Elections; 2024 by THG

Game set match...

T

'Republicans are terrified' of contraception, IVF: Senator ahead of access vote

'A very extreme view': Joe on Southern Baptists vote to oppose use of IVF

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Thursday, June 13, 2024 7:01 PM

Your right to murder babies is not going to save you in November, Theodore.

How many other things have you brought up in the last 3.5 years that was going to save you from Trump and every single one of them have failed on you.

Every single one.

Tick Tock

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

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

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Thursday, June 13, 2024 7:04 PM

Uh oh...

Joe* is in trouble with the ACLU and other American-Haters now.

ACLU, immigrant rights groups sue to stop Biden border policy

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/jun/12/aclu-sues-stop-biden-
border-policy/

Good. Get fucked, Joe*. You catered to these deranged psychopaths your entire presidency. You don't get to change the rules this late in the game because an election is coming up without paying the price for it.

Maybe by next election the Democrats can carve out the 10% of the people who hate America and vote Democrat and we don't have to deal with their extremist points of view every damn day for the rest of our lives.

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

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

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Thursday, June 13, 2024 8:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Your right to murder babies is not going to save you in November, Theodore.

How many other things have you brought up in the last 3.5 years that was going to save you from Trump and every single one of them have failed on you.

Every single one.

Tick Tock

So Trumps president then? Na, so what exactly has he been able to do to me? Nothing, I'm sure. And let's not forget that big red wave. Too funny...

T

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Thursday, June 13, 2024 8:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
So Trumps president then?

That's what I've been telling you.

Quote:
Na, so what exactly has he been able to do to me? Nothing, I'm sure.

You think about Trump every second of every day of your life.

He fucked your brain up pretty good.

Quote:
And let's not forget that big red wave. Too funny...

Pretty hard to win when the NeoCons that the Lincoln Project supports actively sabotage Republican campaigns because they'd have rather had Democrats get elected than anybody who backs Trump.

Don't worry about that, Theodore. We're working on removing what's left of them.

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

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 7:32 AM

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

Trump Rolled The Dice Taking His Hush Money Case To Trial And Lost. Now He Might Lose Again.

For decades, accused criminals who insist on a trial but then lose have generally received far harsher sentences than those who take a guilty plea.

By S.V. Date | Jun 13, 2024, 06:17 PM EDT

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-prison-sentence-possible_n_666b32
1ee4b082cfb5d99cfd

The former president, legal experts say, has put himself on the wrong side of a process that rewards those who do not force the state to expend the time and money for a jury trial — and punishes those who do. Any normal defendant who pleaded not guilty and then lost their trial, these experts note, would likely see the harsher end of the sentencing range.

“If you spare the government the expenditure of resources and accept responsibility and plead guilty early in the process, you get some credit for that,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a former state prosecutor in Manhattan and now a professor at New York University School of Law. “Trump obviously didn’t do that.”

Trump also spent the entirety of the trial, from jury selection through his verdict and beyond, personally attacking the judge, the district attorney, the witnesses against him and the legitimacy of the entire nation’s justice system — something the vast majority of criminal defendants avoid doing.

“I can assure you, if his name was not Donald John Trump, this is exactly the person and the case where a judge would give a stiff prison sentence,” said Karen Agnifilo, also a former Manhattan prosecutor who is now a defense lawyer.

Everyone accused of a crime in America has a right to a trial by jury. But jury trials are labor-intensive and time-consuming for prosecutors, public defenders, judges and court staff. Further, the volume of criminal cases in most jurisdictions means it would be physically impossible to take every case to trial without a manyfold increase in the number of taxpayer-funded lawyers, judges and courtrooms.

Over the decades, the workaround that has been almost universally adopted results in the vast majority of prosecutions being resolved with plea agreements – or “bargains” ? that allow the accused to admit to the charged crime or a lesser crime in exchange for a reduced jail term or, depending on the severity of the offense, even just probation.

But for those who insist on taking a case to trial and end up getting convicted by a jury, particularly when the facts underlying the charges are well-established, the end result is often a sentence much closer to the maximum allowed under the law.

“I can say generally that, across jurisdictions, prosecutors typically rely on the prospect of harsh alternatives to incentivize pleading,” said Lee Kovarsky, a University of Texas law professor.

At the time of his scheduled sentencing on July 11 he will be a first offender in a non-violent crime — a category that, had Trump pleaded guilty, would have almost certainly given him no time behind bars.

“That ship has sailed,” Roiphe said, adding that all of Trump’s outside-the-courtroom behavior that judge Juan Merchan prevented the jury from considering in its deliberations was now fair game in his sentencing decision, including his “conduct during the trial and around the trial and his disrespect for the process.”

Agnifilo said that Trump’s attacks on and attempts to intimidate witnesses should weigh heavily in Merchan’s decision.

