U.S. Politics megathread (merged)

[Boof]

11 weeks of unfettered do-what-you-want is absolute lunacy.

 

And the 'Pardon' concept - how open to ****ing corruption is that?

[Justin Z]

11 minutes ago, Boof said:

11 weeks of unfettered do-what-you-want is absolute lunacy.

 

It made sense in the 18th and 19th centuries when at best, the fastest form of communication was a telegram, and you had to gather results from 25+ states, have an electoral college vote following the public vote to determine the winner, transport was by wagon or train, etc. etc.

 

It's one of about a billion arguments that every single law ever written ought to have a sunset clause. Would force lawmakers to keep things up to date.

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by Justin Z

[redjambo]

39 minutes ago, Justin Z said:

 

It's one of about a billion arguments that every single law ever written ought to have a sunset clause. Would force lawmakers to keep things up to date.

 

 

And a sanity clause too.

[Maple Leaf]

5 minutes ago, redjambo said:

 

And a sanity clause too.

 

He's due on December 25th.

 

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

14 minutes ago, redjambo said:

 

And a sanity clause too.

 

 

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

4 hours ago, Lovecraft said:

 

Check this as I posted above.

 

 

 

As I said before, Trump needs a lot to go his way by hook or crook if he is to win again.

 

 

Yes he does, but it’s not impossible. FiveThirtyEight’s current analysis giving Trump an 11% chance of winning seems reasonable. 
 

[Norm]

34 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

He's due on December 25th.

 

👏👏👏

[kila]

1 hour ago, Normthebarman said:

I know a lot of folk are saying Trump might enact some kind of scorched earth policy if he loses, but I can just as easily see him taking the huff, ****ing off to his golf course and doing absolutely hee haw until January. Like, proper hee haw. A spoiled child who just says "Ah'm no playing" and takes his ball with him.

 

A president who does absolutely nothing, especially during a Pandemic, can be just as dangerous. 

 

More dangerous than spurting lies about it and Fauci?

 

I can't see Trump slithering away quietly. He'll be busier in his final weeks than he has been his entire presidency.

 

[DETTY29]

6 hours ago, Maple Leaf said:

I'm looking forward to this time next week when we'll be discussing Trump's frantic efforts to stay in power despite having lost the popular vote by ten million.

 

Feel free to quote me and laugh if I'm wrong.

No-one sensible will be laughing.

 

If you lnow what I mean.

Edited October 28, 2020 by DETTY29

[JFK-1]

I think he's drunk again.

 

Rudy Giuliani EXPLODES When Fox Host Debunks His Lies

 

 

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by JFK-1

[Lovecraft]

1 hour ago, Kalamazoo Jambo said:

Yes he does, but it’s not impossible. FiveThirtyEight’s current analysis giving Trump an 11% chance of winning seems reasonable. 
 

It's not at all.  There are also all the court case that will be coming due the election.

 

Chickens, hatched etc...

 

 

[DETTY29]

 

[NANOJAMBO]

1 hour ago, JFK-1 said:

I think he's drunk again.

 

Rudy Giuliani EXPLODES When Fox Host Debunks His Lies

 

 

 

I didn't get it from E Europe, I got it from the repairman !!!!". 

 

[Maple Leaf]

32 minutes ago, DETTY29 said:

 

 

As I've posted previously, 60 million Americans will vote to give that piece of trash another four years in the White House.  It's beyond belief.

[JFK-1]

21 minutes ago, Maple Leaf said:

 

As I've posted previously, 60 million Americans will vote to give that piece of trash another four years in the White House.  It's beyond belief.

 

Which makes you wonder about the overall state of the nation. The kind of mentality that would have voted for such a dimwitted cretin in the first place. Then would do so again despite incontrovertible evidence of his stupidity,  misogyny, blatant racism, petty malevolence, and downright criminality.

It may predominately be a North South divide. I couldn't say.

Edited October 29, 2020 by JFK-1

[EH11_2NL]

3 hours ago, redjambo said:

 

And a sanity clause too.

Sorry.Couldn't resist it!

[J.T.F.Robertson]

*Watching CNN right now and this Miles Taylor being interviewed by Chris Cuomo. Holy shit!

If any of this is even remotely fact-based, that bampot is as much of a nutter in "private" as he comes across in public.

 

*I'm aware CNN isn't exactly neutral.

 

[JFK-1]

Trump and Brett Kavanaugh Telegraph Their Plan to Steal the Election

 

 

 

 

[ri Alban]

7 hours ago, JFK-1 said:

 

He will have 77 days between election day and being removed from the office. Many people are contemplating what could happen in that time. And that alone is also unprecedented. Valid worries about what this deranged maniac may do in the final weeks of power.

