REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Elections; 2024

POSTED BY: THG
UPDATED: Thursday, November 21, 2024 06:27
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Tuesday, July 30, 2024 1:40 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Despite the little Democrat Party jerkoff fest over Kamala and the temporary polling bump, Trump still leads over Kamala in every polling aggregate.

Pick somebody else. Kamala isn't going to get you over the finish line. She never was going to.



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

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

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Tuesday, July 30, 2024 2:11 PM

SECOND

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


Joe Biden’s plan to reform the Supreme Court and ensure no president is above the law

Joe Biden writes:

This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one.

But the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on July 1 to grant presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office means there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. The only limits will be those that are self-imposed by the person occupying the Oval Office.

If a future president incites a violent mob to storm the Capitol and stop the peaceful transfer of power — like we saw on Jan. 6, 2021 — there may be no legal consequences.

And that’s only the beginning.

On top of dangerous and extreme decisions that overturn settled legal precedents — including Roe v. Wade — the court is mired in a crisis of ethics. Scandals involving several justices have caused the public to question the court’s fairness and independence, which are essential to faithfully carrying out its mission of equal justice under the law. For example, undisclosed gifts to justices from individuals with interests in cases before the court, as well as conflicts of interest connected with Jan. 6 insurrectionists, raise legitimate questions about the court’s impartiality.

I served as a U.S. senator for 36 years, including as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today. I have great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers.

What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.

That’s why — in the face of increasing threats to America’s democratic institutions — I am calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy.

First, I am calling for a constitutional amendment called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment. It would make clear that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office. I share our Founders’ belief that the president’s power is limited, not absolute. We are a nation of laws — not of kings or dictators.

Second, we have had term limits for presidents for nearly 75 years. We should have the same for Supreme Court justices. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court. Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity. That would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary. It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come. I support a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court.

Third, I’m calling for a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. This is common sense. The court’s current voluntary ethics code is weak and self-enforced. Justices should be required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. Every other federal judge is bound by an enforceable code of conduct, and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to be exempt.

All three of these reforms are supported by a majority of Americans — as well as conservative and liberal constitutional scholars. And I want to thank the bipartisan Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States for its insightful analysis, which informed some of these proposals.

We can and must prevent the abuse of presidential power. We can and must restore the public’s faith in the Supreme Court. We can and must strengthen the guardrails of democracy.

In America, no one is above the law. In America, the people rule.

https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2024/07/29/joe-bidens-plan-to-reform-
the-supreme-court-and-ensure-no-president-is-above-the-law
/

What was the Trumptard response? The usual: “This dangerous gambit of the Biden-Harris Administration is dead on arrival in the House,” promised Johnson.
https://newrepublic.com/post/184345/mike-johnson-torches-biden-supreme
-court-reforms


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

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Tuesday, July 30, 2024 8:23 PM

SECOND

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


“This afternoon, Project 2025 director Paul Dans stepped down at the Heritage Foundation. Reportedly, the Trump campaign applied pressure to stop Project 2025. They’ve been taking a shellacking over it since early voices (like ours here at Civil Discourse) that were focusing on it caught on fire. Recently, there’s been mention of it everywhere, including from both President Biden and Vice President Harris.”

Joyce Vance: Despite the campaign’s claim that “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed,” the goals of Project 2025 still align closely with Trump’s own plans. Politically speaking, Project 2025 became such an albatross around his neck that he had to find a way to distance himself. And perhaps it’s a convenient opportunity to reassert control over personnel for his new administration. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 website said that it was in charge of vetting people for political appointment. So, Trump may have killed two birds with one stone here. But don’t be deceived, whatever Trump’s public reaction to the massive negative publicity Project 2025 has generated, it’s unlikely his plans for the country have changed.

In the July 18 edition of the newsletter, we learned that Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, said he knew Trump was lying about Project 2025.

Important Alert: Update on Project 2025, Civil Discourse Trump caught on a leaked audio talking about Project 2025 with Kevin Roberts the president of the Heritage Foundation. Kevin Clark even said “he knows trump is lying about not knowing about project 2025 in order to fool Americans to vote for him.

c’est la vie . . . (translation: that's life)

https://angrybearblog.com/2024/07/paul-dans-departs-the-trump-campaign
-disavows-project-2025-we-knew-nothing


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

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Tuesday, July 30, 2024 9:26 PM

THG


tick tock...

T


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Tuesday, July 30, 2024 10:30 PM

SECOND

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


20 things that make Republicans weird

1. The FBI was secretly behind the January 6 insurrection.
2. Facebook is constantly censoring conservatives.
3. America needs a strategic bitcoin reserve.
4. You shouldn't drink Bud Light because it's too woke.
5. COVID vaccines can kill you.
6. Childless people should get fewer votes.
7. New York state should be defunded for allowing a court to convict Donald Trump.
8. Trans people are scheming to turn your child trans behind your back.
9. We should return to the gold standard.
10. Climate change is fake.
11. We should allow more oil drilling in national parks.
12. Barack Obama is secretly in charge of the White House.
13. Joe Biden stole the 2020 election.
14. You should not be allowed to buy cultivated meat.
15. Americans stop working too early. Hie retirement age should be raised.
16. We should get rid of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration because it produces too much evidence of climate change.
17. Energy efficiency standards for home appliances should be repealed.
18. The world’s most notorious online drug trafficker deserves a pardon.
19. Christians in America are a persecuted minority.
20. The 2024 Olympics were ruined by a brief tableau that looked vaguely like The Last Supper.

https://jabberwocking.com/20-things-that-make-republicans-weird/

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 1:56 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Yeah.

Don't think we haven't noticed that "weird" is your new buzzword.

The party of tranny generals and normalizing grooming kids is trying to change the definition of the word weird as if they don't exemplify it on a 24/7 basis.

Get fucked, Wetware.



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

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 2:16 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
20 things that make Republicans weird

1. The FBI was secretly behind the January 6 insurrection.


Agents provocateurs who promoted criminal trespass? Maybe

Quote:

2. Facebook is constantly censoring conservatives.
Does a bear shit in the woods?

Quote:

3. America needs a strategic bitcoin reserve.
Bitcoin is backed by nothing. What's the purpose of loading up on nothing?

Quote:

;4. You shouldn't drink Bud Light because it's too woke.
Oh, their spox was just...eeeew. S/he would be enough to put anyone off a product.

Quote:

5. COVID vaccines can kill you.
Actually yes, they can. Rarely, but it's true. That's a risk with ALL vaccines.
https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2021/10/04/how-many-people-have-died-as-a-resu
lt-of-a-covid-19-vaccine
/
Quote:

6. Childless people should get fewer votes.
Interesting thought but ... no.
Quote:

7. New York state should be defunded for allowing a court to convict Donald Trump.
No, but there are some judges and prosecutors who should be disbarred and impeached.
Quote:

8. Trans people are scheming to turn your child trans behind your back.

Some are.
Quote:

9. We should return to the gold standard.
How about ... 100% reserve banking? And THEN go on the golf standard?

Quote:

10. Climate change is fake.
Wrong. Climate change is real. It's the “solutions" by TPTB are fake.
Quote:

11. We should allow more oil drilling in national parks.
I would really need to see the reserves at play and the risks involved.

Quote:

12. Barack Obama is secretly in charge of the White House.
So they say. I wouldn't be surprised.
Quote:

13. Joe Biden stole the 2020 election.
Maybe. As a null hypothesis let's say the election was fair. All you'd need to do is show one instance where it wasn't to disprove it.
Quote:

14. You should not be allowed to buy cultivated meat.
What is “cultivsted" meat? Lab grown?
Quote:

15. Americans stop working too early. Hie retirement age should be raised.
Wrong.
Quote:

16. We should get rid of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration because it produces too much evidence of climate change.
Somehow I feel this wasn't how they said it!
Quote:

17. Energy efficiency standards for home appliances should be repealed.
Why?
Quote:

18. The world’s most notorious online drug trafficker deserves a pardon.
Who?
Quote:

19. Christians in America are a persecuted minority.
Well, actually... if you look at "protected classes" ... sex, race, sexual preference, religion, etc the only UNPROTECTED individuals are white, heterosexual, Christian males age appx 30-50 y/o. So, truth to that.
Quote:

20.The 2024 Olympics were ruined by a brief tableau that looked vaguely like The Last Supper.
It was disgusting. WTH were the organizers thinking???

But given how "the left" misrepresents everyone who disagrees, I doubt this is at all accurate.

-----------
"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.

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 2:59 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


This is the Kool-Aid that Wetware is drinking right now, Sigs.

"Weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird, weird."



What's weird and creepy is the Media doing this crap again. Every time they come up with a buzzword, every single one of them says it over and over and over and over again.

This is what a cult does. Democrats are a cult.