“A defendant should be rewarded for taking responsibility for their actions and sparing witnesses and victims from this arduous and often painful process. Here, Trump still has never taken responsibility, shows no remorse, continues to deny it and, if he could, would attack the witnesses,” she said.

Trump’s continued attacks on the justice system — and his refusal to express even a modicum of remorse — could make it hard for Merchan to find a way to avoid giving Trump at least some period behind bars without acknowledging that Trump is getting special treatment, Roiphe said.

“It almost makes it difficult for the judge to be as lenient as the defense might want,” she said.

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 8:43 AM

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

How Conservatives Changed the Whole Point of American Political Parties

The rise of the right remade the GOP—and fundamentally changed how parties operated in American politics

By Daniel Schlozman & Sam Rosenfeld | June 10, 2024 9:00 AM EDT

https://time.com/6985660/conservative-political-party-history/

The Republican Party of 2024 belongs to Donald Trump and to MAGA. But the populist right once viewed the GOP very differently.

At the second annual Conservative Political Action Conference in 1975, attendees debated whether they should junk and replace the GOP. One speaker advocating for the move called parties “no more than instruments, temporary and disposable, by which like-minded citizens can express their views.” The conference passed a resolution declaring that “the question of our allegiance to [the two major] political parties is a matter of increasing doubt to conservatives.”

Though a proposed third-party venture went nowhere fast, it reflected the right’s distinctive, cold-eyed approach to the party form. Parties, conservatives thought, served solely as a disposable means to an end, rather than as valuable organizations and instruments of democracy in their own right. And when the forces on the right captured and remade the GOP in their own image beginning in the 1970s, the result was a retreat from the very commitments that had made political parties central pillars of small-d democratic and small-r republican politics. In that sense, the crisis roiling American democracy in 2024 is a half-century in the making.

As conservatives transformed the GOP, they obliterated an older model of Republicanism. In the middle of the 20th century, GOP organizations at their best had functioned as civic institutions rooted in communities. Conservative in form as much as substance, they focused on problem-solving in government, and worked to contain and channel political conflict rather than exacerbating it. Such Republican Party organizations reflected the interests and stewardship of local social and economic elites. The political scientist Clinton Rossiter evoked the “Republican self-image” at midcentury as “men of standing and sobriety…sound without being callous.”

Party politics, in this approach, meant organizing social actors into tempered, pragmatic leadership, not serving up grand clashes of worldviews or all-out warfare across social divides. As such, Republican party work and governance emphasized limits in both the exercise of politics and the activity of government.

Ray Bliss, longtime Ohio Republican leader — and then in the 1960s, Republican National Committee chair—typified this approach. To build up GOP organizations, he would cross-check voter registration rolls with membership lists for service clubs like the Kiwanis and Rotarians, chambers of commerce, and country clubs. Averse to ideological infighting or even explicit comment on policy issues, Bliss summed up his own vision of Republicanism in power in 1960: “government which is efficient, yet economical; government that is alert to the changing times, yet guided by common sense; government which is compassionate to the needs of the people, yet wise in the execution of programs to meet those needs.”

Rising conservative activists disdained this approach as both milquetoast and politically ineffective. Seeing politics as fundamentally rooted in conflict, they moved to exploit grievance and status resentments—“knowing who hates who,” as the future Nixon aide Kevin Phillips had put it in 1968—to polarize politics.

Organizational changes to politics in the 1970s set the stage for that approach to overtake the older model of parties. Interest groups, think tanks, and lobbying shops encroached on the activity of both major political parties while a new campaign finance system channeled money outside of the party apparatuses. As the formal Republican Party’s clout waned, outside groups ranging from the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) to the National Right to Work Committee to the Moral Majority filled the breach. And even as they swamped the traditional party from the outside, conservative activists also used this network of groups to remake the GOP from the precinct level up. “Conservatism is the wine,” William Rusher, publisher of National Review, liked to say, “the GOP is the bottle.”

Conservative leaders like Rusher and Paul Weyrich saw how this burgeoning political infrastructure offered the opportunity to forge a new conservative electoral coalition. They aimed to capitalize on the growing resentments among white Americans over social and cultural issues ranging from legalized abortion to busing children to achieve racially integrated schools. Working together, a range of outside groups could mobilize the rising resentment and supplant the GOP establishment. In 1972, Weyrich launched weekly strategy meetings that would grow to include staffers from political groups like NCPAC, religious right groups, and business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers. Where conservatives had once eyed one another with suspicion, they now had a template for cooperation.

The activists’ most critical move was recruiting disgruntled white evangelicals, especially in the South—most of them former Democrats—into the conservative fold. The fervid language of sexual morality had long colored conservative politics. Now it came tethered to new issues and networks. A deacon in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Weyrich always attached deep importance to abortion and homosexuality—and saw early on how they could bring together Catholics and (white) evangelicals.

