It appears that Trump’s victory will be paired with a healthy advantage in the Senate, and probably control of the House as well.
It appears that it will be 312-226 in the electoral college.
The popular vote could be close, but it appears that Trump will win that for the first time. Harris underperformed Biden’s 2020 performance in about 90% of the counties with enough results to analyze, and in 100% of the states!
The Catholic vote has been overlooked. Biden defeated Trump 81m-74m overall, but Biden, who is a Catholic, took 52% of the Catholic vote, while Harris took only 41% against Trump and JD Vance, who is a Catholic. That alone caused a shift of 4 million voters from blue to red. If Biden had taken only 41% of the Catholic vote, as Harris did, he would have lost the popular vote by one million.
Harris also dropped a similar percentage (from 65% to 53%) among Latino voters, but many of those are the same voters as in the Catholic bloc. Harris lost about two million white Catholics and two million non-white Catholics.
Latino males had supported Biden 59-36. They rejected Harris 44-54. This may be a shift to the right in Latino politics, or it may be that Latino males in particular reject the notion of a black, female President. The gender gap in 2024 was 17 points among Latino voters. It had been only 6 points in 2020, when there were two two male candidates.
Among white people, the gender gap was not as significant as the education gap. Trump wins 65% of white voters with no college degree, versus only 44% of white college graduates, so the education gap among whites is 21%. In contrast, the gender gap among whites is only 8%
- There is no education gap among non-whites. This is strictly a white characteristic.
Best jokes so far:
With two non-consecutive terms, you can now call him Groper Cleveland.
Harris shit the bed so bad Johnny Depp wants to marry her.
Do you think she can get her old job back at McDonald’s?
Based on the exit polls, Trump grabbed 53% of white women. He also got their votes.
Just for fun, I want the Republicans to follow through now on all their bullshit voter fraud claims – take them into court, lose, keep appealing til the budget runs out. I mean, fraud in your favor is still fraud, right?
Seriously wonder what will be left of the country after four more years.
This was all set up in 2020 when Biden picked his VP candidate on the basis of checking off more boxes rather than being the best pick.
As a former Treasury worker of 30 years, the possible effect of this 2025 stuff on the functioning of the Federal Government worries the hell out of me. I worked in a well-run area (Treasury debt financing) which pretty much had nothing to do with politics, just getting the job done. Some of Trump’s statements about debt management have bordered on insanity like paying off debt at a discount (would do wonders for the old full faith and credit) and working crypto into the mix. Putting some MAGA bozo into the operational area, below the politicals, could be nothing but disastrous. And there’s the concept of fucking with NOAA, where the work of the professionals continuously produces data and conclusions the “Climate Hoax” sorts don’t want to hear.
And what he would do in the area of foreign policy? Sheesh.
More proximately set up by the DNC putting their thumb on the scale for Hilary in ’16 because it was her turn or whatev. Bernie would have fucking won.
Biden having to run at all was a mistake, he’s always been dead-curious. Understandable though, a woman loses you go with The Right Stiff.
Bernie was despised by, I’m going to say, 30/40% of the Democrats as a Democrat of convenience. Would have been drubbed worse than Dukakis.
In a less corruption-driven primary, Bernie wins. If the DNC got behind him, how many of your 30/40% (which I’m not buying, but anyway) would despise him enough to buck their own party and vote for Trump?
It would have been a clash of outsider geezers and Sanders would have wiped the floor with Trump in general and much moreso in any debate.
Nature Mom, your counterfactual is undecidable. Maybe Bern woulda won the primary, maybe not. Maybe he’d ‘a whupped Trump, maybe not. We’ve seen a debate kill a campaign, but it’s seldom the golden ticket to a victory.
Bill makes a great point about Bernie. I mean, I love the guy. But we’ve already seen it again just yesterday. Dems are reeling. Bernie’s hard at work to fight back. So, is he figuring out how Dems should change to compete? No, he’s trying to tool up for another 3rd party run. He’s a traitor. Bill’s 30/40% is a credible guess at Dems who smell it.
Actually this is to Mom’s 4:11. I wasn’t saying these people would have voted for Trump. But they would have worked less hard or not worked at all for Bernie, given shitloads less money, and a significant number would have sat it out or voted for a boutiquey candidate instead. And it was a close election to begin with.
A traitor, to the Dems? He can’t be, he was never a member. He’s figuring what ANYONE will have to do to win, while pointing out that the middle class rightly feels abandoned by the Dems.
No political parties in the Constitution. I’m convinced they did that on purpose. True: like other things, it’s an unprovable hypothetical. Which doesn’t make it wrong.
Thanks, Nature & Bill. Bill said it, Dem of Convenience. But if he was running as an indy, the DNC couldn’t have just put their finger on the scales against him, right?
That is, why is Bernie’s own take the one you latch onto? Because you’re for him. Your bias. The relevant take that Bill was talking about was the one the Dems should take.
Bernie caucused with them. He voted with them. He endorsed Biden, then Harris. Shouldn’t Dems consider him a fellow traveler?
I’m saying, no. They should not think of him like that. Think of him instead as a turncoat. A fair-weather friend, at best.
The one hypothetical of yours worth putting in context was “Bernie could have fucking won.”
That’s alternate history, & not top shelf in that genre.
“what ANYONE will have to do to win”?
Eh, deport Trump voters? Secede? Get the bomb first, nb Ukraine.
“No parties in the Constitution… on purpose.”
No duh.
“unprovable doesn’t make it wrong.”
Sorry, what?
“Bernie could have fucking won.”
That’s a flat statement. AKA a claim. I don’t need to rebut. Burden of proof is on you. No proof, no believe.
Oops.
You said “would have” not “could have.”
That’s why it’s a flat statement. My bad.
Sigh. OK, reality sucks, so sure I’ll dive back into this weird eddy of couldawouldashouldadidna.
Bernie was running as a Dem because it’s a two-party system – you need one or the other party behind you to win, just like an Olympian needs a country. The Dems let him caucus with them to give an appearance of inclusiveness.
I don’t latch on to Bernie’s views because I like him. Pretty much the complete reverse: he sees and speaks clearly about reality, including that the DNC is as much a wholely-owned subsidiary of several large comanies as the RNC. I don’t know or like him as a guy, I just find things he has said to be true and insightful. What you’re calling bias is just judgement; knowing shit from Shinola.
To be a turncoat, you have to be wearing the coat in the first place. Bernie never was – never self-IDed as a Democrat.
“deport Trump voters? Secede? Get the bomb first”…I never said any of that. Here’s Sanders: “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.” Point being, *actually* do what Trump says he’s going to do. Help people: raise their wages, make healthcare less of a Byzantine shell game, etc.
Let me re-phrase this last bit. Lack of proof that a thing is true does not make it false. But if you want to think Trump would have beat Bernie, be my guest. Like I said, it’s a hypothetical – neither side of the argument can be proven. (like “If God and Superman had a fight, who would win?”) I have my opinion, you have yours, in this case they differ.
Welp – I call Friday nite, I’m outta here. Have the best weekend you can.
Wait, *I* call Friday nite. You can have next Thursday.
I didn’t give an opinion. I don’t have one. I don’t feel a need to have an opinion on things that can’t happen, won’t happen in the future & no one can say what might have happened if we could go back & change the past.
If you have musings, all I ask of you is not to stop at flat claims that I can’t do anything with. Connect it to the future. What can we learn from reflecting on past decisions & their consequences? What does it suggest we can do now?
Frankly, I don’t see Bernie Sanders as a major figure in any resistance to the red insanity afflicting the vast majority of the American landmass. The irony of wokeness is that Dems as a group never showed the slightest sign of consciousness. Predominantly they had their fantasy & it blinded them to reality. It’s now almost certainly too late to do anything about it. Ever.
Scoop doesn’t think that. I think he’s blind, too. It’s not a done deal yet. But it will be fairly soon. I’m confident of that. Now that’s an opinion, & on that we can differ.
P.S. When I suggested secession or cutting out the red cancer, those were hypothetical suggestions I thought *you* could make that would in fact be about actually possible future actions. Because I was saying you needed to project your hypothetical into lessons about some future actions, since only the future is available to us. I didn’t mean I have great ideas about what we should do. Actually, I’m not thinking too hard about it because I believe we are as good as sodomized, basically.
If your ideas about future plans are way more practical than I expect, OK. All due credit. Got anything worth two bits or just venting? In the boat with Bill & me.
Oh absolutely – in a boat, up a creek. Also my arms have been amputated.
It isn’t brought up in polite company it seems, but I’d be shocked given the decline in support for Kamala Harris relative to Joe Biden that vote suppression by Republicans didn’t play a significant role, especially in Texas and Florida.
If you think Harris had a ghost of a chance in either of those, you’re not as smart as I thought you were.
A question of the number of votes not whether she would have won there.
Seriously, Mom, what I’m wondering is whether Trump will try to establish some sort of bullshit commission to investigate the “stolen” 2020 election. Kind of like the Kobach thing to establish how he had actually won the popular vote in 2016. We DC locals got some yuks out of that. It pretty much petered out when its number two guy quickly concluded that the whole notion was nonsense. Kobach, the Kansas Cuccinelli, went on to worse things.
Hey, let’s hope so. The more effort wasted on grievances, that much less actively harming the Constitution. Since Kobach couldn’t spin up sufficient bullshit from nothing, maybe they should give Bannon a try. He has a flair for it.
That’s it. Hit the lights, lock up when you leave. They just handed absolute power to a malignant narcissist who has made very clear that his goal is to be a dictator, above the law. Scotus, house, Senate, exec? That’s the ballgame. I hope you voted, might be the last time you do except in a phoney baloney Putin-style sham.
Come on, I know all that you have heard since he started gaining momentum in 2015 is Orange Man bad but I am so tired of the Fascist comments, can you even define the word?
The goal of this incoming administration which mirrors the path that Trump lived in his last term, is more of a Libertarian platform reducing overreach. How is moving abortion decisions to the state level, trying to settle unwinnable wars, cutting taxes and maximizing efficiency of govt in any way, shape or form align with a fascist dictator’s goal? These to me seem sound rational goals that are for the best of each of us here today not expanding overreach, excess taxation and having open borders.
Please stop and think about what you are saying before you continue to spew the rhetoric that we all have been spoon fed the last 8 years.
Qualifying this all as my opinion but in NO way are any legal US citizens better off than we were 4 years ago at this moment
“Define the word?” See Gen. Kelly’s remarks; if the fucker’s not up to your goose-stepping, Christ-punching standards, he’ll do til the official thing gets here. ‘Just pretend everything’s fine’ has been working great for climate change, wait til it becomes enforced by law.