We all know how petty, spiteful, outright malevolent this maniac is. And we all know that being removed from the office could mean a lot more to him than it ever has to any other president.

I suspect none of us doubt he could become truly deranged as the days count down to his personal Armageddon.

Politico published an article today contemplating potential scenarios. Six major points ranging from the entirely expected flurry of pardons to starting a war to sabotaging the pandemic response capabilities of Biden .

By GARRETT M. GRAFF - 10/28/2020 04:30 AM EDT
Garrett M. Graff is a journalist, historian and author, most recently of the New York Times bestseller The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. He is the director of cyber initiatives at the Aspen Institute.

 

‘I’m Absolutely Expecting Him to Do Something Weird’: How Trump Could End His Presidency

Presidents typically reserve their most controversial decisions for their last weeks in office. Imagine what that could mean for Trump.

 

As we count down the days to Election Day, the pundit class is wringing its hands in worry over whether President Donald Trump will accept a possible win by Joe Biden and agree to leave the White House.

But even if Trump calmly walks out the door of the White House on the morning of January 20th, a more immediate problem looms: What might Trump do with the final 77 days of his presidency if he loses? There are 1,860 hours between Wednesday, Nov. 4, and noon on Jan. 20, when Trump’s first term expires. And that’s plenty of time for him to upend plenty of presidential traditions.

The lame duck period is always a time when outgoing presidents feel free to stir up controversy. Even presidents who care deeply about their legacies and abide by democratic norms often take uniquely unpopular actions in the closing weeks of their presidencies: George H.W. Bush pardoned six officials behind the Iran-Contra scandal; Bill Clinton pardoned more than 140 people on his final day in office — a third of all the clemencies he granted as president — including financier Marc Rich, a controversy that dogged him as he moved into the post-presidency and launched one final investigation of his time in office. Just days before he left office, Barack Obama commuted the sentence of leaker Chelsea Manning.

So, imagine what might happen in a post-election period when Trump — a president who has spent four years demonstrating his lack of interest in norms and practices of a democracy — retains all the powers and authority of the presidency and officially has nothing left to lose?

Conversations with presidential legal experts, Constitutional scholars and national security officials identified six areas where Trump could do real damage to the country, his successor or presidential traditions — a list informed both by his past executive actions as well as the considerations he’d face as he considered a life outside the White House for him and his family. From a last-minute resignation to guarantee himself legal immunity to destroying historic records to launching a war, there’s reason to wonder if a Trump transition might actually be the start of the wildest chapter of an already controversial presidency.

Here’s what a Trump transition could include:

1) A pardon-a-palooza: If Trump loses, nearly everyone expects an unprecedented flurry of presidential pardons in his last 77 days — a way both to reward friends, protect his family, tweak his opponents and curry favor with those who may help him when he is back in private life. “The pardon power operates in the way he imagines the presidency to operate — you wave your hand and it’s done,” says Quinta Jurecic, the managing editor of the blog Lawfare. “I’m absolutely expecting him to do something weird.”

“The pardon power is the easiest to exercise,” says law professor Jack Goldsmith, who used to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Presidential clemency, which Trump seems to remember from time to time and then issue a flurry of pardons in short order, has already proven to be one of his most controversial areas of executive action. And given his willingness to self-servingly commute the sentence of associate Roger Stone even while his reelection hung in the balance this summer, it’s clear that loosed from any political restraints, he might hand out pardons far and wide.

Experts expect a few different buckets of post-election pardons: First, presidential get-out-of-jail-free cards for those already caught up in the Russia investigation — people like Michael Flynn, Roger Stone and perhaps including Paul Manafort, who has repeatedly obstructed and stymied efforts to pierce what really transpired during the 2016 campaign. The one exception who might be left out in the cold? His former lawyer Michael Cohen, who Trump believes betrayed him by cooperating with investigators and speaking publicly.

Second, look for the possibility of blanket, preemptive pardons for the president’s own family, close friends and campaign associates. Presidential pardons — as Gerald Ford demonstrated in pardoning Nixon — don’t require existing criminal charges; they can also be used to block attempts to bring federal charges in the future.

Trump’s application in this category could include both people already under criminal indictment — like Steve Bannon — those who appear to be under federal investigation, like Brad Parscale and Rudy Giuliani, as well as perhaps even family members like Jared Kushner, Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric who may face investigation and charges after Trump leaves office.

