U.S. Politics megathread (merged)

[Governor Tarkin]

10 hours ago, Dawnrazor said:

Not standing up for Trump, but to be fair, I've got golfers elbow and I can't get a glass to my mouth with right hand and I'm only 48😩

I had to use my left hand to get a bottle of beer all the way to my mouth last weekend, never one to miss a chance to take the piss, the wife asked if I was going to be lashing on the fake orange tan next😆

 

Had you pegged at a couple of decades older than that tbh.

 

[Dawnrazor]

1 hour ago, Governor Tarkin said:

 

Had you pegged at a couple of decades older than that tbh.

 

😳😳

[kila]

I want to see Trump walking down a ramp

while drinking a glass of water. 

[The Real Maroonblood]

3 minutes ago, kila said:

I want to see Trump walking down a ramp

while drinking a glass of water. 

A plank would be more appropriate.

 

[Governor Tarkin]

2 hours ago, Dawnrazor said:

😳😳

 

You just seem so sensible and worldly wise.

[JFK-1]

 

[Dawnrazor]

59 minutes ago, Governor Tarkin said:

 

You just seem so sensible and worldly wise.

😅 aye, very good😅

[Maple Leaf]

32 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

 

Sam rips Trump a new one in that podcast, and that was BEFORE the election. 

 

"Dangerous imbecile"

"Child in a man's body"

"Malignantly selfish, ignorant, petty"

"A tyrant in the making"

 

In his 3+ years as POTUS, Trump lived up to those descriptions.

 

I would like to hear what Sam Harris thinks now.

[JackLadd]

So more Putin shenanigans that Trump is ignoring. The crook's tax returns need to be aired soon.

[EH11_2NL]

10 hours ago, JFK-1 said:

 

I'm guessing you don't expect a successful one handed sip to be followed by rapturous applause and whooping. Out of curiosity how are you with ramps? 😉

 

And how does your coiffure handle stairs and winds? Any Bob Dylan 'blowing in the wind' going on? 😉
 

 

Had no idea that he was actually bald. Those bits of hair are obviously just stuck on.

[JFK-1]

24 minutes ago, EH11_2NL said:

Had no idea that he was actually bald. Those bits of hair are obviously just stuck on.

 

I have seen people say that they think it's actually his hair but he is actually very bald. It's thought he has some hair at the sides which he grows as long as possible then it's fashioned into something called a 'double comb over' though I don't know exactly what that is. Then it's held in place by buckets of industrial strength hairspray.

This is a photo of him with his father and you would think it likely that he may look something like this without the combing over and hairspray.

[inspector]

Hair goes down the female line. If you can find him, look at the mother's father ( I'm led to believe) His maternal grandfather

[jambostuart]

Perhaps this is why he tries to be such good pals with Elton?

 

 

[Governor Tarkin]

3 hours ago, Dawnrazor said:

😅 aye, very good😅

 

👍

 

 

 

[JFK-1]

21 minutes ago, inspector said:

Hair goes down the female line. If you can find him, look at the mother's father ( I'm led to believe) His maternal grandfather

 

Dubious. I will be 60 this year and have a full head of thick hair as do both of my brothers. My mothers father was bald.

[Dawnrazor]

3 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Dubious. I will be 60 this year and have a full head of thick hair as do both of my brothers. My mothers father was bald.

Oh.......

[inspector]

6 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Dubious. I will be 60 this year and have a full head of thick hair as do both of my brothers. My mothers father was bald.

Always the mutant exception😄

[Sharpie]

53 minutes ago, inspector said:

Hair goes down the female line. If you can find him, look at the mother's father ( I'm led to believe) His maternal grandfather

 I am so lucky both my grandfathers were baldy, my mother and I both had the thickest black hair, and we both went grey fairly early, my hair loss was quite late and slow, my mother died with beautiful thick silver hair.  My sister took my fathers red hair but like her mother went grey gracefully with thick hair.

[JFK-1]

3 hours ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

Sam rips Trump a new one in that podcast, and that was BEFORE the election. 

 

"Dangerous imbecile"

"Child in a man's body"

"Malignantly selfish, ignorant, petty"

"A tyrant in the making"

 

In his 3+ years as POTUS, Trump lived up to those descriptions.

 

I would like to hear what Sam Harris thinks now.