The contrast with Libertarianism is that the Trump admin will be fiction-based. If Orange Man (who by the way, actually *is* bad) takes out his magic Sharpie and says Alabama’s getting a hurricane, no one’s going to correct him – they’ll all have been fired already.
That’s the plan, anyway. Let’s hope he’s as lying and incompetent as last time. He does the least damage when he just fucks around.
If you look outside your own borders you will see no one is better off than they were 4 years ago, Prices went up everywhere, in Australia fuel prices jumped 3 years ago and havent come down,
Suez cannal problems have doubled container shipping costs and that trickles down to everything.
The definition? You can’t exonerate the man with the definition. For the record, General Kelly went down the dictionary definition of a fascist, and noted that DJT checked off all the boxes.
“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy.”
The general noted that the definition accurately described Mr. Trump. “So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.”
Does that mean Trump will govern that way? No. That remains to be seen. But does it mean he thinks he should govern that way? Yes. He is, by inclination and belief, the very definition a fascist. Presumably the American system will prevent him from governing that way, but that’s certainly the way he would like it.
Or it means one disgruntled ex employee talked some shit about the guy who fired him to a media that hates him.
And if we’ve learned one thing this election cycle, it’s that the media is very happy to lie if it hurts Trump.
But Kelly was simply doing what you suggested – looking up the definition and going down it point-by-point. Trump fits it perfectly.
Of course that doesn’t mean he will govern as a fascist. It just means he would like to.
It’s always darkest just before it turns pitch black!
Guys, don’t be paranoid. Trump is 80 years old, and visibly weaker and older, he will return to the White House to try to rebuild his “legacy” and leave quietly in 2028, don’t despair. He’s not old enough or healthy enough to be a fascist dictator at this point.
He doesn’t need to be a fascist dictator – all he needs to do is pave the way. And with control of the presidency, SCOTUS, Senate and House you can bet MAGA Republicans will make it next to impossible for Democrats to win in 2028.
Like Trump gives two wet farts about his legacy.
Every single thing he’s said about what he wants, when he was in office and after, involves suspending the rule of law and the constitution. Remember “why can’t we just shoot these people?” Remember “I want the army deployed to these cities!” Remember “one violent day and every problem in this country would be fixed?” How about his most recent evergreen, “I’m okay if they shoot through the fake news people.”
.
That’s a “best of” list. He doesn’t want a legacy, he wants to rule as a king or demigod, like the men he admires: Putin, Erdogan, etc.
And can anyone here say with a straight face that the GOP will stop him? They’ve backed every single breach of the law he’s done so far. Every. Single. One. Including when he tried to have his VP murdered and to overthrow congress to get into the position that, oh, THEY JUST PUT HIM IN.
President J.D is only a heart beat away.
They need to put the Quayle Protocol in place: Trump dies, SS shoots JD.
1. My fear is that as he slides into dementia and spends his remaining days playing golf, the people he surrounds himself with are going to be taking full advantage.
2. Also, it’s a hard pill to swallow, but I clearly didn’t see this coming, which means I somehow let myself get caught up in an information bubble, which was something I was trying so hard to avoid. It’s important to get your news from both sides, and I thought I did, but I see now I missed the mood of the country. I was way off on my prediction.
3. It should be obvious to everybody by now that the role of social media in politics is waaaaaay bigger than mainstream media wants to admit. Facebook, X, Joe Rogan show, etc have the unregulated ability to push whatever narrative they want without any fact checking. I feel like social media was the biggest impact on this election by a mile.
That would be great. It’s a cult. A cult of personality. No personality, no cult. All 70 million followers will do whatever he says. Will they do whatever Vance says if he’s out of the picture? That’s a good question.
CNN interviewed did exit polls and when one guy was asked why he voted for Trump, he could only come up with, “Uh…well, she didn’t appear on the Rogan show…” That was literally his only reason. Another guy said, “Trump’s just gonna make everything better” without citing any reasoning for that. This is the kind of intellect we’re dealing with.
On the other side of it, at least we don’t have to hear Beyonce songs every day , and dumb slogans. She ran a godawful campaign and didn’t separate herself enough from Biden. I think America said, “If it were someone else, we’d be glad to vote against a sick fascist like Trump. But her? Not gonna happen.”
So now I guess we’re all supposed to put on the Nazi regalia and go goosestepping around in unison, while Trump’s SS gets rid of all the minorities and democrats he hates. He’s got his Goering in Vance to facilitate the executions. He’ll create new positions of power for Musk, Bezos, the MyPillow guy, and their ilk. Food stamps reduced to powdered milk shipments once a month so the poor people don’t die. Ukraine will be under Putin’s rule within weeks, but before that, he’ll pardon himself for everything.
No Woodward & Bernstein to save us this time.
I think Ukraine will be ok. Trump doesn’t take power until January, and Russia is losing around 1500 troops per day along with a ton of other stuff. By the time January rolls around Russia is going to be in a real bad way.
And let’s not forget that France is one of the leading weapons sellers in the world. Trump might try to get Ukraine to capitulate, but it won’t happen.
Also, if Biden would stop being so damn weak he could authorize long range missile strikes between now and January, which would go a long way towards putting down Russia for good. What I wanted to see at the end of the war was for NATO to break up Russia into smaller provinces once and for all, given that Russia is a cancer on the world and has always been. But it’s unlikely that Trump would go for that result.
Attacking Russia is by far the dumbest and most Fascist thing I have heard from anybody. You sir, take the Idiot Prize. First strike against a nuclear superpower, how do you not know this ends badly for the entire world.
Weird, no nazis sighted yet. Unless you count the ones on college campuses screaming “free Palestine”.
So Stephen Miller has become invisible? That’s an upgrade.
Indeed. Truther is an ostrich.
I’ve never posted here before, but I just couldn’t resist. You batshit crazy Redditors are unbelievable. “He forgot to be a dictator the first time around, but he’s definitely going to do it this time!” Get a hold of yourselves. Take a long hard look in the mirror at what you are, what your Party has become, and try to keep it together for the next 4 years without rioting, looting, assassinations, and suicides. FFS.
Hello, welcome!
You’re in a cult.
best comment that i have read today !!! … i always come here to read the political comments … these folks always start my day off with a good laugh !!! … what they dont realize is that o’bama and michael have been running the country for the last 4 years … talk about your cults !!! … i am surprised that there isnt any riots yet … give them time to regroup i guess … it will be a nice 4 years of men not in a lady’s bathroom … no more men playing in women’s sports … !!! … what always amazed me is that the libtards say tax the rich …tax the rich … but they are backed by Soros … Gates … pro athletes … actors and actresses … tv stars … hmmmm … why is that you think ??? … shouldnt they be scared making all those multi millions of dollars that they will be paying a load of taxes … ??? … says a lot doesnt it … they protect their own and these cult followers will believe them right off of a cliff … funny stuff … i love this site !!!
It is a polar opposite platform than the libs and what we all have lived thru the last 4 years.
I can’t understand democratic optimism of how another 4 years with a like platform could ever improve our situations or standing globally.
The decline of Biden was rapid these last couple of years but propping him up and allowing him to fumble thru a failing platform without a backstop and paired with one of the weakest politicians in history was a major miscalculation. Doubling down on that failure by inserting her to lead the party without a single vote in her favor was the nail.
My advise, next time choose a candidate/running mate based on their qualifications not outwardly stating you chose them because they checked a box in a WOKE platform.
That’s hilariously deranged that you would equate voting for Trump with “improving our situations or standing globally.” He’s viewed as a clownish buffoon by the entire world. Easy pickin’s for any foreign leader if they get him to think they admire him. Putin said “You’re great, love ya!” and Trump sucked his dick like a broke whore ever since.
Comparing the standing we would’ve had with Kamala to the laughing stock of the world that Trump makes us is ludicrous. Sure, I agree she’s dull, unexciting, predictable, annoying, etc, and she attached herself way too closely with Biden’s failures and libs’ bleeding hearts. But she’s a normal, sane person, with a heart, that the world respected as exactly that, rather than the senile, fascist ringmaster of a dangerous circus of rabid MAGA animals.
America said, “Okay, crazy man, here’s the keys, entertain us with your insanity! Do whatever you want, the Supremes said you have no responsibility or fear of punishment!” When this cretinous fucker’s tariffs start raising the prices of everything beyond what we’ve ever seen before, they may regret this choice.
I am sorry that you are unwilling to look past your misguided hatred.
I pray that you are able to find some peace internally, there is no way that carrying this rage every day is healthy.
Unfortunately given the goings on and censorship that accompanied the 2020 election and lies and info manipulation associated with this race has really expedited the demise of traditional media and has only exaggerated the equal sharing of consistent news and divide between us all.
Please consider at least listening to the other side, we will not find any common ground or overcome this divide until we can all have a rational conversation.
You’re going to see the US become the next Argentina. Around 1900 it was the 7th richest country in the world…now it’s third rate.
Americans will be able to all have a rational conversation quite soon, approximately as soon as the polar ice caps and/or Greenland’s glaciers extend to hell. Which will happen because we’ll take the necessary steps to stop the melting.
Argentina? How can we ever match what they have accomplished? 200% inflation year on year. We can try, but it’s quite difficult to do. They just elected a libertarian. Whose plan is deep austerity. What, do you think even Trump can take such bold steps for us? If only. But that’s a pipe dream.
Relax. He’s not going to be a dictator. It’s not the end of America. I’ll be honest, as thrilled as I am that Trump won, I’m not looking forward to the return of unhinged TDS. Keep it together.
Btw, as for Trumps sentencing, wouldn’t he just pardon himself on the federal election interference charge and then the state charge loses it basis as a crime?
Those two charges are completely independent. Trump was not charged in the Cohen trial, which is the one that parallels the New York trial, so there’s nothing to pardon in that case (unless he pardons Cohen, who served jail time for essentially the same crime Trump committed). Furthermore, a pardon is not a declaration of innocence, but a gesture of forgiveness.
Trump’s attorneys would undoubtedly advise him not to pardon himself because that’s a poor move in the longer term. It would later force him to testify in matters where he would prefer not to. (The Fifth Amendment does not apply if the person is immune from prosecution. See Burdick v. United States)
Trump probably will not need to issue any pardons. He’ll be in charge of DoJ, so he can just drop the January 6th trial and the classified documents trial. The Georgia trial seems to be dying out of its own accord, and will in Trump’s worst case get postponed until after his term rather than having a sitting president face a state trial. By then the whole thing will probably be forgotten. Even if that case is somehow still active, given Trump’s age and obesity, he’s unlikely to live long enough to face that trial.
The New York trial is his only criminal worry. Trump’s only hope in the New York trial is for the Supremes to let him apply his Presidential immunity to his actions.
I thought the basis for his convictions as “felonies” was based on federal election interference. So theoretically if he pardons himself for any claims of federal election interference, his convictions automatically become misdemeanors since there is no escalating violation of the law. It may be a stretch but seems logical.
