Elections; 2024 by THG

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Elections; 2024

POSTED BY: THG
UPDATED: Saturday, May 4, 2024 16:44
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VIEWED: 22583
PAGE 23 of 48

Thursday, December 7, 2023 1:21 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Thursday, December 7, 2023 7:02 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Just as appropriate would be a sign that said "Nikki = Irrelevant"

But then he'd also have to be wearing a shirt that said "I'm with Irrelevant".

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Thursday, December 7, 2023 8:43 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Just as appropriate would be a sign that said "Nikki = Irrelevant"

But then he'd also have to be wearing a shirt that said "I'm with Irrelevant".

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

Hahaha!!!!

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Friday, December 8, 2023 5:44 AM

SECOND

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

Trump’s intentions are out in the open for anyone paying attention. His statement to Hannity, that about “day one” and that “after that, I’m not a dictator,” is a bizarre response for a would-be American president. NYU Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, scholar in authoritarianism and author of the book Strongmen, had this to say:

I have studied dictators for decades and guess what they don't stop being dictators after one day
6:50 PM · Dec 6, 2023
https://twitter.com/ruthbenghiat/status/1732563236631814474

Download all Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s free books, including Strongmen from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Ruth+Ben-Ghiat

Quote:
“NO HISTORIAN CAN GET INSIDE the heads of the dead … But with sufficient documentation, we can detect patterns of thought and action,” writes Robert Darnton. This book aims to do just that by looking at the evolution of authoritarianism, defined as a political system in which executive power is asserted at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches of government. I focus on Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco Bahamonde, Muammar Gaddafi, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, Mobutu Sese Seko, Silvio Berlusconi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump, with Idi Amin, Mohamed Siad Barre, Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Nahrendra Modi, Viktor Orbán, and others making cameo appearances.

Some readers may wonder why I do not discuss strong female leaders in modern history, such as Britain’s prime minister Margaret Thatcher or India’s prime minister Indira Gandhi. While some of these women may have had certain strongman traits (Thatcher’s nickname was “The Iron Lady”) or engaged in repressive actions against minority populations, none of them sought to destroy democracy, and so they are not addressed here.

– Ruth Ben-Ghiat

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, December 8, 2023 6:43 AM

SECOND

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

A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week found that 52 percent of Republicans would not vote for him if he was in prison on Election Day.

Let's say that the relentless grind of polarization and partisanship shaves that number down to just 20 percent — this still would represent a landscape-altering disaster for the GOP. According to 2020 exit polls, self-identified Republicans were 36 percent of the more than 158 million Americans who cast a ballot in 2020, or about 57 million voters. 20 percent of that group is 11.4 million, and let's be especially charitable and assume that they just stay home. In 2020, that would have turned Biden's 4.5 point national popular vote win into a 12-point romp with an Electoral Vote total pushing 400.

If an imprisoned Trump, recently convicted of trying to illegally install himself in power as dictator, is down 12 points heading into Election Day, that could exert significant downward pressure on House and Senate candidates, handing Democrats the kind of broad-based repudiation of the GOP that they have dreamed of throughout the Trump era.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-ultimate-nightmare-scenari
o-for-trump-supporters-opinion/ar-AA1l9P9Z

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, December 8, 2023 7:56 AM

SECOND

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

Seven delusions plaguing the mind of the Trump base voter

By Myra Adam | 12/08/23 7:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4345693-seven-delusions-plaguing-
the-mind-of-the-trump-base-voter/

When Capitol building cleaning crews were removing feces from the hallowed halls of Congress after the riot of Jan. 6, 2021, no one imagined that Donald Trump would be leading the 2024 Republican presidential primary field by a 48-point margin just three years later.

Two overarching reasons help explain this unusual circumstance.

First, his “Make America Great Again” base is immovable. Trump knew that already on Jan. 23, 2016, when at a rally in Iowa, he famously stated, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters. Okay?” This is, for example, why Trump can be so comfortable with careless conversations about the executive orders he wants to sign at the beginning of his second term, telling Sean Hannity that he would not be a dictator, “other than day one.”

Second, May poll data found that six out of ten Republicans still think the 2020 election was illegitimate. No wonder, since at his Iowa rally last Saturday, Trump repeatedly told the crowd that Democrats “rigged and stole the 2020 election.”

This delusion has poisoned Trump voters’ minds in seven distinct ways.

1. Deceptive Rationalization

Whatever Trump says or does — no matter the evidence to the contrary — loyal followers normalize, downplay, excuse, and rationalize his behaviors, speech, and legal issues. Indeed, any of dozens of instances of his controversial behavior would have doomed any traditional presidential candidate before June 2015, when he first descended the Trump Tower escalator.

No “traditional” presidential candidate could have survived two impeachments, indictments on 91 felony counts, and numerous investigations without the magic spell of deceptive rationalization. That is the superstructure reinforcing Trump’s movement.

Among my Trump-loyal friends, I often hear rationalizations such as, “I don’t like his personality, but I like his policies,” and “Our nation was stronger when he was president.”

When I ask, “What about Jan. 6, 2021?” the answer is, “That was overblown.” I say, “What about his trying to overturn the Constitution to stay in power?” The retort is, “It was justified, since the election was stolen.” Finally, I ask, “How about all his indictments?” Answer: “It is a Democrat scam to keep him from winning in 2024.”

Deceptive rationalization is the unbreakable feedback loop between Trump and his followers. Trump is perpetually the innocent victim who cannot lose or fail, and the star who always rises, vowing to undo any wrongs, improve your life, and strengthen the nation.

More at https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4345693-seven-delusions-plaguing-
the-mind-of-the-trump-base-voter/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, December 8, 2023 8:54 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Brainwashed waste of carbon. It's what you are.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, December 10, 2023 8:22 AM

SECOND

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

Opinion | Why Fundamentalists Love Trump

By David French | Dec 7, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/opinion/donald-trump-fundamentalist
s-evangelical.html

I just finished reading Tim Alberta’s masterly new book, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.” It’s a powerful and emotionally resonant account of the transformation in evangelical politics that has brought us to the current moment: A godless man, Donald Trump, may now possess more devoted support from white evangelical Christians than any other president in the history of the United States. And most worrisome of all, that support is now disproportionately concentrated among the most churchgoing segment of the Republican electorate.

One of the troubling aspects of the Trump era for me, as a churchgoing evangelical, has been watching the evolution of his support among white evangelicals. During the 2016 primaries, I took some solace in the fact that Trump’s support seemed to decline the more a voter went to church. According to the 2016 American National Election Studies Pilot Study, he received majority support from white evangelicals who seldom or never attended church, but he received barely over a third of the votes of white evangelicals who attended weekly.

As we headed into the general election, a self-justifying narrative emerged. Countless churchgoing evangelicals told friends and neighbors that Trump had been their last choice among Republicans but that they had to vote for him against Hillary Clinton as the only pro-life option remaining.

Soon enough, however, the churchgoing dynamic flipped. I noticed the change among people I knew before I saw it in the data. After Trump won, folks in the pews warmed up to him considerably, especially those who were most firmly ensconced in evangelical America. Most home-schooling families I knew became militantly pro-Trump. I watched many segments of Christian media become militantly pro-Trump. And I always noticed the same trend: the more fundamentalist the Christians, the more likely they were to be all in.

Then the data started to confirm my observations. In 2018, Paul Djupe, a Denison University professor, and Ryan Burge, a statistician and associate professor at Eastern Illinois University, reported that Republican approval for Trump was positively correlated with church attendance: The more often people went to church, the more likely they were to strongly approve of Trump. By 2020, white evangelicals who attended church monthly or more were more likely to support Trump than evangelical voters who attended rarely or not at all.