As president, he’s repeatedly offered pardons to officials involved in some of his controversial policies, like immigration enforcement and child separation, and he could also issue blanket pardons to cabinet secretaries, agency heads and other loyal government officials that would allow them to skirt any post-Trump investigations into their actions in office.

Any actions along these lines would surely ignite political firestorms — and might lead to Congress attempting to legislate limits on presidential pardon authority going forward — but for now there’s not much that can be done to appeal or fight a presidential pardon.

The third type of presidential pardons or commutations that might emerge from the White House post-election is what might be called the “Fox & Friends and Friends of Fox” category. Throughout his presidency, Trump has seemed uniquely susceptible to being lobbied for presidential clemency directly through his friends or on-air through his favorite TV programs.

He has pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D’Souza, Scooter Libby, Rod Blagojevich, Bernard Kerik, Conrad Black and the Hammond family — and he also intervened in the case of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher’s war-crimes courts-martial — causes championed by Fox hosts, guests or others with the president’s ear outside the normal clemency process run by the Justice Department Office of the Pardon Attorney.

He pardoned one Tennessee woman at the request of Kim Kardashian West, who lobbied Trump to grant her a pardon through his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

He’s also shown an odd flair for “historic” pardons, including suffragette Susan B. Anthony and boxer Jack Johnson. While he’s talked publicly about pardoning Martha Stewart, the most controversial pardon that might be on Trump’s mind appears to be whistleblower Edward Snowden, a move so stunningly explosive that even attorney general Bill Barr opposes it. “I’m going to take a very good look at it,” Trump said this summer.

Most experts don’t think Trump would pursue more sweeping actions aimed at bolstering his historical legacy, like, say, pardoning everyone in federal prison convicted of a marijuana-related offense or every police officer convicted of murder — or further tweaking his foes, as in pardoning everyone ever prosecuted by Jim Comey. Trump, our experts suggested, is simply too transactional for such grand gestures — and it’s not clear how such moves would play nor what benefit would accrue to him for doing them.

Moreover, the more complicated and sweeping the legal action, the less easy it is to execute quickly or cleanly — and the Trump administration has demonstrated time and again that attention-to-detail is not its strength.

Regardless of who ends up getting clemency in the closing days of a Trump presidency, his pardons aren’t all-powerful and wouldn’t necessarily allow anyone to escape criminal sanctions entirely: Presidential pardons only wipe away federal charges, and there’s plenty of reason to believe that state and local prosecutors — particularly in New York — are pursuing separate investigations of his family and other associates. New York actually tried just that tack with Manafort, indicting him on state fraud charges, but a judge dismissed the charges after deciding that it overlapped with his federal case too much.

The biggest open question would be if Trump could engineer a way to ensure that he himself isn’t charged: The Mueller Report accepted that a president has federal legal immunity while in office, but currently there’s nothing to stop a federal prosecutor from picking up post-January 20 where Mueller left off.

Trump has previously asserted he has the “absolute right to PARDON myself,” but legal experts doubt whether a president could successfully “self-pardon,” and the legal battle over such an attempt would unfold only after criminal charges were brought against the former president and he sought to offer as a defense the fact that he’d pardoned himself.

The cleanest — and legally bulletproof — way for Trump to escape any further federal investigation post-presidency would be for him to resign early, even just minutes before noon on January 20, and have a newly sworn-in President Mike Pence grant him a full and complete pardon. However, such a move would seem to be un-Trump — he seems unlikely to be willing to leave the presidency a minute early — and would be incredibly dicey politically for Pence, who clearly has own presidential ambitions for 2024.

2) Revenge on the Deep State: The area where a defeated Trump’s transition might look most normal is in its rush and whirl of actions to codify and cement various policies and practices before the clock expires on his presidency — but it’s clear that Trump’s reserving his biggest battles for the imagined forces that have held him back in office, as well as perhaps one final stab at cementing a decade-long tilt to the GOP in Congress.

As is often the case as a presidential term winds down, government agencies already appear to be racing to unveil major actions, from the long-awaited filing of an antitrust case against Google to the settlement of a long-running lawsuit against Purdue Pharma for its role in opioids.

But, experts say, Trump could go farther than his predecessors in trying to unravel the way the federal government operates. In recent weeks, there have been a flurry of actions that appear aimed at exacting lasting change on the government — particularly if Trump wins reelection. In particular came a surprise, sweeping executive order last week that would undo decades of civil service protections and allow the president to reach deep into the bureaucracy to fire federal employees he disliked.