Scoop, thank you for your notes here but how could pardoning himself be a bad move? There is a 0% chance that and of the 71+ million voters that cast ballots for Trump didn’t know about or agree with the charges against him and the sliding scale of justice here.
My real hope for any type of healing or unity in the country would be for these to go away and there is no chasing or mention of this, Biden’s kickbacks or the laptop from hell or the Clinton’s reign of terror and we focus on the issues at hand and where we go from here.
High priced groceries, housing and taxes need to be corrected and the temp across the globe has to be turned down. There will be no winners if there is continued escalation in these ongoing global conflicts including these at home.
The majority of Americans gave up or lost hope that this previous administration could provide a path forward, I pray that we all can tone down the rhetoric and work together on a more inclusive path forward.
I think I explained that:
(1) A pardon takes away his Fifth Amendment rights, which could compel him to testify (for example) in future congressional investigations of him, and criminal trials of others.
(2) In addition, a pardon is pretty much an admission of “guilty but forgiven.” The Supreme Court declared in Burdick v. United States that accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt and carries an “imputation of guilt.” It is not a sign of innocence. It’s a government decision that removes some or all of the legal consequences of a criminal conviction. I think both his lawyers and PR people would advise against that.
On the other hand, I don’t expect him to live through his term, so all of that is probably moot.
Ya, I think JD has better than average odds of taking the helm.
Scoop, I think everything you say here is correct. But the law is what the Supreme Court says it is, and nowadays they just make it up as they go along.
Roger, I’m impressed how far you’ve come. You really get it. Lots of folks still don’t. The Own the Libs crowd think all the MAGA propaganda is totally legit. Dems foolishly thought their values were universal. They were asleep at the switch. In denial. It took catastrophe to pry open their eyelids. It gives me some satisfaction that such a nice guy as you can be enlightened.
Too bad the lesson itself is so terrible.
Roger is an old school republican and a never trumper. He didn’t learn any lessons. We simply moved on from the smug boomers who have no sense of humor. He’s certainly in the class of people who think they know better because they are over educated and uptight af. Basically he is part of the swamp of inexperienced, overeducated Washington DC elites who crave power and influence that they can’t gain in the private sector. They’ve all been drained.
Steve, I don’t need any education to know you’re one of a shit ton of Americans for Small Government because you want the freedom to fleece people. Roger thinks it’s more principled than that, and that’s where he’s wrong. But you, you have nothing to teach me that I don’t already know. You know it, too. I won’t listen to greed.
MyKey, I never said you had anything to learn. Unlike quite a few others here, you are sincere in your principles even though I vehemently disagree with you. I do agree that there are a lot of people who would get fleeced without government protection.
That’s one of the things I noticed this morning:
1 – Trump didn’t increase his support. He lost votes.
2 – A whole lotta Biden voters stayed home. It wasn’t just the Catholics.
Whilst I still consider Trump to be a fascist I don’t think the US will devolve into some nightmare state. Partially because he’s too fucking lazy to do the work.
He won’t fix illegal immigration. All of his rich buddies depend on it for cheep labour.
Enjoy your poisoned water America. You earned it. I wonder if the betting sites will be putting up odds for which river will get set on fire first.
It was the same in 2016, no one wants to point fingers and not see the facts from only 8 years ago.
Voter turnout at 20-year low in 2016
Registered Voters Who Stayed Home Probably Cost Clinton The Election
They came out in 2020
These voters sat out in 2016. Now they could determine the next U.S. president
There was no stolen election or voter fraud, people hated the candidates and chose to vote in silence was better than choosing either
Let those facts sink in…
The only thing I said about the Catholic vote is the fact that if Biden had polled 41% of the Catholic vote (ala Harris), he would have lost the popular vote.
This was strongly covariant with the Hispanic male vote.
Trump won the Catholic vote in 2016 and 2024, but lost it when he ran against a Catholic. Given that Catholic voters are 1/4 of the electorate, this may be more important than people have previously noted.
I agree. The USA has never been Turkey or Russia, and as I said and as you know, Trump is old and increasingly weakened… And his Republican vassals don’t seem like the type who would stage a fascist coup (JD Vence, etc.)
Cry some more, cupcakes
Crawl back in your hole, bozo.
What you said about Walz is exactly what I would say about Trump. With the exception of the “nice fellow” bit.
Bingo.
At least he has full control and ownership of the shit show that’s going to happen now when the country goes into a tariff led recession, so no more passing blame on his oligarchy controlled economy that crushes consumers and employees. All the Hispanic people that broke for Trump are going to have a rude awakening when their legal credentials somehow ‘disappear’ and find themselves in an internment camp with no way to prove anything. Funny that even some without legal status supposedly were for Trump because they worked hard and they wouldn’t dare deport them because they worked. Sounds like the Jews as Hitler took power that he would control some of the more extremists of the party. I guess they’ll all F around and find out.
The irony is the demographic that Trump gained in were exactly the populist demographics Bernie Sanders pulled in 2016 and 2020. It’s too bad the Democratic Party didn’t learn from the strategy then, and continues to take corporate money and try this odd neoliberal-neocon wide tent strategy. If they had lost an insurgency campaign against the labor and consumer exploitative billionaire class, at least it would have been a principled campaign in which Trump’s accelerationism would have been exposed and took the fall for the inflation trickle down economics and led to a further uprising.
Maybe now they’ll stop giving a shit what George Clooney or Abigail Disney think.
Let me know when they start putting Jews or illegals in the ovens or gas chambers. Let me know when trump invades Canada and Mexico. Then we can start the hitler talks. Deporting people who are here illegally is called law enforcement.
And you’re no better than any of them, remember that. You’ll be in the ground just like they will be in another 100 years. Then you can answer to your higher power, if there’s such a thing afterwards.
can we have your intrepid thoughts on Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib? And I kinda don’t see the guy who put the embassy in Jerusalem is going to suddenly inter jews
Trump has basically threatened to invade Mexico to bomb Mexican farms where drugs are grown.
In regards to mass deportations of Latinos, this has been done twice before in American history: under President Hoover in the early 1930s as a response to the Great Depression and under President Eisenhower for a few months in the late 1950s.
The idea, of course, under Hoover was to stop the non American citizen Latinos from taking jobs from Americans and I’m not sure the reason under Eisenhower but the program under him was even called Operation Wetback which may give some indication.
Under both operations however, hundreds of thousands of Americans of Latino heritage were deported to Mexico (some deported apparently were from families that even predated the founding of the United States.) Undoubtedly a major reason for this was a result of venal Americans who either wanted the property of the Latino Americans or who were simply racist and so they successfully disputed the validity of the citizenship of these American citizens of Latino heritage.
I don’t know why anybody would expect anything different this time.
so an undocumented migrant with a sheet as long as my arm kills a 10 year old and how are you handling this
The same as I’d handle it with an American citizen with a sheet as long as your arm who kills a 10 year old.
as the hypothetical it is.
This sounds like Trump’s closing argument: “I’m not literally Hitler himself.”
Technically true, not very relevant.
Vance begs to differ
How can you rationally jump to these conclusions?
Your misguided rage should be directed at democratic party leadership. If Trump was such a bad candidate why would you put an even worse candidate up against him without any public option?
Either your party did you a serious disservice or your stance and that of the Democratic party is incorrect.
I’m an independent, I don’t register with either party. I just know looking back in a hundred years, humanity will look at the Trump movement the same way historians look at the Dark Ages now. A bunch of dumb fucks that the world turned out was better off once they died off and it was long behind them. Hopefully future generations get that luxury, unless the dementia ridden rotisserie chicken faced mushroom dick nukes everything.
I take solace that people like you won’t be around forever, and in the end your idiotic views mean nothing and will be wiped away by history. No better or more entitled than the ‘illegals’ or different you look down upon, as you’ll end up in the same place. In the ground or in ash just like everyone else.
Also, I don’t have to engage with or pretend to be nice to people like you either in person or online and can just go back to ignoring the news again now that this is over. Morons like you and the rest of the MAGA cesspool there will be some future generational study on like the Nazis for brainwashed lack of human intelligence and this movement won’t be anything else besides another ignorant wasted shithole era in the history books because stupidity.
Goodbye.
***mic drop!***
The party of peace, love, and tolerance has taken its ball and gone home.
Indy said he was an Indy. 😮 So you must be brain dead! (mic drop)
Brain dead like the rest of MAGA.
As you correctly pointed out, none of us will be here in 100 years (that includes you). Therefore I have no interest in sharing my taxes or my nations resources with people who don’t have a right to be here. You, of course, are more than welcome to donate your money, your home, and your safety to illegals. You don’t have a right to serve up mine. I donate plenty of money to charities I care about. I don’t need a government to do it for me.
This is exactly why democrats lost the election.
Mislabeling half of the country as deplorables doesn’t do much for furthering your cause. Just a little insight, when you double and triple down on these claims it really makes makes those making such claims look like the unhinged person in a conversation
I really hope you have a good night and find a little peace internally
Trying to intelligently discuss politics at this website is a waste of your time. Enjoy the tits and ass.
Oh, wow, Midwest Conservative is back. I was hoping the Covid had got him. Oh, well, it doesn’t matter much now, I guess.
On the bright side, we just got a major upgrade to BOTH the first and second ladies.
Today is a great day
You know, a lot of Southerners said that in 1860 and 1861, when their states seceded from the Union. If you’re familiar with American history.
RIP Democracy in the U.S.A. I have no doubt that Trump backed up by the Feudalist Federalist Society Supreme Court will bring in a fascist neo Feudalist dictatorship.
One more point on this. I’m sure that at least some Americans will be shocked when this happens and I’m sure that some will completely disagree that this will happen, likely arguing based on normalcy bias, the same views that lead people to believe ‘it can’t happen here.’
However, in any analysis I don’t think it should be overlooked how many Americans will be happy with a strong-man dictator (or at least the perception of Trump being a strong-man dictator since he’s clearly an even bigger clown than Mussolini.) Democracy is messy and difficult and is simply boring and frustrating for many Americans to have to pay attention to, I think a fairly large percentage of Trump voters especially voted for him fully expecting him to do away with democratic institutions and be a dictator. And, I’d actually be surprised if a fair number of Harris voters won’t find that a relief as well: “that was a lot of work, I’m glad I won’t need to do that again in 2026 or going forward even as I’m obviously unhappy with the result.’
BTW, on Latino males, it’s been argued that ‘Machismo’ is a big part of Latino culture. I had always rejected that as being simplistic and unfair stereotyping (and there have been several women leaders of Central and South American countries) but there probably is a lot to it given that they voted for Trump even after he insulted Latinos repeatedly. It’s possibly even likely that they voted for him because he insulted them repeatedly.