I’m certainly not arguing that all regular churchgoers are fundamentalists, but in my experience fundamentalists are virtually always regular churchgoers. To understand why they support Trump, it’s important to understand fundamentalism more broadly and to understand how Trump fits so neatly within the culture of fundamentalist Christianity.

For some readers, that might be a head-spinning idea. How on earth could a secular, twice-divorced, philandering reality television star fit in neatly with fundamentalist Christians? It makes no sense until you understand that the true distinction between fundamentalism and mainstream beliefs isn’t what fundamentalists believe but how fundamentalists believe. As Richard Land, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, once told me, “Fundamentalism is far more a psychology than a theology.” That’s why, for example, you can have competing Christian fundamentalisms, competing Muslim fundamentalisms and secular movements that possess fundamentalist characteristics.

I grew up in a church that most would describe as fundamentalist, and I’ve encountered fundamentalism of every stripe my entire life. And while fundamentalist ideas can often be quite variable and complex, I’ve never encountered a fundamentalist culture that didn’t combine three key traits: certainty, ferocity and solidarity.

Certainty is the key building block. The fundamentalist mind isn’t clouded by doubt. In fact, when people are fully captured by the fundamentalist mind-set, they often can’t even conceive of good-faith disagreement. To fundamentalists, their opponents aren’t just wrong but evil. Critics are derided as weak or cowards or grifters. Only a grave moral defect can explain the failure to agree.

That certainty breeds ferocity. Indeed, ferocity — not piety — is a principal trait of every truly fundamentalist movement I’ve ever encountered. Ferocity is so valuable to fundamentalism that it can cover a multitude of conventional Christian sins. Defending Trump in 2016, Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Dallas, an evangelical megachurch, explained, “Frankly, I want the meanest, toughest son of a gun I can find. And I think that’s the feeling of a lot of evangelicals.”

Alberta captures this rage well in his book. He tells a gut-wrenching anecdote about receiving a nasty note in 2019 at the funeral of his father, a pastor. After Alberta spoke at the service, he was handed the note from a member of the congregation condemning him as part of an “evil plot” to “undermine God’s ordained leader of the United States” and demanding that he seek absolution by investigating the “deep state.” This would be a strange message to direct at a journalist under any circumstance. But to do so at his father’s funeral is grotesque.

Yet certainty and ferocity are nothing without solidarity. It’s the sense of shared purpose and community that makes any form of fundamentalism truly potent. There is an undeniable allure to the idea that you’re joining a community that has achieved an understanding of life’s mysteries or discovered a path to resolving injustice. As angry as fundamentalists may feel, at the same time, there is true joy among comrades in the foxhole — at least as long as they remain comrades.

I’m reminded of an infamous quote by Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, regarding the necessity of loyalty. Explaining Trump’s hostility toward Ron DeSantis, Huckabee said, “I think there are two virtues — loyalty and confidentiality. Be loyal to the people who helped you and learn how to keep your mouth shut.”

Again, that’s not piety. It’s solidarity.

When you recognize the psychology of fundamentalism, fundamentalist Christian enthusiasm for Trump makes considerably more sense. His fundamentalist supporters are certain that he is fulfilling a divine purpose. They are ferocious in their response to opponents, especially those Christians they believe to be weak or squishes. And they experience great joy in their motivated, activist solidarity.

But the keys to fundamentalist success are also the source of its ultimate failure. Certainty, ferocity and solidarity can combine to create powerful social and political movements. They can have a steamrolling effect in institutions because their opponents — almost by definition — have less certainty, less ferocity and less solidarity.

We’ve seen this phenomenon in both secular and religious spaces across the political spectrum. A small number of extremely confident and aggressive people can turn an organization upside down. Political activists who possess fundamentalist intensity can push through resistance — at least until their inherent intolerance creates sufficient backlash to trigger real opposition.

That’s how fundamentalism fails. Certainty, which gives so much purpose, ultimately struggles in the face of complex realities. Ferocity, which allows fundamentalists to bully and intimidate opponents, also limits the ability to win converts. And solidarity, which creates community, can become stifling, as it encourages conformity and punishes those who raise good-faith questions.

Why do so many fundamentalists love Trump? Because in his certainty, ferocity and demands of loyalty, he’s a far more culturally familiar figure than a person of restraint and rectitude such as the departing senator Mitt Romney, who has the piety of a true believer but does not possess the ferocity of the fundamentalist. Thus Romney was culturally out of step with the millions of Christians who wanted, in the words of Jeffress, “the meanest, toughest son of a gun” they could find.

That’s why Trumpism, too, is ultimately doomed to fail. It’s engineered to destroy, not to build. The very characteristics that give it life also plant the seeds of its destruction. And so as we watch the continued marriage between Trumpism and fundamentalism dominate the right, the proper question isn’t whether fundamentalism will permanently remake American culture in its own image. Rather, it’s how much damage it will do before it collapses under the weight of its own rage and sin.

Download Tim Alberta’s free book, “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory” from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Tim+Alberta

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, December 10, 2023 10:10 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Opinion | Why Fundamentalists Love Trump

Opinion. On NYT of all places. 'Nuff said.

Don't show that article to Ted. He's always the guy posting articles about how fundamentalist Christians have turned their back on Trump.

You might make his poor little head explode.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Monday, December 11, 2023 7:15 AM

SECOND

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

Trump doubles down on ‘dictator’ desire

By Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza and Rachael Bade | 12/10/2023 11:32 AM EST

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2023/12/10/trump-doubles
-down-on-dictator-desire-00130973

At an event last night sponsored by the New York Young Republican Club, DONALD TRUMP unsurprisingly defended his comments at a Fox News town hall this week during which he said that if reelected, he would be a “dictator” — but only on Day One.

“I said I want to be a dictator for one day,” Trump told the MAGA faithful at Cipriani in Manhattan. “You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

Trump also insinuated that if he returns to the White House, he will use the force of the federal government to come after JOE BIDEN.

“He’s opened up a Pandora’s box that will never let our country be the same,” Trump said to the supportive crowd (which, Jason Beeferman reports, included both the “chairman of an Austrian political party founded by ex-Nazis [and] the conservative Twitter star behind the anti-trans Bud Light backlash”). “I can only say to Joe: Be very careful what you wish for, but [what] you have done is a terrible thing.” Reminder: There’s no evidence that the White House had anything to do with the indictments against Trump.

To the extent there was any subtlety to that sentiment, the underlying desire was laid bare in remarks by the organization’s chair, GAVIN WAX, who spoke before Trump.

“It will be a time for retribution,” Wax said of Trump’s potential return to power.

“Gavin, that was an excellent speech,” Trump said.

When a historian wrote an essay the other day warning that the election of former President Donald J. Trump next year could lead to dictatorship, one of Mr. Trump’s allies quickly responded by calling for the historian to be sent to prison. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024
-election-robert-kagan/

It almost sounds like a parody: The response to concerns about dictatorship is to prosecute the author. But Mr. Trump and his allies are not going out of their way to reassure those worried about what a new term would bring by firmly rejecting the dictatorship charge. If anything, they seem to be leaning into it.

