandemic. And we’re going through this cataclysm with a legislative branch controlled by right-wing senators, a court system that rubber stamps corporate demands, and an authoritarian president whose major crisis-management experience was firing people on the Apprentice.
And yet, in the middle of this five-alarm garbage fire, we’re asked to white-knuckle it and feign excitement for an opposition party machine run by insiders, lobbyists, and careerists who keep letting us know that they think campaign promises are distinct from policy. In so many ways, they keep telling us over and again that the most we can hope for is, in the words of the nominee himself, that “nothing would fundamentally change.”
There has certainly been a lot of inspiring talk about the health care emergency, the climate crisis, and oligarchy, but the party platform says it all.
During a recession that has resulted in millions losing health insurance, Medicare for All is nowhere to be found in the platform. During climate-intensified wildfires, inland hurricanes, and — yes, really — fire tornados, the platform’s section on ending fossil fuel subsidies was removed. The lobbyists who run the DNC also killed an initiative to reduce the influence of corporate money on the party. Meanwhile, Joe Biden himself rolled out a whole package of legislative promises, and then told his Wall Street donors that, in fact, changing corporate behavior is “not going to require legislation,” and he won’t be proposing any. Please clap.
The worst part is that dispassionately recounting any of these facts obviously proves you love Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin — at least, that’s what you’ll be told if you dare even whisper this. In our tribalized politics, war is peace, freedom is slavery, and dissent is disloyalty. Failure to match the rah-rah spirit of the Blue Team, refusal to get psyched for the charade, asking questions about inconvenient facts — it all means you must be on the Red Team and are being paid in rubles, comrade.
As an electoral strategy, this kind of vote shaming and dissent suppression doesn’t have a winning track record. It is both immoral and bad politics. There must be a better strategy — and for the love of god, with polls now tightening, the world needs the Democrats to find one fast, because another Trump term is unthinkable.
Either way, the constant, incessant demand to be happy about fraudulence — the insistence that we put on a smile and insinuate that the New Deal is on the ballot — is shamefully dishonest. It helps make the whole process into exactly what Ohio state senator Nina Turner described: “It’s like saying to somebody, ‘You have a bowl of shit in front of you, and all you’ve got to do is eat half of it instead of the whole thing.’ It’s still shit.”
This is demoralizing for obvious reasons, but to feel demoralized is to feel like you’re crazy and alone — because it requires you to deviate from the norm of blissful and willful ignorance. It requires you to pay attention and reject a culture that tries to turn you into a goldfish, forgetting your entire world every fifteen minutes.
To be demoralized at this political moment is to remember that, for all the great progressive oratory during the convention, the Democratic presidential ticket is the guy who wrote the crime bill, spearheaded the bankruptcy bill, and worked with Republicans to authorize the Iraq War — and, oh yeah, a running mate who blocked her law enforcement staff from prosecuting Steve Mnuchin.
To be demoralized is to feel momentarily uplifted by Michelle Obama’s inspiring convention speech deriding our “greed is good” culture from her Martha’s Vineyard castle — and to then remember that the Obama administration knowingly fortified that culture when it protected the Wall Street firms that destroyed millions of lives during the financial crisis.
To be demoralized is to make the mistake I made during my family break — to sit along the shore of Lake Michigan and, for some reason, reject a mindless beach novel to instead read Ron Suskind’s old book Confidence Men. That tome meticulously recounts Barack Obama and Biden promising real health care reform during the 2008 campaign, and then steamrolling a public option — and dishonestly pretending they never even pushed such a modest reform in the first place (they did). The book reads like a cautionary tale of what could come during the next Democratic presidency — especially if you believe the signals already coming from Capitol Hill.
To be demoralized, in other words, is to remember — and that’s not what Democrats do in America.