Ted couldn't even talk for 2 weeks, and look at him go today.

Fucking pod people.


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

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 11:26 AM

THG


tick tock

T


Pete Buttigieg thinks a victory for Kamala Harris might loosen Donald Trump’s grip on the G.O.P.


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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 12:44 PM

THG



T


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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 1:55 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
tick tock

T


Pete Buttigieg thinks a victory for Kamala Harris might loosen Donald Trump’s grip on the G.O.P.



Nobody will forget Big Gay Pete's role in fucking up the US economy and taking 6 months maternity leave immediately after taking his post as the Secretary of Transportation when the entire system was broken after Democrats shut down the world over Covid.

Nobody gives two shits about his opinion in 2024.

He should have stayed in South Bend, where all the black people hated him. At least there he was hated by a lot less black people and the ability for him to destroy black people's lives was a mere fraction of what he's done under Joe Biden*.

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

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 3:41 PM

SECOND

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


Of Comic Strips And Dictatorships

July 31, 2024

https://andrewtobias.com/of-comic-strips-and-dictatorships/

Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau is the first (of only two) comic strip artists ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. He begins his forthcoming book with this preface:

It’s a beautiful spring day, and I’ve just concluded a spirited discussion with myself over whether this latest volume should be titled “Day One Dictator” or “Day One Dementia.” I chose the former on the grounds that it’s less terrifying.

Some readers may disagree. The stench of pending authoritarianism is so overpowering that it may distract from the gathering psychiatric consensus that Trump is rapidly slipping into senility — doubly alarming as this new deficit is eating away at the brainpan of a sociopath. Last weekend in Dayton, Trump said, “Joe Biden won against Barack Hussein Obama! Has anyone ever heard of him? Barack Hussein Obaba (sic)!” Rallygoers, primed to cheer, instead exchanged nervous glances.

As well they might. MAGA long ago embraced the crazy — Trump’s loud, transgressive behavior is what endeared him to the mob in the first place. Humans, like apes, are wired to respect the bellowing of alphas, which in Trump’s case, his followers still mistake for strength, not the hypomania it actually is. Dementia, on the other hand, is scary. Most people have seen it in their own lives — a sad, silent aunt, a raging, profane grandfather — and regard it with abject horror. As they listen to Trump free-styling around the stems of common words, at least some of them are surely starting to think, “Uh-oh.”

Or not. Cult members are by definition resistant to reality, and with the help of right-wing media, they have set up false equivalencies, likening Biden’s occasional lapses to Trump’s aphasic word salads. But you have to wonder if there might be some concern among campaign workers, those who see Trump with his guard down, exhausted, floundering, deeply frightened that he’s sliding into the same dark realm that swallowed up his father. Do they worry, not for themselves, but for the country? Are they truly comfortable about the prospect of installing a mad king in the White House? Reagan was in absentia for the last year of his presidency, but at least he had a good heart and was surrounded by institutionalists, career public servants who kept the ship steadied. Trump will have no such support — he’s done with competence in his advisors. The old ones all betrayed him. Only ideologues, sycophants and idiots need apply.

Let’s be clear: It’s no fun mocking someone falling apart before our eyes, but what are the alternatives, particularly given the country’s current glide path to calamity? As you peruse the strips that follow, don’t judge me harshly for doing exactly that to Trump.

Garry Trudeau March 19, 2024

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 4:17 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:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
20 things that make Republicans weird

20.The 2024 Olympics were ruined by a brief tableau that looked vaguely like The Last Supper.

It was disgusting. WTH were the organizers thinking???

But given how "the left" misrepresents everyone who disagrees, I doubt this is at all accurate.

The question you ask yourself is why did you NOT KNOW that this was about ancient Greece (the first Olympics organizers were not Christians) not about New Testament Bible stories?

As CBS News correspondent Elaine Cobbe reports, the specific part of the ceremony that caused the offense was, in fact, a scene depicting Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. It was reportedly based on The Feast of the Gods, a 17th century painting by Dutch artist Jan Harmensz van Biljert that hangs in the Magnin Museum, in Dijon, eastern France. The painting depicts an assembly of Greek gods on Mount Olympus for a banquet to celebrate the marriage of Thetis and Peleus. The figure seated at the table in the center has a halo of light behind his head.

Thomas Jolly, the opening ceremony director, insisted in an interview with France's BFMTV that "The Last Supper" was not the inspiration behind the scene, explaining that "Dionysus arrives at the table because he is the Greek God of celebration," adding that the particular sequence was entitled "festivity."

"The idea was to create a big pagan party in link with the God of Mount Olympus — and you will never find in me, or in my work, any desire of mocking anyone," Jolly said.

The "interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings," a post on the official social media account of the Olympic Games said by way of explanation.

But religious conservatives from around the world decried the segment, with the French Catholic Church's conference of bishops deploring "scenes of derision" that they said made a mockery of Christianity — a sentiment echoed by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. The Anglican Communion in Egypt expressed its "deep regret" Sunday, saying the ceremony could cause the IOC to "lose its distinctive sporting identity and its humanitarian message."

Prominent French far-right politician Marion Maréchal denounced the performance on social media.

"To all the Christians of the world who are watching the Paris 2024 ceremony and felt insulted by this drag queen parody of the Last Supper, know that it is not France that is speaking but a left-wing minority ready for any provocation," she posted on the social platform X, a sentiment that was echoed by religious conservatives internationally.

In Romania, controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate were part of a protest against the Olympics next to the French embassy in Bucharest on Sunday. The Tate brothers criticized the Olympic Games for mocking Christianity during the opening ceremony and called on athletes to boycott.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paris-olympics-organizers-apologize-last-
supper-tableau-religious-conservatives
/

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 4:24 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Oh, get fucked, Wetware.

Why do you constantly defend these degenerates? Democrats would have a much easier time winning elections if they threw the child grooming trannies in the pit where they belong.

The L's and the G's and the B's are fine. Cut everyone else off, and get them the mental help they need. That's what the L's and the G's and the B's want too, but you never listen to them since MSNBC does all of your thinking for you.



In the meantime, this will be the least watched Olympics in decades.

You asked for it, you got it. This whole thing is going to cost the taxpayers of France and Paris in particular a whole lot of money when it's all over.

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

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 6:18 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:
Oh, get fucked, Wetware.

Why do you constantly defend these degenerates? Democrats would have a much easier time winning elections if they threw the child grooming trannies in the pit where they belong.

The L's and the G's and the B's are fine. Cut everyone else off, and get them the mental help they need. That's what the L's and the G's and the B's want too, but you never listen to them since MSNBC does all of your thinking for you.



In the meantime, this will be the least watched Olympics in decades.

You asked for it, you got it. This whole thing is going to cost the taxpayers of France and Paris in particular a whole lot of money when it's all over.

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

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

The same moral complaints are spoken about in the prayers before Trump rallies which condemn the iniquitous Democrats with no mention of the French at the Olympics:

The Most Revealing Moment of a Trump Rally

A close reading of the prayers delivered before the former president speaks

By McKay Coppins | July 29, 2024

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/09/trump-rally-praye
rs/679152
/

A week before Christmas, an evangelical minister named Paul Terry stood before thousands of Christians, their heads bowed, in Durham, New Hampshire, and pleaded with God for deliverance. The nation was in crisis, he told the Lord—racked with death and addiction, led by wicked men who “rule with imperial disdain.”

“With every passing day,” the minister said, “we slip farther and farther into George Orwell’s tyrannical dystopia.”

But because God is merciful, there was reason for hope. One man stood ready to redeem the country: Donald Trump. And he was about to come onstage. “We know what he did for us and how he strove to lead us in honorable ways during his term as our president—in ways that brought your blessings to us, rather than your reproach and judgment,” Terry prayed. “We know the hour is late. We know that time grows shorter for us to be saved and revived.” When he finished in the name of Jesus Christ, Amens echoed through the hall. Soon Trump appeared to rapturous applause and Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.”

For all the exhaustive coverage of Trump’s campaign rallies, even before the assassination attempt at one of them in July, relatively little attention has been paid to the prayers that start each one. These invocations aren’t broadcast live on cable news, nor do they typically attract the interest of journalists, who gravitate toward the more impious utterances of the candidate himself. But the prayers offered before Trump speaks illuminate this perilous moment in American politics just as well as anything he says from the podium. And they help explain how the stakes of this year’s election have come to feel so apocalyptically high.

To understand the evolving psychology and beliefs of Trump’s religious supporters, I attempted to review every prayer offered at his campaign events since he announced in November 2022 that he would run again. Working with a researcher, I compiled 58 in total, the most recent from June 2024. The resulting document—at just over 17,000 words—makes for a strange, revealing religious text: benign in some places, blasphemous in others; contradictory and poignant and frightening and sad and, perhaps most of all, begging for exegesis.