If Mr. Trump is returned to office, people close to him have vowed to “come after” the news media, open criminal investigations into onetime aides who broke with the former president and purge the government of civil servants deemed disloyal. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/us/politics/trump-kash-patel-journa
lists.html

When critics said Mr. Trump’s language about ridding Washington of “vermin” echoed that of Adolf Hitler, the former president’s spokesman said the critics’ “sad, miserable existence will be crushed” under a new Trump administration. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/13/us/politics/trump-vermin-rhetoric-f
ascists.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, December 11, 2023 7:23 AM

SECOND

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

"Trump derangement syndrome" is real — but it's not what they say it is

In an epic case of projection, followers of Trump accuse their foes of a mental disorder

By Kirk Swearingen | December 10, 2023, 9:00AM (EST)

https://www.salon.com/2023/12/10/trump-derangement-syndrome-is-real--b
ut-its-not-what-they-say-it-is/

Like the boastful schoolboy he will forever be, Donald Trump smirkingly twists apt descriptions of himself and his often cartoonishly deranged acts against those who point out his transgressions. And as in a game of Follow the Leader, his fellow Republicans continue to project their own psychopathies on the truth-tellers.

Thus the all-too-accurate pejorative "Trump crime family," describing decades of phony charitable and educational scams, purposeful misstatements of property values and massive grifting during the White House years, becomes mock-outraged references to the “Biden Crime Family.”

Call one of his ravings sent out in the wee hours on his social media platform Truth Central deranged, and he’ll latch onto that word to use as invective against his political opponents.

As Salon’s Heather Parton recently noted, Trump is even trying to turn the tables on the increasing number of historians, journalists and politicians who warn that the former grifter in chief is an obvious threat to the continuation of our democracy. Yes, the twice-impeached ex-president who lies about and despises the free press and talks about suspending the Constitution now regularly claims that he is somehow protecting all of us from “Joe Biden’s war on democracy.”

As it turns out, Trump’s exhortation to insurrection, “Fight like hell or you won’t have a country,” turned out to be a warning to all non-faux patriots, the great majority of Americans, who now are now forced to be conservative, whatever else they may be —conservative about preserving the Constitution, political norms, the rule of law and freedom of the press — because no one else seems willing to do that any longer.

That the 77-year-old former president who is still attempting to overturn the 2020 election simply makes use of the “I know you are, but what am I?” taunt of a pre-teen is laughable (Parton calls it “his latest tribute to the late great Pee-wee Herman”) and also repugnant, because he’s supposed to be an adult. But, like all con men and authoritarians, who are also essentially swindlers, he knows that if you repeat something often enough, an amazing number of people will come to believe it.

Or they’ll believe it because they just want to believe it. As Paul Simon long ago wrote in the classic “The Boxer”: “A man hears what he wants to hear/ and disregards the rest.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, December 11, 2023 6:33 PM

SECOND

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

Here's a reminder of why lots of people are afraid of Trump's authoritarian streak:

• He tried to violently overthrow the 2020 election.

• He often speaks admiringly of foreign dictators.

• He has explicitly promised to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies.

• He wants to eliminate big chunks of the civil service so he can appoint his own loyalists instead.

• He writes about "rooting out" all the vermin who don't support him.

• He laughs about being a dictator on "day one" and then stopping.

These aren't merely points of ordinary partisan disagreement. They are the signs of a man who will at least try to bring down the rule of law for his own aggrandizement. He may not succeed, but it won't be for lack of desire.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, December 11, 2023 8:54 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Here's a reminder of why lots of people are afraid of Trump's authoritarian streak:

• He tried to violently overthrow the 2020 election.

Lie.

Quote:
• He often speaks admiringly of foreign dictators.

Your President behaves like one.

Quote:
• He has explicitly promised to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies.

Your President and his team have done this for 3 years now, and for the entire 4 years before he was elected.

Quote:
• He wants to eliminate big chunks of the civil service so he can appoint his own loyalists instead.

Just like every President who gets elected does every time power changes hands.

Quote:
• He writes about "rooting out" all the vermin who don't support him.

This your guy, fucktard?

Quote:
• He laughs about being a dictator on "day one" and then stopping.

Taken extremely out of context, and you know it.

Quote:
These aren't merely points of ordinary partisan disagreement. They are the signs of a man who will at least try to bring down the rule of law for his own aggrandizement. He may not succeed, but it won't be for lack of desire.

I guess we'll find out in about a year, huh?

Oh... and now you're plagerizing Asshole Kevin Drum, huh?

https://jabberwocking.com/whos-the-real-dictator-here/

Quote:

Who’s the real dictator here?
Author Kevin DrumPublished on December 11, 2023 – 3:06 pm13 Comments on Who’s the real dictator here?

The latest version of "No, you are" comes from Allysia Finley, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, who says that Biden is the real dictator. Her evidence is the usual farrago of right-wing nonsense: Biden signed some executive orders she doesn't like; he put in place some protections from oil drilling that she doesn't like; he has border policies she doesn't like; and most laughably, a lunatic federal judge said he was bullying social media platforms, an allegation so ridiculous that even the Fifth Circuit largely overturned it. Oh, and Biden's Justice Department has gone after Donald Trump on "trumped up charges." Uh huh.

This is all nonsense. Some of it is just stuff Finley disagrees with while the rest is a figment of her imagination. Conversely, here's a reminder of why lots of people are afraid of Trump's authoritarian streak:

He tried to violently overthrow the 2020 election.
He often speaks admiringly of foreign dictators.
He has explicitly promised to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies.
He wants to eliminate big chunks of the civil service so he can appoint his own loyalists instead.
He writes about "rooting out" all the vermin who don't support him.
He laughs about being a dictator on "day one" and then stopping.

These aren't merely points of ordinary partisan disagreement. They are the signs of a man who will at least try to bring down the rule of law for his own aggrandizement. He may not succeed, but it won't be for lack of desire.

You're pathetic.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, December 12, 2023 8:37 AM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You're pathetic.

6ix, you could make a decent life for yourself after you drop your delusions. Here is one of many to drop: Trump is Superman.

The President Is Not Superman

By Tom Nichols | Dec 11, 2023

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-president-is-not-superman/a
r-AA1lm2R3

America is facing an existential authoritarian threat from Donald Trump and the Republican Party in 2024, in part because voters have for too long thought of the presidency as an omnipotent throne.

President Joe Biden is trying to run for reelection on a record of policy successes. In modern American politics, this is a nonstarter: Many Americans no longer tie policy successes or failures to individual politicians. Instead, they decide what they like or don’t like and then assign blame or credit based on whom they already love or hate. Donald Trump understands this problem and exploits it. Whatever his other emotional and intellectual failings, he has always grasped that many American voters now want a superhero, not a president.

The public’s cultish fascination with celebrity is not a new problem, but it’s getting worse. Back in 1992, I was a young professor living in New Hampshire. I was teaching political science back in those days, but I had several years of practical experience from working in city, state, and federal politics. Nonetheless, I was unprepared for the madness that settles over the Granite State during the presidential primaries. I went to several events, and I started to worry about how dysfunctionally Americans regard the office of the chief executive.

As various contenders — including the right-wing populist Pat Buchanan — made their way through the state, I got to hear voters directly addressing the candidates. As far as I could tell, they had one overriding message for the people contending to be the Leader of the Free World at a time of tremendous global instability, and it sounded something like this:

“I am an unemployed pipe fitter from Laconia, and I would like to know when you’re going to get me a job.”

Say what you will about Bill Clinton, but he got it. He’d bite his lip and exude kilocalories of well-practiced empathy. George H. W. Bush — who defeated Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis four years earlier by depicting the Duke as a liberal android with antifreeze in his veins — took his turn in the barrel, checking his watch during a debate and trying to get across a message of caring by saying “Message: I care.”

