U.S. Politics

[HanoiVillan]

Seeing a lot of people understandably blow up about this:

That's fair enough - it's crazy to hear a politician talk this way, even if it is very likely just a 'pose'. There are very few politicians in democratic countries who would refuse to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power.

Thing is though, Democrats need to be careful how they talk about this stuff. Too much doomcore, and you risk putting off some of your support from voting because you've made it seem pointless. As tempting as it might be to say 'he's going to steal the election', the better tactic is to make sure your guy really does have more votes, and then be ready to take to the streets *if* he doesn't cede power. The worst possible situation is for Trump to genuinely win because the most marginal 5% of Dem voters decided to stay home because the fix was in.

[TheAuthority]

If he loses he isn't going quietly. That was he's saying because thats what his enablers have told him he can get away with and his base will support him.

I don't think it's ultimately up to him, but, if it's close enough to make a stink you can bet the GOP will. Look what they did in 1999. They sent every rabid operative they had to Palm Beach County to shout and scream and kick and whine. 

If the election is close, it will be a call to arms. Then you have to look at the GOP leadership - who will ask for a peaceful transition? Or who will get down in the dirt and fight in order to keep Trump there? IMO The GOP  is morally bankrupt and beyond redemption. They will not give up without trying every trick in the book to keep Trump in the White House.

Beyond that, what is the proletariat on either side prepared to do? How far are they prepared to go? Tonight there is 'news' of someone allegedly spray painting "Biden 2020" on the garage of a house that had a Trump sign in their front yard. Was this done by right wingers to start something - or was it a lib who was so mad at a Trump sign that they had to tag the garage? Whats the next step? Smash the windows of someone with a yard sign you don't like? Petrol bomb? When does someone walk out with a gun and start firing?

Someone somewhere is twirling their mustache as it's all going to plan. But I guarantee you that my instinct tells me it's not for you or I's benefit.

[villakram]

19 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

They are career politicians @HanoiVillan - McCain was still serving when he died. They think they know better because they've been there longer. Look at Grassley on the Republican side. He probably shouldn't be allowed to drive a car, wears diapers and can only eat soup and jelly. Yet he was allowed to preside over the contentious Kavanaugh hearings. 

There' so much wrong with the US political system it's exhausting to spend the energy thinking about it. Perhaps we actually need another civil war so we can move forward or at least rid ourselves of the stupid people. It's just the "people dying" part of the civil war that I don't like.

Calexit has been talked about. I've long thought Manhattan should become a city state like Singapore. The values and ideals of urban folk in the US is so far away from rural, bible worshipping, anti-choice hicks. I just don't know how the next generation who will be raised by two such disparate groups will reconcile the differences if we don't do it now. 

It's quite hard though when the planet is on fire and all the science points to an impending catastrophe. However half of the country believe climate change is a lie made up by a secret cabal of pedophile, baby eating lizards who plan to gain I don't know what. How the f*** to you even begin a conversation?

Errr.... Singapore is a city state dictatorship, so I'd hold off on the whole overlords desire thing.

Feinstein should have been thrown out after the Chinese agent who worked in her "office" for 20yrs was identified. She chaired some very important US foreign policy committees during this time. Biden/Trump/Pelosi/Sanders etc., all essentially 3 generations separated from those currently entering the workforce. Not a healthy thing for society.  

The climate is not on fire either, hyperbole like that hurts the legitimate arguments around this issue. So much of the issue with these fires is due to people moving to where they occur, and people playing around with how nature normally deals with these things.

[KenjiOgiwara]

 

[Davkaus]

Trying to refuse to leave makes it all the more likely he ends up in prison. Could be entertaining, but I'm very happy I'm an ocean away.

[Xann]

10 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

Someone somewhere is twirling their mustache as it's all going to plan. But I guarantee you that my instinct tells me it's not for you or I's benefit.