 

Some interesting points made in this one from just a few weeks ago.
 

 

[JFK-1]

4 hours ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

Sam rips Trump a new one in that podcast, and that was BEFORE the election. 

 

"Dangerous imbecile"

"Child in a man's body"

"Malignantly selfish, ignorant, petty"

"A tyrant in the making"

 

In his 3+ years as POTUS, Trump lived up to those descriptions.

 

I would like to hear what Sam Harris thinks now.

 

That link I posted to a more recent Sam Harris pod is actually the public one which is only the first half of the entire pod. You need to have a subscription to play/download the entire pod.

The second half of that pod touches on some truly frightening aspects of Trump. If you want to listen to it or download it PM me and I will give you a link for the entire pod I have uploaded to my own private cloud space.

[Maple Leaf]

1 hour ago, JFK-1 said:

 

That link I posted to a more recent Sam Harris pod is actually the public one which is only the first half of the entire pod. You need to have a subscription to play/download the entire pod.

The second half of that pod touches on some truly frightening aspects of Trump. If you want to listen to it or download it PM me and I will give you a link for the entire pod I have uploaded to my own private cloud space.

 

Thanks for posting that.

 

David Frum is a Canadian-born lifelong Conservative and has been a big presence in the Republican party for many years and in many Republican administrations. The fact that he's so outspoken in his criticism of Trump proves that not all Conservatives have fallen into the Trump cult. 

[JFK-1]

The potential scope of Trump crimes could be staggering. We know for a fact there was Russian interference to the benefit of Trump during the 2016 election.

 

It's further known that Trump owes huge sums of money to Russian banks. Why would Russian banks lend Trump huge sums of money when Western banks with good reason wont touch him with a barge pole?

Next step, who above all would absolutely love NATO to fall apart? The answer to that question is Putin. Then, who has been making the most noise about quitting NATO?

The answer to that is Trump and without the US in it NATO is no deterrent to Putin at all. While just this month a plan to withdraw one third of the total US presence in Germany has been proposed by the Trump administration.

Again, who will that make happy? I believe we may be looking at more than criminal activity to enrich himself and his cronies. We could be talking treason.

And who knows what else has been going on behind the scenes while Trump uses all the power of the office to hinder any investigation.  

[Unknown user]

4 hours ago, JFK-1 said:

The potential scope of Trump crimes could be staggering. We know for a fact there was Russian interference to the benefit of Trump during the 2016 election.

 

It's further known that Trump owes huge sums of money to Russian banks. Why would Russian banks lend Trump huge sums of money when Western banks with good reason wont touch him with a barge pole?

Next step, who above all would absolutely love NATO to fall apart? The answer to that question is Putin. Then, who has been making the most noise about quitting NATO?

The answer to that is Trump and without the US in it NATO is no deterrent to Putin at all. While just this month a plan to withdraw one third of the total US presence in Germany has been proposed by the Trump administration.

Again, who will that make happy? I believe we may be looking at more than criminal activity to enrich himself and his cronies. We could be talking treason.

And who knows what else has been going on behind the scenes while Trump uses all the power of the office to hinder any investigation.  

I'd love him to see jail but let's face it, the batshit mental defence has a decent chance of success. 

[felix]

 

[JFK-1]

4 hours ago, Smithee said:

I'd love him to see jail but let's face it, the batshit mental defence has a decent chance of success. 

 

The irony of it would be amusing. From day one people have been looking on and labeling him batshit crazy while he and enablers call the the diagnoses 'fake news'

If it comes to it I envisage a Harvey Weinstein type defence. Trump among other things may abandon blaming shoes for a ramp shuffle and go full Weinstein like walker shuffle. I'm not sure if they would go for a mentally incompetent angle.

Trumps ego is just too huge to swallow that easily. And chances are he may not speak at all if he were put on trial as Weinstein didn't. Trump had to be talked out of testifying during the Mueller inquiry.

The reason for that is they ran a few test grillings on him and unsurprisingly discovered that he cannot stop lying. In response to questions he invents some utter nonsense out of thin air that would be shredded by prosecutors. 

It became obvious to them that the idiot would talk himself and perhaps others straight into jail. This is why he didn't testify.

