REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Elections; 2024

POSTED BY: THG
UPDATED: Saturday, November 23, 2024 19:33
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 65654
PAGE 71 of 96

Saturday, August 24, 2024 3:23 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
RFK Jr. Was My Drug Dealer

Kennedy’s endorsement of Donald Trump raises an awkward question.



I'm sure this article wouldn't have been written if he endorsed Kamala.

Get fucked, losers.




--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Saturday, August 24, 2024 8:09 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
RFK Jr. Was My Drug Dealer

Kennedy’s endorsement of Donald Trump raises an awkward question.



I'm sure this article wouldn't have been written if he endorsed Kamala.

Get fucked, losers.




--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

From the article about RFK Jr. A famous rich boy selling a hard drug that could’ve gotten him—or, more precisely, someone who wasn’t him—a years-long prison sentence. His almost fetishistic obsession with a bit of plastic trash. His greedy little burst of anger cloaked in righteousness. His faith that he was cultivating precious cocaine crystals. In retrospect, it has seemed to me a tiny illustration of the child as the father of the man he became: fantastical pseudoscientific crusader, middle-aged preppy dick who takes selfies with barbecued dogs and plays pranks with roadkill bear cubs he didn’t have time to eat.

There was no way that RFK Jr was going to endorse any Democrat. His extended family are on record saying that the behavior of RFK Jr is crazy, so Jr predictably endorsed the biggest crazy of all times. Which brings me to 6ixStringJack. I been saving this one for awhile: http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=65350&mid=11998
09#1199809


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I really wish I could share some of what I've been working on here and show it off, but we have two goons here who would literally kill me if given the chance, so the less I share the better. I could just imagine a scenario where one day I end up having to deal with one or both of them on entirely different forums that don't engage at all in politics. If that ever were to happen though, the good news is that those other forums are all moderated and they would be ejected about as quick as they showed up.

Fearfulness. Paranoia. Delusions of superiority/uniqueness/irreplaceableness. That's Trumptards. No surprise that RFK Jr was strongly attracted to Trump since he has the mental illnesses/psychology of a Trumptard such as 6ixStringJack.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 1:17 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

The rise of Harris from basement-level popularity ratings just four years ago to some sort of political genius proves the undeniable power of the corporate media complex to turn the greatest mediocrity into anyone they like.

“The way the US corporate media transformed Kamala Harris from a national embarrassment to a transformative pioneer overnight – without even pretending to care about anything that she thinks or believes – is a powerful testament to how potent the science of propaganda is,” journalist Glenn Greenwald posted on X (formerly Twitter).






-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 2:13 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
RFK Jr. Was My Drug Dealer

Kennedy’s endorsement of Donald Trump raises an awkward question.



I'm sure this article wouldn't have been written if he endorsed Kamala.

Get fucked, losers.




--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

From the article about RFK Jr. A famous rich boy selling a hard drug that could’ve gotten him—or, more precisely, someone who wasn’t him—a years-long prison sentence. His almost fetishistic obsession with a bit of plastic trash. His greedy little burst of anger cloaked in righteousness. His faith that he was cultivating precious cocaine crystals. In retrospect, it has seemed to me a tiny illustration of the child as the father of the man he became: fantastical pseudoscientific crusader, middle-aged preppy dick who takes selfies with barbecued dogs and plays pranks with roadkill bear cubs he didn’t have time to eat.

There was no way that RFK Jr was going to endorse any Democrat. His extended family are on record saying that the behavior of RFK Jr is crazy, so Jr predictably endorsed the biggest crazy of all times. Which brings me to 6ixStringJack. I been saving this one for awhile: http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=65350&mid=11998
09#1199809


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I really wish I could share some of what I've been working on here and show it off, but we have two goons here who would literally kill me if given the chance, so the less I share the better. I could just imagine a scenario where one day I end up having to deal with one or both of them on entirely different forums that don't engage at all in politics. If that ever were to happen though, the good news is that those other forums are all moderated and they would be ejected about as quick as they showed up.

Fearfulness. Paranoia. Delusions of superiority/uniqueness/irreplaceableness. That's Trumptards. No surprise that RFK Jr was strongly attracted to Trump since he has the mental illnesses/psychology of a Trumptard such as 6ixStringJack.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two



It's hardly paranoia.

There have been no less than 100 times that you've taken something I've divulged about myself to people who aren't you and threw it in my face when you can't win an argument against me.

You are my biggest stalker, and you're a self-righteous asshole.

Everybody you know online and in real life hates you, because you're a fucking creep.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 2:35 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


It would be nice if SECOND went away.




-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 6:39 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

It's hardly paranoia.

There have been no less than 100 times that you've taken something I've divulged about myself to people who aren't you and threw it in my face when you can't win an argument against me.

You are my biggest stalker, and you're a self-righteous asshole.

Everybody you know online and in real life hates you, because you're a fucking creep.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

Not that you would notice, but being frightened by the "unknown", such as me or foreigners, is extremely widespread with Trumptards. Trumptards think it is "normal", but it is not. Trump knows that about you. So do I. What else is widespread? Not being able to understand and follow rules. Trump knows he can break them with impunity, but his followers will not hold him accountable because they don't follow rules, since rules make them confused:

Donald Trump Accused of New Federal Crime as He Cozies Up to RFK Jr.

Aug 24, 2024 at 9:16 PM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-accused-federal-crime-rfk-jr-end
orsement-1943980


The federal law, titled, "Promise of employment or other benefit for political activity," states that anyone who "directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."

"Oh, by the way, it is a FEDERAL CRIME to promise a post in an administration in exchange for a candidate endorsement. So of course convicted felon Donald Trump got RFK Jr. to endorse him. And of course former prosecutor Kamala Harris declined to meet with RFK Jr.," wrote Tristan Snell, a lawyer and legal commentator who prosecuted the 2013 civil case filed by the New York attorney general's office against Trump University, a real estate training program created by Trump in the early 2000s.

Trump denied any wrongdoing in the case, but a judge found him liable for operating the school without the proper license.

"Kennedy shopped his endorsement to both candidates. Trump illegally offered him a job. Harris wouldn't even take the call. Tells you everything you need to know," David Lazarus, a business and consumer news reporter for Los Angeles' KTLA, wrote.

One X user, George Leventhal, wrote, "Not that Trump or RFK Jr. cares about following the law, but it is illegal to offer a job in return for political support" and linked to a Cornell Law School webpage that discusses the law that Trump has been accused of breaking.

Much more at https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-accused-federal-crime-rfk-jr-end
orsement-1943980


The above is a man-made rule, so it is not a surprise when Trumptards think it is unnecessary, unfair, unenforceable, but Trumptards also think rules based on physics or biology are no different than man-made rules. That is why Trumptards see no need to curb methane emissions from oil field operations nor to stop smoking, as the government requests on every pack of cigarettes. Just more rules to be ignored by ignoramuses.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 6:45 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It would be nice if SECOND went away.




-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

It would be nice if little Nazis like Signym and 6ix went away, or at least weren't so outright aggressive at publicly saluting Putin and Trump, expressing your compatibility with the worst ideas and leaders.

This letter to Americans has an important message ahead of elections
"What could possibly go wrong?”

By Gianluca Mezzofiore | November 7, 2016

https://mashable.com/article/dear-americans-germany-elections

Dear Americans
Go ahead, vote for the guy with the loud voice who hates minorities, threatens to imprison his opponents, doesn’t give a fuck about democracy, and claims he alone can fix everything. What could possibly go wrong? Good luck.
— The people of Germany
https://x.com/CrappyCrapson/status/794567197041561600

On Friday I posted my „Dear Americans“ message on Twitter.
I hoped it would get some attention. Well, it did. A little more than I expected. I’d like to respond to a few things I read about my piece.