There are many ways to parse the text. You could compare the number of times Trump’s name is mentioned (87) versus Jesus Christ’s (61). You could break down the demographics of the people leading the prayers: 45 men and 13 women; overwhelmingly evangelical, with disproportionate representation from Pentecostalism, a charismatic branch of Christianity that emphasizes supernatural faith healing and speaking in tongues. One might also be tempted to catalog the most comically incendiary lines (“Oh Lord, our Lord, we want to be awake and not woke”). But the most interesting way to look at these prayers is to examine the theological motifs that run through them.

The scripture verse that’s cited most frequently in the prayers comes from 2 Chronicles. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

Ryan Burge, a Baptist minister and political scientist I asked to review the prayers, told me that this verse—which is quoted 10 times—is regularly cited by evangelicals to advance a popular conservative-Christian narrative: that America, like ancient Israel before it, has broken its special covenant with God and is suffering the consequences. “The Old Testament prophets they’re quoting talk about sin collectively instead of individually—the nation has fallen into wickedness and needs healing,” Burge said. “The way they use this verse presupposes that we’re spiraling down the tubes.”

Trump’s supporters attribute America’s fall from grace to a variety of national sins old and new—prayer bans in public schools, illegal immigration, pro-transgender policies, the purported rigging of a certain recent election. Whatever the specifics, the picture of America they paint is almost universally—biblically—bleak.


In Wildwood, New Jersey, a pastor declared, “Our nation finds itself in turmoil, chaos, and dysfunction.” In Fort Dodge, Iowa, the sentiment was similar: “Lies, corruption, and propaganda are driving civilization to ruins.” In Conway, South Carolina, one supplicant informed God, “Our enemies are trying to steal, kill, and destroy our America, so we need you to intervene.”

The premise of all of these prayers is that America’s covenant can be reestablished, and its special place in God’s kingdom restored, if the nation repents and turns back to him. Burge told me that these ideas have long percolated on the religious right. What’s new is how many Christians now seem convinced that God has anointed a specific leader who, like those prophets of old, is prepared to defeat the forces of evil and redeem the country. And that leader is running for president.

Early on in the Trump era, it was common to hear conservative Christians compare him to Cyrus the Great, the sixth-century-B.C.E. Persian king who, though he did not worship the God of Israel himself, liberated the Israelites from Babylonian captivity and helped them build their temple in Jerusalem.

The subtext was not subtle. Here was a handy biblical precedent for the “unlikely vessel”—the man God uses to fulfill his purposes even though he lacks the faith and character of a true believer.

But this analogy seems to have outlived its usefulness to the religious right: A 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that 62 percent of Republicans viewed Trump as “morally upstanding,” and in a Deseret News poll commissioned last year, 64 percent said they believed he is a “person of faith.” The former president no longer needs to be described as a blunt, utilitarian tool in God’s hand. “Cyrus was a way of acknowledging, ‘I know this is an immoral person, but he could still do some good,’?” Russell Moore, an evangelical theologian and the editor of Christianity Today, who has been critical of Trump, told me. “I haven’t heard Cyrus language in at least five years.”

The prayers at Trump’s rallies reflect this shifting perception. Cyrus isn’t mentioned, but Trump does get compared to righteous, prophetic heroes of the Bible, including Esther, Solomon, and David.

In America, more than perhaps anywhere else in the Western world, petitions to God are still a routine fixture of politics—at congressional sessions, presidential nominating conventions, inaugurations. After a gunman shot at Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, both Democrats and Republicans prayed for the former president and for the country he hopes to lead.

And many presidential campaigns are infused with religion. In July, Joe Biden attended a church service in Philadelphia where the pastor compared the president’s recent political struggles to the Old Testament story of Joseph, and a member of the congregation prayed for Biden: “Touch his mind, O God, his body; rejuvenate him and his spirit.”

Bradley Onishi, a scholar and former evangelical minister who studies the intersection of politics and Christianity in America, told me that prayers at political events have traditionally fit a certain mold. God is asked to grant the political leader inspiration and wisdom, to help him resist temptation and lead the country in a righteous direction. “It was always ‘We pray for him to have the strength to do God’s will, to have character, to be the man we need,’?” Onishi said.

Some of the prayers at Trump’s rallies run along these lines, and would be familiar to anyone who has spent time in an American church, myself included. “Give President Trump the strength to make the right decisions both in and out of the public eye,” one man prayed at a Trump event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “Remind him to seek your guidance as events unfold.” I have said “Amen” to a thousand prayers like this in my life, on behalf of government leaders in both parties.

But Onishi, like several of the other experts I asked to read the prayers, was struck by how many of them take Trump’s righteousness for granted. “No one prays for Trump to do right; they pray that God will do right by Trump,” Onishi told me.

Indeed, rather than asking God to make Trump an instrument of his will, most of the prayers start from the assumption that he already is. Accordingly, many of them drop any pretense of thy-will-be-done nonpartisanship, and ask explicitly for Trump’s reelection. “Lord, you have a servant in Donald J. Trump, who can lead our nation,” a woman offering a prayer in Laconia, New Hampshire, told God at a rally on the eve of the state’s Republican primary. “Help us to overcome any obstacles tomorrow so that we may deliver victory to your warrior.”

With Trump’s goodness presumed, the criminal charges against him are cast not as evidence of potential wrongdoing but as a sign of victimhood. “We ask that you put a hedge of protection around President Trump,” one woman prayed in Waukesha, Wisconsin, “and deliver him from the baseless attacks, and remove from office those who are subverting justice in our legal system.”

At a February campaign event in North Charleston, South Carolina, Mark Burns, a televangelist in a three-piece suit, squeezed his eyes shut and lifted his right hand toward heaven. “Let us pray, because we’re fighting a demonic force,” he shouted. “We’re fighting the real enemy that comes from the gates of hell, led by one of its leaders called Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”

Although Burns was more provocative than most, he was not alone in using the language of spiritual warfare. This is perhaps the most unnerving theme in the prayers at Trump’s rallies. One verse, from Ephesians, is quoted repeatedly: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Russell Moore told me he used to hear conservative evangelicals cite this verse as a way of shifting the focus away from earthly concerns like politics and toward the larger, more important battle for our souls. “The point would be that our opponents aren’t our enemies,” he told me. But something has changed in recent years. “That’s not the implication I see in these prayers. It’s ‘Politics is how we fight these spiritual battles.’?”

Terry Amann, a conservative pastor in Iowa, told me I shouldn’t be surprised to hear such a dire framing of the election. Christians like him see abortion as a grave sin and fast-changing social mores around gender and sexuality as serious threats to the nation’s spiritual health. “Every election cycle, they say this is the most important election in your lifetime,” he told me. To him, it feels like this one really is. “Our republic is in trouble.”

But it’s easy to see the danger in internalizing the concept of politics as spiritual combat. Trump’s rallies become more than mere campaign events—they are staging grounds in a supernatural conflict that pits literal angels against literal demons for the soul of the nation. Marinate enough in these ideas, and the consequences of defeat start to feel existential. “This is not a time for politics as usual,” a Pentecostal preacher declared at a Trump rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last year. “It’s not a time for religion as usual. It’s not a time for prayers as usual. This is a time for spiritual warriors to arise and to shake the heavens.”

As I was reviewing these prayers, I wondered what Trump’s most zealous religious supporters would do if they didn’t get the result they were praying for in November. With so much riding on the idea that Trump’s reelection has a divine mandate, what would happen if he lost? A destabilizing crisis of faith? Another widespread rejection of the election’s outcome? Further spasms of political violence?

It wasn’t until I came across a prayer delivered in December in Coralville, Iowa, that a more urgent question occurred to me: What will they do if their prayers are answered?

Onstage, Joel Tenney, a 27-year-old evangelist with a shiny coif of blond hair and a quavering preacher’s cadence, preceded his prayer with a short sermon for the gathered crowd of Trump supporters. “We have witnessed a sitting president weaponize the entire legal system to try and steal an election and imprison his leading opponent, Donald Trump, despite committing no crime,” Tenney began. “The corruption in Washington is a natural reflection of the spiritual state of our nation.”

For the next several minutes, Tenney hit all the familiar notes: He quoted from 2 Chronicles and Ephesians, and reminded the audience of the eternal consequences of 2024. Then he issued a warning to those who would stand in the way of God’s will being done on Election Day.

“Be afraid,” Tenney said. “For rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. And when Donald Trump becomes the 47th president of the United States, there will be retribution against all those who have promoted evil in this country.”

With that, he invited the audience to remove their hats, and turned his voice to God. “Lord, help us make America great again,” he prayed.

This article appears in the September 2024 print edition with the headline “‘Lord, Help Us Make America Great Again.’”

McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of The Wilderness, a book about the battle over the future of the Republican Party, and Romney: A Reckoning, a biography of Mitt Romney that was published in October 2023. Download all of McKay Coppins’ books for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=McKay+Coppins

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 6:32 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


TL;DR, Wetware.

Don't bother condensing it. Nobody cares.

P.S. I'm not religious in the slightest.

I'm just tired of watching you freaks get behind child predator tranny degenerates and pretending that they aren't put up on a pedestal in the Media.

We're done with these people. They will be hiding out in caves for another 100 years soon.

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

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 8:20 PM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump Is on a Real Tear of Reminding Everyone How Awful He Is
It remains astonishing what this man will say out loud, in public.

Trump went on to suggest that a woman who broke into the House chambers and was shot during the riot was an innocent “protester” and there were no real victims of the riot because “nobody died that day, you do know that.” (More than 170 officers were assaulted and at least 15 hospitalized on the day of the attack, with four killing themselves in the days or weeks after the attack and another dying of heart failure.)

So in the course of less than 40 minutes, Trump reminded people of his promise to pardon the mob that assaulted police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, threw his own VP candidate under the bus, insulted and attacked a room full of Black journalists to their faces, and said that Kamala Harris is not Black.

What happened at NABJ — a bulldog journalist asking the former president and current front-runner in the 2024 election challenging questions about his horrible positions in front of a skeptical audience and not letting up once — was at the very least a master class in journalism.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/07/donald-trump-nabj-awful-co
mments.html


Donald Trump takes questions at NABJ conference | Full Conference



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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 9:10 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK




We're all loving it, Wetware.

It's only you Alt-Left degenerates that have a problem with Trump.

You're so weird.



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

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 9:33 PM

SECOND

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


Five Wild Moments From Trump's Trainwreck NABJ Interview

ABC News’ senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott, who served as a moderator, opened with a question addressing “the elephant in the room.” The question is worth reading in its entirety:

You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals, from Nikki Haley to former President Barack Obama, saying that they were not born in the United States — which is not true; you have told four congresswomen of color, who are American citizens, to ‘go back to where they came from’; you have used words like ‘animal’ and ‘rabid’ to describe Black district attorneys; you have attacked Black journalists, calling them ‘losers,’ saying the questions that they ask are ‘stupid’ and ‘racist’; you’ve had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort.

So my question, sir: Now that you are asking Black supporters to vote for you, why should Black voters trust you after you have used language like that?

Trump responded by attacking Scott herself, avoiding any substance entirely. “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” he said, to gasps from the audience.

“Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network,” he told the journalist. “You’re a terrible network. And I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit. I love the Black population of this country. I’ve done so much for the Black population of this country.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/five-wild-moments-from-trump-s
-trainwreck-nabj-interview/ar-BB1qYYY


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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 10:01 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


The interview was great. It's only brainfucked Alt-Left goons like you who didn't think so, Wetware.

This election is going to be a landslide win against Democrats.

Tick Tock



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

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

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Wednesday, July 31, 2024 11:03 PM

SECOND

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


Trump needed to be reminded that his so-called “innocent” Jan. 6 rioters have been convicted of crimes.

When Scott asked Trump why, as someone who’s previously claimed to be the “law and order candidate,” he would pardon the rioters who assaulted the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump short-circuited.

“Those rioters who assaulted officers. Would you pardon them?” Scott asked.

“Oh, absolutely I would. If they’re innocent? If they’re innocent I would pardon them,” he replied.

Scott noted: “They’ve been convicted.”

As the crowd laughed at Trump in disbelief, Trump dismissed the validity of the judicial system, saying, “Well, they were convicted by a very tough system.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/five-wild-moments-from-trump-s
-trainwreck-nabj-interview/ar-BB1qYYYZ


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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 12:08 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Did you actually watch the damn thing, Wetware?

It's only 35 minutes long. I'm sure you can pull yourself away from your chronic internet porn addiction long enough to watch it.

Trump had that audience rolling the whole time.



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

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 12:16 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Trump WRECKS Black Journalist Event!



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

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 6:53 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:
Did you actually watch the damn thing, Wetware?

It's only 35 minutes long. I'm sure you can pull yourself away from your chronic internet porn addiction long enough to watch it.

Trump had that audience rolling the whole time.



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

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

If Trump loses, you will claim the Democrats stole the election. The alternate explanation will be that most Americans are aware of character issues in Trump completely invisible to Trumptards since they have the same character defects.

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 6:55 AM

SECOND

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


Kamala Harris is the worst nightmare of America’s far right

Trump, JD Vance, and their Maga allies are misogynists who want to control women. Harris could not be more of a threat

By Robert Reich | Tue 30 Jul 2024 06.00 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/30/kamala-h
arris-donald-trump-women-gender


When Joe Biden stepped down in support of Kamala Harris, he didn’t just pass the torch to another generation. He passed it from old white men to America’s future.

Consider that women now compose a remarkable 60% of college undergraduates. And that by 2050, it’s estimated that America will consist mostly of people of color – 30% more Black people than today, 60% more Latinos and twice the number of Asian Americans.

The power shift has already started.

Many of the people who have demanded accountability from Trump constitute a Trump nightmare of strong and able women, including several of color – Letitia James and Fani Willis – along with E Jean Carroll and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi.

And now, Kamala Harris.

In naming JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate, Trump feinted a torch pass – but backwards. Vance’s white male belongs in the early 20th century.

During Vance’s bid for the Senate in Ohio in 2021, he called Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies”, offering as examples Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance asked, suggesting the only way to have a “direct stake” is by giving birth.

Even before Vance said this, Harris was stepmother to two teenagers. Soon after, Buttigieg and his husband adopted infant twins.

By this logic, no American male – including Vance and Trump – can have a “direct stake” in America.

Trump himself – dog-whistling racist; alleged groper, fondler, and sexual harasser; and adjudicated rapist – is hardly respectful of women, especially women of color.

Of Harris, he claimed: “They’re saying she isn’t qualified because she wasn’t born in this country.” (Harris was born in California.)

Of Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, he charged – also without evidence – that “she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member”.

Trump has repeatedly denigrated women of color as “angry” or “nasty”.

And he views female human beings as almost alien creatures. “There’s nothing I love more than women,” he has said, “but they’re really a lot different than portrayed. They are far worse than men, far more aggressive, and boy, can they be smart!” And, of course, his infamous: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Trump misogyny has infected the entire Maga Republican party, whose recent convention was a celebration of testosterone – featuring the wrestling champ Hulk Hogan shouting: “Let me tell you something, brother … Trump is the toughest of them all, a gladiator!”

To remind you, Hogan was the protagonist in a sex-tape video scandal. Hogan’s lawsuit over the circulation of the video, which put Gawker Media out of business, was underwritten by the tech billionaire Peter Thiel – the same man who gave JD Vance a lucrative venture-capital job, funded Vance’s senatorial campaign and introduced Vance to Trump.

Other pop cultural “tough guy” icons at the Republican convention similarly attested to Trump’s virility. The conservative rocker/rapper Kid Rock performed his song American Badass.

Instead of being introduced by his spouse, as have most candidates accepting their party’s nomination, Trump was introduced by Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship – known for its machismo culture and sanctioned violence.

Trump, Vance, and their Maga allies are misogynists who want to control women by preventing them from controlling their own bodies – forcing them to have children. Vance is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

Trump’s Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” chillingly recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services “ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method”.

What’s the underlying goal here? The same as in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale – authoritarian fascism organized around male dominance.

In this worldview, anything that challenges the traditional male roles of protector, provider and controller of the family threatens the social order. Strong women and LGBTQ+ people also weaken the heroic male warrior. Brutality, force and violence strengthen him.

In their eyes, Kamala Harris could not pose more of a threat.

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 8:14 AM

SECOND

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


Rupert Murdoch’s Family Battle Proves He’s Losing Control

The media mogul is scrambling to protect Fox News from three of his politically moderate heirs. It’s a sign of Rupert’s waning influence. “Murdoch is no longer the pope,” one political vet says.

By Clive Irving | July 30, 2024

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/rupert-murdoch-james-fox-news-su
ccession-drama


When Rupert Murdoch surveyed the Republican National Convention from his box in the Milwaukee arena, he was, as usual, hard to read. At 93, his face has settled into a mask of vulpine repose, akin to that of an emperor in the gathering shadows of his time.

Few people knew then that, in fact, the Murdoch family dynasty was riven by a feud over the succession. At that moment, it seemed simply that Murdoch had turned up to witness the apotheosis of his yearslong collusion with Donald Trump. Together, through Fox News, they had hijacked the Republican Party and transformed it into a vitriolic personality cult.

And, as it happened, it was that alliance that had played a decisive part in blowing up any chance that Murdoch could die with the satisfaction of knowing that his global media empire would pass seamlessly to his heirs.