Minds are wiped, and Iraq War architects become Resistance heroes and Democratic convention speakers. Memories are scrubbed, and Wall Street thieves become Democratic economic gurus and treasury secretaries. Amnesia takes hold, and the Democratic governor of Mount COVID becomes a pandemic man crush. Democrats lose a presidential campaign to Donald Trump by defending the Washington establishment — and now, four years later, they are running the same Washington valor campaign again, telling themselves they’re too legit to quit, baby.
Our society is not interested in recollection and learning from the past. We are immersed in short-attention-span media and propaganda that doesn’t want us to remember, and that therefore goes out of its way to omit mention of historical context.
Indeed, this is part of why it’s almost sad that podcasts like Slow Burn seem like such wonderful aberrations — they are fascinating because they resurface lost history, but it shouldn’t be such a fascinating novelty, because political history should never be lost in the first place. Memory is the last defense against repeating catastrophes — but we choose to live in the memory hole.
On the long drive back from Michigan, I listened to some of those lost-history podcasts, and their themes mixed with my recent reading of Confidence Men. That first morning back home, I laid in bed, scrolling the news with that feeling of dread, wondering whether we have forgotten the most important history of all: the history of how authoritarianism rises.
We’ve seen this parable over and over again — elite-run, neoliberal governments are democratically elected and then do not economically deliver for the vast majority of the population, creating popular frustration and the political space for a right-wing strongman to seize power.
This is the taboo tale tying together the Obama and Trump eras. Though oversimplified, the broad strokes are clear: a populist campaign won the election, before an elite-run administration capitulated to corporate power, sowing frustration and disillusionment, which helped a demagogue peddling racism and sexism to successfully vault himself into the presidency.
We’ve been lucky that Trump is so narcissistic, clumsy, and inept — in many cases, his own idiocy has inhibited his ability to make things even worse than they are.
However, if our goldfish culture means we omit inconvenient facts and no longer allow ourselves to remember that journey from Obama to Trump, then what is to prevent us from repeating the journey again?
If we forget how bad the old “normal” was and just have to go back to a Wall Street–run White House championing incrementalism in the face of existential crises, what is to stop another Trump from emerging afterward?
If the 2009 capitulations of a new Democratic president, his party, and liberal groups in Washington become the 2021 capitulations of a new Democratic president, today’s party, and liberal groups, then what is to prevent 2024 from ending up like 2016, only with President Tom Cotton?
I probably should’ve read a pulp novel during my time off, because I don’t want these questions haunting my mind. I’d prefer that innocent, moronically naive hope I felt, standing with tens of thousands of others, when Obama visited Denver at the very end of the 2008 campaign.
But now, here in the middle of the country, with the sun blocked out by wildfire ash, with people losing jobs and health care, with schools closed, with a Democratic governor refusing to halt evictions — I can’t find that feeling. It’s gone.
That doesn’t mean I don’t know what to do when I get my ballot. I know I’ll have to deliver it to a drop box rather than by mail if I want to make sure it gets there on time. And I know to vote the Democratic ticket, because I live in a swing state, and I know that fascism’s bid for reelection must be defeated.
But I also know that the threat of fascism isn’t going away after November, so don’t ask me to be excited or feel happy. I’m not, and I don’t — and I suspect it’s the same for many people.
Maybe that doesn’t make us crazy. Maybe it makes us human.
At least, that’s what I’m telling myself when I have trouble rising and shining the morning after Joe Biden’s convention speech.
George Washington warned us about political parties and what will result in having them.
It's possible Powell and Kasich bring some votes to Biden. I wouldn't rule it out because there are Republicans that don't like Pres. Trump.
Wow, Biden has Fox news and Drudge Report kinda swooning about him. Looks like Biden is the juggernaut in the election race now. The bring in Kasich and Powell strategy appears to have gained traction.
Fox News and the Drudge Report praised Biden's 'barn burner' DNC speech, despite attacks from Trump
https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-...e-trump-2020-8
Kasich is shit.