• It has been suggested that the author wasn’t German. I am, in fact, German and have the birth certificate to prove it (I knew you’d ask). I’m from Hamburg, currently living and working in San Diego, CA.

• I’ve received many nice messages along the lines of „I HOPE YOU DIE!!“. Rest assured, dear Trump followers, the possibility of me dying is very, very high. And seeing that most of you must be in your early teens (judging from the rest of your messages), you’ll be dancing on my grave.

• Some people suspect me to work for the Clinton campaign. I don’t, but I’d vote for her if I could (I can’t. I’m German. Pay attention.). And of course she’s not the perfect candidate either, far from it. But I compare what I hear about her with what I hear about (or rather, directly from) Trump, and I really don’t know how anyone could think that’s comparable.

Dear Internet.

Let me clarify a few things.


• Of course I can’t speak for the entire population of Germany. I used that signature line as a way of overdramatizing to add emphasis. I’ve been told it’s a common narrative device. Not all Germans think that way. But from what I hear from friends and family back home, what I read on German news sites and social media, many Germans are just scared shitless that an obvious demagogue and outright liar can gather so many people behind him. Yes, it does remind us of something that happened here. And worse, it’s happening here again, too. Same empty promises, same lies, same racism. They’re calling themselves the „Alternative for Germany“ (AfD). A party of populists that have just come out in support for Trump, calling him „an exciting breath of fresh air“. They are, of course, referring to his clever use of Tic-Tacs. No, seriously, those people are frightening.

• A frequent observation was that the comparison with Hitler was a bit of an exaggerated cliche, a worn and overused technique to stir attention. I agree! Glad it worked. You can’t compare Trump (or anybody) to the monster that was Hitler, and I didn’t mean it literally (personally, I think he’s more of a Goebbels type of guy, very media-savvy). But I see a lot of similarities in the way Trump and Hitler gained momentum, amassed followers around them despite so many telltale signs that all is not right. I’m not alone in that assessment. If you still believe in what journalists say, google it (try Newsweek and The Washington Post for starters).

• Whenever I travelled outside Germany in the past, I’ve often been asked how the German people could have fallen for Hitler back in the 30’s and 40’s. „How could your people NOT have known?“, they often asked. I don’t get that question much lately.

Thanks for reading. And happy voting.

- Johan from Germany (not speaking for the entire country)
@crappycrapson #orangeisthenewbrown
https://x.com/CrappyCrapson/status/795247701365583872

To Signym and 6ix, I just want to point out that there are many people like you two in Texas. They all think of themselves as unique individuals, irreplaceable precious gems, but they are not. What is also not unique about them is the vast number of problems they have caused themselves, problems which follow directly from the insane way they live. How would they know what is sanity, these cracked up "gems"?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 10:08 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Why don't you take a breather from your years- long streak of name calling and go away?
It'll be good for you.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 10:35 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why don't you take a breather from your years- long streak of name calling and go away?
It'll be good for you.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

You goddamn Trumptards have never behaved like decent citizens at anytime in your lives. See Trump for a documented life of indecency. At long last the good citizens should kick the hell out of you for your tax cheating instead of listening to your fake complaints about not being respected and your constant stupidity at home, work, in your health habits, and especially in your politics.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 10:36 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND.

You goddamn Trumptards have never behaved like decent citizens at anytime in your lives. At long last the good citizens should kick the hell out of you for your tax cheating instead of listening to your fake complaints about not being respected and your constant stupidity at home, work, in your health habits, and especially in your politics.



Touched a nerve, didn't I?

It's not like I told you to kill yourself (like you've done) or looked forward to your death (like you've done) or said you deserve to be beaten up (like you did).

You can hardly complain about MY behavior after what you've been doing for years.

Yep, you REALLY need a vacation!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 10:51 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND.

You goddamn Trumptards have never behaved like decent citizens at anytime in your lives. At long last the good citizens should kick the hell out of you for your tax cheating instead of listening to your fake complaints about not being respected and your constant stupidity at home, work, in your health habits, and especially in your politics.



Touched a nerve, didn't I?

It's not like I told you to kill yourself (like you've done) or looked forward to your death (like you've done) or said you deserve to be beaten up (like you did).

You can hardly complain about MY behavior after what you've been doing for years.

Yep, you REALLY need a vacation!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

Where I live, the population is half Trumptard, which is why I get to frequently see a comparison between the two halves of America. When one of the Trumptards drops dead or retires, things gets smoother, errors and mistakes are fewer, decisions aren't delayed by the stupidity of the gone Trumptard. In other words, fewer Trumptards means less turmoil and more peace/prosperity. Funny thing is that all the Trumptards think of themselves as indispensable, but losing them shows how little they actually contributed and how expensive it was having them around.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 12:37 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Are Republicans losing the culture wars?

School board candidates who ran on parental rights in classrooms are suffering defeats in states like Florida, once a leader in the “anti-woke” movement.

By Juan Perez Jr. and Andrew Atterbury | 08/24/2024 07:00 AM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/24/republicans-culture-war-races
-00176166


Republicans are confronting a decisive moment in the battle over public education: proving they can still win a culture war.

School board candidates backed by Moms for Liberty, a conservative vanguard whose members popularized restrictions on classroom library books, are losing elections in Florida and some swing states. Republican leaders who rallied against critical race theory and LGBTQ+ issues recently faced recalls in red pockets of California.

And in the presidential race, Democrats are playing offense. This week’s party convention in Chicago featured liberals attacking conservative candidates as “weird” and denouncing so-called book bans.

Former President Donald Trump is expected to lean into school politics next week at a Moms for Liberty summit, making the case that culture war issues still resonate with core supporters. Republicans show no signs of changing their strategy. But the party faces new challenges from a Democratic agenda — embodied by vice presidential nominee Tim Walz — that is redirecting the divisive education issues promoted by conservatives during the pandemic into a vehicle for highlighting free school lunches and affordable child care.

“We’re in the middle of a cultural revolution in America, and one of the biggest battlegrounds is the schools,” Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said in an interview. “We didn’t start this fire, but we’re going to put it out.”

Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said there is “a lot of mutual consensus” between the Republican nominee’s beliefs on education “and what Moms for Liberty stands for.”

But several Democratic National Committee speakers found ways to leverage social issues, including Walz, a former teacher who used them to pivot to a law he signed as Minnesota governor providing free school meals to all students.

“We made sure that every kid in our state gets breakfast and lunch every day,” Walz said Wednesday at the DNC. “So while other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours.”

Moms for Liberty has declared the Democratic presidential ticket “would give way to the rise of the most anti-parent, extremist government America has ever known.” Some conservatives have started referring to Walz as “Tampon Tim” for a law he passed as governor that provides students with free menstrual products in school restrooms. They assert the law requires those products in boys’ bathrooms, but it does not include such a mandate.

Walz is currently the most popular member of either presidential ticket, according to polling conducted last week by the Democratic research firm Blueprint. It concluded about half of voters and independents said the free school lunch law caused them to view the governor more favorably.

Education ranks high on the list of Americans’ concerns, according to recent polling that suggests many prioritize less politicized issues such as school funding.

Preparing students to enter the workforce and attracting and retaining good teachers are among Americans’ top educational priorities for the next White House, according to a newly released education association survey that found a narrow majority of Americans see public education as extremely or very important to their vote. The poll, conducted in late June and early July when President Joe Biden was still in the race, concluded significant majorities of independents support ideas that garner wide public acclaim.