And there is a good deal more to the family rupture than the desperate legal steps, first revealed by The New York Times, that Murdoch is taking to change a so-called irrevocable family trust so that his son Lachlan takes over the empire, in defiance of his three other eldest children, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence.

It was evident long ago that James, in particular, felt that Fox News had poisoned the reputation of the whole business and that he wanted rid of it, a move that animated Rupert’s attempted coup on behalf of the loyal Lachlan. Rupert’s legal action cites “a potential reorientation of editorial policy and content” as a reason to give Lachlan the voting rights to stave off such a change, according to the Times.

The problem was—and is—that Rupert has never had any problem with the cohabitation of journalistic extremes in either his brain or, for example, in his New York headquarters where Fox News operates out of the same tower on the Avenue of the Americas as his sober benchmark national newspaper, The Wall Street Journal.

This morally bifurcated business model (that also exists in London) is okay with Lachlan too. On the evidence of his stewardship of Fox News, a moral compass isn’t something he seems to be familiar with.

However, some analysts believe that James wants to go beyond offloading Fox News—although that in itself would be a lucrative move. As one analyst told me, “Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion. There must be some nutter who would buy Fox News for $30 billion.” (Brian Stelter reported in his book Hoax that in 2019, a private equity firm sounded out Lachlan on a deal at that price but was rebuffed).

The larger plan, which James is said to have considered, is a reorganization of the empire’s assets based on a favorite euphemism of mogul maneuvering: “tax efficiency”—a strategy that often surfaces in succession dramas. (A rep for James declined to comment when reached by Vanity Fair.)

This would be strikingly counter to his father’s preferences. In 2022, Rupert and Lachlan proposed merging the two main corporations, Fox and News, which was widely interpreted as an indication that Rupert wanted control of them to pass to Lachlan on his father’s death.

Three months later, that idea was abandoned after strong opposition from major stockholders in News Corp. They had two concerns: The value of their investments would suffer—and the reputational harm of being in the same fold as Fox News. All of this highlights the basic tension in the family: Fox News is Rupert’s invention and agent of his political power, but to others it is the toxic contaminant in the underbelly of the empire.

I was cautioned not to assume that James, Elisabeth, and Prudence agree on all issues, particularly on the idea of a reorganization, just because they are united in opposing the change to the trust. Elisabeth has always been an independent careerist, not beholden to her father. Currently, she runs the film studio Sister Pictures. Prudence avoids any public life, reportedly calling herself a “housewife.”

In the immediate future, the family is alarmed about the reputational and financial damage facing the two principal Murdoch businesses—Fox Corporation, holding the core TV interests, and News Corp, home of the newspaper empire—as a result of two unresolved and costly legal cases, which would impact any valuation of assets.

The first results from Fox News’s slavish support of Trump’s claim that the 2020 election result was rigged with the help of rogue voting machines. It has already forced the company to make a settlement of $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems. Smartmatic is expected to go to court in New York in 2025 with a similar defamation case against Fox. The voting technology company’s ability to press home the case is now reinforced by a multimillion-dollar investment from Reid Hoffman, a cofounder of LinkedIn.

In London, it is the notorious hacking scandal at the Murdoch tabloids that still, after more than 15 years, drains the coffers. The final wave of claims made by 40 plaintiffs, led by Prince Harry, is due to reach court in January—unless the Murdochs settle in advance, as they have done with three previous waves, to the tune of an estimated 1.9 billion British pounds, including legal costs and the confidential settlements.

For the family, the greatest jeopardy of the two cases lies in the risk of Rupert Murdoch himself having to give evidence in court, an experience that, at his age, they feel, could be an intolerable ordeal. This was the main reason for the Dominion settlement. (Murdoch was deposed last November by Smartmatic lawyers.)

In London the same is true. The outcome there is as much in the hands of Prince Harry as it is Murdoch: Which one will blink first?

Concurrently in London, the landslide electoral victory of Keir Starmer’s remade Labour Party also marked the waning of Murdoch’s political influence. At one time his summer garden parties were a compulsory event for the leaders of both main parties who had to kiss the ring. (Tony Blair, both during and after his premiership, was a longtime supplicant).

“Murdoch is no longer the pope,” a seasoned political observer tells me. “The Murdochs can do us no more harm”—a reference to the influence of the Murdoch papers on the catastrophic Brexit movement. To be sure, Lachlan was received politely by Starmer’s team, and two of the Murdoch titles, The Sun and The Sunday Times, endorsed Labour. But that was gratuitous—the needle didn’t need them to swing left of center.

Meanwhile, the jubilant coronation of Trump that Murdoch witnessed in Milwaukee, seemingly a slam dunk for Fox News and confirming its dominance in the prime-time coverage of the 2024 presidential race, has been completely screwed by the switch from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris.

We’ll never really know if the Milwaukee carnival accurately described the world as Murdoch wanted it to be. It certainly described the world that Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Redux, had betted the business on.

Now it looks like Trump and Fox News are, in a way unthinkable only a week or so ago, stuck on the wrong side of history. Like the Trump base, the Fox News audience is predominantly white and aging. A generational tsunami has been unleashed by the Democrats, in which social media is a far more precise and responsive way of building, energizing, and funding a campaign than old media—cable TV and newsprint.

James Murdoch effectively quit the family business in 2020 citing “disagreements over certain editorial content” and “certain other strategic decisions.” He and his wife, Kathryn Hufschmid, donated to the 2020 Biden campaign. The new Democratic ticket is probably even more their thing.

However, James’s saintly status has been somewhat punctured by allegations in the tabloid hacking case that he directed the systematic destruction of any evidence that could have shown that his father had direct knowledge of the depravity of his newsrooms. James had his father’s back then, and at that time in 2011, he seemed well-placed to become the ultimate winner in the fight to succeed.

As things have now turned out, though, Lachlan could be inheriting a poisoned chalice. As dynastic dramas go, this one will run and run.

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 8:28 AM

SECOND

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


My “Never-Trump From Here to Eternity” FAQ

By Scott Aaronson | July 30th, 2024

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8172

Q1: Who will you be voting for in November?

A: Kamala Harris (and mainstream Democrats all down the ballot), of course.

Q2: Of course?

A: If the alternative is Trump, I would’ve voted for Biden’s rotting corpse. Or for Hunter Biden. Or for…

Q3: Why can’t you see this is just your Trump Derangement Syndrome talking?

A: Look, my basic moral commitments remain pretty much as they’ve been since childhood. Namely, that I’m on the side of reason, Enlightenment, scientific and technological progress, secular government, pragmatism, democracy, individual liberty, justice, intellectual honesty, an American-led peaceful world order, preservation of the natural world, mitigation of existential risks, and human flourishing. (Crazy and radical, I know.)

Only when choosing between candidates who all espouse such values, do I even get the luxury of judging them on any lower-order bits. Sadly, I don’t have that luxury today. Trump’s values, such as they are, would seem to be “America First,” protectionism, vengeance, humiliation of enemies, winning at all costs, authoritarianism, the veneration of foreign autocrats, and the veneration of himself. No amount of squinting can ever reconcile those with the values I listed before.

Q4: Is that all that’s wrong with him?

A: No, there are also the lies, and worst of all the “Big Lie.” Trump is the first president in US history to incite a mob to try to overturn the results of an election. He was serious! He very nearly succeeded, and probably would have, had Mike Pence been someone else. It’s now inarguable that Trump rejects the basic rules of our system, or “accepts” them only when he wins. We’re numb from having heard it so many times, but it’s a big deal, as big a deal as the Civil War was.

Q5: Oh, so this is about your precious “democracy.” Why do you care? Haven’t you of all people learned that the masses are mostly idiots and bullies, who don’t deserve power? As Curtis Yarvin keeps trying to explain to you, instead of “democracy,” you should want a benevolent king or dictator-CEO, who could offer a privileged position to the competent scientists like yourself.

A: Yeah, so how many examples does history furnish where that worked out well? I suppose you might make a partial case for Napoleon, or Ataturk? More to the point: even if benevolent, science-and-reason-loving authoritarian strongmen are possible in theory, do you really expect me to believe that Trump could be one of them? I still love how Scott Alexander put it in 2016:

Can anyone honestly say that Trump or his movement promote epistemic virtue? That in the long-term, we’ll be glad that we encouraged this sort of thing, that we gave it power and attention and all the nutrients it needed to grow? That the road to whatever vision of a just and rational society we imagine, something quiet and austere with a lot of old-growth trees and Greek-looking columns, runs through LOCK HER UP?

I don’t like having to vote for the lesser of two evils. But at least I feel like I know who it is.

Continue with Questions Q6 to Q18 at https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8172

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 11:19 AM

SECOND

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


"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.