The move — met with shock, an immediate lawsuit and at least one protest resignation from a Trump official — had been in the works for years.

While the executive order changes might be short-lived if Biden takes office, the carefully laid groundwork suggests that Trump will continue to wage war on his imagined “Deep State” until the final hours of his presidency. “They’ve actually given some thought to this already — it’s a little bit surprising. I’m even a little taken aback by the institutional-type things that have unfolded just in the last week,” says one legal observer.

Another particular area of concern for lame duck mischief is the U.S. Census, which the Trump administration has spent all year handicapping and undermining. Just weeks after the election, the Supreme Court is likely to rule on the Trump administration’s hope to exclude noncitizens from its population counts for the purposes of congressional apportionment — a move with potentially dramatic consequences for federal funding and congressional representation in states that have large numbers of undocumented immigrants; the move would likely help largely homogeneous states at the expense of diverse states.

One think tank’s analysis suggests that the Trump approach would cost California, Florida and Texas each one congressional seat (and thus, one electoral vote), while delivering an extra congressional district (and electoral vote) to Ohio, Alabama and Minnesota.

Census watchers, already alarmed at the Trump administration’s battle to cut short the count mid-pandemic, fear that the White House — rather than acting an honest broker pass-through to Congress for apportionment purposes by the December 31st deadline — might instead doctor the decennial numbers itself.

There is a limit to what Trump will be able to pull off. Push-back from the more process-oriented bureaucracy — and the normal checks and balances on executive action — would likely hinder his ability to deploy the powers of the government at whim.

And any broadly controversial unilateral executive actions — like say, ordering ICE to embark on a mass deportation campaign in Trump’s final weeks or expanding the administration’s Muslim travel ban — would immediately run into the same problems such programs already have earlier in the Trump administration: Court injunctions, prolonged legal fights and limits imposed by congressional appropriation procedures. But that’s not to say that a defeated Trump might not try some wilder actions anyway.

“Early in the administration they threw just a lot of stuff at the wall. ‘We’ve got 100 ideas, let’s just try it all and see what sticks,’ and they weren’t really paying attention to what the odds were whether it got through,” says one legal observer. “It seems like they might try to do the same here — even if it just ties up the Biden administration for a while undoing it.”

3) The mass firing of top officials: Trump’s already widely telegraphing that he has a list of people to fire ready in the event of a win. The list includes officials who have rankled him through the year — including FBI Director Christopher Wray, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and CIA Director Gina Haspel — and presumably might include an even wider housecleaning of people viewed insufficiently loyal to Team Trump.

Even if Trump loses, though, he may move to fire some officials, simply symbolically or for pure pettiness. It’s unlikely that the Senate in its own lame duck session could move quickly enough to confirm replacements for them, which means the firings of Wray and Haspel in particular would almost certainly be a gift to an incoming Biden administration: No president has ever had the opportunity to immediately select a new FBI director.

Other career government officials, like American heartthrob Dr. Anthony Fauci, who serves as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would be more isolated from presidential umbrage. Trump, in theory, could order Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar or the head of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, to fire Fauci — and fire them if they refuse — but the current civil service protections would mean that Fauci could likely appeal and successfully run out the clock on the Trump administration before he would be forced to leave his office.

4) The destruction of records and obstruction of the new administration: The Presidential Records Act and Federal Records Act in theory guarantee the preservation of the official history of the White House’s work, presidential actions and staff debates. However, just how closely the Trump White House plans to abide by them remains an open question.

“They’re just going to not care about the Records Act — just like they didn’t care about the Hatch Act. It falls into the category of nuisance laws that they just don’t think apply to them. Like what’s going to happen to them if they don’t?” says one legal observer. “That’s less indicative of him and more about the type of people he has brought around him.”

A coalition of 12 open-government organizations wrote a letter earlier this month to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) asking Archivist David Ferriero to take affirmative steps to preserve Trump records. “We are alarmed and deeply concerned by the Trump administration’s failure to honor its legal responsibility to create and preserve records. Reportedly President Trump rips up his papers and had concealed documents detailing meetings with foreign leaders. Agency leaders have shown similar disregard for records creation and preservation,” the group wrote. “These actions subvert the public’s right to know and obstruct future efforts to hold the administration accountable.”

While the automatic backups and preservation procedures for some electronic records of the White House and government agencies would make them difficult to delete or destroy entirely, other sensitive, controversial hard-copy records might be tempting to destroy, even if illegal. “Golly, the documents they must have,” says one observer. “Email is regularized, but the documents kept in safes and SCIFs, next to burn bags? It’s an open temptation.”