“If I were advising a candidate for office, I would focus on the issues that have broad support across political ideologies,” said James Lane, a former senior adviser to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona who is now CEO of PDK International, the professional association for educators that conducted the poll. “At least in our polling, independents have some very clear priorities for the next president.”

Trump will swap out a campaign-style speech in favor of a “fireside chat” next Friday with Moms for Liberty in Washington. Supporters hope he’ll elaborate on a party platform that includes commitments to close the Education Department and defund schools that are “pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

More at https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/24/republicans-culture-war-races
-00176166


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 1:09 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


In his blistering, insightful account of his time in the Trump White House, McMaster describes meetings in the Oval Office as “exercises in competitive sycophancy” during which Trump’s advisers would flatter the president by saying stuff like, “Your instincts are always right” or, “No one has ever been treated so badly by the press.” Meanwhile, Trump would say “outlandish” things like, “Why don’t we just bomb the drugs?” in Mexico or, “Why don’t we take out the whole North Korean Army during one of their parades?”

McMaster’s book, which focuses on Trump’s tenure as commander-in-chief, comes at a particularly timely moment, just as many Americans start to really consider whether Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris would make a better commander-in-chief.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/25/politics/mcmaster-trump-book-account/in
dex.html


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 2:30 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND.

You goddamn Trumptards have never behaved like decent citizens at anytime in your lives. At long last the good citizens should kick the hell out of you for your tax cheating instead of listening to your fake complaints about not being respected and your constant stupidity at home, work, in your health habits, and especially in your politics.



Touched a nerve, didn't I?

It's not like I told you to kill yourself (like you've done) or looked forward to your death (like you've done) or said you deserve to be beaten up (like you did).

You can hardly complain about MY behavior after what you've been doing for years.

Yep, you REALLY need a vacation!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

Where I live, the population is half Trumptard, which is why I get to frequently see a comparison between the two halves of America. When one of the Trumptards drops dead or retires, things gets smoother, errors and mistakes are fewer, decisions aren't delayed by the stupidity of the gone Trumptard. In other words, fewer Trumptards means less turmoil and more peace/prosperity. Funny thing is that all the Trumptards think of themselves as indispensable, but losing them shows how little they actually contributed and how expensive it was having them around.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

And that excuses your behavior?

Get lost. Things will go smoother here.
We could have actual conversations instead of you ruining the site with hate speech, libel, and torrents of disinformation.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 8:14 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And that excuses your behavior?

Get lost. Things will go smoother here.
We could have actual conversations instead of you ruining the site with hate speech, libel, and torrents of disinformation.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

Signym, you condemned yourself with two words you have written over and over: "Fuck Ukraine." - Signym. Then Signym took Russia's side in murdering, raping and torturing Ukrainians by claiming it didn't happen.

Even your signature is false, since Kissinger did not say what you claim, Signym.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/56470/did-henry-kissinger
-say-it-may-be-dangerous-to-be-americas-enemy-but-to-be-am


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 8:15 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The ideas in Project 2025? Reagan tried them, and the nation suffered

By Joel Edward Goza | Aug. 25, 2024, 3 AM PT

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-08-25/project-2025-trump-he
ritage-foundation-election
#

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative playbook that would overhaul much of the federal government under a second Trump administration, has sparked fear and concern from voters despite the former president’s attempt to distance his campaign from the plan. But while Project 2025 might seem radical, most of it is not new. Instead, the now-famous document seeks to reanimate many of the worst racial, economic and political instincts of the Reagan Revolution.

Project 2025 begins with its authors boasting of the Heritage Foundation’s 1981 publication “The Mandate for Leadership,” which helped shape the Reagan administration’s policy framework. It hit its mark: Reagan wrote 60% of its recommendations into public policy in his first year in office, according to the Heritage Foundation. Yet the 900-plus-page Project 2025, itself a major component of a new edition of “The Mandate for Leadership,” does not contain any analysis of the economic and social price Americans paid for the revolution the Heritage Foundation and Reagan inspired.

If today’s economic inequality, racial unrest and environmental degradation represent some of our greatest political challenges, we would do well to remember that Reagan and the Heritage Foundation were the preeminent engineers of these catastrophes. Perhaps no day in Reagan’s presidency better embodied his policy transformations or the political ambitions of the Heritage Foundation than Aug. 13, 1981, when Reagan signed his first budget.

This budget dramatically transformed governmental priorities and hollowed out the nation’s 50-year pursuit of government for the common good that began during the New Deal. Once passed, it stripped 400,000 poor working families of their welfare benefits, while removing significant provisions from another 300,000. Radical cuts in education affected 26 million students. The number of poor Americans increased by 2.2 million, and the percentage of Black Americans living in poverty rose to a staggering 34.2%.

Of course, this was just the beginning of Reagan’s war on the poor, the environment and education. Following a Heritage Foundation plan, the Environmental Protection Agency’s operating budget would fall by 27%, and its science budget decreased by more than 50%. Funding for programs by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that provided housing assistance would be cut by 70%, according to Matthew Desmond's "Poverty, By America." Homelessness skyrocketed. And, as Project 2025 proposes, Reagan attempted to eliminate the Department of Education but settled for gutting its funding in a manner that set public education, in the words of author Jonathan Kozol, “back almost 100 years.” As funding for these issues nosedived under Reagan, financial support for the “war on drugs” skyrocketed and the prison population nearly doubled.

All the while, protections provided to the wealthy ballooned. Tax rates on personal income, corporate revenue and capital gains plummeted. For example, the highest income tax rate when Reagan took office was 70%. He would eventually lower it to 33%.

To ensure that wealth would be a long-lived family entitlement, Reagan instituted a 300% increase in inheritance tax protections through estate tax exemptions in his first budget. In 1980, the exemption stood at $161,000. By the time Reagan left office in 1989 it was $600,000. Today it is $13,610,000. This means that today nearly all wealthy children enjoy tax-free access to generational wealth.

And beginning during Reagan’s presidency, the number of millionaires and billionaires multiplied, increasing 225% and 400%, respectively, while the poverty of Americans across racial lines intensified. Even white males were more likely to be poor following Reagan’s presidency. Today poverty is the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S., even though this is the wealthiest nation in the world.

If we feel like we live in a country that isn’t working for anyone who isn’t wealthy, these are some of the core reasons why. Looking back at the Reagan era and the Heritage Foundation’s original “Mandate for Leadership,” we must remember that our domestic wounds are largely self-inflicted, results of buying into racial, economic and environmental lies that continue to be sold. It is precisely the types of policies that devastated the nation during the Reagan administration that Project 2025 now seeks to resuscitate. Perhaps the only truly new thing Project 2025 suggests is using more authoritarian means to enact its agenda.

History has hinges, moments that change the trajectory of nations. The greatest progress in our country has almost always emerged during turbulent times. It is up to the United States' most committed believers to close the door on terror and trauma and open one that leads to new democratic possibilities.

Our current moment represents more than an election. It is a turning point that has the potential to transform the United States for generations to come. We don’t need the version of the past that Project 2025 is trying to sell us. It didn’t work for most Americans then, and it won’t work for most of us now. But perhaps Project 2025 is the push the Democratic Party needed. While the Republican Party veers further into authoritarianism, Democrats must be equally determined to develop a truly equitable democracy and bind the wounds of a deeply divided nation.

Joel Edward Goza, a professor of ethics at Simmons College of Kentucky, is the author of the forthcoming book “Rebirth of a Nation: Reparations and Remaking America.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Sunday, August 25, 2024 8:46 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Raw data: Who’s the most militaristic president? Who’s the least?