A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want."

- Hannah Arendt
German historian and philosopher
(1906 - 1975)

https://www.auburn-reporter.com/opinion/once-upon-a-time-when-the-trut
h-still-mattered-whales-tales
/

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 11:55 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.

A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want."

- Hannah Arendt
German historian and philosopher
(1906 - 1975)

https://www.auburn-reporter.com/opinion/once-upon-a-time-when-the-trut
h-still-mattered-whales-tales
/



Huh.
Are you posting about our government and media?

-----------
"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.

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 12:12 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:

Huh.
Are you posting about our government and media?

Q9: Why do you care so much about Trump’s lies? Don’t you realize that all politicians lie?

A: Yes, but there are importantly different kinds of lies. There are white lies. There are scheming, 20-dimensional Machiavellian lies, like a secret agent’s cover story (or is that only in fiction?). There are the farcical, desperate, ever-shifting lies of the murderer to the police detective or the cheating undergrad to the professor. And then there are the lies of bullies and mob bosses and populist autocrats, which are special and worse.

These last, call them power-lies, are distinguished by the fact that they aren’t even helped by plausibility. Often, as with conspiracy theories (which strongly overlap with power-lies), the more absurd the better. Obama was born in Kenya. Trump’s crowd was the biggest in history. The 2020 election was stolen by a shadowy conspiracy involving George Soros and Dominion and Venezuela.

The central goal of a power-lie is just to demonstrate your power to coerce others into repeating it, much like with the Party making Winston Smith affirm 2+2=5, or Petruchio making Katharina call the sun the moon in The Taming of the Shrew. A closely-related goal is as a loyalty test for your own retinue.

It’s Trump’s embrace of the power-lie that puts him beyond the pale for me.

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8172

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 12:24 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

And then there are the lies of bullies and mob bosses and populist autocrats and deepstate cabals and transnational overlord wannabes and their colluding minions , which are special and worse. These last, call them power-lies, are distinguished by the fact that they aren’t even helped by plausibility.


You forgot something ...

Yep! Joe Biden was on top of his game and running the show!

The deepstate doesn't exist!

Trump was hit by a piece of shrapnel.

The assassination attempt was just a colossal series of unbelievable fuckups by a DEI patsy appointee!

TRUMP RUSSIA COLLUSION!

Insurrection!

Mostly peaceful BLM/ANTIFA riots!

Men can be women and women can be men!

*****

The list of official lies is legion and deserves its own thread.

I'm surprised you forgot to mention them.


-----------
"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.

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 12:45 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Did you actually watch the damn thing, Wetware?

It's only 35 minutes long. I'm sure you can pull yourself away from your chronic internet porn addiction long enough to watch it.

Trump had that audience rolling the whole time.



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

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

If Trump loses, you will claim the Democrats stole the election.



Oh. You mean like you all did when Clinton lost in 2016.

Welcome to the new world. It's going to be like that for both sides from here to eternity, Wetware.

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

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 12:46 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

And then there are the lies of bullies and mob bosses and populist autocrats and deepstate cabals and transnational overlord wannabes and their colluding minions , which are special and worse. These last, call them power-lies, are distinguished by the fact that they aren’t even helped by plausibility.


You forgot something ...

Yep! Joe Biden was on top of his game and running the show!

The deepstate doesn't exist!

Trump was hit by a piece of shrapnel.

The assassination attempt was just a colossal series of unbelievable fuckups by a DEI patsy appointee!

TRUMP RUSSIA COLLUSION!

Insurrection!

Mostly peaceful BLM/ANTIFA riots!

Men can be women and women can be men!

*****

The list of official lies is legion and deserves its own thread.

I'm surprised you forgot to mention them.


-----------
"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.



Isn't that weird? That's just weird.

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

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 12:52 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:

You forgot something ...

Yep! Joe Biden was on top of his game and running the show!

The deepstate doesn't exist!

Trump was hit by a piece of shrapnel.

The assassination attempt was just a colossal series of unbelievable fuckups by a DEI patsy appointee!

TRUMP RUSSIA COLLUSION!

Insurrection!

Mostly peaceful BLM/ANTIFA riots!

Men can be women and women can be men!

*****

The list of official lies is legion and deserves its own thread.

I'm surprised you forgot to mention them.

Q16: What, if anything, could Republicans do to get you to vote for them?

A: Reject all nutty conspiracy theories. Fully, 100% commit to the peaceful transfer of power. Acknowledge the empirical reality of human-caused climate change, and the need for both technological and legislative measures to slow it and mitigate its impacts. Support abortion rights, or at least a European-style compromise on abortion. Republicans can keep the anti-wokeness stuff, which actually seems to have become their defining issue. If they do all that, and also the Democrats are taken over by frothing radicals who want to annihilate the state of Israel and abolish the police … that’s, uh, probably the point when I start voting Republican.

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8172

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 12:54 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

You forgot something ...

Yep! Joe Biden was on top of his game and running the show!

The deepstate doesn't exist!

Trump was hit by a piece of shrapnel.

The assassination attempt was just a colossal series of unbelievable fuckups by a DEI patsy appointee!

TRUMP RUSSIA COLLUSION!

Insurrection!

Mostly peaceful BLM/ANTIFA riots!

Men can be women and women can be men!

*****

The list of official lies is legion and deserves its own thread.

I'm surprised you forgot to mention them.

Q16: What, if anything, could Republicans do to get you to vote for them?

A: Reject all nutty conspiracy theories. Fully, 100% commit to the peaceful transfer of power. Acknowledge the empirical reality of human-caused climate change, and the need for both technological and legislative measures to slow it and mitigate its impacts. Support abortion rights, or at least a European-style compromise on abortion. Republicans can keep the anti-wokeness stuff, which actually seems to have become their defining issue. If they do all that, and also the Democrats are taken over by frothing radicals who want to annihilate the state of Israel and abolish the police … that’s, uh, probably the point when I start voting Republican.

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8172

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



Wetware would never vote Republican. It is not in it's coding.

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

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 1:00 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:

Wetware would never vote Republican. It is not in it's coding.

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

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

The reason I won't vote for Trump is that his Trumptards are disgraceful individually. Well, there might be Trumptards in Utah that aren't a disgrace to the human race, but I don't know 'em. I sure know Texas Trumptards: drunks, liars, crappy workers prone to stealing on the job, a long list of human failures bound into political party.

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 1:02 PM

SECOND

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


A New York state appeals court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump's challenge to a gag order in his hush money criminal case, where the former U.S. president was convicted in May on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star.

The decision by the Appellate Division in Manhattan means the Republican presidential nominee cannot comment publicly about individual prosecutors and others in the case until Justice Juan Merchan sentences him on Sept. 18.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-loses-appeal-gag-order-hush-money-
criminal-case-2024-08-01
/

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 1:19 PM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump stated on July 31, 2024 in an NABJ conference appearance:

Kamala Harris was “Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn and she went, she became a Black person.”

Fact check by PolitiFact: Trump is a Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/jul/31/donald-trump/donald-
trumps-pants-on-fire-claim-at-nabj-about-ho
/

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 1:24 PM

SECOND

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


There’s one American who must be angry about the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and 23 other Westerners from prisons in Russia and elsewhere. That angry American is Donald Trump.

Trump has bragged, as he has when speaking of many problems, that only he could solve the problem. Back in May, he wrote on his Truth Social platform that Gershkovich

will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, would do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!

Few social media posts, even from Trump’s hand, have aged so poorly.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/08/evan-gershkovich-release-v
ladimir-putin-trump-harris.html


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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 1:56 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You forgot something ...

Yep! Joe Biden was on top of his game and running the show!
The deepstate doesn't exist!
Trump was hit by a piece of shrapnel.
The assassination attempt was just a colossal series of unbelievable fuckups by a DEI patsy appointee!
TRUMP RUSSIA COLLUSION!
Insurrection!
Mostly peaceful BLM/ANTIFA riots!
Men can be women and women can be men!
The list of official lies is legion and deserves its own thread.
I'm surprised you forgot to mention them.



SECOND:

Q16: What, if anything, could Democrats do to get you to vote for them?

A: Stop lying and censoring. Fully, 100% commit to fair and auditable elections. Stop using actual problems and fake "crises" to impose authoritarianism and phony "solutions" that transfer wealth to the wealthy. Stop promoting "woke" diviseness and victimhood, and commit to equality of education and full meritocracy. Stop warmaking. Promote reindustrialization, balanced trade and economy. Increase required banking reserves. Protect our borders. If they do all that … that’s, uh, probably the point when I start voting Democrat

*****

Fixed it 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  

Thursday, August 1, 2024 1:58 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Wetware would never vote Republican. It is not in it's coding.

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

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

The reason I won't vote



Nobody cares, Wetware.

