US Politics Thread 2021-24

[Skybird]

Believe it or not but if they hold a weapon at my head and force me to vote, I would vote Trump.



Of course, voluntarily I would not vote, even if being paid for it.

[Rockstar]

California just changed its state motto from ‘The Golden State to ‘The Predator State’

Gavin Newsom’s Law:

“Child predators follow a common playbook: target the victim, gain their trust, fill a need, and, crucially, isolate the child from her parents. For several years, this has also been standard California state protocol with regard to schoolchildren questioning their gender identities.

On Monday, this scheme became law.”

[Jimbuna]

Biden ‘angry’ with Obama over calls to step down from presidential race

Joe Biden is reportedly angry with Barack Obama for joining other top Democrats in calling for him to consider bowing out of the US presidential race.

The US president has not yet decided to step aside, with his team publicly insisting he will remain on the ticket. However, in private, the Biden team has reportedly acknowledged that his position may be untenable as a growing number of Democrats urge him to withdraw.

Mr Obama and Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, have been among those calling for Mr Biden to consider withdrawing from the race, as his cognitive faculties have come under increasing scrutiny.

Currently in isolation with a Covid infection at his beach home in Delaware, Mr Biden is said to view Ms Pelosi as the instigator of the plot to oust him, but he is particularly wounded by the involvement of the former president, whom he once considered a close friend.
The president’s aides have been privately discussing dates and a venue for Mr Biden to announce his exit from the race, according to the New York Times.

Mr Biden’s advisers reportedly believe he would be reluctant to step aside before Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, visits Washington on Wednesday to address Congress. They suggested that he would want to avoid giving the Israeli leader the satisfaction, given their fraught relationship over the ongoing war in Gaza.

Mr Biden is said to have complained privately about Mr Obama advising him on how to save the party, given that he performed better in the 2022 mid-term elections than his former boss had in 2010.

Around 40 members of Congress have publicly called for the 81-year-old to step aside, forming a minority of the party. However, two Democrats estimated that in a secret ballot, 70 to 80 per cent of the party’s caucus would likely favour his withdrawal, the New York Times reported.

Some Democrats have twisted the knife over Mr Biden’s mental acuity in recent days. One congressman told the Washington Post that on a recent flight on Air Force One, the president was speaking inaudibly and that his demeanour had notably changed over the past four years. Another congressman told the newspaper that Mr Biden would trail off in conversation and even addressed him by the wrong name.

On Friday, Seth Moulton, a Democratic congressman who called on Mr Biden to drop out of the race earlier this month, said the president did not recognise him at the recent D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

“For the first time, he didn’t seem to recognise me. Of course, that can happen as anyone ages, but as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem,” he wrote in the Boston Globe.

The president’s frailty was on display yet again on Thursday when, after having caught Covid for the second time, footage showed him struggling to climb a short flight of stairs to board Air Force One.

Aides passed along footage of the display in despair, the Washington Post reported.

Meanwhile, some White House staff are starting to focus on damage control, preparing for a Trump presidency by finding ways to lock in policies enacted by Mr Biden, an administration official told the paper.

Staffers have begun to fast-track plans to impose term limits on the Supreme Court and new ethics rules on the justices.

They are also drafting a significant new federal intervention to limit inflation by removing tax rebates from corporate landlords who raise their rents by more than 5 per cent a year.

Mr Biden stumbled when announcing the policy last week, even as he read the details off a teleprompter. He said that he was capping rent increases at $55 a year, rather than at 5 per cent.

Mr Biden has said he is ready to return to the campaign trail next week, even as a growing chorus of Democratic lawmakers calls for him to step aside.

CBS News reported that Mr Biden believes Mr Obama and Mrs Pelosi are underestimating his political appeal and the strength of his coalition.

He feels that the pair should be quiet and supportive if they are not going to “run against him publicly”, the news channel reported.

After wrapping up their national convention in Milwaukee this week, Republican officials, strategists and activists are exuding a confidence not seen in decades.

Donald Trump on Saturday was due to hold his first public campaign rally since he was injured in an assassination attempt, with an event in the battleground state of Michigan alongside his new running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...a634a876&ei=68

[Skybird]

Biden will be gotten rid of. But then the most likely replacement will be Kamela Harris.

And who would dare to claim that with her Democrats would stand a better chance...?
Most of those giving her their vote would not do it by conviction, but only to prevent Trump. But has Harris what it takes to convince in this regard so that she makes people voting for her just to prevent Trump? From the other side of the Atlantic my impression is such that I would doubt it.