By Kevin Drum | August 25, 2024 – 3:06 pm

https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-whos-the-most-militaristic-presiden
t-whos-the-least
/

Here's an interesting tidbit you might not know: who is the least warlike recent US president? In the following list you get one point added for each war you started and one point subtracted for ending someone else's war. I've included only sizeable wars that featured either American boots on the ground or substantial air activity. If it was just occasional drones or missiles or a few dozen advisors, it doesn't count. Here's the scorecard:

Reagan: +2 (Lebanon, Grenada).
Bush: +3 (Panama, Iraq, Somalia).
Clinton: +2 (Bosnia, Haiti, ended Somalia, Kosovo).
Bush: +3 (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia).
Obama: +2 (ended Iraq war, Libya, Niger, ISIS).
Trump: -1 (ended ISIS).
Biden: -3 (ended Afghanistan, ended drone strikes, ended Niger).



This doesn't paint the whole picture, of course. Some wars are bigger than others. Some are multilateral. And events are different from administration to administration.

All that said, however, George W. Bush was our most interventionist president. He's technically tied with his father but his wars were considerably bigger and longer-lasting. Joe Biden has been by far the least interventionist president of our lifetimes.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 12:00 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And that excuses your behavior?

Get lost. Things will go smoother here.
We could have actual conversations instead of you ruining the site with hate speech, libel, and torrents of disinformation.

SECOND: Signym, you condemned yourself with two words you have written over and over: "Fuck Ukraine." - Signym.


SECOND, you revealed yourself to be demented. I don't believe I EVER posted "fuck Ukraine"

And this is the SECOND time you posted that, the SECOND time I corrected you, and the SECOND time I challenge you: Find more than three instances where I posted 'Fuck Ukraine ", with links.

You can't.

Nothing sticks in that Swiss cheese brain of yours, does it?



-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 3:19 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Raw data: Who’s the most militaristic president? Who’s the least?

By Kevin Drum | August 25, 2024 – 3:06 pm

https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-whos-the-most-militaristic-presiden
t-whos-the-least
/

Here's an interesting tidbit you might not know: who is the least warlike recent US president? In the following list you get one point added for each war you started and one point subtracted for ending someone else's war. I've included only sizeable wars that featured either American boots on the ground or substantial air activity. If it was just occasional drones or missiles or a few dozen advisors, it doesn't count. Here's the scorecard:

Reagan: +2 (Lebanon, Grenada).
Bush: +3 (Panama, Iraq, Somalia).
Clinton: +2 (Bosnia, Haiti, ended Somalia, Kosovo).
Bush: +3 (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia).
Obama: +2 (ended Iraq war, Libya, Niger, ISIS).
Trump: -1 (ended ISIS).
Biden: -3 (ended Afghanistan, ended drone strikes, ended Niger).



This doesn't paint the whole picture, of course. Some wars are bigger than others. Some are multilateral. And events are different from administration to administration.

All that said, however, George W. Bush was our most interventionist president. He's technically tied with his father but his wars were considerably bigger and longer-lasting. Joe Biden has been by far the least interventionist president of our lifetimes.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

And Ukraine...?

How stupid do they think we are?

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 6:42 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Vengeance, bluster, self-promotion and threats have been Trump's engines of notoriety for decades. This approach helped get him elected in 2016, as he tapped into resentment against political, media, cultural and business elites — and rocked Washington. So when Trump’s backers beseech him to behave in a more temperate way by avoiding raging social media screeds or personal attacks, they are not only asking him to suppress part of himself. They are also seeking to neuter some of his core political tactics.

GOP campaign experts are frustrated because the path to victory against a vice president of an unpopular administration seems obvious — talk about the issues that voters care about most and on which Republicans are favored, including high grocery prices and concerns about the southern border. It’s not that the ex-president cannot talk policy. But his policy points get drowned out by his histrionics and unhinged social media posts.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/26/politics/trump-personal-attacks-policy-
harris-analysis/index.html


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 6:59 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And Ukraine...?

How stupid do they think we are?

If "they" is Trump, they think you are pretty stupid:

Trump has baselessly claimed at least twice in recent days that V.P. Kamala Harris had a meeting with Putin just days before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

“Remember when [President Joe] Biden sent Kamala to Europe to stop the war in Ukraine,” Trump said at a North Carolina campaign rally on Aug. 21. “She met with Putin to tell him, ‘Don’t do it.’ And three days later, he attacked. That’s when the attack started.”

The next day, during an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Trump repeated the claim and took it a step further, falsely claiming Harris had been sent to Russia.

He said: “But let me tell you — and a little known fact and the press doesn’t want to talk about, Biden sent — I call her comrade Kamala — sent comrade Kamala to see Putin in Russia three days before the attack. She went. She said — she gave her case. He attacked three days later. He attacked three days later. He laughed at her. He thought she was a joke.”

But it’s not a fact, and there is no reason for the press to talk about it because there is no indication a meeting happened. There’s nothing about such a meeting — let alone a trip to Russia — in the press pool reports, which were filed daily by one of the reporters traveling with Harris. The idea that the press would ignore such a high-level meeting is absurd.

https://www.factcheck.org/2024/08/trumps-false-claim-that-harris-met-w
ith-putin
/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 6:59 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND.

You goddamn Trumptards have never behaved like decent citizens at anytime in your lives. At long last the good citizens should kick the hell out of you for your tax cheating instead of listening to your fake complaints about not being respected and your constant stupidity at home, work, in your health habits, and especially in your politics.



Touched a nerve, didn't I?

It's not like I told you to kill yourself (like you've done) or looked forward to your death (like you've done) or said you deserve to be beaten up (like you did).

You can hardly complain about MY behavior after what you've been doing for years.

Yep, you REALLY need a vacation!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

Where I live, the population is half Trumptard, which is why I get to frequently see a comparison between the two halves of America. When one of the Trumptards drops dead or retires, things gets smoother, errors and mistakes are fewer, decisions aren't delayed by the stupidity of the gone Trumptard. In other words, fewer Trumptards means less turmoil and more peace/prosperity. Funny thing is that all the Trumptards think of themselves as indispensable, but losing them shows how little they actually contributed and how expensive it was having them around.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

And that excuses your behavior?

Get lost. Things will go smoother here.
We could have actual conversations instead of you ruining the site with hate speech, libel, and torrents of disinformation.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.



His problem is that he thinks in binary. There are no shades of grey. No nuance.

It's why he makes the claim a thousand times that Democrats are all going to live until they're 100 years old because they don't drink or smoke or do any drugs or philander ever make any bad decisions or ever do anything that isn't morally right, etc., etc. etc..

As you can see just the other day, I got him to admit this wasn't the case by getting him to speak judgmentally and dismissively about millions of Democrat voters that are beneath him and the "good people" he feels that he represents who don't do any of those things.

He knows he's completely full of shit whenever he has to wrestle with the nonsense ideas he has about people in the real world, let alone the constant hypocrisy he expresses whenever he tells you what he thinks of himself while simultaneously behaving in stark contradiction to that self-assessment.

His moments of introspection are very rare and are usually avoided at all costs.

It's so much easier just to throw every single person in America into two separate boxes and scream "Everyone in my box is good and everyone in your box is bad! Therefore I am a good person and you are a bad person!"

:smokin"

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 7:09 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Oh... and all that above....?

That's why people like you and me can argue issues and policy, Sigs, while people like Second can only argue people and vague concepts.

How many times do you think Second or Ted walked away feeling like they won an argument simply by replying "Trump!" or "Russia!"?

It's why they've never posted a meaningful reply in threads like your "What are America's Best Interests?"

They have no idea how to answer that question. The answer to that would require thought processes to take place that their brains are incapable of carrying out.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 3:27 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

His moments of introspection are very rare and are usually avoided at all costs.