Or they immigrated from countries where leaders like Trump are the norm.
Go back to your books, clown. You can’t be a real person. You were born directly into a bubble and never gained an ounce of experience. You sound like a 5 year old or simply someone who is actually insane. Get help or get experience. Those are your options.
Compelling counter arguments.
What is clear is that your a complete phony and a troll.
The funny thing is that if you met me in person, you wouldn’t open your mouth. At all. About anything.
Is that either some kind of juvenile threat of violence or a false claim that I wouldn’t actually speak up to you in person?
As I said, you’re a complete phony and a troll and I have no doubt you actually are nothing more than a loser who lives in your parent’s basement.
That wasn’t a threat. I’m simply stating that you would be be too intimidated to speak up to me in person. You’re welcome to try.
Sure Steve, it’s easy for you to sound tough living in your parent’s basement 24/7
Steverino is a moron…no point discussing with him.
Says the man who keeps a Leopard at home, shocked that the Leopard at his face…
Wonder what your plea will be when it is your turn to “othered”
Wow, how tough you got so fast, Steverino. You’re in the catbird seat now, aren’t you?
Adam, when you say RIP Democracy in the United States, I hope you are wrong and I am afraid you are right. I think we have a few things going for us, and one is the staggering incompetence of the American far right. On the other hand, the Nazi’s were very incompetent in many ways, and the Confederate federal government was almost designed not to work, but look at the suffering they caused despite that.
Ruthlessness worked for the Nazis….its really all you need.
Confiscated wealth Hitler yes , Trump no
Confiscated Guns Hitler yes, Trump no
Jailed Reporters Hitler yes, Trump no
Ethnic Cleansing Hitler yes, Trump no
Confiscated businesses Hitler yes, Trump no
I tell you this is the worst impression of Hitler i’ve ever seen
It’s a myth that Hitler confiscated guns.
It’s pretty telling that THAT is the one single point of Angelo’s that you refuted. You wrote 42 paragraphs above about how Trump is going to dismantle our democracy (which is actually a Constitutional Republic), and when faced with the fact that you’re wrong, you point out that he didn’t confiscate guns (even though he actually did). What a clown.
they just can’t see the forest through the tees it’s actually pretty sad
No, Hitler really didn’t. He confiscated guns from Jews as part of taking property from them generally, but otherwise, there was no gun consfication in Germany under Hitler.
As to the rest, Trump tried to confiscate TikTok in his first term but failed. I’m not sure if there were other businesses.
Nobody has said that Trump would engage in ‘ethnic cleansing’ but Trump did ramp up deportations of those who had been in the United States for a long time and has promised ‘mass deportations.’
Steve Bannon himself has been quite explicit on this. The Trump Administration had a large learning curve in its first term and was unprepared to use the power that it had. That is past and the Trump Administration will carry out its will in a second term.
Iof course also have a hard time taking seriously anybody who takes seriously ‘the United States is a republic (or a constitutional republic) and not a democracy. But, I suspect an ignorant jerk like you wrote that just to ‘own the libs.’
Trump has also promised to jail reporters this term. Whether he does so, or whether he’s just trying to intimidate them into silence, I don’t know.
“Hitler didn’t confiscate guns. He only confiscated guns from people he didn’t like, political adversaries, etc.” I’m currently arguing with a big-brained liberal who is defending Hitler on technicalities. My day just keeps getting better.
Except that’s wrong, the only guns Hitler ‘confiscated’ were from Jews and that was part of a general confiscation of Jewish property.
I’m not surprised a dimwit like you can’t comprehend basic facts.
Because you’re clearly too ignorant to know this: Hitler had a large number of political adversaries, not just Jews, and did not confiscate their guns.
That guy says: “If you read the 1938 Nazi gun laws closely… several conclusions become clear. First, with regard to possession and carrying of firearms, the Nazi regime relaxed the gun laws that were in place in Germany at the time the Nazis seized power. Second, the Nazi gun laws of 1938 specifically banned Jewish persons from obtaining a license to manufacture firearms or ammunition. Third, approximately eight months after enacting the 1938 Nazi gun laws, Hitler imposed regulations prohibiting Jewish persons from possessing any dangerous weapons, including firearms.”
I realize he writes for the Columbia Law School, and he’s not a 17th level keyboard warrior like you, but that seems to indicate that they disarmed Jews to make it easier to rob them of all those other possessions you’re so concerned with.
Look man, you’ve had a bad day. I get it. You’re wife’s MAGA boyfriend is probably railing her right now while you cry on your keyboard, so I’ll let you have this one. Hitler didn’t disarm EVERY German citizen, so he probably wasn’t as bad as Orange Man. I realize crying about this and pretending you’re a learn-ed scholar on a celebrity porn website is your entire personality, so take the win. You got me.
Again, it seems reading comprehension is not your strong suit. I said ‘Hitler confiscated guns from Jews as part of a general confiscation program.’
While I’m sure taking weapons from German Jews was partly to facilitate taking Jewish property, in fact, a majority of Jewish business owners had already been pressured into ‘selling’ their businesses to ‘Aryans’ well before 1938.
And, as I said previously, Hitler had significant other adversaries, not just Jews, and made no attempt to confiscate their guns.
Adam? It didn’t do any good arguing with these people before the election. It does less good now. They think just because they refuse to stop yapping back, that means they are never wrong. They don’t believe in facts, they believe in their own rightness.
Yeah, you’d think one of them would look up the terms to see what they mean.
A lot of us around here got this pretty much right. The answer is basically: group think. Here’s fairly recent thinking why this behavior of ours is rather less than surprising. Where “recent” is such that “this past November’s election” is a reference to 2016.
Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds
I don’t have a subscription but I didn’t hit a paywall. If anyone needs help getting past a paywall, I’ll try to work thru it with you here. Kolbert’s a journalist, not an expert. She’s also author of a book, The Sixth Extinction.
Roger, I appreciate that, but as an academic, I just can’t help but try and correct the record.
And, as that same article you linked to pointed out, Hitler made it easier for every other German other than Jews to own guns. So, my original point is correct: it’s a myth that Hitler ‘confiscated’ guns or toughened gun control laws.
This is one of the funniest exchanges I have ever seen. Well done MAGA 2028. You got the liberal nazi out of the closet.
You: Trump is Hitler.
Us: No he’s not, here are a half-dozen reasons why.
You: AHA! A small technicality on one of those things you listed means Hitler wasn’t as bad as you say he was, and Trump is still Hitler!
J D Vance would disagree with MAGA2028
Well, I never said Trump was Hitler and I think the rest remains to be seen, but Trump has indicated that he supports some form of all of those things.
Again, As Steve Bannon said in regards to the first Trump term ‘We weren’t prepared to govern and had a steep learning curve. This time we’ll be ready on day one.’
So, if your evidence is to look at Trump’s first term to claim ‘no he won’t do these things’ Steve Bannon and others around Trump beg to differ.
A constitutional republic is a form of democracy, of which there are many. Specifically our form of democracy is a constitutional, federal, representative republic. There are of course also many kinds of republics. We started with one in which only landowning male citizens at least 21 years old could vote (some states also specified that they had to be white and Christian), so it was more like the old Polish Noble Republic except that no foreigners could hold the highest executive office. And even those landowning, white, male Christians didn’t get to vote for their senators!
Most of the founding fathers foresaw a republic with a sharing of power between the states and the feds, with the states perhaps more powerful. That scheme also included a more-or-less equal sharing of the federal portion between the three branches. From that concept, wherein the president was truly just the executor of laws made my others, a relatively small cog in the governmental machine, we have wandered far afield. Powerful men in the oval office have gradually arrogated more power to an imperial presidency. That may or may not be a good thing, with your opinion depending on your view of checks and balances, or perhaps depending on whether your guy is in power. Or perhaps you can argue that the fast pace of the recent centuries has required faster decision-making than the Congress is capable of.
Uh. Angelo T? HIS SECOND TERM HAS NOT STARTED YET. Had Hitler done of any of those things BEFORE the German elections of 1932? No. BECAUSE HE WASN’T IN POWER YET.
I mean, really, don’t you mind saying such stupid stuff in public?
Trump’s first term had guardrails, people who would refuse to carry out his more flagrant idiocies and abuses of power. His second one won’t. It will be full of yes-men and people egging him on. It will have lots of people taking advantage of his senility to manipulate into carrying out their plans, which are summed up in Project 2025.
Assuming this discussion board or even website is still around, will you admit you were wrong?
Of course he will not admit it. You are talking to a Trump supporter. He will claim it is all the fault of radical Leftists and Antifa and migrant caravans and stuff.
Just to get one thing on the record here. I think it’s pretty obvious how the dictatorship will start. It doesn’t all happen at once, at least not in a long standing democracy. I’d say that’s how it happens in the movies, but even in Star Wars, it took Palpatine years to eliminate the Imperial Senate. (George Lucas was actually trying to describe the end of democracy based on the Nixon years. I’d say he got messed up with the prequels by having Palpatine essentially wage war on himself with the ability to pull that off that only a Sith Lord with some ability to forsee the future could do.)
1.The Senate Republicans eliminate the filibuster. The Democrats may try and prevent this but they won’t succeed. If by chance, a majority in the Senate doesnt’ vote to end the filibuster, I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. If it matters at all, they do have the precedent of having declared the line item veto (which the Republican Congress in 1995 actually gave to President Clinton) unconstitutional. Also, it’s a bit different, but the U.S Supreme Court also declared federal term limits unconstitutional.
2.Congress will declare all sorts of state laws like those passed by Democrats illegal – the obvious place to start for Republicans here is the California laws that limit greenhouse gas emissions. I’m not sure what else they’ll consider, but, again, if the Democratic governors challenge this, where else can they go but the majority Republican Supreme Court? Again, it hardly matters if the Supreme Court actually rules in a way that is consistent with precedent or with the Constitution.
It’s now the Imperial Court…not the Supreme Court.
Well deserved! As I said before, changes have begun in the Western world. We could see this in the summer elections in Europe.
Mission accomplished, comrade. You can now stand down.
Thanks for your answer. This shows how stupid you are.
Says the denseness from Odense. You remind me of the Dutch guy working in Switzerland who used to come here regularly to tell us how bad we are.
Trust me,, I’m completely different. Actually one of my friend lives in Switzerland. My girlfriend and I are going there soon.
I didn’t vote and I’m glad I didn’t as I have nothing to complain about because there was never a good choice. This is as good as we Americans can get. And yet, that was not good enough. Democracy failed back in Ancient Greece to the point that they were in ruins and it took a general to save the city of Athens by negotiating a surrender to the Macedonians. This is why it is important to learn from history and if we don’t learn from history. We’re doomed to repeat it. Now, this country is totally FUCKED and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Right now, the whole world laughs at us and rightfully so. I knew Kamala Harris was a bad choice as she’s just a younger version of Biden and neither of them have any kind of personality. She was going to do everything Biden was doing and it SUCKED then and it was going to SUCK even worse.