Edited June 28, 2020 by JFK-1

[Jambo-Jimbo]

1 hour ago, JFK-1 said:

 

The irony of it would be amusing. From day one people have been looking on and labeling him batshit crazy while he and enablers call the the diagnoses 'fake news'

If it comes to it I envisage a Harvey Weinstein type defence. Trump among other things may abandon blaming shoes for a ramp shuffle and go full Weinstein like walker shuffle. I'm not sure if they would go for a mentally incompetent angle.

Trumps ego is just too huge to swallow that easily. And chances are he may not speak at all if he were put on trial as Weinstein didn't. Trump had to be talked out of testifying during the Mueller inquiry.

The reason for that is they ran a few test grillings on him and unsurprisingly discovered that he cannot stop lying. In response to questions he invents some utter nonsense out of thin air that would be shredded by prosecutors. 

It became obvious to them that the idiot would talk himself and perhaps others straight into jail. This is why he didn't testify.

 

It also became obvious that he'd suffer a 'massive heart attack' and die, long before he ever got near a court house.

 

[Boof]

53 minutes ago, Jambo-Jimbo said:

 

It also became obvious that he'd suffer a 'massive heart attack' and die, long before he ever got near a court house.

 

 

If he should happen to die in office, would Pence become first of all the President and then the candidate for the election?

[JFK-1]

My preference would be rotting in jail not dying in office. I want to see him humiliated. In a court situation where inane bluster and conspiracy babble have no credibility.

[Boof]

20 minutes ago, Barack said:

I'm happy to be corrected by @Justin Z...but, Pence would be President, yes. However, it would the Party, (GOP) who would decide if Pence got the ticket to run for (re)election. 

 

In all honesty, they wouldn't pick Pence. 

 

 

 

But who, though?

 

Tempus is fugiting and all that...

[Boof]

Also...is there a cut-off point where there isn't time between a President's death and the election to get the VP installed?

 

All kinda @Justin Z questions, I suppose...

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

Trump has retweeted a video of a supporter yelling ‘white power’. There really is no bottom.

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

15 hours ago, Barack said:

Let's stretch the boundaries of incredulity for a moment, and ponder that statement.

 

Either they did know, and it's treason. They genuinely didn't know, then it's gross misconduct.

 

If they didn't know and weren't briefed by the NSA, Sec Def & the Chief of Staff, because they couldn't trust Trump's reaction to bad news about Russia...then that's not good either.

 

Feels like an impeachment has been wasted, with this news coming out.

 

Can’t trust a thing McEnany says. The reporting has also been verified through multiple news outlets, not just the New York Times.

[Cade]

1 hour ago, Kalamazoo Jambo said:

Trump has retweeted a video of a supporter yelling ‘white power’. There really is no bottom.

 

Just seen that

 

[JFK-1]

1 hour ago, Kalamazoo Jambo said:

Trump has retweeted a video of a supporter yelling ‘white power’. There really is no bottom.

 

Given all the eruptions over race these past few weeks it's beginning to like like a decision to just go full blown crazy. There appears to be no limits to his brand of crazy. It's becoming frightening that someone so deranged is in such a position of power.

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

18 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Given all the eruptions over race these past few weeks it's beginning to like like a decision to just go full blown crazy. There appears to be no limits to his brand of crazy. It's becoming frightening that someone so deranged is in such a position of power.

 

 

The tweet has been deleted. White House appears to be trying some damage control (while not actually condemning racism).

 

 

Edited June 28, 2020 by Kalamazoo Jambo

[JFK-1]

1 minute ago, Kalamazoo Jambo said:

 

 

The tweet has been deleted. White House appears to be trying some damage control.

 

Next follows the denial. He didn't know what was in the video. Now ask yourself, are any of the celebrities out there with millions of followers, who generally aren't noted for being geniuses, retarded enough to post a video if they don't know what's in it?

While Trump is a self professed "very satble genius" And even if it were true  he is that stupid that alone is damning considering the position of power this wacko is in.

[JFK-1]

9 minutes ago, Kalamazoo Jambo said:

 

 

The tweet has been deleted. White House appears to be trying some damage control (while not actually condemning racism).