It's so much easier just to throw every single person in America into two separate boxes and scream "Everyone in my box is good and everyone in your box is bad! Therefore I am a good person and you are a bad person!"

None of this is complicated, 6ixStringJack. But if you somehow managed to get everything upside down, you are a bad person. Is bad too harsh a word? Substitute "stupid person" for "bad person". Either "stupid" or "bad", the results are still the same: misery, poverty, and a shortened life. I have seen thousands of miserable, poor Trumptards who chopped years off their lives, and off the lives of people around them, because of stupidity and/or badness, take your pick what you want to call the Trumptards' actions.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 3:31 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


JD Vance’s Trumped-Up Economics (Vance is either stupid or bad, but I can't tell which because he is so sneaky about his motivations for the reasons why he is selling these wrong/bad ideas.)

August 26, 2024 7:00 am

https://angrybearblog.com/2024/08/lying-about-economics

Today, Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance told NBC News that the tariffs Trump imposed during his term in office had not raised prices for Americans but had brought a significant number of jobs back to the United States.

Wrong on both counts.

In a careful analysis, researchers found the cost of Trump’s tariffs were “almost entirely borne by U.S. firms and consumers.” https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26610/w26610.pdf

That’s not surprising; tariffs function like taxes by raising the costs of imported goods. Trump’s proposal to raise tariffs on all imports as a means of raising revenue to offset a tax cut is obviously absurd.

Vance is also wrong about employment. Research clearly shows that the Trump tariffs did not bring jobs back to the United States.

Tariffs may be necessary for national security to protect critical industries such as semiconductors. But no one should be fooled into thinking they’re costless for consumers, or good for workers. The 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff made the Great Depression far worse than it already was.

That Vance would make these claims, claims which have been so convincingly debunked, should cause all of us some concern. He seems as unreliable as the person who named him his running-mate.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 4:18 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

His moments of introspection are very rare and are usually avoided at all costs.

It's so much easier just to throw every single person in America into two separate boxes and scream "Everyone in my box is good and everyone in your box is bad! Therefore I am a good person and you are a bad person!"

None of this is complicated, 6ixStringJack. But if you somehow managed to get everything upside down, you are a bad person. Is bad too harsh a word? Substitute "stupid person" for "bad person". Either "stupid" or "bad", the results are still the same: misery, poverty, and a shortened life. I have seen thousands of miserable, poor Trumptards who chopped years off their lives, and off the lives of people around them, because of stupidity and/or badness, take your pick what you want to call the Trumptards' actions.



You're like this weird version of autism that is completely unbearable to be around.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 6:10 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

His moments of introspection are very rare and are usually avoided at all costs.

It's so much easier just to throw every single person in America into two separate boxes and scream "Everyone in my box is good and everyone in your box is bad! Therefore I am a good person and you are a bad person!"

None of this is complicated, 6ixStringJack. But if you somehow managed to get everything upside down, you are a bad person. Is bad too harsh a word? Substitute "stupid person" for "bad person". Either "stupid" or "bad", the results are still the same: misery, poverty, and a shortened life. I have seen thousands of miserable, poor Trumptards who chopped years off their lives, and off the lives of people around them, because of stupidity and/or badness, take your pick what you want to call the Trumptards' actions.



You're like this weird version of autism that is completely unbearable to be around.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

No kidding!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 8:50 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You're like this weird version of autism that is completely unbearable to be around.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

There is an article called
Is it better to debate people or shrug and drink wine?
If philosophers really enjoy one thing, it’s a good debate — but not an argument.
https://bigthink.com/thinking/everyday-philosophy-is-it-better-to-deba
te-people-or-shrug-and-drink-wine
/

6ixStringJack and Signym, this was never a debate, but only an argument.

I've been observing since they were children the people who grew up to be Trumptards. All of them are argumentative, not philosophers. It is no surprise to me that the argumentative children grew up to be rather unsuccessful adults. They think it is not their fault what happens to them. I know for a fact how it happened and it is all their fault, just like Trump's decades of well-documented problems were all caused by his mental defects. It is absolutely no surprise when people who have Trump's faulty way of understanding also vote for Trump. I'm not philosophically debating people like that, but rather use the same methods as on construction projects: confrontation about their inadequacy followed by termination and lawsuits.

Here is the very real life example of FIGG Engineers refusing to acknowledge that they are incompetent. I wouldn't be surprised if they are Trump voters:

August 11, 2020 - Harris County fires designer of $1 billion Houston Ship Channel bridge
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2020/08/11/potentially-millio
ns-of-taxpayer-dollars-wasted-over-houston-ship-channel-bridge
/

Nov 22, 2022 - Two bridges in Texas designed by FIGG Engineers, both with design flaws
https://www.kristv.com/news/6-investigates/6-investigates-two-bridges-
in-texas-designed-by-figg-engineers-both-with-design-flaws-and-different-outcomes


March 27, 2024 - Companies linked to firm that designed FIU bridge that collapsed facing debarment
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/companies-linked-to-firm-that-desi
gned-fiu-pedestrian-bridge-that-collapsed-facing-debarment/3269707
/

Linda Figg and FIGG engineers should be banned from bridge engineering based on past performance, but they argue the point. Trump and Trumptards should be banned from governing based on past performance. They argue the point, too.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 10:00 PM

THG


T


NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 11:53 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Masking that fear with fake smiles.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Monday, August 26, 2024 11:54 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You're like this weird version of autism that is completely unbearable to be around.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

There is an article called
Is it better to debate people or shrug and drink wine?
If philosophers really enjoy one thing, it’s a good debate — but not an argument.
https://bigthink.com/thinking/everyday-philosophy-is-it-better-to-deba
te-people-or-shrug-and-drink-wine
/

6ixStringJack and Signym, this was never a debate, but only an argument.

I've been observing since they were children the people who grew up to be Trumptards. All of them are argumentative, not philosophers. It is no surprise to me that the argumentative children grew up to be rather unsuccessful adults. They think it is not their fault what happens to them. I know for a fact how it happened and it is all their fault, just like Trump's decades of well-documented problems were all caused by his mental defects. It is absolutely no surprise when people who have Trump's faulty way of understanding also vote for Trump. I'm not philosophically debating people like that, but rather use the same methods as on construction projects: confrontation about their inadequacy followed by termination and lawsuits.

Here is the very real life example of FIGG Engineers refusing to acknowledge that they are incompetent. I wouldn't be surprised if they are Trump voters:

August 11, 2020 - Harris County fires designer of $1 billion Houston Ship Channel bridge
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2020/08/11/potentially-millio
ns-of-taxpayer-dollars-wasted-over-houston-ship-channel-bridge
/

Nov 22, 2022 - Two bridges in Texas designed by FIGG Engineers, both with design flaws
https://www.kristv.com/news/6-investigates/6-investigates-two-bridges-
in-texas-designed-by-figg-engineers-both-with-design-flaws-and-different-outcomes


March 27, 2024 - Companies linked to firm that designed FIU bridge that collapsed facing debarment
https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/companies-linked-to-firm-that-desi
gned-fiu-pedestrian-bridge-that-collapsed-facing-debarment/3269707
/

Linda Figg and FIGG engineers should be banned from bridge engineering based on past performance, but they argue the point. Trump and Trumptards should be banned from governing based on past performance. They argue the point, too.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two



You are so unaware of yourself it's just pathetic at this point.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 7:08 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You are so unaware of yourself it's just pathetic at this point.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

I wrote all that about FIGG bridge engineering because I was with a Trumptard yesterday. He was complaining that the bridge wasn't completed (we were passing by that much delayed FIGG engineered bridge) because of Democrats in the government.