Plus, why would I want to cast my vote on a party that continuously supports the genocide of a group of people in support of another dictatorship? Really, it’s just between a shit sandwich and a giant douche. We were fucked then and we’re fucked even more. We all lose!
I completely agree. If the Palestinians continue their attempted genocide of the Jewish people, then Israel should wipe them all off the map. You should have voted for trump.
For the record. I did say that the silent majority would deliver this election for trump. There are millions of us who don’t talk politics, don’t defend trump, and don’t respond to polls. We simply vote. You’re welcome.
I think she was talking about Iran and their proxies that we are funding with the B’s we sent them for Thanksgiving last year
Yeah, you’re right, but I couldn’t resist.
I’m a dude. I was talking about Israel. Fuck Netanyahu and his Zionist bitches. Plus, I loathe Republicans and Democrats.
We all know what you were talking about. Basically an American outpost in the Middle East surrounded by terrorists who want to kill them. But of course a “dude” like you who isn’t sure he’s a dude would side with extremists who would cut your head off and feed your body to the their goats if they had the opportunity. But you do you. At least Adam is “intellectual” (at least on television). You are absolutely and completely fucking clueless. Not worth a debt ate. Not worth a vote. You should move to Gaza and support “your people”. They will love you.
The total moron strikes again.
I’m not Palestinian you stupid asshole. I just believe in human rights but no. You are part of the problem. You’re a fucking imbecile. Who the fuck is this Adam? Intellectuals are part of the problem because they’re a bunch of know-it-alls who look down upon everyone. You support the Jewish equivalent to Adolf Hitler so go bow down to your Fuhrer Zionist!
I believe your rationale for opting out of political participation is the wrong end of the stick. FWIW, your basic position has been put more powerfully by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Zion extremism is apartheid. Coates, black american intellectual, is against it. Full stop. OK.
Yet, Hamas sees raining death on Jews as just tactics. The only way they can get the attention of Israel’s Zionist leaders. Provoke them to take actions that run against Israel’s own longterm interest. In turn, the only response is to intensify that reaction hoping to dismantle the terrorists. Which is futile & damaging to Israel, or so the terrorists hope. It’s a conundrum that Coates himself doesn’t know how to solve. But you do.
I never said you were Palestinian. You can’t really be Palestinian when there’s no such thing as Palestine. My point was that you should go live there because they’d be so thankful for your support. They will love you and praise you. You’d live like a king.
The Palestinians are lucky they are only “occupied”. Gaza and the West Bank were seized after a failed invasion of Israel. Now that israel owns that land by right of conquest, they should clear it out and build waterfront condos and hotels. Maybe a few casinos. The Palestinians can go live in Egypt and Jordan and thank them for putting them in the middle of a battle one. Oh wait… they won’t take them.
“I didn’t vote and I’m glad I didn’t as I have nothing to complain about…”
Proceeds to list a litany of complaints. LOL
Obviously, you don’t listen to the words of George Carlin. A true prophet!
Saying you’re happy Trump won because Republicans would be violent is such a bizarre statement. It says a lot about them, if that’s what you think.
That’s what a vast majority thinks.
70% of American voters were afraid of post-election violence (about 80% of Harris voters, but also 60% of Trump voters), and I’m pretty sure that they weren’t afraid of Adam Schiff taking up arms.
It’s not fair to use the term “Republicans” as you did in conjunction with violence. The overwhelming majority of Republicans are non-violent. What we, including Republicans, were afraid of was violence by ultra-right fringe groups. A Trump victory negates that threat.
Boy, I wish I could be that hopeful about the future of the United States, Scoop. I think we will move briskly toward an oligarchical state, where no one will have any rights that the authoritarian state will respect, unless they are wealthy and well connected.
Oh, and Juno Beach, I agree with you about people being happy Trump won because of a fear of Republican violence being bizarre. But I also think it says a lot about the people saying it. I think what we get out of this election will either be oppression or far more violence. I hope I’m wrong, but boy, it doesn’t look like it. The people in charge now have told us what they want with Project 2025.
Sure. Not all republicans are ultra-right wing voters but all ultra-right wing voters voted republican
Technically, KH has been the 1st female US President in history, during Mr. Biden’s borescope session where he was sedated.
Jim, you know you can stop now. There is no point any more. Unless this is really the kind of person you are, and this is the kind of thing you actually believe. In which case, I guess you can’t stop.
The idiot can’t stop.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H. L. Mencken
Pretty sure he was talking about Harding ie 1920. Mentioned this before ~ Jon Meacham quote a couple mos. after Trump was elected in 2016: “The Founding Fathers probably would have been surprised someone like Trump didn’t happen a lot earlier in American history.
And so it goes …
The election period is always a good time to revisit Mencken’s essay. If you read it, you may note that Mencken wrote this slightly before the passage of the 19th Amendment, which is why he refers to voters as “men.”
It has always been the position of historians that Harding was a “numskull” (to use Mencken’s spelling), but the reality is that he was an excellent student, although not a good speaker. He earned his B.A. at the age of 16. Mencken, on the other hand, was a high school graduate (albeit valedictorian of his high school).
However, Harding was a terrible President. The worst since the start of the 20th century until George W Bush and Donald Trump.
Although Mencken makes a couple of points that I agree with, it’s a pretty damn crappy essay. He’s a journo. My opinion of journos who think they’re knowledgeable, wise & a thinker is they’re none of those. A book written by a journo rarely forces me to rethink. They have little to offer that’s surprising to me.
Meacham is one among a circle of historians who write on interesting subjects & manage to make them boring. As for this particular counterfactual, it doesn’t matter what they expected, & we can’t know what they’d think had they been living their lives today.
What I told friends and family before: Ignore the polls & election updates from sources paying close attention to them. National polls are higher quality but just a distraction bc EC. Local (State) polls are important but a joke. +-4% error in battleground states is consistent with, depending on swing vote, a +310 EC slaughter *in either direction.* Useless.
If you aren’t undecided & you just want to mindread swing voters based on policy, rest assured policy statements won’t help you there. You can pretty much stop following election news. For the outcome, be patient. We’ll know soon enough.
We never figured out 2016. Some good ideas what happened have come out since then. For the most part, though, there are too many crosstabs & accidental correlations abound. For now, I’ll look at 2024 crosstabs in, oh, a few weeks. I’ll think then about systemic leanings, because the EC was not terribly close. Like Scoop’s Catholic Conjecture, Latino gender gap, white education gap, &c.
Anyway, if you had your hopes up knowing the polls were tight, that wasn’t a very good idea. Diagnosing what went wrong in 2024 will be about as much use as diagnosing 2016 was for 2020 & 2024. That is, not at all.
If you can fight, you fight. If not, just lay low. Maybe your day won’t come. Maybe it will. Maybe you’ll get another bite at the apple. I kinda doubt it. But sour grapes will just paint a target on your back.
Actually, polls in 2016/2024 were fairly accurate ie nationally HRC by 2 and Harris/Trump a toss-up. Also, WI/MI/PA all toss-ups in 2024. One thing “they” got wrong in 2016 was many early Dem voters were actually voting for Trump and many of those voters voted for Obama in 2008/2012.
Indeed, yes Virginia, Hillary pissed off a lotta Obama supporters in 2008 including me, although I held my nose and voted for HRC in 2016. Hillary, being a god awful candidate in 2008 and god awful nominee in 2012 notwithstanding. Digressing …
The main reason Harris lost? High inflation iow it’s the economy stupid!
Yielding back the balance of my time …
Also HRC inspired no one in 2016. Hence, ergo, therefore low turn out.
Well, I said I’d look at crosstabs but not right now. Inflation, that’s a crosstab. You don’t know that. You’re just bullshitting.
I told them to ignore polls, I didn’t say the polls are wrong. But with +- 4% error, they’re also not telling my friends they can guess this way or that. When they say tossup, that’s the same as, could go heavily either way. Even if they said Harris +4, it could still be a tossup. Why do my friends need to know such a misleading stat?
Also, I’m not interested in the question of how the polls missed, why they got this particular election so wrong, or how to fix them. It’s not my problem. Pollsters try to make up for bad data. They estimate votes using assumptions. There’s no substitutes for sample size & representative sampling. That’s the underlying problem. Polling isn’t able to correctly capture voters who decline to participate, or aren’t on the level. Including, who say they’re gonna vote, then don’t.
You have a keen grasp of the obvious! Congrats!
You’re right, but I’m not patting myself on the back. I point out that educated folks who believe pollsters adjusting algorithms can magically see through the mist to see true numbers, they’re suckers. They don’t grasp the obvious.
As for those jokes, I like them, even though they’re pretty cheesy. The Depp one is especially “to hold the nose.”
I’m OK with deporting all those Mexican men who voted Trump. In fact, why don’t we deport the non-Mexican Trump voters, too? Bah Dump Bump.
Dems: “Trump is going to be a tyrannical fascist dictator.”
Also Dems: “We should deport everyone who didn’t vote Democrat to help ‘save Democracy.”
Every. Fucking. Time.
How do you know you’re talking to an unhinged lefty? Sit back and let him tell you.
Nobody ever said anything like that, except in jest.
“Also Dems: “We should deport everyone who didn’t vote Democrat to help ‘save Democracy.””
So, who in the hell has said that? You MAGAs make up nonsense, usually of the whiny paranoid variety, every fucking time.
He is going to try to be a dictator of sorts but being dumber than two boxes of rocks as well as monumentally lazy and going crackers, he’ll fall short of his goals.
No lefty here, although not right by any current definition, and ex-Republican. Pigs and sheep and goats will fly before I’m a Dem.
You ain’t read so good, do you? Did you see the comment I was responding to just above? The guy literally said, “I’m OK with deporting all those Mexican men who voted Trump. In fact, why don’t we deport the non-Mexican Trump voters, too?” He played it off as a joke, but we all know it wasn’t.
Well, numb-nuts, I was referring to anyone more nationally prominent than Mykey, who can say some goofy stuff when he’s on a roll. Btw, I read pretty well in three languages and rusty in two others. Yourself?
FWIW, Bill, true. It’s Angry Tears. It’s not when I’m on a roll, but I’ve blown my top & venting steam.
MyKey, I made the same comment in a different board.
Trump’s seeming Administration officials to be have already seemingly backed off a couple positions:
1.They’re ‘only’ going to try to deport 4 million illegals in 4 years, or a million a year, and this doesn’t even sound like net deportations but could include deportations of those who enter the U.S illegally during these four years.
2.RKF JR said that he isn’t going to or wouldn’t recommend that the Trump Administration ban vaccines.