Eventually, Christian Right pastors would deploy the same tactics as Weyrich and his fellow activists to mobilize resentment. “We need an emotionally charged issue to stir people up and get them mad enough to get up from watching TV and do something,” Bob Billings of the newly launched Moral Majority explained. “I believe that the homosexual issue is the issue we should use.” Especially on these cultural issues, women like the Catholic Phyllis Schlafly and the Evangelical Beverly LaHaye also contributed to the explosion of outside conservative groups.

This activism took advantage of the new post-Watergate limits on individual contributions to formal parties and candidates. Those restrictions opened up space for political action committees (PACs), which could rake in big money from small-dollar donors motivated to give by sensationalist direct mail focused on hot button cultural issues. NCPAC’s chairman Terry Dolan cheerfully prophesied a politics unmoored from the lines of accountability that had long restrained parties and candidates alike. “A group like ours could lie through its teeth,” he said in 1980, “and the candidate it helps stays clean.”

One moment epitomized the clash between dueling visions of political action. At a testy breakfast on May 19, 1981, Richard Richards, chair of the Republican National Committee, confronted a who’s who from the right, ranging from Dolan, Weyrich, and Schlafly to the billionaire oilman and John Birch Society member Bunker Hunt. Richards, a conservative but tradition-minded political operative, complained about the independent groups making mischief where the GOP did not want them. Their lavish advertising campaigns and repeated interventions in primaries usurped the traditional roles of the party. They were, Richards scolded, like “loose cannonballs on the deck of a ship.”

Nonsense, responded John Lofton, editor of the Conservative Digest. If he attacked those fighting hardest for Ronald Reagan and his tax cuts, it was Richards himself who was the loose cannonball.

Richards was a more doctrinaire conservative than earlier party chairmen like Bliss. But he continued to hew to the classic organizational model, with its lines of accountability and authority, that had defined the political party for a century and a half. “If I’m the chairman of the party and I have responsibility for a campaign in a given area,” he argued, “I don’t want someone else coming in and interfering with my strategy.” Richards later attempted to forge a “non-interference agreement” by which conservative organizations would pledge to stay out of races where Republican candidates or state chairs asked them to stand down.

NCPAC rejected the request—and deemed Richards’s complaints the purist of establishment claptrap. Dolan asserted that party operatives “don’t give a damn what registered Republicans think.” They cared only “about their contributors.” The truth was that now that the right had its own machinery, financial clout, and connection with GOP base voters, formal parties were in no position to make demands.

Over the ensuing decades, as the right’s issues became the party’s, so did its operatives, activists, and political approach. Thus did the conservative loose cannonballs come eventually to dominate the GOP—and define our disordered political era.

Parties at their best safeguard democracy, linking the governed with their government and instilling norms of forbearance. When parties fall short of those virtues, democracy itself is threatened. As the right has moved from Tea Party to MAGA in recent years, its longstanding mercenary, win-at-all-costs approach has shifted in disturbing new directions, dismissing not just the authority of political parties, but the very project of building electoral majorities themselves. Consumed by apocalyptic fears of a changing American electorate, Republicans have turned to and relied on the features of the American political system that frustrate popular majorities: the courts, the malapportioned Senate with its 60-vote filibuster rule, gerrymandering, and a politicized voting process.

Perhaps the signal moment for the impulse that began to break down the traditional controls on American politics in the 1970s came with the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. With mob violence, the right all-but-openly declared that electoral victories by the enemy did not count and countenanced any measures necessary to stop them. The fundamental criterion of democracy, that the losers accept their losses and fight again, no longer held—just another fetter to discard, as “temporary and disposable” as the fetters of party.

Daniel Schlozman is associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. Sam Rosenfeld is associate professor of political science at Colgate University. Together they are the authors of The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics (Princeton, 2024), from which this essay is adapted.

Download the book for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=The+Hollow+Parties

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 9:36 AM

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

Donald Trump Just Admitted to Committing Another Crime

Jun 13, 2024 at 5:54 PM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-may-have-admitted-committing-cri
me-1912598

However, Trump's words are not proof he committed the crime:

"If Trump states that he possesses a firearm at this juncture (after a felony conviction and possibly in violation of his bond), that would be an admission. However, separate proof and evidence of his actual possession is still required to support any enforcement action. Let's remember, Donald Trump has a long history of saying things that don't reflect the actual facts."

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 9:48 AM

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

We’ve Seen This Movie Before

June 14, 2024

The Economist predicts Trump has a two-out-of-three chance of winning.

Norm Ornstein and Dahlia Lithwick predict what will happen if he does.