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I never saw it but apparently the Kasich video showed him at a crossroads talking about how the US was at a crossroads. I agree with the sentiment and I'm hoping people will realize that this isn't a left right thing that doesn't matter so much as it being an authoritarian v non authoritarian thing. Anyhoo I have to admit it was funny that someone tracked down the roads in question which were near his home and apparently both routes led to houses worth over $800k which does say a lot about politics and politicians.
He wasn't originally going to watch the DNC Convention, but mom yelled down into the basement and made him?
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Funkmonkey (08-23-2020)
Oh, Jesus fuck, really? Really? I knew you were a lazy, wet liberal but to go to Marianne New Age Flake Fuck has made you hit new lows. Yes, let's all get our healing crystals out, maybe a Tarot card or two, some patchouli and a Yanni CD and try to give a rat fuck what she has to say.
Again, you self-entitled Bernie shits fail to see it's people like her (and you) that Ol' F A T T Y is president and probably will be for another 4 years.
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I'd take Marianne Williamson over John Kasich or Michael Bloomberg any goddamned day.
huffingtonpost.ca
Joe Biden’s DNC Speech Sounded A Lot Like A Jack Layton Quote
Former vice-president Joe Biden delivered a stirring speech as he accepted the party’s nomination for president at the Democratic National Convention Thursday night.
“Let us begin you and I together, one nation under God. United in our love for America. United in our love for each other,” Biden said. “For love is more powerful than hate, hope is more powerful than fear and light is more powerful than dark.”
Biden’s words about the power of love over hate were heralded as inspirational, as he looks to defeat President Donald Trump in the November election.
There’s just one thing: Canadians have heard those words before. Or, at least, a version of them.
In his final message to Canadians, the late NDP leader Jack Layton promised something quite similar.
“My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”
Many Canadians on Twitter were quick to take notice of the similarity.
While others were touched that Layton’s words were once again being mobilized for change.Jack Layton did it better https://t.co/N4wJhqZsOF
— nashwa lina (@nashwalina) August 21, 2020
this is basically a Jack Layton quote https://t.co/k3FbbuWWfd
— Jenn has maskne (@JennJefferys) August 21, 2020
So did he credit Jack Layton or no? https://t.co/8skVhQnjsH
— daanis gwaanden 🔥👊🏽💃🏽 (@gindaanis) August 21, 2020
Biden’s campaign did not respond to HuffPost Canada’s request for comment on whether Layton was a reference for the speech.Last night, Joe Biden invoked the words of Jack Layton. These thoughts from Jack are also mine and many of you in the NDP and of millions of Canadians.
Let's make sure these words, Jack's letter, help bring change.
"Don't let them tell you, it can't be done," Jack Layton. pic.twitter.com/G6zckO0Jqy
— Rick Barnes (@queerthoughts) August 21, 2020
People complaining that Joe Biden channeled Jack Layton should understand that
'Quoting a positive message is more powerful than whining and tweeting lies in ALL CAPS' https://t.co/WUsQ3sShvP
— Sue Me (@IAmHighOnHeels) August 21, 2020
My fellow Canadians, be glad that Biden is emulating/quoting Jack Layton. Be proud of that. Get your heads out of your asses and support our neighbours to the south in getting Trump the fuck out of office. FFS.
— Violet Fawkes (she/her) (@fireandhoney) August 21, 2020
Oh wow, so many people accusing Biden of “plagiarizing” Jack Layton in his speech last night. Two things:
1. He used some similar language, yes. Probably unintentionally.
2. I don’t think Jack would mind. He wanted everyone to think this way. https://t.co/7Rz8TgTdSU
— Stevie Jackson 🏳️*🌈 (@steviekayjay) August 21, 2020
But even Layton wasn’t the first Canadian politician to mobilize “love is better than hate” phrasing. That honour goes to prime minister Wilfrid Laurier, who said something similar in 1916.
“I shall remind you that already many problems rise before you: problems of race division, problems of creed difference, problems of economic con*flict, problems of national duty and national aspiration,” Laurier said during a speech in London, Ont.