And what kind of miserable presidency can one expect with such a candidate anyway? She failed in the race 2019, and as a vice president she convinced with absence. Thats no sufficient qualification.

[mapuc]

I've asked before-Is the any candidate among the Dems who can win over Trump ?

Markus

[August]

1 in 3 Democrats believe Trump faked assassination attempt.


If some polls are to be believed, one in three Democrats think that Donald Trump faked his own assassination attempt. When I read that, I thought, could this possibly be true? But this weekend on my drive home to West Virginia from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, I got the theory first hand. And it's a fascinating doozy.

Station Square Ristorante, just off of I-80 in Liberty, Ohio, is an absolute gem. Ottavio and Bridget Musumeci have somehow managed to create a legitimate fine-dining experience attached to the Super 8 motel. And no, I’m not kidding. In the wood-paneled bar, as I ordered oysters and antipasto for a late lunch, I met Mark, originally from northern New Jersey, which his accent revealed before he did. And Mark, well, he had some very interesting things to say.

"That whole thing was a setup," Mark told me.
Before I could even respond, John, the bartender, who I would learn doesn’t like Trump or Biden, said, "Nah, two people are dead. No way."

Mark’s response was, "this is Donald Trump, he’s capable of anything."
So I dug in a bit. How did they get the kid to do it? Mark was ready with answers. They paid off the family, or maybe told him he’d get off with just a few years in jail, he suggested.

"And the death of Corey Comperatore?" I asked, referring to the retired fire chief who died shielding his family from the assassin's bullets.
"Donald Trump doesn’t care if his supporters die," Mark shot back, quite certain of himself.
You should know that Mark did not come off as some kind of lunatic. A bit prone to conspiracy theories maybe, but by no means crazy. So how could he believe all this with no evidence whatsoever?

He also had a good appetite, and as he wolfed down his caesar salad and veal piccante topped with mussels, he made it clear that it all came down to one simple precept: Trump is capable of anything.

I couldn’t help but think that the fact that Mark shares this kind of weird, irrational thinking with a third of his party faithful is because it is exactly what Democrats and their media allies have been feeding them.

Why wouldn’t Mark, if he has a steady diet of liberal media, think that Trump is capable of killing innocent people? After all, they say he will deny women their rights, he won’t let black people vote, he will destroy democracy, and on and on and on. Mark is conditioned to believe that Trump is a unique evil and nothing should be put past him.

I said to Mark that if I thought one party, one side, or call it what you will, was willing to kill innocent Americans in this way, then it might be time to buy some guns. Then he said something that surprised me.

"It’s not the other side, it’s just Trump."


It made little sense, but in a strange way, I was glad to hear him say it. At least Mark doesn’t blame his fellow citizens who support Trump. Not yet, anyway. Mark finished and left before I did, and we had a wholesome and sincere goodbye. After the door closed, I asked to John, "What do you make of that?" "It’s crazy," he shrugged.

Yes it is, but here we are.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/1-3-...d-one-them.amp

[em2nought]

If there is one thing that the democrats excel at it is "projection".

[Jimbuna]

Biden ‘delaying stepping down’ until after Netanyahu meeting

Joe Biden will meet Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday as the Israeli prime minister visits Washington during a defining week for the Democratic Party.

The US president has been facing intense pressure to step down as critics warned it was now or never to replace him.

Mr Biden was reported to be preparing the ground to step aside but was said to be holding on at least until the meeting with Mr Netanyahu which is scheduled for noon.

Relations between the two leaders have been tense, and the New York Times reported that Mr Biden did not want to give Mr Netanyahu the “satisfaction” of him standing down in the week of the Israeli prime minister’s Washington trip.

Mr Netanyahu’s visit is shrouded in controversy already, with the Democratic Party split on support for Israel, which has been accused of triggering a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
The Israeli leader is visiting and addressing Congress on the invitation of the Republican Party, which observers said was a plan to dare Democrats to shun him.

Israeli media also reported that Mr Netanyahu may visit Donald Trump while in the US, but this was not confirmed by officials.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...d8b36f0&ei=138

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by August

1 in 3 Democrats believe Trump faked assassination attempt.

Add to that the thoughts below of the real kook fringe in America. 2/3rds of a political party filled with grown men accepting the gov't and media telling them Trump is Hitler, Trump is a threat to America, mocking an attempted assassination, accepting they can't go outside, can't gather w/ friends or family & that they HAVE to get an experimental injection so they could go to bars, restaurants & movies again, mocking the deaths of unvaccinated neighbors. They are absolutely weak minded and awful.