“The system,” they say, will not hold.

Let me know where, if anywhere, you think they’re wrong.

If enough people understand this — and I think enough will — Trump will lose. Just as candidates in Germany and Italy would have lost 90 or so years ago if German and Italian voters had had the benefit of hindsight.

Unlike them, we do. We’ve seen this movie before.

https://andrewtobias.com/weve-seen-this-movie-before/

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 1:25 PM

Strong TDS this morning, huh?

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

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 1:28 PM

I keep telling you guys about Virgina...

Virginia Hasn’t Backed a Republican for President in Two Decades. Is It About to Flip?
Early polls show Trump is gaining in the non-battleground state, an ominous sign for the Democratic president

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/biden-trump-virginia-2024-elect
ion-a7dc11ea?mod=hp_lead_pos4

Trump set for greatest political comeback in history

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/jun/13/trump-set-for-greates
t-political-comeback-in-histo/

The World Rallies To President Trump’s Defense In Aftermath Of Kangaroo Court Verdict

https://amac.us/newsline/society/the-world-rallies-to-president-trumps
-defense-in-aftermath-of-kangaroo-court-verdict/

Tick Tock

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

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 7:50 PM

MAJOR Trump Meeting BLOWS UP In His Face

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Friday, June 14, 2024 9:53 PM

Oh boy. I bet it did.

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

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 11:39 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh boy. I bet it did.

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

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

Conservative commentators and lawmakers are calling for an end to no-fault divorce, arguing that it has destroyed the fabric of society. Oklahoma introduced a bill to ban the state’s version of no-fault divorce. The Texas Republican Party added a call to end the practice to its 2024 platform. Federal lawmakers like Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and House Speaker Mike Johnson have spoken out in favor of tightening divorce laws.

If this sounds like easily dismissed political posturing — surely Republicans don’t want to turn back the clock on marital law to 1960 — it’s worth remembering how rhetorical attacks on abortion, birth control, and IVF have become laws.

The Christian right is coming for divorce next
Some conservatives want to make it a lot harder to dissolve a marriage.
https://www.vox.com/today-explained-newsletter/354635/divorce-no-fault
-states-marriage-republicans

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

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Friday, June 14, 2024 11:59 PM

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

CEOs at Trump meeting: Ex-president ‘doesn't know what he's talking about’

Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs Thursday at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, multiple attendees told CNBC.

“Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one CEO who was in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speaking. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how he planned to accomplish any of his policy proposals.

Several CEOs “said that Trump was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought and was all over the map.”

Among the topics on which Trump offered scant details were how he would reduce taxes and cut back on business regulations.

The same CEOs who were struck by Trump’s lack of focus “walked into the meeting being Trump supporter-ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction.”

“These were people who I think might have been actually predisposed to Trump but actually walked out of the room less predisposed” to him.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/14/ceos-at-trump-meeting-not-impressed.ht
ml

President Bloviator Trump.

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

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Saturday, June 15, 2024 12:06 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
CEOs at Trump meeting: Ex-president ‘doesn't know what he's talking about’

Former President Donald Trump failed to impress everyone in a room full of top CEOs Thursday at the Business Roundtable’s quarterly meeting, multiple attendees told CNBC.

“Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one CEO who was in the room, according to a person who heard the executive speaking. The CEO also said Trump did not explain how he planned to accomplish any of his policy proposals.

Several CEOs “said that Trump was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought and was all over the map.”

Among the topics on which Trump offered scant details were how he would reduce taxes and cut back on business regulations.

The same CEOs who were struck by Trump’s lack of focus “walked into the meeting being Trump supporter-ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction.”

“These were people who I think might have been actually predisposed to Trump but actually walked out of the room less predisposed” to him.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/14/ceos-at-trump-meeting-not-impressed.ht
ml

President Bloviator Trump.

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

Which CEO said it???? I'm just dying to know who my new hero is!!!!

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

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

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Saturday, June 15, 2024 6:12 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Which CEO said it???? I'm just dying to know who my new hero is!!!!

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

Your attitude is why Trumptards suffer and die early. "Smoking doesn't cause cancer." "Climate change is a hoax." "Per experts, Trump doesn't know what he is saying. I don't believe those experts." "I'm not an alcoholic. I can stop anytime." Trumptards don't believe what inconveniences them. But their suffering and death are ultimately inconvenient.

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

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Saturday, June 15, 2024 6:46 AM

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

Trumptards on the Supreme Court reinterpreted the 1934 law against machine guns. You can now buy a machine gun to "protect your freedom" and stop the Libtards with a bullet. Nothing could possibly go wrong with this decision.