I always knew that a fair number of voters would form “parasocial” relationships with presidents, a phenomenon — one that is perfectly normal, within limits — in which people think they are connected to, and know, celebrities. What I was not prepared for, however, was to see up close how ordinary citizens think of the American president as Superman (or, if you prefer, the Green Lantern), a nearly omnipotent being who can create new realities through sheer willpower. In 1992, and again during the less contentious 1996 election, I came to understand better how the presidency in the postwar era — and especially during the Cold War — had become so large and its reach so broad that the glare of its powers wiped out the ability of voters to see any office below it.

When I would sit through events in northern New England, I was stunned that the local citizenry seemed unaware of any other level or branch of government. As an occasional talking head on New Hampshire television, I would sometimes try to engage some of these folks. I would ask: Do you have a mayor? A city council? Who is your state representative? (New Hampshire has one of the smallest ratios of voters to legislators in its House of Representatives in the union.) Have you called your state senator? What about the governor? How about your member of Congress?

Sometimes, people knew who these other officials were, and sometimes they didn’t. But in the end, there was an unshakeable faith that if you were unemployed in New Hampshire, the buck stopped in Washington, D.C.

Let’s not be too harsh in blaming the voters. Politicians — in America and elsewhere — encourage this view by doing what politicians do, taking credit for everything good that happens in the nation and sticking blame for the bad stuff on their opponents. It’s a stupid and dangerous game. When it works, it’s magic. Crime fell on your watch? Of course it did; well done, Mr. President. A new wonder drug was developed? You did that, sir. But when things go bad, the temptation to evade blame is overwhelming.

Worse, partisans have every interest in catastrophizing the state of the nation: No one runs on a slogan of “Hey, things are basically okay but we can do better.” Instead, they seek to convince voters in each cycle that the nation is a hot mess and that their nominee for president is the savior who can fix everything — even the stuff that isn’t broken. (Ironically, voters generally don’t care about the one area over which presidents do have nearly full control, foreign policy, unless it’s related to terrorism.)

Republicans, in particular, are the masters at continuously depicting the country as a hellhole and then arguing that the only recourse is to have more hailing to the chief. Their position is rooted in both bad faith and logic: The GOP is becoming a minority party, and it knows that the peculiar path through the Electoral College to the White House is the best hope for exercising national power. But make no mistake: Democrats, too, have an obsession with the presidency. The scholar Mark Lilla calls this the Democratic “daddy complex,” the belief that the president is a father figure who can solve all our problems — which is why so many Democrats show up for presidential elections and then ignore almost everything else.

Trump has played to both sides of the Superman/daddy concept, encouraging a cult of personality that endows one man with saintly powers — a man who never has to deliver, and who can never fail but can only be failed by others. (Trump reportedly wanted to emerge from his COVID treatment at Walter Reed hospital by unveiling a Superman emblem under his shirt.) His GOP competitors still refuse to recognize the irrationality of the Trump cult; in the primary debates, they have argued over policies, as if those matter. Only Vivek Ramaswamy has tried to replicate the Trump celebrity dynamic, but cults do not transfer well and his featherweight Trumpism has had limited appeal even within the GOP.

Biden, meanwhile, has clumsily tried to play the personality game by branding good economic news as “Bidenomics.” Ironically, Biden actually can take at least some credit for the economy (as an extension of his legislative successes), but tacking his name onto economic conditions when voters flatly refuse to draw that connection is a risky and hollow move that cannot even begin to break through the noise of Trump’s blood-and-soil fascism and cries for social and cultural vengeance.

Cults of personality are always a danger in mass politics, and never more so than when unscrupulous opportunists such as Donald Trump or Viktor Orbán or Recep Tayipp Erdogan warp democratic politics by fusing the idea of the nation to themselves. The world is living through an authoritarian revival, despite some democratic successes (in Poland, most recently). America should be the example to other democracies; instead, years of glorifying individual leaders of both parties have left voters in the United States with an unrealistic understanding of the presidency and its powers — a civic weakness that Trump is exploiting every day on the campaign trail.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, December 12, 2023 10:03 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You're pathetic.
6ix, you could make a decent life for yourself after you drop your delusions.

I have no complaints.

Quote:
The President Is Not Superman

By Tom Nichols | Dec 11, 2023

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-president-is-not-superman/a
r-AA1lm2R3

Oh good. We're not plaguerizing today then.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023 6:55 AM

SECOND

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

A Texas case shows that abortion ban exemptions are a sham by Republican Party

Soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, horror stories started emerging of women denied medically urgent abortions for pregnancies gone dangerously awry. In response, the anti-abortion movement (that is another way to say the Republican Party) developed a sort of conspiracy theory to rationalize away the results of their policies.

Abortion rights activists, they argued, were deliberately misconstruing abortion laws, written by the Republican Party, leading doctors to refuse to treat women who obviously qualified for exceptions. “Abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that lifesaving care is not or may not be permitted in these states, leading to provider confusion and poor outcomes for women,” said a report by the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute, a wing of the Republican Party. The Catholic conservative Richard Doerflinger, a Trump-lover, accused “pro-abortion groups” of spreading “false and exaggerated claims in order to ‘paralyze’ physicians and discredit the laws.”

Whether this argument stemmed from genuine denial or a cynical desire to mislead the public, a shattering case in Texas shows how absurd it is. Late last month, Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, learned that her latest, much-wanted pregnancy was doomed because of a severe genetic disorder. If the pregnancy continued, she was likely to have a stillbirth, and if she didn’t, the baby had virtually no chance of surviving long outside the womb.

She’d made several trips to the emergency room for severe cramping and what seemed to be leaking amniotic fluid. Her doctor told her that carrying the pregnancy to term could jeopardize her future fertility, and Cox very much wants more children. So she, her husband and her doctor sued the state, seeking a court order to allow her to terminate her pregnancy in Texas. If the Texas abortion ban had workable medical exceptions, it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t apply to Cox. But it doesn’t, and the state attorney general, Trump-lover Ken Paxton, fought the Cox family and their doctor every step of the way.

This case is unusual for Cox’s willingness to wage a legal fight while suffering a medical catastrophe, but not for the cruel bind the Republican controlled state placed her in. The day Cox received the terrible news about her fetus, the Texas Supreme Court (all justices are Trump-lovers) was hearing oral arguments in Zurawski v. Texas, a suit brought by two doctors and 20 women who had been denied medically necessary abortions and were seeking to clarify the scope of emergency exemptions to the state’s ban. Among the plaintiffs is Amanda Zurawski, who was 18 weeks pregnant after a year and a half of fertility treatments when her water broke. Although her pregnancy had no chance of surviving, she was denied an abortion until she became septic. Zurawski ended up spending days in an intensive care unit and has been left with damage to her reproductive tract that will most likely make it harder for her to become pregnant again.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023 10:52 AM

SECOND

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

Supreme Court to decide whether to restrict abortion drug nationwide

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing in legal briefs that “more than half of American women who choose to terminate their pregnancies rely on mifepristone to do so.”

The decision means the court, controlled by Trump appointees, will again wade into the abortion debate after Trump appointees overturned Roe v. Wade last year, altering the landscape of abortion rights nationwide and triggering states controlled by Trump-lovers to outlaw or severely restrict the procedure.

US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, issued a ruling that would have halted the FDA’s 2000 approval of the drug.