 

 

 

Comical, just as I was posting you were adding an edit proving my prediction 100% correct. 🤣

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

6 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

Comical, just as I was posting you were adding an edit proving my prediction 100% correct. 🤣

 

Glad I could help

[JFK-1]

4 minutes ago, Kalamazoo Jambo said:

 

Glad I could help

 

Even the denial is a train wreck. Now they're saying Trump was impressed by the 'tremendous enthusiasm' of his supporters. So they're saying his supporters are tremendously enthusiastic white supremacists. 🤣

[Cade]

Narcissist's Prayer strikes again
 

That didn't happen.

And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

And if it was, that's not a big deal.

And if it is, that's not my fault.

And if it was, I didn't mean it.

And if I did...

You deserved it.

[Justin Z]

6 hours ago, Barack said:

I'm happy to be corrected by @Justin Z...but, Pence would be President, yes. However, it would the Party, (GOP) who would decide if Pence got the ticket to run for (re)election. 

 

In all honesty, they wouldn't pick Pence.

 

Harvard Law seems to have paid off for you, Prez. Spot on.

[Ray Gin]

9 hours ago, felix said:

 

 

 

   Absolute morons

[Cade]

4 minutes ago, Ray Gin said:

 

 

   Absolute morons

 

.........who have the vote

[Maple Leaf]

5 hours ago, Cade said:

 

.........who have the vote

 

Trump supporters are committed to their man, and there's nothing that anyone can say or do that will make them vote for Biden.

 

However, none of the slogans from 2016 will work this time, so the Trump campaign can forget all the MAGA, lock her up, drain the swamp, build the wall populist bullshit as it can only work once. Now he has to run on his record, and that's the last thing he wants.

 

The election will go to the candidate who wins the independent vote.  Trump got it last time as the indies were wary of Hilary, but not this time.  Trump is now viewed by everyone except his cult members as a toxic freak who is not qualified for the job.  Biden is winning the independent vote, and that is his passport to the Oval Office.

 

Now all Biden has to do is pick the right running mate, and victory is well within his grasp, maybe even a lopsided victory.  Kamala Harris or Susan Rice will do it for him.  Even Elizabeth Warren.

[JFK-1]

27 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

Trump is now viewed by everyone except his cult members as a toxic freak who is not qualified for the job.

 

It's flabbergasting to me that anyone had to effectively see the movie to have it confirmed that he's a toxic freak unqualified for any position of power far less the oval office. That wasn't obvious?

 

32 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

However, none of the slogans from 2016 will work this time, so the Trump campaign can forget all the MAGA, lock her up, drain the swamp, build the wall populist bullshit as it can only work once. Now he has to run on his record.

 

And yet the same old bullshit is more or less perhaps with different slogans meaning the same thing exactly what he is/will run on again. And in effect all Biden has to do is run on Trumps record which is a disaster from day one. What in the world could he possibly point to as a success?

MAGA? He claimed the world was laughing at the US. That wasn't true but it is now.
 

 

Lock her up? For what exactly? Colluding with foreign nations who have been considered an enemy of the US for over a century? Can't be that because that's Trump? She isn't locked up, never was going to be, and never will be.

Drain the swamp? How much more evidence is required that he is the swamp.

Build the wall? Well he has built 3 miles of new wall that wasn't paid for by Mexico. Going to take several centuries to pull that one off.

 

He has absolutely zero accomplishment to point to while sheer incompetence is an almost daily occurrence. His 'white power' tweet earlier today demonstrates that's all he actually has left, the racists.

At a time when the country has become ever more ashamed and uncomfortable about the historic and systemic racism evident in the nation.

Notice he's rushing to proclaim protection for confederate statues. He thinks that's a winner? It might be in the grunts who would vote for the idiot, grunts even dumber than he is and that's saying something. But that wont swing an election. Not now it wont.

I can see no way back for him and the coming election should be a Biden landslide. But we all know Trump is literally insane. I have fears of the depths he may plumb as it becomes ever more obvious even to him that it's over.

And that there are potentially threats of criminal proceedings coming his way when he will not be able to fire investigators. When Hitler was trapped in the bunker and it finally sunk in that it was over he completely lost the plot.

He apparently said he wished that he had a bomb that could blow up the whole world, wanted to take the entire world down with him. That wasn't possible so he ordered the total destruction of all German industrial capacity and infrastructure.

He couldn't take the whole world down with him but he could take the Germans down with him. Leave them absolutely nothing to build on in the aftermath. Luckily for them Albert Speer declined to follow through with that.