It already seems likely that historians will never be able to fully reconstruct the foreign and domestic policy thinking in the Trump years: Reports show that Jared Kushner used WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders and that White House aides have used secure apps to talk amongst themselves — actions that violate federal law if those exchanges are not preserved.

One fact working against any Trump effort to bury the truth: He famously does most of his ethically questionable business face-to-face. In congressional testimonies and interviews damning Trump by figures like Jim Comey, Michael Cohen and Gordon Sondland, they’ve all compared him to a mafia boss who gives opaque — but unmistakable — orders.

“Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates,” Cohen said. “He would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.” As Comey explained pressure from Trump, “I mean, this is a president of the United States with me alone saying, ‘I hope this.’ I took it as, ‘This is what he wants me to do.

’” Such behavior, in some ways, would be easier to preserve than a paper record, since the witnesses to it will be walking out of the White House themselves too. As a former government lawyer says, “His verbal orders might live to haunt him. He appears to commit obstruction of justice as a way of life.”

Beyond simply making it impossible for the country and historians to ever fully understand what happened — and why — during the Trump administration, the destruction of such records could also make it enormously hard for the Biden administration to assume power smoothly on Jan. 20 as a lack of documentation or institutional history would stymie their ability to understand government plans or actions already underway.

Especially if uncertainty about the outcome post-election lingers, Trump may also stall engaging with Biden’s team — or refuse to participate in any transitional conversations at all. Given the acrimony of the year already, it’s not clear that the two sides would even trust each other even if they do engage in normal transition exercises and meetings. Instead, Biden “landing teams” at agencies will likely find a patchwork of cooperation and noncooperation, depending on agency leadership and engagement. The Biden transition team is reportedly already planning for the possibility where the Trump administration refuses customary briefings.

While records-destruction presents one problem, the opposite problem seems likely to unfold too in the closing days of any Trump administration: Trump has been rushing to settle scores with past political foes by releasing the Durham report on the origins of the Russia investigation and has been pressuring Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to declassify more emails from Hillary Clinton. The administration might well rush to push out any remaining dirt on political opponents in its final days.

5) Military conflict or covert action: Up until the final minutes of a presidency, the so-called “nuclear football” remains close at hand for the commander-in-chief, and while presidents have traditionally delayed potentially escalatory actions during a transition to avoid hamstringing their successor, such restraint is merely a norm.

In theory, Trump could launch military strikes, initiate covert actions and even launch a full-scale nuclear war right up until 11:59 a.m. on Jan. 20.

There are precedents for other officials in the chain of command attempting to curtail a president’s unilateral nuclear authority; Nixon’s defense secretary, James Schlesinger, said later that he had left orders in the closing days of Nixon’s administration unraveling amid Watergate that if the president gave a launch order, it should be double-checked with him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. More recently, under Trump, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly are said to have made a pact in the early days of the administration that both men wouldn’t travel abroad at the same time, ensuring one would always remain available in the U.S. to monitor presidential orders.

However, such orders or plans are strictly extra-constitutional and wouldn’t necessarily forestall a valid, legal order from the commander-in-chief to execute an attack or operation.

Military leaders have previously said they would not comply with an illegal order, but that’s actually a much more narrow viewpoint than the public usually interprets. It’s not a blanket reassurance that the military would ignore an illogical presidential order, it literally means that they would not comply with an order that violates international or military law, a tightly proscribed set of actions that revolve around questions like proportionality and the status of noncombatants.

What if Trump begins to up the pressure on China in the South China Sea or decides in his closing weeks as president to go after Iran either in cyberspace or the real world, as he started the year assassinating top military leader Qasem Soleimani? Would the White House staff or military chain of command resist reckless actions that could lead to a lame duck war? “I can imagine a low-level constitutional crisis if he starts being aggressive,” says one former official.

It’s possible too that if the president greenlights actions against foreign adversaries in cyberspace or certain covert actions, that his final presidential actions may go publicly unnoticed and emerge only months or years later. Covert actions routinely are handed off from one administration to another; President Bush initiated cyberattacks against the Iranian nuclear program before handing off the operation, known as OLYMPIC GAMES, to Obama in 2009. Obama, for his part, deferred a major special forces operation targeting Yemen for Trump to execute after he took office; the operation, approved just days into Trump’s presidency, went awry and ended with the death of a Navy SEAL.

Would Trump offer the same courtesy to a successor — or push forward with any proposed covert actions over the weeks ahead to claim the possible credit himself?