The judge said that the FDA failed to consider “the intense psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress women often experience from chemical abortion.” The term “chemical abortion,” which is preferred by abortion opponents, was repeatedly invoked by the judge in his ruling, as was “abortionist” and “unborn human.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/13/politics/supreme-court-to-decide-whethe
r-to-restrict-abortion-drug-nationwide/index.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023 11:16 AM

SECOND

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

Trump on Hannity’s show: 24 false or misleading claims in 5 minutes

A bogus claim every 12 seconds, on average. That’s what a single five-minute clip of former president Donald Trump speaking in Iowa on Dec. 5 yielded. In the clip, from a Fox News “town hall” hosted by Sean Hannity and brought to our attention by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CFRB), Trump ludicrously asserts that American oil and natural gas resources — “liquid gold” in the ground — could solve Social Security’s looming fiscal imbalance. That claim comes toward the end of the clip; to get there, a listener must first hear falsehood after falsehood in rapid succession.

Hannity tees up Trump by noting that he had mentioned energy. Hannity says that with $34 trillion of debt, the United States is paying $1 trillion in annual interest costs — a correct statement — and says “that is unsustainable.” (If you own Treasure Bonds, you expect to be paid that interest, sustainably until the bond matures when the face value of the bond must be repaid. Seems pretty simple to me. Also simple: a trillion dollars in taxes are not paid because the IRS does not have enough funding to coerce people like Trump, who can afford to hire lawyers to stall the IRS, to pay their taxes.)

We went through a transcript of Trump’s response, noting each false or misleading statement in boldface and providing a time stamp. The first falsehood comes in the 43rd second.

More at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-on-hannity-s-show-24-fal
se-or-misleading-claims-in-5-minutes/ar-AA1lomDJ

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023 11:34 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

The IRS has plenty of funding.

But instead of going after rich people, they're going after people who make more than $600 selling used stuff at garage sales.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023 3:33 PM

SECOND

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

A Republican president could ban abortion nationwide without enacting a single new law by exploiting the puritanical Comstock Act of 1873.

Republicans want to ban all abortions throughout the country. To do so, they argue that the Comstock Act of 1873, a notorious anti-vice law, already outlaws access to reproductive care. One section of the statute makes it a federal crime to send, through the mail or any common carrier, “every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion.” Taken literally, and read in isolation from other provisions, this section would seem to make virtually all abortions unlawful. Mifepristone is a “drug” that causes abortion, as is misoprostol, so mailing medication abortion (to a patient, or to a doctor’s office or pharmacy) would be a criminal offense. But so would the shipping of any “article,” “instrument,” or other “thing” used for procedural abortion. The basic medical supplies necessary to perform abortions in-clinic would suddenly become contraband, their suppliers subjected to criminal penalties. This ban would cut across state lines, applying to red and blue states alike.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/12/supreme-court-mifepristone
-abortion-pill-case.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023 3:40 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:
The IRS has plenty of funding.

But instead of going after rich people, they're going after people who make more than $600 selling used stuff at garage sales.

Let me check. Too easy. You are lying, 6ix.

A well-functioning tax system requires that everyone pays the taxes they owe. Today, the “tax gap” — the difference between taxes that are owed and collected — totals around $600 billion annually and will mean approximately $7 trillion of lost tax revenue over the next decade. The sheer magnitude of lost revenue is striking: it is equal to 3 percent of GDP, or all the income taxes paid by the lowest earning 90 percent of taxpayers.

https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/the-case-for-a-robust-
attack-on-the-tax-gap

Tax cheats cost the U.S. $1 trillion per year, I.R.S. chief says.

The United States is losing $1 trillion in unpaid taxes every year, Charles Rettig, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, estimated on Tuesday, arguing that the agency lacks the resources to catch tax cheats.

The so-called tax gap has surged in the last decade. The last official estimate from the I.R.S. was that an average of $441 billion per year went unpaid from 2011 to 2013. Most of the unpaid taxes are the result of evasion by the wealthy and large corporations, Mr. Rettig said.

“We do get outgunned,” he said during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the coming tax season.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the Democratic chairman of the committee, called the $1 trillion tax gap a “jaw-dropping figure.”

“The fact is that nurses and firefighters have to pay with every paycheck and so many highfliers can get off,” Mr. Wyden said.

Mr. Rettig attributed the growing tax gap to the rise of the $2 trillion cryptocurrency sector, which remains lightly regulated and has been an avenue for tax avoidance. He also pointed to foreign-source income and the abuse of pass-through provisions in the tax code by companies.

The size of the I.R.S.’s enforcement division has declined sharply in recent years, Mr. Rettig said, with its ranks falling by 17,000 over the last decade.

The spending proposal that the Biden administration released last week asked for a 10.4 percent increase above current funding levels for the tax collection agency, to $13.2 billion. The additional money would go toward increasing oversight of tax returns of high-income individuals and companies and improving customer service at the I.R.S.

— Alan Rappeport

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/13/business/stock-market-today#ir
s-tax-gap

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023 5:17 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The IRS has plenty of funding.

But instead of going after rich people, they're going after people who make more than $600 selling used stuff at garage sales.
Let me check. Too easy. You are lying, 6ix.

No I'm not. That is EXACTLY what they're doing with all their extra funding.

But they know it's so unbelievably popular after Democrats voted it in that they've delayed doing it not one year, but two years now.

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-announces-delay-for-implementation-of
-600-reporting-threshold-for-third-party-payment-platforms-forms-1099-k

Quote:
The American Rescue Plan of 2021 changed the reporting threshold for TPSOs. The new threshold for business transactions is $600 per year; changed from the previous threshold of more than 200 transactions per year, exceeding an aggregate amount of $20,000.

Under the law, beginning January 1, 2023, a TPSO is required to report third-party network transactions paid in 2022 with any participating payee that exceed a minimum threshold of $600 in aggregate payments, regardless of the number of transactions. TPSOs report these transactions by providing individual payee's an IRS Form 1099-K, Payment Card and Third-Party Network Transactions.

This law passed by Democrats destroys eBay, Paypal, CashApp and other service providers and will put a very large delay on TPTB's ability to get us all on a non-cash based system like they want.

Giving more money to the IRS was NEVER about going after rich people with good lawyers. It was about fucking poor people who barely scratch out a living.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023 5:19 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:

This law passed by Democrats destroys eBay, Paypal, CashApp and other service providers and will put a very large delay on TPTB's ability to get us all on a non-cash based system like they want.

Giving more money to the IRS was NEVER about going after rich people with good lawyers. It was about fucking poor people who barely scratch out a living.

6ix, you are full of shit.

They used to throw women in the water to see if they were witches. If they drowned, they were innocent.

Now Republicans are saying the only abortion exception is if the woman's life is at risk. If she dies, she was at risk.

You can see the recurring flaw in the methodology.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023 5:22 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

GET FUCKED, IDIOT. YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT THIS LIKE YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Wednesday, December 13, 2023 10:24 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

So nobody is going to mention the fact you'd have to go back to January 3rd, 2018 to find a single day where Trump's approval was lower than Biden's current 39.9% is right now.

Trump's approval on December 11th, 2019 was 44.1%.

Hell... I didn't even notice it, but on July 21nd of this year, Biden's approval was only 36.8.

Trump never got that low.

He only dropped to 39.4 from 43.9 in the week of Legacy Media bashing after the made up January 6th story in 2020. Biden's just half a point ahead of Trumps worst post-Presidency rating.

It doesn't matter if you have the entire Legacy Media behind you when the results of your presidency are this terrible.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-app
roval-7320.html

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_app
roval-6179.html

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Thursday, December 14, 2023 6:47 AM

SECOND

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

The National Review published Wednesday a scathing critique of work done by the many attorneys defending the former president from the numerous criminal and civil charges he faces, but cast blame on their “client from hell.” A man so bad at working with lawyers should not be the nation’s commander-in-chief.