However, can we really take their word for these less hardline positions? Trump himself likes to believe he’s an expert in game theory and keeping people uncertain can be a tactic used in negotiating and in creating doubt amongst opponents.
So, I agree that I wouldn’t take anything the Trump Administration says seriously until it’s official.
His comment was obviously not serious. Nobody in either wing has ever suggested deporting American citizens.
As I always point out to everyone who comments here, this page is not the right one for you if you don’t get jokes and sarcasm.
But, but, but there’s a lotta truth in sarcasm. 😛
Nope, but as I pointed out above, in both the early 1930s and the late 1950s hundreds of thousands of Americans of Latino heritage were deported to Mexico.
There is simply no way to conduct mass deportations without people getting caught up either through simple mistakes or through venal people taking advantage of the situation.
Scoop’s point is, though, a person who seems to be advocating extreme measures isn’t automatically serious. Or, as MAGA thinks, being coy about actual plans, but playing it off as a joke. If it’s really a joke, the teller assumes it won’t be taken seriously. If it isn’t taken as serious & acted on, well, that was as planned. But yes, it’s true that some people who say such things are serious. That satire if acted on becomes the thing.
“Does Trump still want to deport all those Mexican men who are voting for him?”
They’re not all illegals, dumbass
This is really not a good page to read if you don’t understand jokes.
In theory, no non-citizens can vote in a Federal election, and I presume Mr. Trump doesn’t plan to deport American citizens.
Although with him you never know.
There have been discussions of revoking the citizenship of anchor babies.
Best thing in the US goverment is the various checks and balances. That should counter many of Trump craziest and illegal ideas as it did during his first term.
I can’t wait for what he is going to do in Ukraine and the Middle East… For the rest, happy to live in Europe and having left the US.
And seriously, Scoop, Waltz a bufoon but not Trump ????
Trump has been and always will be graded on the curve + the press let’s him get away with what almost all other politicians can’t ie oh that’s just Trump being Trump, nothing to see here.
The dumbing down of America iow Trump made it ok for all Republican politicians to act like spoiled brat children. It’s a new world folks.
TBF the U.S. electorate has never been that bright to begin with and yes , that includes both Dems and Reps. As always, America survives despite itself.
I never said “not Trump.” I’m well aware of his issues. I simply looked at Walz and said “not a President.” That pretty much should be evident to anyone, and therein lies my point. How is it that nobody noticed this except Scott Jennings?
You have to understand that I am not tribal. I do my best to remain objective, even though that is an unreachable goal. The mainstream media and late-night comics, who are so quick to find fault with Republicans, gave Walz a pass. Since Walz’s buffoonery is completely obvious to anyone who listens to him for just a few minutes, it’s then clear that that his deficiencies were ignored deliberately, and that the right-wingers actually have a case when they whine about media bias.
Of course, the media savants had an agenda. If they were to point out that Walz was a lightweight, they would also be pointing out, by inference, that Kamala’s judgement was poor, and they did not want to do that. As far as I know, CNN’s Scott Jennings was the one mainstream pundit who was willing to note that the emperor was naked.
I would love to have Tim Walz as a friend or relative. Seems like a nice guy. Clearly not Presidential material.
Did Jennings ever say anything negative re: Trump/Vantz? Rhetorical.
Political pundits all being pretty much useless notwithstanding.
btw, Vantz compared Trump to Hitler. Just a small item lol.
And yes, once upon a time Vantz was a never Trumper. Oh the humanity!
Have a lovely day!
Vance, not Vantz ~ carry on …
Scott Jennings is a liar and a thought leader for the brain-dead Trump cult.
Tim Walz put together a major list of accomplishments as governor of Minnesota. I suppose it depends on what generation you come from when looking for a leader. Walz has a goofy personality but he’s also demonstrated that he is very sharp when needed.
Sorry, I deleted (most of) my name and forgot to retype it before posting.
Get real. He obviously would never be treated as a serious man by foreign leaders or top business execs, as anyone can see who listens to him for two minutes. If I had ever had to take a meeting with him in some business context, it would have lasted maybe five minutes if I were feeling polite. If I needed to further the discussion, I would then try to communicate to whichever of his underlings might have more of a clue.
Since what I am saying is so obvious, your comment makes you seem like a Harris apologist rather than a rational thinker. If Walz were a conservative, you would be laughing at the very idea that anyone would put such a clown on a national ticket, a heartbeat from the presidency, as liberals did with Dan Quayle (deservedly, I might add).
Sarah Palin …
btw, most “experts” thought Truman was a country bumpkin. Who knew?
By early 1952, pretty much everyone in the country agreed that Truman was a country bumpkin. His approval rating that February had dropped to 22, a level of unpopularity so deep that it makes the current guys seem like a combination of Henry V and Pericles.
Of course this may have been somewhat related to the fact that, although he was not a dull-witted man, he WAS a country bumpkin, a major league bigot, as reflected in his letters in which he referred to Jews and African-Americans in terms I can’t type here. It was not just when he was a young cracker. He expressed strong racist sentiments before, during and after his presidency, but to his credit, he rose above his personal inclinations to become a President for all the people and an advocate for civil rights. He did not act as President as he felt in private, which is the mark of a true leader.
I rank him as a personal favorite, alongside David Souter as one of the few post-war governmental figures who was willing to take action against his own personal inclinations or against popular positions when he felt that the country, the law or the constitution required it. I think that Harry never lacked integrity pr patriotism, although he made his share of bad decisions.
Scoop, I’m gonna side with Shiloh for two reasons. One, his clownishness is partly an act. Yes, I was dismayed by his debate whiffs. But his claim to a niece that turkey was an honorary vegetable & pretending he didn’t hear her say “but it’s meat,” that seemed like a sharp wit.
Two, I’ve admitted you’re sharper than me. By a smidge, but it’s clear enough. OTOH, from where I sit, in my position, I’m a tiny bit sensitized to how little correlation there is between sharpness & achievement. You did this site, I didn’t, you wrote a book, & I didn’t. I’m not saying you aren’t accomplished, & more so than me. But then there are math PhD’s, now famous professors, despite not being as sharp as I am, or used to be. I’m no professor nor mathematician nor even hold an advanced degree. Other factors went into my choices & theirs.
But the difference between Einstein & Poincare, or Planck, take your pick, is boldness. Einstein lacked their reserve. Arguably they knew more, & held back. Einstein blithely assumed a spherical cow, pretended that was reality. They doubted. This is why Shiloh’s example of Truman is telling.
I think I already offered my response on Truman. He was a man of integrity, and I admire him in many ways, but he definitely WAS a country bumpkin.
But you can’t compare Truman to Walz. I’ve seen Truman speak many times and never got the impression that he was as dumb as a rock, ala Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin or Tim Walz. He didn’t have a lot of formal education, but he was a good student. While his speeches are not filled with resonant phrases ala JFK or Reagan or Obama, they are clear and to the point, as his personality would suggest.
Walz, on the other hand, just seems like an SNL parody of himself. In fact when I heard him say “Who is that jackwad?” I assumed that it was a some kind of fake, but no, turns out that was really the VP candidate.
Buffoonery? Deficiencies? WTF? He’s my governor, so I either a) know him well, or b) am biased, however you want to look at it. But, among other things, he got us through Covid better than any of our bordering states. He listened to the antivax kooks, paid lipservice to their irrational fears, threw them a bone where possible so they would feel less powerless in the middle of a very powerless time. Otherwise, kept things clamped down tight, maybe too tight in places but that’s erring on the right side. Fewer cases, fewer deaths when it was over. Rs ran against him next election with an MD candidate and the tagline “Walz failed us”. People knew this for the BS it was, re-elected him.
But but but! The George Floyd riots! Jesus Christ how could he not send in the Guard right away to kick some ass?!? Well, he was in the Guard. He likely knew that when you’ve got a bunch of whackos with Molotovs, throwing a shitload more men and live ammo in there wasn’t going to help and might go all Kent State. So what’s the right course of action? It’s a little outside the box, I know, but maybe don’t have cops murdering people for the hell of it.
Seriously – Buffoonery. Deficiencies. What in particular are you talking about?
Give me a break. The man is as dumb as a rock. You may agree with him on many issues, but that doesn’t make him any smarter. (All of my conservative friends insisted Dan Quayle was a genius!) As I noted in an earlier discussion, if he were a conservative, people would be ridiculing him non-stop, as they did with his fellow dimwits Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin.
I found myself rolling my eyes constantly in that VP debate. I really wanted him to do well, but he either was a total weasel or filled with platitudes, and he let Vance get away with murder when he had openings.
Gotta say, I generally agree with most of what you say. But let me repeat my question, I don’t think you’re understanding it: What has he done or said that makes you think he’s at all dumb – let alone Quayle/Palin/Trump dumb?
“I’ve become friends with school shooters.” (Perfect Quayleism)
“We can’t afford four more years of this”
“He talks about this wall, I always say, let me know how high it is. If it’s 25 feet, then I’ll invest in the 30 foot ladder factory.”
“Look, we produce most of the turkeys that you’re going to eat in Thanksgiving. Those are immigrants working hard, establishing themselves here. What’s he going to do? Is he going to take them all out? And how does the economy going to work?”
I have no idea what he is trying to say (it’s supposed to be about immigration), who “we” are, what turkeys have to do with it, or what language is it supposed to be in. (Look at the last sentence)
“Gathering in large numbers in the church, we simply don’t want that happening.”
In this case I do know what he means, but it’s an incredibly poor choice of phrasing for a major authority figure.
Media outlets are reporting that you actually didn’t travel to Asia until August of that year. Can you explain that discrepancy?
“I grew up in small, rural Nebraska, town of 400. Town that you rode your bike with your buddies till the streetlights come on … I’m a knucklehead …” blah, blah, blah. … babbles on about nothing for several minutes…
The question was, can you explain the discrepancy?
“I got there that summer and misspoke on this, so I will just, that’s what I’ve said. So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest, went in, and from that, I learned a lot of what needed to be in governance.”
(So – to the original question, a three word answer, “I was incorrect” works fine. And exactly what did he learn about governance from the Chinese? What I found totally confusing – even after the “final answer,” after admitting he was wrong, isn’t he still claiming to be there? “So I was in Hong Kong and China during the democracy protest.” His dithering is so garbled that I’m not sure is that’s what he means. Hasn’t it been established that he was actually in Nebraska during the democracy protest? Wasn’t he apologizing for claiming that in the first place, then repeating the false claim? Frankly, I just don’t know.
“I don’t talk about my faith a lot (proceeds to talk about his faith)- “Matthew 25:40 talks about, To the least amongst us, you do unto me. I think that’s true of most Americans.”