6) Giving up on the pandemic: One widespread concern is that if Trump loses, the White House will just cease any effort to combat the pandemic, perhaps slowing the push for a vaccine or abandoning any congressional push to jumpstart the still-ailing economy — a three-month delay ahead of a Biden administration that might have catastrophic consequences for millions of families and hamstring the Biden team even further as they inherit an even-deeper hole to dig out of in 2021. Already, even pre-election, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows appears to be throwing in the towel on the pandemic.

The good news — if you can call it that — is that our experts see little real effect if Trump loses next week and then retires to Mar-a-Lago to tweet and golf out the remainder of his presidency. As Meadows’ comment made clear, the sad truth is that the White House has been so disengaged from the pandemic response for so long that a total abdication of its role wouldn’t likely look all that different. Similarly, congressional and administration action on economic relief for the Covid-19 pandemic has already been stalled since May.

One area of concern, though, is if the Trump administration decides to take its foot off the gas on vaccine efforts — the president’s much vaunted Operation Warp Speed and relentless push for a pre-election vaccine might quickly lose momentum after Nov. 3. But even if the government attention wanes, so much of the vaccine race is being managed by private companies (as well as by foreign governments) that it may not matter dramatically for the vaccine calendar.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/28/trump-wild-transition-433025

Forget it. 

Edited October 29, 2020 by ri Alban

[ri Alban]

If Trump could pardon ever prisoner across America, that would cause total chaos. So??? 

[Tazio]

The really odd thing is that the more I look at it Trump isn’t even a proper republican. He’s a Trump, he just chose to ride on the republican ticket. 

[Sidelight]

Nigel Farage speaks at Trump rally.

 

 

[The Real Maroonblood]

“The bravest man I’ve ever met.”

[Des Lynam]

54 minutes ago, Barack said:

 

The "dog ate it" excuse.

 

Pity DeJoy ****ed up the mail, eh! 

 

 

The desperation of these ****ers.

 

Is it the 1970’s? Scan those documents that don’t exist. The likes of Tucker, Mitch and Lindsey shouldn’t escape a retrospective look back at this madness. 

[Jambos_1874]

52 minutes ago, alfajambo said:

Nigel Farage speaks at Trump rally.

 

 

 

That's hilarious. What does Farage get out of his association with Trump!!? Is it just another platform to allow him to push his xenophobic agenda?

Edited October 29, 2020 by Jambos_1874

[graygo]

5 hours ago, ri Alban said:

Forget it. 

 

 

[RobboM]

4 hours ago, alfajambo said:

Nigel Farage speaks at Trump rally.

 

 

It's important to be reminded just what a ***** Farage is. Thanks for posting

[The Real Maroonblood]

1 minute ago, RobboM said:

It's important to be reminded just what a ***** Farage is. Thanks for posting

[Sharpie]

So the cease fire that Trumps representatives gained last week, and announced proudly by Trump went unannounced that yesterday Armenia and Azebaijan had a serious armed conflict. I hope the ones with Israel last longer, the good thing is they won't need to last long while Trump is President.

.

 

[Bigsmak]

The USA needs to change a lot of things.. 

 

Why is there a transition period until January - this should just happen straight away. 

The electoral Collage - This doesn't work and the folks in California votes count less than in lest populated states. This needs to be changed along with the Gerrymandering that goes on - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Gerrymandering%2C in other words%2C is,boundaries rather than compact areas.

Remove the filibuster

Remove the ability for the sweeping pardons by a president without appeal or sense. 

 

This list could solve a lot of problems. 

 

 

[Joey J J Jr Shabadoo]

4 hours ago, Jambos_1874 said:

 

That's hilarious. What does Farage get out of his association with Trump!!? Is it just another platform to allow him to push his xenophobic agenda?

He probably gets to use the glory hole in Ivanka's shower cubicle when Trump's finished using it.

[Craig Gordons Gloves]

We took a road trip a couple of weeks back from here to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Minnesota-Wisconsin-Illinois-Indiana-Kentucky-Tennessee-North Carolina.  The further south you go, the more visible the rural poverty is.  Something that I still can't get my head around is the level of support for Trump from those living in what is obvious rural poverty.  Run down shacks, broken trailer homes etc all proudly displaying their Trump flags.  I know all about the mistrust of government from those is rural areas and yet the fact that people with barely a house to live in see some messiah in a grifter who couldn't care less about them is galling. 