“Let me tell you that for the solution of these problems you have a safe guide, an unfailing light if you remember that faith is better than doubt and love is better than hate.”
Biden has been accused of using other politicians’ words before. His first presidential run in 1988 was halted amid multiple instances of plagiarism, including lifting specific phrases and from a British Labour Party politician Neil Kinnock while making closing remarks at a debate.A 19th century conservative Canadian prime minister (Wilfrid Laurier), a 20th century socialist opposition leader (Jack Layton) and a 21st century liberal U.S. presidential candidate (Joe Biden) agree love is better than hate. Hm, is that the starting place?
— Kelly Toughill (@ktoughill) August 21, 2020
Maybe if Joe actually put his plagiarism skills to work, and stole Bernie Sanders platform (and actually enacted all of it) he could be a halfway decent President??
Assuming the Democrats won the senate you still have the same problem of right wing southern Democrats. Biden like Obama can maybe get the odd thing through but nothing remotely radical is doable now that consensus has broke down.
That's why all your Bernie dreams are so unrealistic, that's not how your system works. It's designed not to. The only consolation is the powerlessness of the president has protected you from some of the fucking insane shit Trump would have done.
The Senate is a whole other problem in and of itself. Should the Democrats manage to win it, rule # 1 has to be that Chuck Schumer isn't allowed anywhere near the Senate Majority Leader chair, as he has no idea what the words "majority" or "leader" mean. Bernie himself would be well suited for that job, but of course he would probably have to officially designate himself as a "Democrat" in order to do it.
As far as the "powerlessness of the President" goes, after Reagan, Chimpy, Cheeto, and the possibility of Biden, it really is starting to look like various degrees of Zaphod Beeblebrox, isn't it? At this rate I expect to see the Vogon ships show up any day now....
Here we go again, ladies and gentlemen. The ever-so-entitled Bernie shits are doing what? Oh, that's right complaining. Remember, always fucking remember, it's people like slave FORD that peole like Ol' F A T T Y are in office.
Yeah, people like FORD stole the 2016 primary and alienated half the fucking voters. Just keep telling yourself that, dumbass....
At least your spoiled, self-entitled Bernie shits are admitting you fucked things up. Yes, we have Ol' F A T T Y because of people just like you. Dumbass.Yeah, people like FORD stole the 2016 primary and alienated half the fucking voters. Just keep telling yourself that, dumbass....
It's mind-boggling the amount of wealth politicians gain while serving as government employees.
I think I figured out who Kristy really is. She's professional lying & Bernie hating media whore Joy Reid of MSDNC/Scumcast Inc.At least your spoiled, self-entitled Bernie shits are admitting you fucked things up. Yes, we have Ol' F A T T Y because of people just like you. Dumbass.
Kulinski makes a great point; it's not about ideology, it's about the structure of the party. The party is what is important. George Washington warned us about political parties. I'm also amazed at Joy Reid's almost fawning on Joe Biden.
Funny thing is, up until a few months ago, Joy Reid hated Biden almost as much as she hated Bernie Sanders (and still does hate him, of course.)
Considering Biden literally kicked off his campaign in the mansion of Scumcast's CEO, I'm guessing she was told her future paycheck depended on her getting over her hate for Biden.
As for the structure of the Democratic Party, it's been rapidly deteriorating for 30 years now, despite the fact that Bill Clinton was the only candidate to date who actually won on the DLC agenda.
Technically, Al Gore won, but he wasn't allowed to take his office. Obama certainly won... but he campaigned as a progressive, NOT a neoliberal DLC'er. Effective as all hell on the campaign trail, just sad he didn't mean a word of it.
This Turd Way, Republican lite (not even all that lite anymore, honestly) strategy has failed repeatedly, yet they insist on using it again and again. As Kyle says in many of his videos, "it's not 1992 anymore".