I don’t even know what he was trying to say there. It’s just gibberish. Perfect Quayleism. All it needs at the end is “Yes, how true that is.”
“Who is that jackwad? Dude, are you serious?”
That guy Hinchcliffe may indeed by a jackwad, whatever that is exactly, but it’s difficult to believe that a major party candidate would be dumb enough to say this in public, in these words, unless impersonating Bill and Ted for a Jimmy Fallon wheel of impressions. (I’m excluding Trump of course, who is in a special category, but this would be coarse even by his standards. Trump occasionally throws in a “bullshit,” but usually makes his point without calling anyone a “jackwad” or a “douchebag” or any other 7th grade insult.)
“I had 24 kids in my high school class and none of them went to Yale.” (WTF? Yeah, it’s really terrible that JD Vance grew up in a backwards and poor hillbilly community and managed to go to Yale. The nerve of the man!)
Gwen Walz clarified that the couple had used a fertility treatment other than in vitro fertilization to conceive after her husband had suggested they had used IVF. That last one is hard to figure out. Was he lying? If so, why would he? If not, is he too dumb to know the difference?
“We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war.” In that case, I assume he was lying to inflate his importance, but he might just have a poor grasp of the English language. After all, he wasn’t an English teacher. Either way, it’s difficult to imagine a public figure, who is obviously subject to fact-checking, being dumb enough to claim he was in war when he wasn’t. Stolen valor is the third rail of America.
Again, you judge Walz stupid. Again I side with Nature Mom. You fixation on country bumpkin misses the point. It’s not that one particular characterization was accurate or not. It’s about which of his traits was his fulcrum. Eisenhower had the intellect, Truman the moral compass. Eisenhower made the far better impression among Americans & also world leaders. But Truman made many key decisions & didn’t waver. Not all of them were best. However, he was a straight shooter. Like the hero of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, he bested men of greater skill just because he didn’t hesitate.
In other words, your pointing out that Truman wasn’t as stupid as most of the world thought he was, that’s just focusing on the wrong question. Brains simply wasn’t the quality that really mattered. It seldom is. It wasn’t, in your own life, either. You’re almost a good person, no thanks to your brains.
Yes, Walz is/was not a good debater. He told Harris that before she picked him. Doesn’t mean he’s stupid.
Harris picked him so maybe she’s not so bright?
Yeah, that was kinda my point. The late night comics avoided Walz even though he was low-hanging fruit because they didn’t want to hurt Kamala’s chances, and they didn’t want to question Kamala’s judgment in choosing him. Let’s face it, I did the same thing. I don’t think I made a single joke or snarky remark about Walz, despite plenty of opportunities.
But late-night comics and I are not really obligated to present a balanced picture. What’s more troubling is that the major networks, the Times and the Post really seemed to look the other way when Walz would come out in his floppy shoes and spray seltzer on himself.
As to the question of whether he is stupid: it would be unfair of me to say that in earnest. We all, including me, throw around words like stupid, moron, idiot, etc. If we’re being serious, those words are too strong to describe Walz or Trump. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene can’t be that dumb, because she got through college – with a degree from Georgia, which is one of the best public universities. (I have to admit I can’t understand how Greene could have gotten through a university, because she really does appear to me to be cognitively challenged, all kidding aside. She makes Sarah Palin seem like Madame Fucking Curie. But I must be wrong.)
But I don’t believe MENSA will be recruiting any of those people any time soon.
If you are judging Walz by his response to gotcha questions but then saying that he wouldn’t last 5 minutes with corporate executives:
David Colhoun, Boeing CEO after two Boeing planes crashed due to Boeing executive incompetence in front of Congress:
1.”I apologize for the grief that we have caused.”
2.” I’m proud of our safety record.”
Tobacco CEOs before Congress in 1994
William Campbell, CEO of Phillip Morris
I believe nicotine is not addictive, yes.
James Johnston, CEO of R.J Reynolds
Mr. Congressman, cigarettes and nicotine clearly do not meet the classic definition of addiction. There is no intoxication
And 5 other CEOs all said
“I believe nictone is not addictive
:;pud Blankfein CEO of Goldman Sachs testifying before Congress after the 2008 banking collapse
Clients “are not coming to us to represent what our views are, they probably wouldn’t care what our views are. They shouldn’t care.”
The hearing came less than two weeks after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud suit against Goldman, charging that it hid vital information from investors about a mortgage-related security.
However, Jamie Dimon (who should be in jail over Libor and probably many other corporate crimes) CEO of J.P Morgan Chase
This week, though, Dimon declared he had had enough of new bank rules. “It is time to fight back,” the 68-year-old, the only one of the nine CEOs from 2008 still in the same job, told the American Bankers Association. “We don’t want to get involved in litigation just to make a point, but if you’re in a knife fight, you better bring a knife and that’s where we are.”
That’s not exactly what I said. I said no high powered corporate executives would treat him as a serious man. He looks like a slob and talks like a goofball. He looks like he has bad breath.
I did say that he wouldn’t last five minutes with me back in the days when I was in a position to need something from the state of Minnesota. Here’s how I size him up. If we had a meeting, I’d probably have spent a couple of minutes with him, then would have had somebody take him to a really expensive lunch and make small talk with him. Preferably that somebody would like to fix his own car or lawnmower, or would like to talk about the Vikings. Then I’d try to continue the conversation with an underling who seems to know what he/she is talking about. Later on, if we made a deal, he’d come back in for some kind of ceremonial appearance to sign off and get a souvenir pen. If it were a really fancy pen, like one that can write in two different colors, I assume he would be playing with the button on the pen with an expression of childish delight.
Adam, I’m going to spell Lloyd that way from now on.
I was surprised that I couldn’t find more quotes easily, for instance, all the CEOs who ducked responsibility saying they either weren’t aware of what was going on or that they were playing golf at the time, but then I am using Google one of the biggest corporations in America.
That said, Google at least has made new products and seems to invest in its own workforce, so they seem to have smart executives, but certainly, there are a number of things in which most corporations anyway unite and I have no doubt that scurbbing the internet of (most) negative news stories on corporate behavior is one of them.
For instance, I’ve looked for years at what seems to be increasingly acknowledged but Tim Harford wrote this in his book The Undercover Economist now 19 years ago, that people buying stuff online get charged different prices based on the information gathered from websites like Facebook and then sold to third parties that use algorithms and then inform companies of a person’s expected maximum price point.
For a long time I wouldn’t find anything on this, but I just googled it now and found one story from CBC marketplace from seven years ago mentioning that this occurs.
Yes, but so what? No high powered corporate executive should be treated like a serious man. That they are says pretty much everything about the problems facing the United States.
Well at least you’ve given an actual answer.
It’s a real triumph of quantity over quality, sort of a modern digital version of Richelieu’s ‘Give me six lines written by any dude and I will hang that dude for you.’
I’m gonna leave turkeys alone, seems that’s been flogged to death. Otherwise in no particular order (bc pre-caffein)…
Walz did not imply he’s had IVF, someone else mistakenly *inferred* it, Mrs. Walz straightened them.
“I didn’t go to Yale” is not a sign of stupidity; anyone at Harvard or Caltech can expand on that.
“Gathering in large numbers at church” happened during Covid. Some churches insisted on gathering but others found ways to distance-worship, slowing the spread of disease.
“Jackwad,” etc – he had a visceral reaction to some depraved shit. Seems to me a healthy response.
30-foot ladder bit isn’t original to Walz, he was just repeating the obvious. Lazy maybe, not dumb.
‘Weapons of war’ was in the middle of a cogent argument for an assault weapon ban (after a rash of mass shootings). This is the only genuine substantive fuckup on the list, really. That’s one. After they turned the man’s life inside out and gave a vigorous shake, this is what they found – a five word clause in the middle of a sentence.
Thanks for not including the theory that he retired from the Guard after 20+ years because he knew war/mobilization was coming.
In conclusion: I still agree with me that he is not dumb. We watched Trump bungle Covid and thought how many lives President Walz would have saved.
Thank you, Nature Mom. In review, Scoop presented a litany of minutiae whose total value was chump change.
I too was puzzled & frustrated by the noncombative debate tack. But I think that was the conscious plan by the campaign, not by Walz alone.
Combined with the folksy manner of speech, Scoop’s impression of the Gov was a low-brow. The choice of niggling gaffs, many of which were overblown, suggests confirmation bias may have unseemly explanatory value.
Yes, if we look at those things as evidence of stupidity I forget the context, but J.D Vance started off by decrying the lack of civility from Democrats and ended up with saying “Kamala Harris is garbage.”
J.D Vance – what a maroon!
He is soul-dead.
But, as I mentioned, maybe there’s some value in guys who make evil friends.
In regards to the last point, Walz served 24 years in the National Guard (and this wasn’t the ‘get out of war free’ National Guard that it was when Quayle and George W Bush may or may not have served in it. So, saying Walz has stolen valor for not serving in combat is pretty stupid.
Also, if there is a case of stolen valor, the new Republican Senator elect from Montana Tim Sheehy seems a far better case having lied that he got a wound in combat when he almost certainly shot himself. And yet, his stolen valor was no problem for Montana Republicans.
If you weren’t familiar with that Scoopy, that’s also pretty stupid of you.
I can’t speak to all the other things you bring up, but it doesn’t necessarily surprise me that he got a couple irrelevent things wrong like not rememberring the specific fertility treatment his wife took however many years ago. To make a big deal out of that or even the trip to China is pretty stupid as well, although the stupid right wing mainstream media made a big deal out of it, presumably to play some stupid false equivalency.
I don’t judge people as much by how they speak off the cuff, even the smartest people use the wrong word or get lost in thought at times.
IAs an economist, I can however, easily intepret the first quote. He left out two minor details and got one word wrong.
“Look, we produce most of the turkeys that you’re going to eat in Thanksgiving (the state of Minnesota, the number one producer of Turkey’s in the United States.) Those (the farm workers) are immigrants working hard, establishing themselves here. What’s he going to do? Is he going to take them all out? And how does (is) the economy going to work (if all the illegal and legal immigrants are deported?”)
I had no problem understanding what Walz was getting at when he said it. Anybody who lived through the supply chain issues should have no trouble understanding the problems caused by worker shortages.
I’m also not sure that American business executives are much of a judge either. Most of them are appallingly greedy self interested incompetents with no understanding of how to actually grow their business beyond buying out their competitors with large amounts of debt. They’re certainly nothing to want to emulate and I there isn’t much that they’ve accomplished (other than making themselves extremely wealthy) to believe they’re intelligent.
So Walz was saying that Minnesota needs illegal immigrants to raise turkeys, and are currently doing that?
(I don’t think Trump plans to deport legal immigrants with work permits, although I wouldn’t put that past Stephen Miller, so I think Tim’s turkeys are safe, if that’s what he meant, and if those immigrants are legal.)