And we got Euros here thinking everyone else is the cult. Little do they know.



Third of Democrats wish Donald Trump had been killed
BY ERIC KAUFMANN

A third of Democratic voters I surveyed in a snap poll on 18 July openly agreed with the statement “I wish Trump’s assassin hadn’t missed.” Looking beneath the numbers, the new moral absolutism of the progressive Left picks out which Democrats support assassination and which do not.

The concerning news is that a third of Democrats support the attempt on Donald Trump’s life. The good news is that the other two-thirds of party voters really do disagree. I used a concealed technique called a list experiment which found that even when they could disguise their true sentiment, a solid seven in 10 Democrats were pleased the assassin missed.

This raises the question of which kind of Democrat backed the killing of Trump. Support for the statement hardly varies by age, race or education, but is connected to ideology and partisanship.

When I asked whether respondents agreed with the statement “White Republicans are racist”, 55% agreed and only 20% disagreed. But particularly interesting, as illustrated below, is how tightly people’s answer to this question predicts whether they support Trump’s assassination. In a statistical model controlling for various demographic characteristics, ideology and partisanship, this question came out as so statistically significant it relegated all other variables to irrelevance.

For my new book The Third Awokening (published in the UK as Taboo), I conducted nationally representative surveys in 2020 which showed that two in three white liberals agreed with the “White Republicans are racist” statement. Those who did were twice as likely as those who disagreed with it to say that “people who disagree with me politically are immoral.” They were also nearly twice as likely to say that politics is important for their identity. In effect, woke beliefs make people moralise politics, increasing intolerance and totalising black-and-white thinking.

Those with degrees have been measured as more likely than others to hold this moralistic sensibility, with researchers overturning their previous belief that higher education made people more likely to believe that values are relative and that there is room for disagreement on morality. In fact, young people with higher education backgrounds are now more likely to believe in absolute right and wrong than those with just a high school qualification. Education in our high culture makes people less tolerant.


Moral absolutism around identity underpins negative partisanship on the Left, which we see in the growing unwillingness of liberals to date and hire Republicans or Trump supporters. Just 7% of female college students — and 19% of males — at top 200 universities who don’t back Trump are willing to date a Trump supporter. Those who would not date a Trump supporter are far less willing to hire them for a job. Among college faculty, 40% would not hire a known Trump supporter for a job, and these people are overwhelmingly against the idea of having lunch with a Trump-supporting colleague.

There is increasingly a pattern of partisan asymmetry — especially in elite institutional settings — in which the Left is more prejudiced against the Right than vice versa. In both Britain and America, those on the Left are between two and five times more likely to unfriend people on social media, refuse to date, or otherwise discriminate against those on the Right than the other way round. Left-wing faculty members in the Anglosphere have a far more negative view of Right-wing voters than Right-wing faculty do of Left-wing voters.

When the primary points of focus for the Left were class and Government spending, interests governed emotions more, permitting compromise. The two sides might have disagreed, but this was a matter of the other side being selfish or misguided rather than immoral.

Now, identity politics has moralised the outlook of the Left, painting conservatives as evil rather than wrong. This fuels catastrophising language around “white supremacy”, “fascism” and “danger”, leading to a high-stakes emotional atmosphere. Given our new politics of identitarian sacredness and moral absolutism, we should not be surprised to see a rise in political extremism.

Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and author of Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Led to a Cultural Revolution (Forum Press, 4 July).

epkaufm

[Skybird]

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign...-clinton-2024/

[August]

Originally Posted by em2nought

If there is one thing that the democrats excel at it is "projection".

It's true. Regardless of which side you believe is willing to go there, the fact is that Trump just doesn't have the resources to pull off an assassination, or fake an assassination, but the Democrats, with the support of the letter Agencies such as the CIA and FBI, certainly do have both the resources and the people in high places to commit such a heinous act and cover it up.

[Von Due]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1e5xpdzkd8o

That took som arm twisting.

[Jimbuna]

I really don't think Biden had any other choice than to step down.

I was beginning to think he was a selfish old man but to what extent he may have been manipulated by others I doubt we will ever know.

Soooo....who will he be replaced by?

[Rockstar]

Well Biden is out, wonder who the party elites will crown as the next candidate? So much for democracy

[Shadowblade]

Sleepy Joe out of the fight - a bit late, but reasonable decision.

I am wondering who will replace him...