The Supreme Court Rewrites America’s Gun Laws
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/06/supreme-court-nra-gun-laws
-bump-stocks.html

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

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Saturday, June 15, 2024 7:13 AM

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

Donald Trump said Joan Rivers voted for him in 2016. She died in 2014

‘I know one thing: she voted for me, according to what she said,’ claimed the former president

In the book, Trump discusses Rivers, who won the second season of Celebrity Apprentice in 2009.

In the month before the election, Trump claimed to Fox News’s Sean Hannity that he feared voter fraud using dead voters would swing the election for his opponent. “You have 1.8 million people who are dead, who are registered to vote, and some of them absolutely vote,” said Trump. “Now, tell me how they do that.” Trump’s claims were refuted.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/news/donald-tr
ump-joan-rivers-death-republican-b2563058.html

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

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Saturday, June 15, 2024 7:59 AM

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

UPDATED Jun. 14, 2024, at 5:13 PM

Who Is Favored To Win The 2024 Presidential Election?

538 uses polling, economic and demographic data to explore likely election outcomes.

Trump wins 51 times out of 100 in our simulations of the 2024 presidential election.

Biden wins 48 times out of 100.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/

For comparison: Biden wins 71 times out of 100 back in August 2020.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200812094739/https://projects.fivethirty
eight.com/2020-election-forecast/

There is a 1-in-100 chance of no Electoral College winner, leaving Congress to decide the winner. That would be very special. If no one gets a majority, the election goes to Congress to resolve. But the House has elected the President only twice, in 1801 and 1825, and the Senate has chosen the Vice President only once, in 1837.

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

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Saturday, June 15, 2024 10:42 AM

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

Trump’s Bizarre Rants at Private GOP Meeting Are a Break-Glass Moment

As awful new reports emerge about the GOP capitulation to Donald Trump, a veteran observer of Republican politics explains why all this is cause for genuinely profound alarm.

New reports are emerging about Donald Trump’s tightening grip on the GOP, and the upshot is this: It’s crazier and more dangerous than you thought. First we learned that Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson privately schemed over how to sabotage ongoing prosecutions of Trump. Then Trump met with Republicans and reportedly unleashed numerous strange rants, calling the Justice Department “dirty no good bastards” and spinning out a wild tale about Nancy Pelosi’s daughter. We talked with A.B. Stoddard, a columnist at The Bulwark and a shrewd observer of GOP politics, and she trenchantly explained why this moment is very much not a drill.

https://newrepublic.com/article/182723/trumps-bizarre-rants-private-go
p-meeting-break-glass-moment

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

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Saturday, June 15, 2024 12:14 PM

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

Trump thinks he is Ronald Reagan. You know what? He is:

Why Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ Defense Plan Remained Science Fiction
Reagan said he wanted to avoid nuclear Armageddon, critics called the Strategic Defense Initiative far-fetched and expensive. https://www.history.com/news/reagan-star-wars-sdi-missile-defense

Trump vows to build Israel-style 'Great Iron Dome' over US if re-elected: 'Made in America'

Trump said that he would make a "beautiful" Iron Dome during his birthday party

By Sarah Rumpf-Whitten Fox News | June 15, 2024 12:01am EDT

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-vows-build-israel-style-great-i
ron-dome-over-us-re-elected-made-america

"By next term we will build a great Iron Dome over our country," Trump said at his 78th birthday soirée at Club 47 in West Palm Beach on Friday evening. "We deserve a dome. We deserve it all, made state of the art.

"It's a missile defense shield, and it'll all be made in America," he said. "Jobs, jobs, jobs."

Trump said that Ronald Reagan once rooted for an Iron Dome in the U.S., "but at that time, we didn't have the technology."

"We now have the technology," Trump said. (We don't. Trump is crazy.)

Trump said his proposed Iron Dome will be made in America and that it will create "beautiful" opportunities for young people.

"It's all going to be made in states," he said. "We're going to have a big, beautiful Iron Dome."

"Great opportunity for young people," Trump said.

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

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Sunday, June 16, 2024 6:35 AM

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

Can Trump Eliminate The Income Tax? Maybe With An 85% Tariff

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewleahey/2024/06/14/can-trump-elimina
te-the-income-tax/

Recently, former President Donald Trump suggested replacing the federal income tax with tariffs on imports. A closer examination quickly reveals why the policy is impractical.

In a private meeting with GOP lawmakers at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D.C., Trump floated the idea of a so-called “all-tariff policy.” If tariffs on imports were raised sufficiently, the federal income tax could be eliminated entirely.

Everyday necessities, like clothing, food, and household goods, as well as significant purchases like electronics, vehicles, and equipment, will immediately increase in price. Even goods entirely produced domestically, and thus not directly subject to tariffs, may see price hikes — as demand outstrips supply.