 

 

[Maple Leaf]

29 minutes ago, Craig Gordons Gloves said:

We took a road trip a couple of weeks back from here to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Minnesota-Wisconsin-Illinois-Indiana-Kentucky-Tennessee-North Carolina.  The further south you go, the more visible the rural poverty is.  Something that I still can't get my head around is the level of support for Trump from those living in what is obvious rural poverty.  Run down shacks, broken trailer homes etc all proudly displaying their Trump flags.  I know all about the mistrust of government from those is rural areas and yet the fact that people with barely a house to live in see some messiah in a grifter who couldn't care less about them is galling. 

 

 

 

I just read an article about the coal miners in West Virginia, especially in a town called Madison.

 

They voted overwhelmingly for Trump last time because he promised to put all the miners back to work, producing "beautiful clean coal."  Well, like many of Trump's promises, that didn't happen and there are fewer miners employed today than there were four years ago.

 

Nevertheless, the good citizens of Madison will be voting for Trump again in 2020.  When they were asked why, some simply said that they don't like Biden.  One woman said that she liked Trump's business sense.

[SectionDJambo]

2 hours ago, RobboM said:

It's important to be reminded just what a ***** Farage is. Thanks for posting

Is there still a quarantine period for returning from the US? If there is, I wonder if he’ll stick to it this time. He was suspected of breaking his quarantine after returning from a high risk area in Tulsa, after supporting his mate.

[RobboM]

2 minutes ago, SectionDJambo said:

Is there still a quarantine period for returning from the US? If there is, I wonder if he’ll stick to it this time. He was suspected of breaking his quarantine after returning from a high risk area in Tulsa, after supporting his mate.

Equally there are restictions on British nationals travelling to USA. So two weeks quarantine there, two weeks quarantine on return all just to give Donald Trump a 3 minute blowjob 😂

 

Travel to USA is subject to entry restrictions

• British nationals cannot enter the USA if they have been in the UK, Ireland, Schengen zone, Iran, Brazil or China within the previous 14 days
• If you are eligible to enter the USA you must be prepared to self-isolate for up to 14 days after arrival
  
   

[Bindy Badgy]

17 hours ago, Kalamazoo Jambo said:

Yes he does, but it’s not impossible. FiveThirtyEight’s current analysis giving Trump an 11% chance of winning seems reasonable. 
 

 

I think he was around 30% last time round. I assume they account for all of the GOP's voter suppression tactics?

Edited October 29, 2020 by Stokesy

[JackLadd]

17 minutes ago, Stokesy said:

 

I think he was around 30% last time round. I assume they account for all of the GOP's voter suppression tactics?

 

'Justice' Brett Kavanaugh is doing his best for Trump. The concept of not counting postal ballots if they arrive after election day via the postal service Trump controls is blatant.

[Maple Leaf]

53 minutes ago, JackLadd said:

 

'Justice' Brett Kavanaugh is doing his best for Trump. The concept of not counting postal ballots if they arrive after election day via the postal service Trump controls is blatant.

 

Whiny Kavanaugh owes Trump big time for securing him a lifetime job on the Supreme Court.  

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

6 hours ago, Stokesy said:

 

I think he was around 30% last time round. I assume they account for all of the GOP's voter suppression tactics?

Honestly not sure I’d they do specifically account for that.

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

52 minutes ago, Barack said:

Senator Perdue of Georgia, just ran to the hills like a little bitch.

 

Just Google  Jon Ossoff taking him to the cleaner's the other night, for reference.

 

Utterly glorious denunciation of a racist tit.

 

 

 

It was wonderful to see. Perdue is the guy who deliberately mispronounced Kamala Harris’s name the other day be cause he’s a racist ass. And he’s now cancelled his final debate with Ossoff because he’s a coward.

(Edit: in American terms, he’s literally chicken)

 

 

 

[Kalamazoo Jambo]

On a lighter note, Blaire Erskine is brilliant.  Somehow both Michael Moore and M.C. Hammer took her latest impression of a TrumpSheep as the real deal...

 

 

 

[A Boy Named Crow]

10 minutes ago, Kalamazoo Jambo said:

It was wonderful to see. Perdue is the guy who deliberately mispronounced Kamala Harris’s name the other day be cause he’s a racist ass. And he’s now cancelled his final debate with Ossoff because he’s a coward.

 

 

 

I'm working the now,  but tonight I intend to look up the full debate on YouTube.  I NEED to see his response!

[A Boy Named Crow]

10 minutes ago, Barack said:

Oh, he's pumped out some shitey excuse. And is slithering up Trump's anus at a Georgia rally.

 

Because he knows, and the GOP knows, based on early polling...they are in deep shit for a change there.