Donald Trump’s Lousy Lawyers Shaft Him Again
By Dan McLaughlin | December 13, 2023 3:09 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/donald-trumps-lousy-lawyers-shaf
t-him-again/

As I have noted before, Donald Trump is the client from hell. He stiffs his lawyers on bills. He ignores their advice. He demands that they take impossible, extreme, and indefensible positions. He lies to them or withholds information so that they are sent out to burn their own credibility on his behalf, after which he throws them under the bus. He doesn’t protect attorney–client privilege, so lawyers get forced to testify about their communications with him (a long-standing pattern; the ghostwriter of Art of the Deal recounted how Trump would let him listen on speakerphone to Trump talking to his lawyers). Several of the people who advised or represented him in his uniformly failed challenges to the 2020 election ended up getting indicted, disbarred, or both. His lawyers in the Mar-a-Lago boxes case got dragged into testifying because Trump had them tell falsehoods to the feds, which then unraveled.

This pattern predictably results in his getting the bad lawyering he deserves, either because he can’t get good lawyers to subject themselves to this or because his impossible demands result in strategic errors. Yet another consequence came today from the federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan, in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit. Trump argued that he was immune from suit because of presidential immunity. This was always a questionable argument: While Carroll sued Trump over statements Trump made while he was president, immunity would require Trump to act in his official capacity as president in claiming that Carroll was making up her story of being sexually assaulted by Trump in the 1990s. The controversy, like Paula Jones’s lawsuit against Bill Clinton, involved an alleged sexual assault that happened before Trump was president, so the argument would have to be that the president’s defense of his personal reputation is definitionally an official act.

But the Second Circuit didn’t even get to the question, because it concluded that Trump waived the immunity defense when his lawyers forgot to include it in filing his answer to Carroll’s complaint and waited three years to ask the court for permission to add the defense to his answer. Carroll filed her lawsuit in November 2019 in state court. Trump’s answer was filed, on a timely basis, in January 2020. The answer to a civil complaint is supposed to include any legal defenses a defendant may assert, although there are technical rules that vary by state and federal process on what things must be in an answer to avoid waiving them. Some things, like a lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, are not waivable because a federal court’s lacking the power to hear a case is not something the parties can change. Trump’s lawyers, however, didn’t raise presidential immunity until they filed a summary-judgment motion in January 2023, long after removing the case to federal court, and subsequently asked the trial judge to let Trump add the defense to his answer (as well as to an amended answer filed after Carroll amended her complaint). As the appeals court concluded, “Defendant unduly delayed in raising presidential immunity as a defense. Three years passed between Defendant’s answer and his request for leave to amend his answer. A three-year delay is more than enough, under our precedents, to qualify as ‘undue.'” The excuse that Trump had tried to raise related issues was not enough to explain why he had not taken the precaution of actually listing it as one of his defenses. And waiting until the eve of trial to raise it was unfair to Carroll:

Had Defendant raised presidential immunity before discovery closed, Plaintiff claims, she would have engaged in discovery on whether Defendant’s actions fell within his official duties. First, Plaintiff would have asked Defendant for more detail on the process through which he issued and prepared the June 2019 statements, including how the process compared to his pre- and post-presidential processes. Second, Plaintiff would have sought third-party discovery from White House personnel allegedly involved in preparing and issuing the statements. Third, Plaintiff would have sought expert testimony from former White House officials and requested internal White House documents from the National Archives regarding former presidents’ processes for issuing statements denying wrongdoing. (Footnotes omitted).

The presidency is an executive job. Aside from what comes out of presidents’ mouths or what they tweet with their thumbs — i.e., the sort of thing that got Trump sued in this case in the first place — most of what presidents do is done through other people. To hear Trump tell it, he is always being betrayed. At some point, the chronic incompetence of the people carrying out even simple rule-following tasks on his behalf has to reflect on the man’s capacity to do an executive job.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, December 14, 2023 9:34 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Oh boo hoo. The poor lawyers.

Fuck Lawyers.

I guess we can add the Lawyers to the long list of shitty people Democrats love in modern politics.

You'd better hope that your guy can destroy his political opposition by imprisoning him for life, because it's the only way that Democrats win the election in November.

Tick Tock

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Thursday, December 14, 2023 9:47 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:
Oh boo hoo. The poor lawyers.

Fuck Lawyers.

I guess we can add the Lawyers to the long list of shitty people Democrats love in modern politics.

You'd better hope that your guy can destroy his political opposition by imprisoning him for life, because it's the only way that Democrats win the election in November.

Tick Tock

As a future President, Trump works with lawyers who are defending him, but he can't let them go about their work unsupervised because he is so much smarter (in his opinion) than the people who are defending him and must micromanage them. After all, his lawyers are no match for Trump's high personal standards of legal legerdemain and flashes of brilliance Trump constantly displays in speeches to his adoring citizens.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, December 14, 2023 9:53 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh boo hoo. The poor lawyers.

Fuck Lawyers.

I guess we can add the Lawyers to the long list of shitty people Democrats love in modern politics.

You'd better hope that your guy can destroy his political opposition by imprisoning him for life, because it's the only way that Democrats win the election in November.

Tick Tock

As a future President, Trump works with lawyers who are defending him, but he can't let them go about their work unsupervised because he is so much smarter (in his opinion) than the people who are defending him and must micromanage them. After all, his lawyers are no match for Trump's high personal standards of legal legerdemain and flashes of brilliance Trump constantly displays in speeches to his adoring citizens.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Joe Biden* can't even find his way off stage after he finishes reading the teleprompter.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Thursday, December 14, 2023 11:05 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Leftist shitrag Bloomberg has some bad polling news for Biden* today.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/gop_primaries/

Arizona: Trump 46, Biden 42
Georgia: Trump 49, Biden 43
Michigan: Trump 46, Biden 42
Nevada: Trump 47, Biden 44
N. Carolina: Trump 49, Biden 40
Pennsylvania: Trump 46, Biden 44
Wisconsin: Trump 45, Biden 41

Uh oh, Joe*. That's all the swing states.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Thursday, December 14, 2023 7:07 PM

THG

J.D. Vance Home State Newspaper Compares Him to Putin

Republican Ohio Senator J.D. Vance has been mocked as a "Bad Santa" and compared to Russian President Vladimir Putin in an editorial cartoon published by a news outlet in his home state.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/j-d-vance-home-state-newspaper
-compares-him-to-putin/ar-AA1lvIzD?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=1cbf36d54c034d239eeee4b560c49a23&ei=14

Bad Santa, too funny...

T

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Thursday, December 14, 2023 7:09 PM

THG

Worried about the polls, don't be. Most people haven't begun to pay attention yet. And when they do, baby look out.

T

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Thursday, December 14, 2023 9:45 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Worried about the polls, don't be. Most people haven't begun to pay attention yet. And when they do, baby look out.

T

Look at history, buddy.

4 years ago Trump was doing much worse in every poll under the sun, and Biden* was doing a lot better.

Trump came MUCH closer to getting reelected than any of the polls indicated too.

He's up in every swing state now. He was never up in the polling aggregate in any of the swing states last time.

You fuckin' Democrat or Die idiots might not be paying attention yet, but everybody else is. You're also losing a sizable percentage the blacks, the Mexicans, the Jews, and the youth vote.

Tick Tock

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Friday, December 15, 2023 6:53 AM

SECOND

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

Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas to Trump:

Congress has approved legislation that would prevent any president from withdrawing the United States from NATO without approval from the Senate or an Act of Congress.

The measure, spearheaded by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), was included in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which passed out of the House on Thursday and is expected to be signed by President Biden.