Much more at https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewleahey/2024/06/14/can-trump-elimina
te-the-income-tax/

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

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Sunday, June 16, 2024 6:40 AM

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

Trump complained that his generals weren’t “totally loyal” like Adolf Hitler’s. At least they were honest.

Every General appointed by Trump to his staff:

"More dangerous than anyone could ever imagine"
- Marine Corps four-star general and Trump’s Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis

"The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me"
- Marine Corps four-star general and Trump's former Chief of Staff, General John F. Kelly

"Wannabe Dictator"
- U.S. Army four-star general and Trump’s Joint Chiefs chairman, General Mark A. Milley

“You f---ing generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?” Trump asked then-White House chief of staff John Kelly, according to an excerpt of “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” co-written by New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser and New York Times correspondent Peter Baker.

When Kelly asked Trump for clarification, the president reportedly replied by specifying, “The German generals in World War II."

Kelly, a retired Marine general, then asked Trump whether he knew that those generals "tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off."

According to the excerpt, Trump dismissed Kelly's historically accurate description, insisting, "No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him."

Kelly, in an interview with NBC News on Tuesday, confirmed the accuracy of the account in the book excerpt. He said he would tell Trump that the American generals’ first loyalty is to the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

Kelly described Trump’s “unwillingness to accept that the American generals should not be loyal to him as the German generals were to the leader of Germany. And, again, I very definitely pointed out that they tried to kill him [Hitler] a number of times.”

The exchange was described in the excerpt as “typical” of Trump’s expectation of fealty from his military officers.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-complained-general
s-werent-hitlers-book-says-rcna42114

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

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Sunday, June 16, 2024 6:55 AM

Oh no, Trump is sniffing her hair. He's a pedophile for sure. Let's face it. He does like his girls to be of the younger kind.

T

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Sunday, June 16, 2024 8:41 PM

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Monday, June 17, 2024 1:54 PM

Oh no, it's Peter Zeihan again.

T

Why Trump Will Lead Republicans to Historic Defeat

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Monday, June 17, 2024 1:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Oh no, it's Peter Zeihan again.

Pretty risky gamble he's been taking.

His YT channel is probably going to be dead after November.

Tick Tock

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

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

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Monday, June 17, 2024 2:01 PM

Des Moines Register: Trump maintains big lead over Biden and RFK Jr. despite felony conviction, Iowa Poll shows

Biden approval rating continues ‘consistent decline’

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trump-maintains-big-lea
d-over-joe-biden-after-trump-s-conviction-iowa-poll-shows/ar-BB1omJJz

CNN: We're Watching Historic Numbers Of Black Voters Under 50 Giving Up On Democratic Party

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/06/17/cnns_enten_careenin
g_toward_a_historic_performance_among_black_voters_for_trump.html

Home foreclosures are on the rise again nationwide
More Americans lost their homes in May as foreclosures move higher

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/home-foreclosures-rise-again-natio
nwide

US Consumer Sentiment Unexpectedly Falls to Seven-Month Low

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-consumer-sentiment-unexpect
edly-falls-to-seven-month-low/ar-BB1oetwv

And at the current number, Joe* and the Democrats have made zero progress in 2 years.

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

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

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Monday, June 17, 2024 3:48 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Des Moines Register: Trump maintains big lead over Biden and RFK Jr. despite felony conviction, Iowa Poll shows

I've been there, seen how they live, and per the results of their personal achievements, Iowans have proven themselves to be stupider than average Americans. Don't tell Iowa but the polls correlate with Iowans being blockheads.

Trump's presidency was a huge mess (and Iowa will never understand why)

By Matthew Yglesias / Jun 17, 2024 at 5:08 AM

https://www.slowboring.com/p/trumps-presidency-was-a-huge-mess?utm_sou
rce=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share

Last week, Donald Trump blurted out at a meeting with congressional Republicans that he favors switching to a McKinley-style system in which the American government relies on tariffs for all of its revenue. This reminded of a larger point that I think is often forgotten: When Trump was President of the United States, he did a really terrible job.

In a funny way, his tendency to muse about policy ideas that don’t make any sense and reflect a total lack of comprehension of the issues relates to one of his political strengths. Most people don’t pay that much attention to politics and have relatively low levels of policy knowledge. Swing voters, meanwhile, tend to be below-average in their level of interest in politics and policy. So Trump, by being not just ignorant but willfully disinterested, comes across as more in touch with the electorate than a typical politician.

But in most cases, you would not hire someone for a job if he had no idea what he was talking about.

You would probably worry that if you hired someone like that, he would do a bad job. And when Trump did get hired in a narrow, flukey election that saw most people vote for his opponent, he did, in fact, do a bad job. By the time he left office he was deeply unpopular because people saw — and this was before Dobbs — that he wasn’t good at it. Since then, Joe Biden has become unpopular, primarily I think because he didn’t pivot fast enough in the face of inflation. But I also think that a lot of people have forgotten what a bad job Trump did, thanks in part to a mix of delusions and deliberate myth-making, but mostly because of a strange tendency to hold him to an unusual and inconsistent standard for job performance.