The real story is that Republican politicians got rejected in Harris County (Houston is the main city) during the 2020 election, at the same time as Trump was rejected. It was the new Democrats in government who discovered that the FIGG engineered bridge would fall down in a Category 5 hurricane. The Democrats had to fix the bridge that the Republicans had done wrong, wrong, wrong, but the Trumptard in my Ford Lightning pickup (the Trumptard hates electric vehicles like my truck) misunderstood everything about who was at fault. The Trumptard blamed Democrats for the Republicans' foolishness and incompetence.

I must say that the Trumptard in my truck not only misunderstood a relatively simple problem like the bridge, but he has also screwed up his life, which I find not surprising since he is a huge Trump supporter, with signs in his front yard that say Trump Vance 2024. Trump is grotesquely incompetent at governing but, despite evidence, the passenger in my truck stubbornly believes Only-Trump-Can-Fix-It.

(The Trumptard spilled his drink in my truck but he said it was my fault for being a bad driver. I think that is because shifting blame away from themselves is pretty typical behavior for Trumptards. I laughed at him when he blamed me. He then got upset with me for laughing at his loss of drink. He was thirsty and wanted it all. Later, we had to make a pit-stop because he needed to pee and I was expected to buy another drink for the greedy selfish pig in order to keep peace between us. I also had to clean up the split drink because he wouldn't since it wasn't his fault, at least in his mind.)

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 9:07 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Behind the rhetoric, a presidential campaign is a competition about how to tell the American story

By Ted Anthony | August 26, 2024

https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-american-story-conventions-68
aad96e58a7786c2603544f606cf8ed


NEW YORK (AP) — Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination “on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth.” America, Barack Obama thundered, “is ready for a better story.” JD Vance insisted that the Biden administration “is not the end of our story,” and Donald Trump called on fellow Republicans to “write our own thrilling chapter of the American story.”

“This week,” comedian and former Obama administration speechwriter Jon Lovett said Thursday on NBC, “has been about a story.”

In the discourse of American politics, this kind of talk from both sides is unsurprising — fitting, even. Because in the campaign season of 2024, just as in the fabric of American culture at large, the notion of “story” is everywhere.

This year’s political conventions were, like so many of their kind, curated collections of elaborate stories carefully spun to accomplish one goal — getting elected. But lurking behind them was a pitched, high-stakes battle over how to frame the biggest story of all — the one about America that, as Harris put it, should be “the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”

The American story — an unlikely one, filled with twists that sometimes feel, as so many enjoy saying, “just like a movie” — sits at the nucleus of American culture for a unique reason.

Americans live in one of the only societies that was built not upon hundreds of years of common culture but upon stories themselves — “the shining city upon the hill,” “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” “all men are created equal.” Even memorable ad campaigns — ”Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet” — are part of this. In some ways, the United States — not coincidentally, the place where the frontier myth, Hollywood and Madison Avenue were all born — willed itself into existence and significance by iterating and reiterating its story as it went.

The campaigns understand that. So they are putting forward to voters two varying — starkly opposite, some might say — versions of the American story.

More at https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-american-story-conventions-68
aad96e58a7786c2603544f606cf8ed


This election is about storytelling more than ever. Because the loudest, most persuasive tale — told slickly with the industrial-strength communications tools of the 21st century — will likely win the day.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 10:12 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Trump knows how to tell a story. It is not a true story, but Trump keeps telling it:

August 27, 2024

Donald Trump added to his unfortunate record of disparaging military service two weeks ago when the former president said the Presidential Medal of Freedom was “much better” than the Medal of Honor — comments the Veterans of Foreign Wars, among others, described as “asinine.”

Former Trump chief of staff and retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, a fierce critic of his former boss, agreed. “The two awards cannot be compared in any way,” he told CNN. “Not even close.”

A week later, the GOP presidential nominee returned fire. The New York Times reported:

In a podcast interview that ran on Monday, Donald Trump again attacked current military leadership as “woke,” and mocked his former chief of staff and the man he appointed as his top military adviser as “stupid.” “Milley was a stupid person, very stupid,” Trump said of Gen. Mark A. Milley, whom he picked to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He added of his onetime chief of staff, “Guys like John Kelly are one of the — he’s one of the dumbest people I’ve ever met. A bully, but a weak bully.”

In case it weren’t quite enough that Trump referred to his own former White House chief of staff as “one of the dumbest people” he’s ever met, in the same interview, the Republican called Kelly a “lowlife” and a “terrible, stupid person.”

More about Trump's amazing ability to tell false stories and misunderstand what is happening around himself at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-calls-his-former-chief-o
f-staff-a-terrible-stupid-person/ar-AA1pwdZG


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 11:27 AM

THG


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Masking that fear with fake smiles.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.





T

"Lincoln Project’s Trump Roast Sparks Laughter and Goes Viral"



NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 4:02 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Nobody besides the Bush family and you watch The Lincoln Project, Ted.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 5:38 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Speaking of The Lincoln Project, I think it's pretty funny how many Democrats are endorsing Trump while so-called Democrat voters like Ted watch NeoCon propaganda videos on YouTube.

Trump sounds like a 80's Democrat up there right now. That makes sense, because he was a Democrat all his life.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 8:22 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


“I wanna get a law passed […] You burn an American flag, you go to jail for one year. Gotta do it — you gotta do it,” Trump said.

“They say, ‘Sir, that’s unconstitutional.’ We’ll make it constitutional.”

In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson that while the desecration of the flag may be objectionable, “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-restrict-fir
st-amendment-1235088402
/

Proper disposal of the flag means burning it. American Flag Retirement Program
https://www.clearlakeshores-tx.gov/329/American-Flag-Retirement-Progra
m


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 8:27 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Why Kamala Harris Gets Under Donald Trump’s Skin

The former president has always derided his political opponents, but something specific is happening here.

By Jill Filipovic | Aug 27, 2024 2:58 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/08/why-kamala-harris-triggers
-donald-trump.html


Her crowd sizes really are larger, and he cannot accept that.

Kamala Harris is the Opponent that makes Donald Trump fully lose it.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 10:32 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Donald Trump Jr. Is Not Exactly One of the Great Political Strategists of Our Time

As a Backroom Power Broker, Donald Trump Jr. Is Basically the Complete Opposite of Nancy Pelosi

That RFK Jr. alliance was just one of his brilliant ideas.

He is like King Midas, except instead of everything he touches turning to gold, it turns to raw sewage and loses a key race by 6 points.

By Ben Mathis-Lilley | Aug 27, 2024 4:21 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/08/rfk-jr-donald-trump-jr-jd-
vance-kari-lake-political-reverse-midas-touch.html


Trump Jr. campaigned in Pennsylvania, for example, with gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who lost his race—in an otherwise closely divided state!—by 15 points. He endorsed Kari Lake in the Arizona governor’s race and Blake Masters in the state’s Senate race; they lost. He said in June 2021 that Herschel Walker would be the party’s strongest Senate candidate in Georgia; Walker lost. He backed 2020 election denier Kelly Tshibaka as a MAGA challenger to Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski; Tshibaka lost.

Perhaps most egregiously, Trump Jr. backed the Missouri Senate primary campaign ?of the state’s former governor, Eric Greitens, who resigned amid scandal when the woman he was having an affair with accused him of taking nude photos without her consent in order to blackmail her. (Greitens, who denied the allegations, was also accused of abusive behavior by his ex-wife; he denies those allegations as well.) That idea was so toxic that even other MAGA figures helped shut it down; the state’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, eventually won the seat easily.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 11:08 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


"You know, it's interesting, I've been now around long -- you know, I think of myself as a young guy, but I'm not so young anymore. And I've been around for a long time. And it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans." - Trump
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-economy-better-under-democrats/

Does the economy do better under democrats? Funny that you should ask, but it does!
https://www.google.com/search?q=Does+the+economy+do+better+under+democ
rats


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 11:08 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


An estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model of how much each candidate's economic proposals will affect the national debt
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/

Trump's proposals blow up the debt by 5x more than Harris's.