Even Republicans have their limits. Trump keeps talking about pulling out of NATO, and they want to nip that in the bud while they have a Democratic president willing to sign it. It's a big middle finger to the Donald.

https://thehill.com/homenews/4360407-congress-approves-bill-barring-pr
esident-withdrawing-nato/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, December 15, 2023 7:52 AM

SECOND

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

Democracy has grown and matured by turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy: It persists because everyone in a society believes it should and will exist. If democratic culture dims, democracy’s prospects dim with it.

The United States, the first country to claim the mantle of democracy in the modern era, has long had an exceptionally strong democratic culture. Belief in democratic ideals, liberal rights, and the basics of constitutional government are so fundamental to American identity that they’ve been collectively described as the country’s “civil religion.”

Yet today, America’s vaunted democratic culture is withering before our eyes. American democracy, once seemingly secure, is now in so much trouble that 75 percent of Americans believe that “the future of American democracy is at risk in the 2024 presidential election,” according to a study by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution.

This withering took off during Donald Trump’s rise to power and has continued apace in his post-presidency. The more he attacks the foundations of the democratic system, the less everyone — both his supporters and his opponents — believe American democracy is both healthy and likely to endure.

Moreover, he has birthed an anti-democratic movement inside the Republican Party dedicated to advancing his vision (or something like it). These Republicans vocally and loudly argue American democracy is a sham — and that dire measures are justified in response. This faction is already influential, and will likely become more so given its especial prominence among the ranks of young conservatives.

As worrying as the prospect of a second Trump term is, the damage he and his allied movement have already done to American democratic culture is not hypothetical: It’s already here, it’s getting worse, and it will likely persist — even if Trump loses in 2024.

Put differently, Trump has already robbed us of our sense of security and faith in our democracy. The consequences of that theft are not abstract, but rather ones we’ll all have to deal with for years to come.

https://www.vox.com/2023/12/15/23990986/trump-2024-democracy-consolida
ted-culture-campaign

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, December 15, 2023 12:17 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Trump reaches +3.2 in national polling for the first time in any general election polling aggregate today.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general-ele
ction-trump-vs-biden-7383.html

For comparison's sake...

The 2020 election:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_ele
ction_trump_vs_biden-6247.html

Trump never had a lead at any point in time on the aggregate leading up to the 2020 election. The closest he got was Biden* +4 in January of 2020.

The 2016 election:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_ele
ction_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

For a very brief moment in July of 2016, Trump was ahead of Clinton by 0.9 and a brief moment in May of 2016 where he was up 0.2 on Clinton. The rest of the entire leadup to 2016's election Clinton was ahead of Trump in the aggregate, sometimes by as much as 10 or nearly 20 points.

Bloomberg: Trump Pulls Ahead in Michigan as Union, Women Voters Sour on Biden

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-pulls-ahead-michigan-union-100011942.html

GM to lay off 1,300 Michigan workers as vehicles end production

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/14/gm-to-lay-off-1300-michigan-workers-as
-vehicles-end-production.html

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

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Friday, December 15, 2023 2:28 PM

THG

'Trump isn't going to win': Analyst makes case that major 'MAGA defeat' is a certainty

Buried deep in an analysis of all of the reasons why Donald Trump will go down to defeat against President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election, a columnist suggested that history is not on his side and that the MAGA movement is winding down.

Writing for the Atlantic, Hussein Ibish of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington explained that there are multiple roadblocks that will deny Trump a second presidency, including his extensive list of criminal trials that are casting a cloud over his campaign, his disparaging comments about the military that are resurfacing, and the fact that he is not the man he was in 2016 when he won his surprising victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-isn-t-going-to-win-analy
st-makes-case-that-major-maga-defeat-is-a-certainty/ar-AA1lyOKS?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=aaa3bd2cffc2420d893f4590439948a6&ei=38

tick tock

T

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Friday, December 15, 2023 3:33 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
'Trump isn't going to win': Analyst makes case that major 'MAGA defeat' is a certainty

Buried deep in an analysis of all of the reasons why Donald Trump will go down to defeat against President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election, a columnist suggested that history is not on his side and that the MAGA movement is winding down.

Writing for the Atlantic, Hussein Ibish of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington explained that there are multiple roadblocks that will deny Trump a second presidency, including his extensive list of criminal trials that are casting a cloud over his campaign, his disparaging comments about the military that are resurfacing, and the fact that he is not the man he was in 2016 when he won his surprising victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-isn-t-going-to-win-analy
st-makes-case-that-major-maga-defeat-is-a-certainty/ar-AA1lyOKS?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=aaa3bd2cffc2420d893f4590439948a6&ei=38

tick tock

T

Some dude named Apu who's part of an "institute" that hates you because you're white told you the same thing that you two morons have been repeating every time the Legacy Media says it for 3 years now.

*yawn*

There's no cloud over Trump's campaign. The guy is hardly even bothering to campaign at all right now and Democrats have fucked things up so bad that Trump has BY FAR his best polling numbers in three entire election cycles (see: above).

Get fucked Ted.

Biden has less than 11 months before he loses.

Tick Tock

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Saturday, December 16, 2023 11:31 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Joe Scarborough is going to have to find another intern to rape and murder and Mika looks like she's dying from her 15th booster shot.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/12/14/morning_joe_panel_r
eacts_to_bloomberg_morning_consult_poll_showing_trump_leading_biden_in_7_swing_states.html

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Saturday, December 16, 2023 12:55 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Yammering Dems....

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1734679864152625626

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Saturday, December 16, 2023 1:19 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yammering Dems....

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1734679864152625626

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

The problem with this messaging is that people know things are not good right now and everything was a lot better under Trump.

So not only isn't anybody who hasn't locked themselves away in that echo chamber taking any of them seriously anymore, but they're now aware about how much they're outright being lied to everyday and that these people are making claims that Trump is going to do everything that the Biden* Administration has been doing from the beginning.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, December 17, 2023 8:20 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:

The problem with this messaging is that people know things are not good right now and everything was a lot better under Trump.

You are out of your little mind. Well, everybody who is angry poor white trash is doing worse, but so what? Guys who weigh 450 pounds are doing worse. Guys who retired when they were 30 and living on $7,000 per year are doing worse. But, so what? People who support Putin are doing worse, but so what?

How is the economy doing? It is doing fine, so long as you are not a Nazi.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+is+the+economy+doing%3F

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, December 17, 2023 8:21 AM

SECOND

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

Claiming that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of the country" is the literal language of Hitler's Mein Kampf. Trump and his allies are openly embracing fascism, and it's time for the media to stop being scared to use that word.

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” the former president said. “They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/16/trump-immigration-attack-0013
2156

By Olivia Alafriz | 12/16/2023 06:03 PM EST

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, December 17, 2023 8:39 AM

SECOND

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

If you want a sense of what the future could bring if either party wins full control of the federal government next year — all you have to do is look at the states.

Over the long term, state policies have a measurable impact on life expectancy. Writing for The American Prospect, Paul Starr summarizes the results of a 2020 paper looking at the disparity in life expectancy between the most liberal states and the most conservative states, singling out Connecticut and Oklahoma as two states where policies shifted the most, either to the left or to the right.