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

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 1:59 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
A New York state appeals court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump's challenge to a gag order in his hush money criminal case, where the former U.S. president was convicted in May on charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star.

The decision by the Appellate Division in Manhattan means the Republican presidential nominee cannot comment publicly about individual prosecutors and others in the case until Justice Juan Merchan sentences him on Sept. 18.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-loses-appeal-gag-order-hush-money-
criminal-case-2024-08-01
/

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



He will anyway.

Real Americans reject outright the authority of the corrupt Alt-Left New York judicial system.

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

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 2:02 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump stated on July 31, 2024 in an NABJ conference appearance:

Kamala Harris was “Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn and she went, she became a Black person.”

Fact check by PolitiFact: Trump is a Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/jul/31/donald-trump/donald-
trumps-pants-on-fire-claim-at-nabj-about-ho
/

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



PolitiFact is lying to you once again.

Here you go...



Educate yourself with some truth for once. We've got tons of video footage, photographs and articles showing she did just that.

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

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 2:10 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Here's one...

LA Times (October 25, 2019): The progressive Indian grandfather who inspired Kamala Harris

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-10-25/how-kamala-harris-in
dian-family-shaped-her-political-career


Quote:

As she campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris often invokes her late mother, Shyamala, a diminutive and dauntless breast cancer researcher who taught Kamala and her younger sister, Maya, to strive for excellence and lift others up.

These were principles Shyamala inherited from Gopalan and her mother, Rajam. In 1958, she surprised them by applying for a master’s program at UC Berkeley, a campus they had never heard of.

She was 19, the eldest of their four children, and had never set foot outside India. Her parents dug into Gopalan’s retirement savings to pay her tuition and living costs for the first year.

“It was a big deal,” said Harris’ uncle G. Balachandran, a 79-year-old academic in New Delhi. “At that time, the number of unmarried Indian women who had gone to the States for graduate studies — it was probably in the low double digits. But my father was quite open. He said, ‘If you get admission, you go.’”

It sounds today like a classic immigrant tale, but Harris’ grandparents’ broad-minded values were uncommon for the India of that time. That family legacy doesn’t shine through in Harris’ speeches on the campaign trail, where she has struggled to break into the top tier. She seldom delves into her Indian heritage, reflecting a broader reticence to share personal stories beyond a handful of well-worn anecdotes.

“Shyamala was quite definitely influenced by my father, and she in turn had a great influence on Kamala,” Balachandran said in a lengthy conversation in his home, a modest, semidetached apartment his father built on land he was given upon retirement. Much of the family’s story was related by Balachandran and his daughter. Other family members declined to be interviewed.

Gopalan was a Brahmin, part of a privileged elite in Hinduism’s ancient caste hierarchy. In post-independence India, convention destined Brahmin offspring for arranged marriages and comfortable careers in academia, government service or the priesthood — if they were men. Women were not expected to work at all.

All four of his children bucked convention in their own ways.

Balachandran, who earned a PhD in economics and computer science from the University of Wisconsin and enjoyed a distinguished academic career in India, married a Mexican woman and had a daughter. His younger sister Sarala, a retired obstetrician who lives outside the coastal city of Chennai, never married. The youngest, Mahalakshmi, an information scientist who worked for the government in Ontario, Canada, had an arranged marriage but bore no children.

“Not one of them was traditional,” said Harris, who grew close to her aunts and uncle during extended visits to India as a girl.

“When you’re raised in a family, I guess later in life you realize how your family might be different,” she said. “But it all seemed very normal to me. … I obviously did realize as an adult, and as I got older, that they were extremely progressive.”

Gopalan was born in 1911 in Painganadu, a village ringed by temples about 180 miles south of Chennai, then known as Madras. His marriage to Rajam, who was raised in a nearby district of Tamil Nadu state, was arranged.

He started out as a stenographer, and moved the family from New Delhi to Mumbai to Kolkata as he climbed the ranks of the civil service.

In her 2019 memoir, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris wrote that Gopalan had been part of India’s independence movement, but family members said there was no record of him having been anything other than a diligent civil servant. Had he openly advocated ending British rule, he would have been fired, Balachandran said.

Raised mainly by Rajam — a no-nonsense woman with a soft spot for stray animals — the children were studious but occasionally got into mischief. Shyamala and Balachandran, whom the family calls Balu, were about two years apart and partners in high jinks. They would hide under beds, prompting Rajam to root them out with a broom handle.

In 1950s Mumbai, then known as Bombay, where Gopalan was posted as a senior commercial officer at India’s busiest trading hub, there were clear rules at home: To thwart businessmen who wanted to offer bribes, no strangers were allowed to enter the family residence on Pedder Road in the heart of the city, and the children were not to accept any deliveries.

But when visitors arrived bearing parcels, Shyamala and Balachandran would sometimes peek inside.

“If it was sweets or fruits, we’d say, ‘OK, you can give it,’” Balachandran said.

Shyamala was a gifted singer, specializing in the classical Carnatic music of southern India, a discipline she learned from her mother. She won a gold medal in a national competition and occasionally sang on the radio, earning a small bit of cash.

And unlike many Indian parents back then, Balachandran recalled, they let Shyamala keep the money.

At Lady Irwin College, then one of the top women’s institutions in New Delhi, Shyamala studied home science, which encompassed nutrition, textiles and childhood development. It mainly trained students for lives as homemakers, and her father seemed to think the subject was beneath her.

“What is home science?” Balachandran remembered him needling her. “Are you learning how to invite guests?”

Rajam, who was active in raising funds for social causes, was determined that the children pursue careers in medicine, engineering or the law.

“My grandparents had really high expectations of their kids and were nurturing,” said Balachandran’s daughter, Sharada Balachandran Orihuela, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Maryland.

“I do think now of just how permissive they were in allowing their daughters to leave them, but also of how bold the daughters were to want to leave to begin with,” she said. “And given that Shyamala was the oldest, she really set the stage for the rest of the siblings to follow in her path.”

When Shyamala left to study nutrition and endocrinology at Berkeley, eventually earning a PhD, most Indian households didn’t have phone lines. The family stayed in touch through letters, handwritten on lightweight, pale-blue stationery known as aerograms that took about two weeks to travel between India and California.

At the American library in New Delhi, Gopalan found an atlas with a street map of Berkeley. He looked up Shyamala’s address and traced her commute to campus. On her first trip home, Shyamala brought happy souvenirs of her new American life: vinyl jazz records by Louis Armstrong and Dave Brubeck.

She joined the black civil rights movement, where she met a brilliant Jamaican economics student named Donald Harris. When she and Harris married in 1963 — in what in India is still described as a “love marriage” — it marked an even greater challenge to convention, especially because she didn’t introduce him to her parents beforehand.

Donald Harris’ race wasn’t an issue for Shyamala’s parents, Balachandran said, but “the fact that she didn’t marry in India might have upset them, and the fact that it was someone they didn’t meet.”

No one from the family attended the wedding, but Balachandran said that was because of financial reasons. He had just gone off to study in Britain, and money at home was tight.

A few years later, Shyamala and Donald brought their daughters to Zambia. Kamala would have been 4 or 5 years old; Maya, two years younger, was still sleeping in a crib. The young Kamala was oblivious to the intrigue swirling around her, with Gopalan’s government-issued car whisking him to meetings with Zambian officials and diplomats dropping by for visits.

What she remembers is the soil of Lusaka, rich with copper, which glowed a fiery red.

After Shyamala divorced Donald in the early 1970s, she brought her daughters back to India often, usually to Chennai, where her parents settled after Gopalan retired. As the eldest grandchild, Kamala sometimes tagged along on Gopalan’s walks with his retiree buddies, soaking up their debates about building democracy and fighting corruption in India.

“My grandfather felt very strongly about the importance of defending civil rights and fighting for equality and integrity,” Harris said. “I just remember them always talking about the people who were corrupt versus the people who were real servants.”

In photos, Gopalan stares gravely from behind oversized glasses, but with his granddaughters he cracked sly jokes. When Rajam left the house, Gopalan, a strict vegetarian who avoided even eggs, sometimes cast Harris and her sister a conspiratorial look and said: “OK, let’s have French toast.”

He taught Harris to play five-card stud poker. If she misbehaved, Gopalan would take her into another room and pretend to slap her on the hand — urging her to shriek in mock pain — before reemerging to tell Shyamala, “I handled it.”

Harris wore saris for family events and spoke a few Tamil phrases with her relatives. Shyamala was determined that the girls retain links to India even as she understood — as Harris wrote in her memoir — “that she was raising two black daughters” in an America that would see them as black.

“There was never a question that they were Indian,” said Balachandran Orihuela, 36. “I don’t think she felt conflicted about it. She told the girls, ‘You are Indian; you are black. You don’t have to prove that you’re one or the other.’”