On the economy, Trumpstalgics say that what matters is that the results were fine, even if the ideas espoused (like funding the entire government with tariffs) were often unsound. But on Covid, Trumpstalgics say that what matters is that he espoused the right ideas (in this case, being less cautious), even if he was completely inefficacious in delivering results. Biden gets no credit for rapid job growth, because that was just the natural unwinding of Covid-era unemployment, but he is personally to blame for every cent of inflation, which is somehow totally unrelated to that unwinding. And the unemployment itself wasn’t Trump’s fault, because it was the virus that caused the collapse of the labor market, but Trump — rather than the aforementioned collapse of the labor market — deserves credit for the temporary halt in the flow of asylum claims.

It genuinely makes no sense! And it’s worth taking a break from wrangling over whether January 6 was technically an insurrection or exactly what Trump meant when he suggested using disinfectant on people’s lungs, and zooming out to the part where he was overall bad at the job.

The myth of the Trump economy

I think an important part of this is that if you go back to the winter of 2019-2020, when everyone agreed the American economy was in pretty good shape, very few people were inclined to lavish praise on Donald Trump specifically for this.

Nearly everyone understood, at the time, that whether looking at jobs or GDP, nothing happened when Trump took over in 2017. It was just a continuation of the slow and steady recovery from the Great Recession that had been underway for seven years by the time of his inauguration. There was no thrilling turnaround. And while plenty of people who had voted for Trump because they agreed with him about immigration or guns or abortion or whatever else were excited to credit him, nobody who was skeptical of Trump thought, “Aha, he’s a genius!” It was just same old, same old.

But in fact, it’s worse than that.

The whole time that Barack Obama was president, he was asking congressional Republicans to enact additional expansionary fiscal policy to boost the economy. They kept saying no, no, no, can’t do it because we care so much about debt and deficits. And when Obama proposed a deal that combined short-term stimulus with long-term deficit reduction, they said no, no, no, we can’t do that, either. Then Trump becomes president, and Republicans turn on a dime, not only cutting taxes but agreeing to increase spending.

That’s the whole Donald Trump miracle economy. Paul Ryan and his colleagues deliberately sabotaged the recovery during Obama’s presidency, and stopped sabotaging once Trump took office. The results were totally fine (until Covid, at which point they weren’t) but there’s no evidence of any deep insights or policy efficacy that would lead you to expect strong out-of-sample performance. If we currently had a demand-constrained economy being sabotaged by Mike Johnson, that would be one thing. But it’s not the case. The best thing you can say about Trump is he didn’t wreck the status quo.

Trump set foreign policy bombs

A big concern when Trump ran in 2016 was that his ignorance and impetuousness would be destabilizing on the global stage.

And this is, in fact, what has happened. For example, Trump pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that was designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. At the time he did this, he said that he was not trying to set the United States on a collision course for war with Iran. Instead, he was going to use a program of “maximum pressure” to force Iran back to the table to sign an unspecified “better deal.” This did not work, and no better deal emerged. During Trump’s presidency, Iran did not engage in much escalatory action, because they were hoping he wouldn’t be president forever and they could reach a deal with his successor.

Thus, Joe Biden became president and this problem was dumped in his lap. Because Trump had abrogated the JCPOA, Iran wasn’t willing to just accept the same old deal — they understandably demanded more generous terms. Because the Iranian regime is all-around pretty bad, Biden understandably was not willing to give them more generous terms, and almost certainly couldn’t have gotten such terms through Congress. Thus, Iran is now rapidly progressing toward a nuclear weapon and engaging in a range of aggressive actions throughout the Middle East.

Trump, through this quirk of timing, has secured a reputation in certain quarters as the true candidate of peace and as the true candidate of being tough on Iran, when the simple truth is he made an irresponsible policy decision and left his successor to deal with the mess.

In Afghanistan, similarly, he brought American military casualties down to zero by reaching a ceasefire deal with the Taliban that committed to the United States to withdraw all troops — after he left office. This left Biden with the no-win choice of abrogating a deal he didn’t negotiate, or rolling the dice on the stability of Afghan security forces that had supposedly been built up under his predecessor. And Trump, the ultimate blame-shifter gets to both say that the chaotic withdrawal wouldn’t have happened if he’d been president, but also that America wouldn’t be mired in an endless war. Again, though, this was just him making careless decisions and punting the consequences down the road.

Trump failed at crisis management

I’m not an idiot. I do understand, as a question of political psychology, why Joe Biden is not reaping political credit for the steep decline in the murder rate after it soared during Donald Trump’s presidency.