Aye, I was probably hoping for too much.  He doesn't seem like the sort too do a sincere,  contrite apology... hopefully he gets telt next week!

[Ulysses]

On 23/10/2020 at 02:11, Ulysses said:

 

The next 7 days will tell a lot.  The equivalent period of the 2016 campaign was from October 28th to November 4th (Friday to Friday).  Clinton's lead had slipped a little in the couple of days before the 28th.  On October 28th, James Comey wrote to members of Congress to say that the FBI would be reviewing more of the "Clinton emails".  In the 6-7 days after that her lead in the national polls fell from 4.6% to 1.3%.  In the key battleground states her lead was wiped out completely.

 

Evidently, the Republicans are hoping that the Hunter Biden stuff will have a similar effect to the Comey letter.  However, that would seem to be a bit optimistic for three reasons.  Firstly, James Comey was regarded by the public as independent, so his letter would have had an influence on independent and undecided voters.  Those voters are less likely to pay attention to people who are obviously Republican apparatchiks, regardless of how lurid the Hunter Biden stories are.  Secondly, although Clinton wasn't corrupt or dishonest in her email usage, she did actually breach security protocols, and people did mark her down for that.  And thirdly, people were generally more negative about Clinton than they are about Biden, and therefore less willing to cut her any slack.

 

So we'll see.  If Biden is still 4 points ahead in the battleground states and 6-7 points ahead nationally next Thursday night, then that position is unlikely to shift over the weekend.  If the polls are looking more like 2016, then it will be time for Democrats to worry.

 

Well, 'tis Thursday evening on the East coast.

 

RCP's average nationally has Biden ahead by 7.4%, compared with 2% for Clinton on the Thursday night before the 2016 election.  In the six battleground states, Biden is ahead by 3.2% compared with Clinton's 1.6%.  More importantly, in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin he is ahead, but not by much more than Clinton was in 2016, so those states are still in play.  Not quite like 2016, but still in play.

 

538 is still giving Biden an 88% probability of winning.  538 predicted a similar probability for Clinton at this point in 2016, and on election day they were still saying she had a 72% probability of winning.  We know how that went.

 

One thing that's clear from all the pollsters is that Biden is significantly outperforming Clinton (and in one or two cases Obama) in North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, Iowa, and Arizona.  Yet he might not win any of them.  Likewise, Florida will be very close, and while Trump is leading in Texas his lead is within margins of error.  Trump's efforts to thieve the election could be successful, although if Biden flips (say) NC and GA that'll probably put a halt to that.  Biden could find himself within decimal points of winning all of those states but losing them all.  Imagine winning the popular vote by about 6% but losing in the electoral college by 270 to 268.

 

 

Edited October 30, 2020 by Ulysses

[Sharpie]

So Trumps action of appointing Republican leaning  federal Judges has paid off in Minnesota. Federal Court Judges voted 2 to 1 to change election rules in Minnesota. The rule was if you mailed your vote in and it is postmarked prior to the election day and I believe even on election day it was good to be counted up to a period of ten days after election day, the Republican leaning two judges terminated that policy  and votes now have to be in by election day. Any appeal would have to go to SCOTUS, that sounds fair, oh is that not a Republican leaning majority in there also. 

 Trump is nothing but an unscrupulous scoundrel. 

 

Edited October 30, 2020 by Sharpie

[JFK-1]

22 minutes ago, Sharpie said:

Trump is nothing but an unscrupulous scoundrel. 

 

You're so polite about him. Tell us what you really think.

[A Boy Named Crow]

9 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

You're so polite about him. Tell us what you really think.

I was about to say,  he's that...and a lot of other things too!

[Sharpie]

41 minutes ago, JFK-1 said:

 

You're so polite about him. Tell us what you really think.

 You do  understand that at my age any suspension I get could be for life, so I remain very respectful to the President in my comments.

[Justin Z]

8 minutes ago, Sharpie said:

 You do  understand that at my age any suspension I get could be for life, so I remain very respectful to the President in my comments.

 

Clearly your wit is not going anywhere, anytime soon.

[Lovecraft]

Personally I think Trump is gonna lose much badly, great badly, fantastic badly.

 

 

 

The amount of early voting doesn't bode well for the Rebublicans at all.

 

They will still take as much through the courts as they can, but I think lots of them will realise that they have lost quite early, so they don't wanna make things worse for when the power switches sides.

 

I'm thinking about taking off next Wednesday and sitting getting pissed watching it all unfold.

 

 

Edited October 30, 2020 by Lovecraft