I see similarities between Hitler in the bunker and Trump bunkered down in the White House. And that has to be concerning when we're talking about an obviously deranged maniac who exists in an alternate reality.

[JFK-1]

How the Republican Party became a death cult
 

Quote

This week’s Pew poll has mixed news on mask-wearing, a proven method of reducing the likelihood of coronavirus infection. On the positive side, “65% of U.S. adults say that they have personally worn a mask in stores or other businesses all or most of the time in the past month, while 15% say they did this some of the time.

Relatively small shares of adults say they hardly ever (9%) or never (7%) wore a mask in the past month, and 4% say they have not gone to these types of places.”

However, when you break out mask-wearing by party, the numbers are disturbing. “Democrats and those who lean Democratic are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say they personally wore a mask all or most of the time in the past month (76% vs. 53%),” the pollsters found.

“Conservative Republicans are among the least likely to say they have worn a mask all or most of the time in the past month — 49% say they’ve done so, compared with 60% of moderate Republicans. Liberal Democrats are the most likely to say they have worn masks (83% say they’ve done so all or most of the time, vs. 71% of moderate Democrats).”

The racial and education breakdown of this survey mirrors the polarization of American politics. Nonwhites and college-educated Americans are more likely to be Democrats and mask-wearers.

Whites and non-college-educated Americans are more likely to be Republicans and eschew mask-wearing. There is one constant: More older Americans than younger Americans are wearing masks.

This outcome is the triumph of Republicans’ tribal politics, in which identification with the cult and assault on the truth win out over common sense, science and even self-preservation.

To be a Republican — at least in the eyes of millions of them — means to adopt illogical, anti-factual beliefs and oppositional conduct.

You cannot take seriously the threats of climate change or the novel coronavirus because … well, because that is not what Republicans do, and to do otherwise would be to concede that the dreaded radical left and elites (presumably one can be both) are right.

At the extremes, Republicans will engage in objectively destructive conduct to prove their point — hoarding hydroxychloroquine even if the Food and Drug Administration says the drug is ineffective or dangerous, and, of course, going without masks.

If Republicans are willing to go maskless at their peril, then they are willing to believe or disbelieve anything to stay within the cult. Is it any wonder that these people insist Trump never committed impeachable acts, did a swell job on the pandemic, sounds lucid and is not corrupt?

It is true that some Republicans — especially activists, operatives and conservative media figures who make their living catering to the right-wing mob — might not actually believe this rubbish. They simply exploit those willing and even eager to believe what President Trump tells them.
 

But this is not an acceptable state of affairs for a self-governing people. Authoritarian regimes flourish when objective truth is under assault and leaders manipulate reality.

For democracies, however, the result is frightful when a significant segment of the public remains unpersuaded by facts and logic and refuses to hold leaders accountable for their actions.
 

Perhaps a massive defeat in November will snap Republicans out of their trance. If not, the dysfunction, anger, corruption and self-destructive conduct of millions of voters and their party of choice will continue. That bodes ill for addressing the very real problems we collectively face.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/23/how-republican-party-became-death-cult/

 

[Cade]

2-party politics is a bad thing as it only leads to polarization, lies and tribalism.

Having said that, if everybody that voted Libertarian last time around had voted Clinton, she'd have won.

[Maple Leaf]

An anti-Trump group of Republicans will be running an ad that emphasises Trump's mishandling of the pandemic, resulting in the needless deaths of thousands, including many WWII veterans.  Says one of the group:

 

"Americans should judge Trump on his inhumanity for accepting us as expendable," Galen said.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/28/politics/lincoln-project-trump-coronavirus-deaths-greatest-generation/index.html

[I P Knightley]

I saw something over the weekend suggesting that if Trump continues to trail in the opinion polls, his vanity may result in him withdrawing from the race. Retire on grounds of injury/ill-health rather than losing bigly. A bit like Novak Djokovic retiring hurt from so many matches in the past when it appeared that he was going to get pumpded oot anyway.

 

Who knows? Trump's problematic bone spurs could be on the verge of flaring up again? It might be the reason that he had to walk funny on that ramp.

[Maple Leaf]

Amid the flurry of failures, let's not forget another of Trump's broken promises: "I'm going to be too busy to play golf."

 

https://trumpgolfcount.com/

 

His golf trips have cost the American taxpayer about $136 million.