But I do think that rational people should try to think harder about what the job of the President of the United States is. Like Donald Trump, I enjoy tweeting a lot and doing provocative takes. But the president’s job can’t possibly be to sit in the Oval Office watching bad events unfold and then doing posts that say “hey guys, this is bad.”

If you think back to George Floyd’s death, it was a tough time for the country. A brutal crime unfolded on camera at a time when a lot of people had been cooped-up by Covid, and anti-police activists seized the moment. A handful of jurisdictions gave in to activist demands to cut police funding, but the vast majority of jurisdictions did not do that. And the vast majority of Democratic Party politicians — including some as far left as Bernie Sanders — did not hop on this particular bandwagon. Nonetheless, the protest movement that swept the country generated a broad-based decline in the intensity of police activity and a concurrent broad-based surge in violence. I think it’s really important to note that this happened all over the place, including in red states and rural areas and the handful of cities that had GOP mayors.

We had, in short, a massive failure of leadership.

This would have been a great time for an empathetic, effective president to speak from the heart to the American people about the outrageousness of what we saw on film, and also the importance of proactive policing and public safety. But that’s not Trump. He didn’t do anything to reach out and try to bring the country together, and he also didn’t do anything to try to maintain police morale or activity levels. He watched the country spiral into lawlessness and rioting, and then tweeted that it was bad that this was happening. And it was, in fact bad. Trump warned that if he lost the election, these trends would only get worse. Instead, he lost and they got better.

Far be it from me to deny you your right to cast a purely expressive anti-leftist vote for Donald Trump. But I think this again speaks to the question of his competence, judgment, and effectiveness as a leader. Stuff happened, and he did not handle it well.

I think that the same broad analysis applies to Covid. There’s a kind of knee-jerk anti-Trumpism that wants to hold him personally responsible for every American who died, and also a knee-jerk anti-anti-Trumpism that wants to say the left went crazy about this. The missing bit is an evaluation of Trump’s actual job performance. Did the federal government provide people with accurate and timely information about the efficacy of face masks? About airborne transmission? Why did national parks close? The idea that America’s public sector institutions handled the situation poorly has come to be associated with pro-Trump thought. And though I get why it polarized that way, it again raises the question of what exactly this says about Trump’s job performance.

Trump appointed a lot of conservatives to stuff

In fairness to the 47 percent of Americans who voted to re-elect Trump, it’s not like his administration did nothing but flail and tweet.

A lot of what any president does is quasi-routinized appointments, and Trump did a perfectly adequate job of appointing a lot of right-wing people to various jobs. If that’s what you want out of a presidency, that’s what you want. There isn’t really much to argue about, and none of what I’m saying here applies to you. I think most highly ideological conservatives who hear about ideas like “replace the income tax with tariffs” think to themselves, “Well, that’s absurd, and because it’s absurd, we’ll talk him out of it and it won’t happen and we don’t need to worry.”

And that’s probably right. For any given terrible-but-unorthodox Trump idea, the odds of it actually happening are pretty low.

By contrast, the odds of him filling judicial vacancies with people recommended by the Federalist Society are extremely high. It’s politics in a polarized age, party ID counts for a lot, and I respect that many people are just going with the team. But I do want to emphasize that low odds does not equal zero odds, and all presidencies end up dealing with a certain amount that can’t be addressed by returning to ideological baseline. Having a president in office who has no idea what he’s talking about and is too intellectually lazy to find out poses a wide range of risks.

His defenders explain this away with an inconsistent series of arguments. We’re supposed to dismiss his erratic behavior, but the economics outcomes under Trump were fine if you give him a mulligan on Covid. But the bad outcomes of 2020 aren’t his fault, because he (erratically) opined that the meltdown of American civil society was bad. And it’s definitely true that if you judge him by outcomes rather than inputs and also make an exception for the bad outcomes, then his presidency was fine. But the inputs were, in fact, erratic and the outcomes were, in fact, bad, including several of the foreign policy problems that are troubling the country today.

Everyone makes mistakes and ideally learns from them. As best I can tell, what Trump learned from his term is that he needs to double-down on surrounding himself with craven loyalists who won’t contradict him. Not only did he tell congressional Republicans that we should replace the income tax with tariffs, but to the best of my knowledge, nobody bothered to tell him that’s a stupid idea, because at this point everyone knows that you either get on the Trump Train or do what Mitt Romney is doing and quit congress. Will governance outcomes be better or worse when nobody wants to contradict the president’s dumb ideas? It does not seem, historically, that it’s a good idea to combine an ignorant leader with a team of sycophants.

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

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Monday, June 17, 2024 4:14 PM

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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 7:44 AM