Quote

 

Robert Leroy Mercer (born July 11, 1946)^[2] is an American hedge fund manager, former principal investor in the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica,^[3] computer scientist who was an early artificial intelligence researcher and developer, and former co-CEO of the hedge fund company Renaissance Technologies.^[2][4][5]

Mercer played a key role in the campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union by donating data analytics services to Nigel Farage.^[6] He is also a major funder of organizations supporting right-wing political causes in the United States, such as Breitbart News^[7] and Donald Trump's 2016 campaign for president.^[8] He is the principal benefactor of the Make America Number 1 super PAC.^[9]

In November 2017, Mercer announced he would step down from Renaissance Technologies and sell his stake in Breitbart News to his daughters.^[10]

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mercer

Edited September 24, 2020 by Xann

[maqroll]

Journalists frame their transfer of power questions as if Trump has the right to deny said transfer. It breathes life into the idea, which is obviously problematic. Trump thinks he has the right to deny a Biden victory, partly because people keep asking him about it and speculating about it on cable news as if it's a decent option for him, and that he could justify it by doing and claiming any number of things.

[HanoiVillan]

A pithier version of what I was trying to say last night:

The key is to get more votes than him first, and worry about what he's going to do later.

[il_serpente]

1 hour ago, villakram said:

Errr.... Singapore is a city state dictatorship, so I'd hold off on the whole overlords desire thing.

Feinstein should have been thrown out after the Chinese agent who worked in her "office" for 20yrs was identified. She chaired some very important US foreign policy committees during this time. Biden/Trump/Pelosi/Sanders etc., all essentially 3 generations separated from those currently entering the workforce. Not a healthy thing for society.  

The climate is not on fire either, hyperbole like that hurts the legitimate arguments around this issue. So much of the issue with these fires is due to people moving to where they occur, and people playing around with how nature normally deals with these things.

Those of us living in western states beg to differ.  We're expected to hit 100F in the Bay Area on the third to last day of September, which is unprecedented.

The issue isn't people moving to where fires occur.   First of all, most of these communities have been there for more than a century without burning.  Second, a lot of these places are not out in the middle of nowhere in forests.   I've spent time around Talent and Phoenix, Oregon.  These are towns in an agricultural valley of fruit orchards, steps from an interstate highway,  that are morphing into suburbs as Ashland and Medford grow.  Look at pictures of some of the neighborhoods that have burned.  They could easily have been in the middle of Kansas.

[villakram]

1 hour ago, il_serpente said:

Those of us living in western states beg to differ.  We're expected to hit 100F in the Bay Area on the third to last day of September, which is unprecedented.

The issue isn't people moving to where fires occur.   First of all, most of these communities have been there for more than a century without burning.  Second, a lot of these places are not out in the middle of nowhere in forests.   I've spent time around Talent and Phoenix, Oregon.  These are towns in an agricultural valley of fruit orchards, steps from an interstate highway,  that are morphing into suburbs as Ashland and Medford grow.  Look at pictures of some of the neighborhoods that have burned.  They could easily have been in the middle of Kansas.

A plot of high temps measured at the locations of large recent (past few years) Californian fires over that last 100yrs would suggest nothing overly abnormal about this particular year in terms of max temps. Most of this is the result of recent wet years following a large number of dry years and piss poor human behavior/strategic planning that is much more related to what happened in New Orleans after Katrina (well known issues with levee maintenance).

It is massively tragic, but ascribing individual events as evidence of climate change is a fundamentally incorrect way to frame the conversation and simply provides an easy way for those on the oil burning side of the fence to poke holes in your argument by simply ignoring the facts and running to statistics 101 or any number of well worn tactics. Don't play their game.

 

[HanoiVillan]

LOL, be interesting to see if he gets any responses

 

[maqroll]

If Trump gets his flunky Supreme Court nominee approved, he might be able to get a favorable judgement when the disputed result goes before the court. If he doesn't get his desired decision, he'd have some big balls to try to stay in there afterward. I used to think seeing Trump hauled away in handcuffs was just a nice, wishful daydream. But it could very well end that way for him if he actually rejects a SC decision to seize power. Hard to believe we are talking in these terms.

[sne]

Cute 

 

[sharkyvilla]

So what's the verdict, is she as nuts as we were expecting?