Shyamala bore the hidden scars of discrimination — Harris has said she was passed over for promotions and dismissed as unintelligent because of her accent — and dispensed lessons to her family and graduate students of color with the same sharp, sassy wit.

Her toughness became well known. After she had back surgery, she would work from the bedroom of her spacious condo overlooking Lake Merritt in Oakland, sitting up on her adjustable Tempur-Pedic mattress amid a sea of papers.

Balachandran Orihuela, who lived with Shyamala as an undergraduate at Oakland’s Mills College, recalled extended conversations surrounding race following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Shyamala warned her that American men would call her exotic, a term she said was meant to diminish her.

“The minute they call you exotic, you walk away from them and tell them to f--- off,” Balachandran Orihuela remembered her saying. If anyone asked where she was from, Shyamala admonished her to answer: “None of your business.”

Shyamala died in 2009 of complications from colon cancer. She was 70. Rajam passed away later that year.

In her cousin Harris, 18 years her senior, Balachandran Orihuela sees glimmers of her aunt’s intensity and focus, as well as her warmth. When Harris arches an eyebrow during a presidential debate, the feisty skepticism reminds her of Shyamala.

“There’s very little ambiguity, very little moral relativism to debate with Kamala,” she said, “and Shyamala was very similar.”

In February 1998 — the month Harris was appointed assistant district attorney in San Francisco, beginning her political rise — she traveled to India to visit Gopalan, who was 86 and ailing.

Two weeks after her visit, he passed away.

One of Harris’ fondest memories of Gopalan’s final years was in 1991, when the whole family gathered in Chennai to celebrate his 80th birthday. It had been at least 20 years since everyone was together, and Rajam — by then great-grandmother to Maya’s daughter, Meena — insisted that they all stay in their three-bedroom apartment, on a quiet, tree-lined street a few blocks from the beach.

Overwhelmed with pride at having four generations under her roof, Rajam urged them not to venture outside in one group, lest the evil eye fall on her extended brood, Balachandran recalled.

Harris, who was about 27 at the time, remembered a house bristling with strong personalities, her aunts and uncle suddenly reverting to the role of children. Rajam quibbled with Shyamala, two forces of nature colliding in the ground-floor flat.

“It was just a whole scene,” Harris said with a laugh, “and by the end of it we went to a hotel.”

Bengali reported from New Delhi and Mason from Los Angeles.





PICTURED: Kamala Harris, left, with her sister, Maya, and mother, Shyamala, outside their apartment in Berkeley in January 1970.
(Kamala Harris campaign)


PICTURED: Kamala Harris. Not a black woman.

*I don't have any text from the article about this one since they appear to have tried to remove this picture already. Though a google image search found this picture and linked to the article that doesn't have the picture anymore.

What happened to Kamala? She looks like she fell down the ugly tree and smashed her face into every branch on the way down. If that's her sister on the far right, she's a real Marsha to Kamala's Jan Brady.




Oh, and P.S. Kamala's father Donald Harris, who was briefly mentioned as a mere footnote in this very long article chronicling Kamala's very Indocentric upbringing and life-story, was a Jamacian born man who is an economics professor at Stanford University. He does not speak with his daughter. When she was running for California senate he said that nobody should vote for her.

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

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 8:09 PM

SECOND

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


Anne Applebaum's new book, "Autocracy, Inc.," examines how autocracies are gaining power, and what they’re doing with that power.



Do you think Donald Trump would be an autocrat?

Anne Applebaum: He certainly says so.

I mean, sometimes he says so in a kind of jokey way. I'll be dictator for one day. Sometimes, he says so in the language he uses about whether it's about president XI, who he admires, or president Putin, who he admires, or even the dictator of North Korea, who's driven his country into poverty and isolation, who he also admires. So he's telling us what kinds of people he admires. He has very few kind words for American allies or for fellow democracies.

It's really the absolute people with absolute power that he wants to be like. You can also hear in the language he uses, whether it's about judges or whether it's about the media or whether it's out American institutions of other kinds, about the electoral system, maybe above all, that he has great disdain for the institutions of democracy and the rules that were set up to make sure that power is checked in our country and that the executive isn't a king. And those are disturbing traits. And they would be, you know, they would be disturbing at any time in history, but they're particularly disturbing now when we have the rise of so many leaders with absolute power around the world who would love to have a transactional American president to do deals with.

Download Anne Applebaum’s free books from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?&req=Anne+Applebaum+Autocracy

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 8:31 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:
Donald Trump stated on July 31, 2024 in an NABJ conference appearance:

Kamala Harris was “Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn and she went, she became a Black person.”

Fact check by PolitiFact: Trump is a Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2024/jul/31/donald-trump/donald-
trumps-pants-on-fire-claim-at-nabj-about-ho
/

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



PolitiFact is lying to you once again.

Here you go...

Educate yourself with some truth for once. We've got tons of video footage, photographs and articles showing she did just that.

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

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

Kamala Harris' father is Donald Jasper Harris. Both Harris are black. One Harris is also Indian. Take a look at Donald Jasper Harris to see a black father: https://www.google.com/search?q=donald+jasper+harris

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 8:49 PM

SECOND

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


Who Donald Trump Was Really Speaking to With His Vile Comments on Kamala Harris’ Blackness

We’ve seen this before.

By Kaila Philo | Aug 01, 2024 3:54 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/08/amala-harris-identify-indi
an-black-trump-journalists-race-scott-nabj.html


Polarization is the defining feature of American politics in this era. Amid growing political divides and deepening racial inequities, many voters are looking for politicians to pick sides.

This is the message that Trump seeks to sow with his contempt for Harris’ identity: that she won’t pick a side—and that her lack of allegiance to one race or ethnicity or “side” makes her inherently untrustworthy.

Ultimately, Sims argued, that messaging is yet another symptom of a “perverted racism” designed to pit oppressed groups against each other. “Because if they’re against each other,” Sims noted, “they’re not going to unite against who?”

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 8:56 PM

SECOND

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


GOP Lawmakers Don’t Know How Trump’s ‘Mass Deportation’ Policy Would Work. They’re Still On Board.

When NOTUS asked Rep. Troy Nehls how the government would deport potentially millions of undocumented immigrants, Nehls had a simple answer: “One at a time.” (Nehls is a Texas Trumptard who wouldn't know that is a stupid answer.)

https://www.notus.org/congress/gop-lawmakers-trump-mass-deportation

Former President Donald Trump is promising “mass deportation” — and Republicans in Congress have been quick to support the promise, even if they’re unsure how such an effort would work.

“You’ll have to ask the president,” Sen. Ron Johnson said when NOTUS asked last week what that sort of deportation policy would look like.

When NOTUS asked Rep. Troy Nehls a similar question — how the government would go about getting a large number of undocumented people out of the country — the Texas Republican provided a simple answer: “One at a time.”

The idea of a “mass deportation” is difficult to pin down. It’s become a rallying cry on the right, but getting details into how the government would potentially deport tens of millions of people is much more difficult. Whether or not it’s realistic depends largely on how people interpret the meaning.

“There’s all these comments on, mass deportation is gonna be, you know, grabbing all these people who are still in their legal process,” Sen. James Lankford told NOTUS. “That’s not gonna happen because, again, a court’s gonna stop it, and the Trump administration has been through this before. They know it.”

“No one really knows what it looks like,” Lankford added. “I just know what a court would stop and what a court wouldn’t stop.”

And yet, because no one knows what it would look like, it’s been easy for Trump allies to endorse the idea without having to address some of the more brutal details, like family separation policies. The lack of details has also allowed immigration advocates to paint a scary picture.

They ask how the government could go about finding undocumented people and figuring out if they’re in the country legally without a huge increase in law enforcement, without the need to prove citizenship for everyday activities and without using data and surveillance to peer into the lives of Americans.

Much more at https://www.notus.org/congress/gop-lawmakers-trump-mass-deportation

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

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Thursday, August 1, 2024 11:54 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Kamala Harris' father is Donald Jasper Harris. Both Harris are black. One Harris is also Indian. Take a look at Donald Jasper Harris to see a black father: https://www.google.com/search?q=donald+jasper+harris

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



Besides the point, Wetware.

And her father, by his own admission, is barely black. Quadroon, perhaps? The Irish had a lot of Jamaican slaves back in the day. Harris' father has more Irish in him than I do.

And I've got more Irish in me than Kamala has black in her.



And any of you double-digit IQ white college "educated" retards referring to her as African American now are just fucking idiots. Neither India nor Jamaica are located in Africa. Not today. Not in the history of the world.

Read a fucking book.

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

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

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Friday, August 2, 2024 5:18 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Is it just me?

I'm already getting tired of that endlessly smiling Kamala_ face

Or does the media I go to only show stupid pictures of her?

-----------
"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.

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