The Trump plan is steadily more generous the richer you are. Harris is most generous to the poor and reduces income slightly among the rich.


https://jabberwocking.com/trump-plan-blows-up-the-debt-gives-most-mone
y-to-the-rich
/

See Table 1: Budgetary Effects of the Trump Campaign Policy Proposals
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2024/8/26/trump-campaign-
policy-proposals-2024


See Table 1: Budgetary Effects of the Harris Campaign Policy Proposals
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2024/8/26/harris-campaign
-policy-proposals-2024


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 28, 2024 5:50 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Trump insists he’s ‘not a threat to democracy’ in Dr Phil interview, suggests God wants him to save the world

The former president also attempted to clarify previous remarks about wanting to be a ‘dictator for one day’

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-
interview-dr-phil-democracy-harris-election-b2602819.html


“I mean, the only thing I can think is that God loves our country, and he thinks we're going to bring our country back. He wants to bring it back. It's so bad right now,” Trump replied.

The next logical step for super-salesman Trump is to claim he is Moses, anointed by God, to bring his people into the Promised Land. Trump would clarify that he was like Moses, but with better hair. Not that Trump wanted Mose's name found and replaced in the Bible with Trump's name.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 28, 2024 6:46 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Trump video: "If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California."

7:38 PM · Aug 27, 2024

https://x.com/AccountableGOP/status/1828593064102789422

Trump is already claiming the election was stolen.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 28, 2024 8:24 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


The GOP has transitioned from climate denial to climate misrepresentation, experts say

Why denying the science of climate change is no longer politically tenable.

By Julia Jacobo | August 27, 2024, 5:51 PM

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gop-transitioned-climate-denial-climat
e-misrepresentation-experts/story?id=113056571


Trump has vowed to boost U.S. oil production if elected to a second term, promising to "drill, baby, drill" to lower the costs of energy. Yet data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration in March showed that the United States "produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, according to our International Energy Statistics, for the past six years in a row" – 12.9 million barrels per day in 2023, during the Biden administration, breaking the record set in 2019 of 12.3 million during the Trump administration.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 28, 2024 6:28 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Why the Media Won’t Report the Truth About Trump

The political press has doubled down on horse race coverage of the election, overlooking the threat Trump poses to democracy.

By James Risen | August 28 2024, 9:09 a.m.

https://theintercept.com/2024/08/28/trump-campaign-election-media-cove
rage-journalists
/

Over the last few years, as it grew increasingly likely that Donald Trump would mount a third campaign for the White House, leading press critics and others in the media vowed that this time had to be different. The press couldn’t fail in its coverage of Trump once again.

This time, it must aggressively investigate Trump while focusing coverage on the threat that he poses to democracy. The stakes for the nation in the election, not just the odds of who was likely to win the campaign, should be front and center in the press coverage, New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen argued.

But the change in coverage hasn’t happened. Instead, the press has doubled down on horse-race coverage, proving unable to alter its traditional formula for campaign coverage. Distracted by the campaign’s dramatic moments, highlighted by the attempted assassination of Trump and President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the race, day-to-day, process-driven coverage of the campaign remains paramount. Horse-race coverage is back in full force, and the threat Trump poses to democracy is now an afterthought.

The calls for reforms in covering Trump emerged because of the litany of failures in past coverage. When Trump first ran for president in 2016, the press was caught flat-footed, flummoxed by how to report on a racist demagogue. Journalists tried to cover Trump like every other candidate they had covered in the past, seeking to fit his lunacy into their traditional coverage formulas. But that disastrous effort led to recriminations over the inadequate coverage that failed to capture his malevolence.

In 2020, the press was caught flat-footed once again, this time after the election, when Trump refused to accept defeat and tried to mount a coup to stay in power. During the campaign, the press had largely ignored the mounting evidence that Trump was planning to reject the results of the election and later failed to adequately track the warning signs of an insurrection, even as it was openly discussed among right-wing extremists.

Finally, after January 6, 2021, it seemed certain that the nation’s press was ready to cover Trump like a dangerous demagogue, rather than as a normal American politician. The fact that Trump was also convicted of a felony early in the 2024 campaign made changes in coverage seem inevitable.

But the press seems to have amnesia. It is as if journalists have forgotten that Trump was impeached twice, criminally indicted four times, and already convicted once. He should be facing three more criminal trials this year in the midst of the campaign, but he’s so far been saved from that fate by a series of shockingly partisan rulings by judges that he appointed.


Yet the insurrection, the indictments, the criminal conviction, the impeachments tend to receive little more than brief mentions in the Trump campaign coverage today. Poll-driven horse race stories now dominate, overwhelming the scattered attempts by the press to hold Trump accountable.

Just over the last few days, political coverage has been overwhelmed by endless stories about an endorsement of Trump by independent candidate and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and about Trump’s waffling on debating Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on ABC News.

Those kinds of stories and more horse-race trivia are featured in the endless loops of bite-sized stories featured 24-7 on the homepages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other news organizations.

Warnings of the danger Trump poses to American democracy are not in evidence on the daily campaign news feeds. (It will be intriguing to watch in the coming days how the political press deals with Tuesday’s decision by Special Counsel Jack Smith to issue a new criminal indictment of Trump in connection with January 6, on charges revised so that the case can survive under the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity.)

For Trump to escape much scrutiny from the press for the third time can be attributed in part to the deep historical, technological, and financial trends that have swept through the news industry.

Modern American political coverage has its origins in the 1960 presidential campaign between Democratic Sen. John F. Kennedy and Republican Vice President Richard Nixon. The 1960 race fundamentally altered the way journalists thought about and practiced campaign coverage.

“The Making of the President 1960,” a ground-breaking book about the Kennedy–Nixon race by Theodore White, has had a long-lasting impact on how journalists cover presidential campaigns. White’s book was a bestseller and won a Pulitzer Prize because it offered something new: White wrote about the presidential campaign as a yearlong narrative, an adventurous arc that took the reader from the snows of New Hampshire to the November day when the Kennedy compound on Cape Cod was suddenly transformed into the home of the president-elect. White created the modern campaign book, and with it, a narrative framing that became the model for generations of political reporters. Thanks to White’s book, the presidential campaign, a quadrennial event, became the story; examining policies and issues and investigating potential scandals all became secondary.

Television also came of age as a political force in 1960, and the nationally televised Kennedy–Nixon debates changed the relationship between candidates and the press. The television networks became more powerful at the expense of newspapers and weekly news magazines. Presidential campaigns were now dominated by televised visuals, and reporters in turn focused their coverage on the imagery and symbolism of campaigns, rather than the substance. Which candidate was best on television became the story.

That transformation was captured in “The Selling of the President 1968,” another seminal campaign book that documented the way in which Madison Avenue advertising and marketing executives were able to remake and polish Nixon’s image, propelling him to victory after he was beaten by the more telegenic Kennedy in 1960. The book, by Joe McGinniss, was the first cynical examination of how television and advertising were changing campaigns, and it convinced political reporters that they should focus much of their coverage on the marketing gurus behind the candidates. That led their reporting even deeper into the weeds of the campaign process — and the horse race.