[TheAuthority]

11 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

So what's the verdict, is she as nuts as we were expecting?

She believes that sky fairies control the world and if you ask these imaginary friends hard enough with you eyes closed then your wishes come true.

I'd say that was pretty nuts. In a country where there's supposedly a separation of church and state, all judges should be atheists in my opinion.

[LondonLax]

All the lines of attack seem to be based around the fact that she is a Catholic, quietly not mentioning that the Democratic nomination for president is also a devout Catholic.

I’ve yet to actually see any analysis regarding whether she is good at her job or not.  

[TheAuthority]

On 24/09/2020 at 08:58, villakram said:

Errr.... Singapore is a city state dictatorship, so I'd hold off on the whole overlords desire thing.

Feinstein should have been thrown out after the Chinese agent who worked in her "office" for 20yrs was identified. She chaired some very important US foreign policy committees during this time. Biden/Trump/Pelosi/Sanders etc., all essentially 3 generations separated from those currently entering the workforce. Not a healthy thing for society.  

The climate is not on fire either, hyperbole like that hurts the legitimate arguments around this issue. So much of the issue with these fires is due to people moving to where they occur, and people playing around with how nature normally deals with these things.

I thought it would be obvious that I wasn't advocating for a dictatorship or have an "overlord desire."  It was a comment about separating economically and politically from the US Federal government. But why am I not surprised that you decided to read it that way?

The planet is suffering from climate change caused by human activities? Hyperbole? You obviously don't live in Western states like myself and @il_serpente Try reading some science and educate yourself.

https://sciencebrief.org/uploads/reviews/ScienceBrief_Review_WILDFIRES_Jan2020.pdf

https://sciencebrief.org/topics/climate-change-science/wildfires/explorer

From 3 days ago: https://news.sciencebrief.org/wildfires-sep2020-update/

Quote

Climate change increases the risk of wildfires

Update: strengthened evidence that #climatechange increases the frequency and/or severity of fire weather around the world. Land management alone cannot explain recent increases in #wildfire because increased fire weather from climate change amplifies fire risk where fuels remain available.

Adam J. P. Smith1, Matthew W. Jones1, John T. Abatzoglou2, Josep G. Canadell3, Richard A. Betts4,5

 

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia (UEA), UK.

 

Management of Complex Systems, University of California, Merced, Merced, CA, USA.

CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, G.P.O. Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter.

College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter.

 

Approach. We undertook a ScienceBrief Review on the link between climate change and wildfire risk in January 2020, reviewing 57 scientific articles. 116 scientific articles are now available. This update focuses on articles relevant to the wildfires ongoing in the western United States, new findings relevant to the wildfires that raged in southeastern Australia during the 2019-2020, and new findings since January 2020.

Scientists from all over the world collaborating on, well, science, using 116 different articles. Hyperbole. FFS.

[TheAuthority]

Just now, LondonLax said:

All the lines of attack seem to be based around the fact that she is a Catholic, quietly not mentioning that the Democratic nomination for president is also a devout Catholic.

I’ve yet to actually see any analysis regarding whether she is good at her job or not.  

The BBC report is fairly well balanced. Includes interviews with some of her students from Notre Dame.

Biden is Catholic but doesn't believe that life begins at conception or that woman shouldn't have the right to choose what happens to their bodies, or that sex should only happen between heterosexual married couples. Her views which are rooted in Catholicism are very puritanical hence why people are focussing on them. Wonder if she likes beer?

[sharkyvilla]

27 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

She believes that sky fairies control the world and if you ask these imaginary friends hard enough with you eyes closed then your wishes come true.

I'd say that was pretty nuts. In a country where there's supposedly a separation of church and state, all judges should be atheists in my opinion.

Well yeah, I took that as a given!  

[HanoiVillan]

1 hour ago, sharkyvilla said:

So what's the verdict, is she as nuts as we were expecting?

As far as I can tell, she is well qualified and extremely right wing, which is absolutely standard for the highly professional conservative legal movement.