Claiming to have been in combat when you have not been absolutely is stolen valor, no matter if you spent your life in the National Guard or the Marines or the French Foreign Legion. That’s not a debatable point. One of my sons is a navy lifer and he is navy through and through, war college and the whole deal. As much as he has dedicated his entire life to the service and to the country, he would be dishonored if he claimed to have been in combat. He has not. Thank heaven.
Walz certainly knows that, as any military man does , so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and allow that he probably just worded his phrase poorly. I think he just meant to say that he carried combat weapons and had used them, but he’s so inarticulate that it all came out wrong.
And yes, that Tim Sheehy story is truly fucked up. I’m willing to go out on a limb and say he definitely shot himself in the arm in a national park, as he himself admitted to the ranger and in a signed statement. But he changed and cross-referenced his sorry so many times that I didn’t have time to keep up with it. At one point he was claiming all sorts of weird things, like having parachuted into Glacier as part of his SEAL training.
That said, the man was a SEAL who was in combat and received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. Although he may not have sustained a gunshot wound in combat, he had to have been wounded in some way to qualify for the PH. So while his national park story is something out of the Tommy Flanagan playbook, he does appear to be an honest-to-god war hero.
Sheehy has also lied about his business among other lies. He seems to be similar to George Santos but this time information was presented to the voters and Republicans in Montana had no trouble solidly electing him.
In regards to work permits for legal immigrants, those are for one or two years. So there would be no need to deport them, the Trump Administration can just issue an executive order that at the very least rescinds Biden’s executive order that allowed illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S with work permits.
I don’t know if ending all work permits would require new legislation or just an executive order and I don’t know if the Trump Administration would want to do that due to resistance from employers, but certainly Trump has commented that “immigrants” take jobs from Americans and often doesn’t distinguish between legal immigrants and otherwise.
So, no, Governor Walz was absolutely correct in what he said in the debate.
Sheehy seems to have accumulated a tremendous amount of money in a very short time. He apparently has wealthy friends in very high places.
Well, to repeat myself
If those turkeys are being raised by legal immigrants, and being paid legal wages with payroll deductions, ol’ Tim needn’t worry.
If those turkeys are being raised by illegal immigrants and being paid off the books, (1) some employers will be facing jail time and/or fines, (2) many Americans may be looking for a substitute meat for next Thanksgiving.
May I also offer some advice to any employers who think they need to hire immigrants, legal or illegal. If you need workers, consider recruiting and hiring Puerto Ricans instead. Puerto Ricans can live, work, and study in any state or territory, and move freely between them. This is considered internal migration, not immigration, just like Trump moving from NY to Florida. Puerto Ricans are already American citizens. They can even vote. They study English in every school (although they usually don’t speak it at home). And plenty of workers are available.
Interesting point on Puerto Rico, but there are 3.25 million Puertan Ricans and 675,000 temporary legals and who knows how many illegals (who apparently both take American jobs and are also on welfare.)
So, that ultimately was the other point Walz made about ‘worker shortages.’ While I don’t think it’s bad for Americans to make higher wages, it will result in higher prices and inflation was supposedly what the election was about.
Also, Trump at least once hired illegal immigrants to work in his construction and while the workers got deported, Trump didn’t even receive a fine. So, I wouldn’t be too sure about employers reiving fines, yet alone facing jail time.
btw, Harris cleaned Trump’s clock in their only debate and it didn’t seem to make much difference, eh.
In other words, thank you shiloh, IQ wasn’t the deciding factor in the election. Abortion, religion, gender, education, maybe maybe maybe maybe.
IQ? Nope. Scoop fixates on IQ bc it’s his confirmation bias eye of the hurricane.
Harry didn’t have Ike’s intellect, & yet somehow how good Harry was boils down to he wasn’t so dumb, really.
If VP Vance is so much smarter than Gov Walz, & a valor thief too, then why is GW still twice the man that VPV is?
Maybe IQ is not character.
The odds-on favorite in a nationwide election is “the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.”
—H.L. Mencken
Where’s that Walz guy when what we need for a VPOTUS is exactly what he is—a moron?
Just a generalization re: why? “We” had 4 yrs of Trump and the world didn’t cum to an end + Reps got 3 new scotus appts, ended Roe, lower taxes for the rich who in turn funded his 2024 campaign and many Rep senators, etc. So Reps were very happy indeed!
Crypto billionaires spent $40 billion to defeat Sherrod Brown. Brown probably would have lost anyway as OH has turned totally red.
+ again, high inflation, the immigration problem, Dems being woke yada yada yada. Woulda, coulda, shoulda ie Biden should have never run for re-election. Harris being totally connected to Biden was a bad choice. Like Brown, someone other than Harris probably would have lost as well.
And Reps have always been better at messaging iow lying, bs, framing the debate. Trump being Trump has been tested for (9) yrs and given a pass. + 1/3 of the country doesn’t care and don’t vote.
The yin/yang of potus politics.
Yielding back the balance of my time …
Well, shiloh, this has been a pretty good wide ranging thread. These remarks of yours are the only ones that to me cry out for a reaction & haven’t been yet.
“The yin/yang of potus politics.”
If that’s true, it’s a sure sign American self-governance is a hopeless cause.
“Reps [are] better at lying, bs, framing… Trump [got a pass] for (9) yrs. 1/3 of the country don’t care, don’t vote.”
IOW our founders’ vision was a mirage.
“Inflation, immigration, Dems woke… Biden [should not’ve been in this race]. Harris… was a bad choice [but] someone [else] would have lost [too].”
An indictment of Americans. Clueless how econ, demographics & laws work, how they’re connected and decoupled. We can understand in hindsight what’s happened to us in the last quarter of a century. But they do not begin to. They instead use their vast Dunning-Kruger intuition to manufacture a false reality.
“Crypto billionaires spent $40 billion to defeat Sherrod Brown.”
Eh, that sounds kinda like business as usual. Part of the general brokenness that is the American Way.
“re: why? “We” had 4 yrs of Trump and the world didn’t cum to an end + Reps got 3 new scotus appts, ended Roe, lower taxes for the rich who in turn funded his 2024 campaign and many Rep senators, etc. …Reps [are] happy!”
Quick recap: Red played to win, Blue played around. Journalists recklessly stuck to their evenhandedness dogma. America doubled down on 2016. White resigns. Is that about right?
There’s rumors re: mtg being head of homeland security. 😮
And Aileen Cannon being a scotus pick. Not to worry as she will have law clerk(s). 😛
I have read the speculation that Cannon would be on Trump’s short list for the SCOTUS because of the way she delayed the Florida trial. That is a scary thought.
That’s the first I heard of the MTG speculation. That’s strange, but is it any stranger than RFK being the head of HHS?
Concurring opinion, just to call it a shit show.
Elise Stefanik is being considered for U.N. ambassador.
Congrats to Stefanik on turning her coat at just the right time. Empty G for anything other than WH dog walker (yes, I know they don’t have a dog) is a recipe for trouble. But then that’s kind of their brand…
On Eisenhower, I think he had been dropping in the recent surveys of historians and political scientists but was back up to 6th in the latest survey from 2022 (one ahead of Truman.)
Leaving aside the deportations of American citizens, his mostly inaction on civil rights and public defense of southern white racists, and his employment of the psychopathic Dulles Brothers for foreign policy, I read for the first time yesterday that he even refused to enter the White House until Truman left.
I appreciate that obviously he was a war hero and was certainly a better person than Douglas MacArthur, but, for instance, coupled with his rather classless comments about Richard Nixon, Eisenhower actually seems to have been a pretty big jerk.
Of course, I’m referring to his comment that he couldn’t think of a single idea that Nixon came up with that Eisenhower adopted as President. “If you give me a week I might think of one.”
He could have easily answered the question by deflecting and repeating that as President he makes the decisions but Nixon did a wonderful job defending the United States against Khrushchev in their impromptu debate and that is a major part of the role of the Vice President.
If he had concerns about Nixon, it might have broken some other protocol, but maybe he should have said so directly rather than making this rather classless comment.
Even his expressing concern about the ‘military industrial complex’ was at the end of his administration when he did nothing to address it during his eight years in office. Thanks!
Of course, the immigrants are eating your cats and dogs is pure genius…I believe that originated with Vance.
And Pence wasn’t a lightweight?
LOL. Venting myself.
Good. For a change, I’m happy to be in the boat with you.
A lot of unnecessary talking and explaining, but this is the point.
I already warned everyone before the elections…
I expect the same in Europe in the coming years.
Once again, the Democrats spent more on the campaign and this was the end result. After terrible years, a terrible campaign and a disastrous candidate.
Everyone should choose the media where they want to find information…
Let no one forget what my first comments were. It wasn’t by chance that I saw all of those who reason and try to explain themselves as stupid. The Democrats have managed to draw the same conclusion while everyone is laughing at them on X.
They also didn’t take seriously those who own crypto, which is more than 50 million different people in the US…
If no conclusions can be drawn, the same will be expected in 4 years.
I appears that Trump won every single county in both Oklahoma and West Virginia.
Once upon a time there were more Reps than Dems in OK/WV. OK not that long ago. Things change. God, guns, gays …
Praise the lord and buy Trump’s bible for $60. You can’t make this shit up ie the least religious person in the history of mankind is selling bibles.
This was foretold in 2 Corinthians …
Correction: more Dems than Reps. Yea, OK had two Dem senators not that long ago. Same w/WV.
He won every state that requires ID to vote.
Please open your eyes
What states don’t require ID’s to vote? Your continuing the 2020 election was stolen nonsense notwithstanding.
In another 28 states, there is either no identification requirement or no photo identification requirement.
Alaska
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia
Hawaii
Illinois
Iowa
Kentucky
Oklahoma
Oregon
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Dakota
Pennsylvania
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Yes, voter suppression helps Republicans. Thanks for making the point.
Every state requires voter registration. How do you get voter registration again?
Hint: It requires ID.
You’re not talking about the same thing that they are. Every state requires identification to register, but plenty of states don’t require a photo ID to prove that the person voting in person matches the person who registered.
And yet somehow the system works with minimal voter fraud.
Since MidWest seems to be indulging in conspiracy theories why doesn’t he explain why California, for example, has a fraud problem.
What he said. Sometimes ya just gotta take the W man.
But like I said up top, if anyone thinks there was serious fraud in ANY of these elections, take it to court and bring your evidence. I double-dog dare you.
States that don’t require ID to vote in person
You need a better tinfoil hat.
No not my claims
I’m just pointing out a coincidence
Then “open our eyes” to what?
“fearful of violence in the election’s aftermath”
Sam Harris considers this reaction tempting but not smart. In his most recent podcast. He says after this episode he’s on indefinite hiatus from any more politics commentary.