No book has had a greater influence on the current generation of campaign reporters than “What It Takes: The Way to the White House,” Richard Ben Cramer’s iconic book about the 1988 presidential campaign. “What It Takes” has shaped presidential campaign coverage ever since its publication in 1992, almost certainly in ways that Cramer never intended. The book provides deeply researched profiles of the major candidates in 1988, concluding that George Herbert Walker Bush was the most willing of all of them to slash and burn his way to victory. That has given the book an unintended legacy by convincing reporters that they should focus on whether candidates are willing to do anything, including sacrificing their integrity, in order to win. That has led to a style of campaign coverage that downplays ethical and moral lapses unless they get in the way of electoral victory. Long after Cramer’s death in 2013, “What It Takes” has inadvertently provided the narrative formulation that reporters have used to cover Trump.

Technological change has also played a big role in making sure that horse-race coverage remains dominant.

In the 1980s, broadcast television was revolutionized with the shift from film to video, which made it possible for network reporters to file more often and more quickly from the field. At the same time, the founding of CNN in 1980 ushered in the era of cable news, taking full advantage of new commercial satellite technology and the shift from film to video to fill endless hours of daily campaign coverage. The gaping maw of the 24-hour news cycle led to a constant hunger for new content, which meant that minor campaign process stories were treated like big news on an endless loop.

Cable news was followed by the rise of the internet and social media, which led to even greater demands for quick hits from the campaign trail. After Twitter was founded in 2006, many of its earliest and most avid users were political journalists, who used it to track campaigns on a minute-by-minute basis. No tactical decision by a campaign was too trivial for reporters to catalog on their Twitter feeds.

These trends all converged with the 2007 founding of Politico; its business model was built around the idea that it would cover politics faster and in shorter bites than the New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media. Politico was unabashedly focused on horse-race coverage, and it soon was setting the tone in Washington for daily campaign reporting. Before long, Politico alumni were being hired by every major media outlet, and the Politico style of horse-race coverage came to dominate the entire political journalism landscape.

The brutal financial pressures facing news organizations today have also had a big impact on political coverage.

Demands for more web traffic have forced news organizations to put a priority on quickly written breaking news stories that help generate hourly attention. Few news organizations now can afford to have reporters take the time required to dig deeply. Horse-race coverage — quick and easy to write or broadcast — is perfect for today’s attention-deficit news landscape. And, at a time of intense political polarization, horse-race coverage has the added benefit of helping news organizations insulate themselves from criticism that they are too partisan.

But there are costs for news organizations caused by their horse-race obsession — costs that many in the business still don’t comprehend. Horse-race coverage is substance-free journalism that simply recounts which candidate is up and which one is down. That means that in addition to a lack of investigative and accountability journalism, there is also a dearth of in-depth stories on policies and issues.

Campaign officials take advantage of the media’s horse-race fixation when it benefits them. But increasingly, they are trying to break through the horse-race noise by going completely around the press to get their messages out to the public. It is a trend that threatens to make the political press irrelevant.

Trump was one of the first candidates to fully embrace the new ways available to campaigns to skirt the press. In 2016, political reporters were not prepared for Trump’s prolific use of social media, which enabled him to speak directly to his supporters and influence the campaign narrative on an hourly basis. Reporters found themselves writing daily stories about each Trump tweet, which had the effect of allowing Trump to hijack the horse-race coverage.

The trend among campaigns to ignore the press and its fixation on horse race coverage reached new levels at last week’s Democratic National Convention, where more than 200 online influencers were credentialed by the Democratic Party to post content for their followers on TikTok, Instagram, and other platforms. That move deeply angered some in the traditional political press, but the Democrats saw it as a way to communicate more directly with young people and others turned off by conventional campaign coverage.

Yet the political press still doesn’t understand that campaigns are going around them in part because of their obsession with the horse race. They don’t get the connection.

And so horse-race coverage is likely to keep its iron grip on political journalism — an arrangement that leaves candidates unchallenged, important questions unasked, and voters uninformed. It’s an arrangement that Trump is eager to exploit.


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 28, 2024 7:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Thanks for putting all the propaganda in one place.



--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 28, 2024 7:35 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Thanks for putting all the propaganda in one place.

The Trump Campaign tax and spending proposals would increase primary deficits by $5.8 trillion over the next 10 years

The Harris Campaign tax and spending proposals would increase primary deficits by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years

https://angrybearblog.com/2024/08/how-will-the-trump-and-harris-budget
s-affect-the-national-debt


Electing Trump will cost more than double what Bush's Iraq and Afghan Wars cost.

Jan. 14, 2021 - The national debt has risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. That’s nearly twice as much as what Americans owe on student loans, car loans, credit cards and every other type of debt other than mortgages, combined, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It amounts to about $23,500 in new federal debt for every person in the country. The “King of Debt” promised to reduce the national debt — then his tax cuts made it surge.
https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 28, 2024 7:46 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Uh huh.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 28, 2024 7:59 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Uh huh.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

Jan. 14, 2021 - Falling deeper into the red is the opposite of what Trump, the self-styled “King of Debt,” said would happen if he became president. In a March 31, 2016, interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post, Trump said he could pay down the national debt, then about $19 trillion, “over a period of eight years” by renegotiating trade deals and spurring economic growth.

After he took office, Trump predicted that economic growth created by the 2017 tax cut, combined with the proceeds from the tariffs he imposed on a wide range of goods from numerous countries, would help eliminate the budget deficit and let the U.S. begin to pay down its debt. On July 27, 2018, he told Sean Hannity of Fox News: “We have $21 trillion in debt. When this [the 2017 tax cut] really kicks in, we’ll start paying off that debt like it’s water.”

Nine days later, he tweeted, “Because of Tariffs we will be able to start paying down large amounts of the $21 trillion in debt that has been accumulated, much by the Obama Administration.”

That’s not how it played out. When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that federal budget deficits would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump’s term. Instead, the deficit reached nearly 4% of gross domestic product in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019.

There were multiple culprits. Trump’s tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, took a big bite out of federal revenue. The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.

Meanwhile, Trump’s claim that increased revenue from the tariffs would help eliminate (or at least reduce) our national debt hasn’t panned out. In 2018, Trump’s administration began hiking tariffs on aluminum, steel and many other products, launching what became a global trade war with China, the European Union and other countries.

https://www.propublica.org/article/national-debt-trump

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

YOUR OPTIONS

NEW POSTS TODAY

USERPOST DATE

OTHER TOPICS

DISCUSSIONS
Where is the 25th ammendment when you need it?
Sun, November 24, 2024 01:01 - 18 posts
In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2)
Sat, November 23, 2024 23:46 - 4761 posts
Australia - unbelievable...
Sat, November 23, 2024 19:59 - 22 posts
Elections; 2024
Sat, November 23, 2024 19:33 - 4796 posts
MAGA movement
Sat, November 23, 2024 19:28 - 12 posts
More Cope: David Brooks and PBS are delusional...
Sat, November 23, 2024 16:32 - 1 posts
List of States/Governments/Politicians Moving to Ban Vaccine Passports
Sat, November 23, 2024 16:27 - 168 posts
Once again... a request for legitimate concerns...
Sat, November 23, 2024 16:22 - 17 posts
What's wrong with conspiracy theories
Sat, November 23, 2024 15:07 - 19 posts
human actions, global climate change, global human solutions
Sat, November 23, 2024 14:38 - 945 posts
Convicted kosher billionaire makes pedophile Roman Polanski blush
Sat, November 23, 2024 13:46 - 34 posts
The worst Judges, Merchants of Law, Rogue Prosecutors, Bad Cops, Criminal Supporting Lawyers, Corrupted District Attorney in USA? and other Banana republic
Sat, November 23, 2024 13:39 - 50 posts

FFF.NET SOCIAL