Yeah, that's what shocks me is what seems like the complete about-face Reid took on Biden. Rachel Maddow appeared to get a little moist listing to Reid. It was a little surreal.
I'm not totally sure what happened with Obama, but change in Washington is very difficult regardless of left or right.
newsweek.com
Richard Spencer backs Joe Biden, says "MAGA/alt-right moment is over"
By Ewan Palmer On 8/24/20 at 8:34 AM EDT
White nationalist Richard Spencer has said he will be backing Democratic candidate Joe Biden in November's election after previously distancing himself from Donald Trump.
Spencer, who was one of the key figureheads of the alt-right movement, tweeted how he is "on Team Joe" on Monday, adding in a self-made campaign slogan, "Liberals are clearly more competent."
In a series of tweets, Spencer further explained his reasoning for backing Biden.
"The MAGA/Alt-Right moment is over. I made mistakes; Trump is an obvious disaster; but mainly the paradigm contained flaws that we now are able to perceive. And it needs to end," Spencer wrote. "So be patient. We'll have another day in the sun. We need to recover and return in a new form."
In another tweet, Spencer added: "I will never flip on my fundamental principles. (My principles were never voting for the supposed 'the lesser or two evils' or 'stopping big government.')
"Walking into certain defeat, even death, is not heroic. It's foolhardy. I have no sympathy for martyrs. I admire winners."
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Spencer as "a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old."
Spencer first rose to prominence in 2016 after shouting "Hail Trump!" and being greeted with Nazi salutes at an event in Washington shortly after Trump was elected.
However, Spencer said earlier this year that he regrets voting for Trump, following the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
Spencer feared that Trump's approved airstrike which resulted in the death of Soleimani brought the U.S. to the brink of war with Iran.
"I deeply regret voting for and promoting Donald Trump in 2016," Spencer tweeted. "To the people of Iran, there are millions of Americans who do not want war, who do not hate you, and who respect your nation and its history.
"After our traitorous elite is brought to justice, we hope to achieve peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness," he added.
Spencer also led a protest against the Trump administration launching an airstrike on a Syrian airbase in 2017.
Credited with creating the term "alt-right," Spencer was also one of the main organizers of the neo-Nazi "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 at which counter-protester Heather Heyer died after being struck by a car driven by white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr.
In a statement released on the third anniversary of the deady rally, Biden said: "Three years ago today, the world watched in horror as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and far-right extremists with torches in hand descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, spewing the same anti-Semitic bile that was heard in Hitler's Germany in the 1930s.
"It was a moment of testing for our country, and a wake-up call to the fact that hate never dies—it only hides. And when our leaders give it oxygen, it can come roaring back to life.
"And then our president claimed that there were 'very fine people on both sides.' Donald Trump had the audacity to assign moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those who stood against it.
"I knew then that we were in a battle for the soul of this nation. And I knew then that I could not stand by and let Donald Trump destroy the core values of this nation. Now, three years later, we can see even more clearly that everything that has made America, America, is at stake."
Spencer and Biden's campaign team have been contacted for comment.
So did Spencer make his endorsement after Joe picked Scamala Harris?? Because she doesn't exactly seem like the ideal white supremacist candidate. Though they are probably fine with her record of locking up a lot of black & brown folks as a prosecutor.
Is that a thing, white supremacists have often dressed well?
NAZI SS uniforms, Hitler youth and brownshirts were all designed by Hugo Boss!
I think it's a reference to Spencer wearing "normal" suits, as opposed to most of the neo-Nazi types who prefer to dress up in the halloween costume versions of the old Hugo Boss designs.
Please take note ladies and gentlemen, that when Ol' F A T T Y get his 4 more years you will have slave FORD to blame.
So I will take the time now to say "fuck you" to slave FORD and his fucking stupid hipster propaganda.
"If voting was the solution, well these problems wouldn't, I mean, people voted for you twice, he's acting like he was never President, they voted for you twice and then Trump won. What does that tell you?"
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