“Their model,” Starr writes, “indicated that if all states’ policies were the same as Connecticut’s in 2014, U.S. life expectancy would have been two years longer for women and 1.3 years longer for men — and if all states’ policies were like Oklahoma’s, Americans’ lives would have been shorter.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/jamelle-bouie-the-real-difference-be
tween-republicans-and-democrats/ar-AA1lAM5b

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, December 17, 2023 10:59 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The problem with this messaging is that people know things are not good right now and everything was a lot better under Trump.
You are out of your little mind. Well, everybody who is angry poor white trash is doing worse, but so what? Guys who weigh 450 pounds are doing worse. Guys who retired when they were 30 and living on $7,000 per year are doing worse. But, so what? People who support Putin are doing worse, but so what?

How is the economy doing? It is doing fine, so long as you are not a Nazi.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+is+the+economy+doing%3F

OK Reaverfan.

Homelessnes in America:

https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homelessness-stati
stics/state-of-homelessness/

SPOILER ALERT: The vast majority of them are packed in Blue Cities inside of Blue States.

Quote:
Leaving these individuals to remain on the streets can cost taxpayers up to $50,000 per year for a single chronically homeless individual by them cycling in and out of treatment facilities, jails, hospitals and other institutional care facilities.

See now, that's a problem and another example of Government waste.

I thrive on $7,000 per year, but it costs taxpayers $50,000 per year per homeless person on the street.

Illegal Immigration:

Illegal immigration: Black Americans protest, demand closed borders

https://www.vanguardngr.com/2022/09/illegal-immigration-black-american
s-protest-demand-closed-borders/

Quote:
As they filed through the streets, the activists sang in support of closed borders and requested that the migrants should go back to their home countries.

When one protester asked, “What do we want?” The group shouted, “Closed borders!”

“When do we want it?” the protester further asked. “Now,” the group answered.

“Immigrants, we’ve been here,” a woman yelled into a megaphone. “Take your a** home,” the group yelled in response.

CBS NEWS: Chicago residents to protest proposed migrant shelter

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/chicago-residents-protest-migrant
-shelter/

Quote:
"The thing that we're most concerned about is our children, our Black children, the football, the soccer, and all the things that they do, and trying to be constructive citizens. And now they're going to take this part beautiful part and give it to migrants," said resident Brooksy Cribs. "Don't get me wrong, I understand the situation, but that's not on us."

Those gosh darned black White Supremacists!!!

Car Repossessions:

Business Insider: More people are missing car payments in another ominous sign for the economy

https://www.businessinsider.com/more-people-missing-car-payments-anoth
er-ominous-sign-for-economy-2023-10

Quote:
Cox Automotive, a leading auto organization, predicts that 1.5 million cars will be repossessed this year – 300,000 more than in 2022.

The rising number of delinquencies on auto loans is not putting off some consumers, however. A record number of new car buyers took out loans with monthly payments of $1,000 or more in the three months to June, according to data from Edmunds.

Car payments have become the highest expense for some Gen Zers and millennials, even exceeding their rent.

Bloomberg: Car Owners Fall Behind on Payments at Highest Rate on Record

The risk of vehicle repossession is rising for many Americans facing a budget crunch.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-21/high-car-loan-inter
est-rate-payments-americans-struggle-with-monthly-bills?sref=h4tCfJuJ

Once again, I'm going to be the winner here. I thrive in economies like this. I bought my house for cash the last time we had a bad economy, and I've owned a car I bought for only $2k cash in a Bankruptcy deal that still had nearly $5k left in payments to Carmax, and I've been driving it ever since. I've managed to keep it running for 15 years now, but since I probably can't pass an emissions test in the spring, it looks like it's going to be the perfect time to buy one by the time I need it.

What you don't seem to understand is that I'm not in a position that I can't buy a car. I just won't pay top dollar for a used car. Just like the $2,000 worth of pre-primed baseboard and window/door casings I bought to trim out my entire house for only $125 on clearance 4 years before I finally put it all up, I'm going to get a phenomenal deal on a used car because there have been millions of repossessions by the time I finally buy one in a market where everybody's pandemic savings has run out.

I will buy one cheap, and I will keep it running and out of a landfill for at least another decade.

Great for me. Not great for millions of Americans who lost their car and the tens of millions who can barely afford the car payments... a majority of them being young voters who keep voting in the Democrats who put them into this position in the first place and might be reconsidering their vote next year.

Foreclosure Activity In First Half Of 2023 Ticks Upwards Toward Pre-Covid Levels

https://www.attomdata.com/news/market-trends/foreclosures/attom-mid-ye
ar-2023-u-s-foreclosure-market-report/

Quote:
IRVINE, Calif. — July 13, 2023 — ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property, and real estate data, today released its Midyear 2023 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows there were a total of 185,580 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions — in the first six months of 2023. That figure is up 13 percent from the same time period a year ago and up 185 percent from the same time period two years ago.

Too bad I'm not in the market to buy a house since I already have one that's paid for and you'd be insane to try to get into the real estate market after the CDC put a moratorium for years against evicting non-paying squatters.

But if prices fall, so do my already much-lower property taxes that I'm paying because I'm not an idiot and I know how to fight them.

Once again, this is all good news for me. Not good news for all the people booted out on the streets or the millions of Americans struggling to keep paying their mortgages while paying higher prices on everything else under the sun right now. They're not going to simply forget any of this by next November because none of it is going to get any better before then. At least not meaningfully so.

Food:

Forbes: Food Prices Outpace General Inflation: Here’s What You Need To Know

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2023/08/30/food-prices-outpace
-general-inflation-heres-what-you-need-to-know/?sh=396c40656fbd

Quote:
As food prices head higher, it’s a safe bet the Fed will continue to tighten rates until inflation falls to its 2.0% target. Of course, if the federal government reduced spending, the Fed might not need to go to such extremes in raising rates and reducing the money supply.

Haha... That'll be the day.

Yahoo Finance: 60% of Americans Can’t Afford Groceries

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/60-americans-t-afford-groceries-1521419
06.html

60% is a lot more than the 40+% of people who are going to vote Trump over Biden* in November in all the polls. If 60% of the people still can't afford groceries by election day, Democrats are toast just on this issue alone.

I could go on and on, but these stories are real, and they effect a whole lot more than your supposed Trumptard Nazis. I made a point of only putting articles from your Lefty shitrag sites that spend most of their days blowing Biden* and attacking Trump.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Monday, December 18, 2023 10:36 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:

I could go on and on, but these stories are real, and they effect a whole lot more than your supposed Trumptard Nazis. I made a point of only putting articles from your Lefty shitrag sites that spend most of their days blowing Biden* and attacking Trump.

The German Nazis made exactly the same economic arguments as you are making. Only Adolph can fix it but with a slight modification: "Only I can fix it." - Donald Trump.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Only+I+can+fix+it.%22+Donald+Trump

The Army Warned Troops in 1945 of the Danger of Fascism.
That Warning Rings True Today

by Alan J. Singer | 6/25/2023

Alan Singer is a historian and professor in the Hofstra University Department of Teaching, Learning and Technology. He is the author of New York’s Grand Emancipation Jubilee: Essays on Slavery, Resistance, Abolition, Teaching, and Historical Memory (SUNY Press, 2018).

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/185879

On March 25, 1945, the United States Army issued “Fact Sheet #64: Fascism!” to promote discussions among American troops about fascism as the war in Europe wound down to a close. Discussion leaders were alerted “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze; nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

It is worth revisiting the Army’s warnings as Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans denounce legal due process and threaten civil war.

Four key points were addressed in the Army fact sheet to be included in discussions.

(1) Fascism is more apt to come to power at a time of economic crisis;

(2) Fascism inevitably leads to war;

(3) It can come to any country;

(4) We can best combat it by making our democracy work.

The fact sheet described findings by war correspondent Cecil Brown who toured the United States after leaving Europe. Brown discovered that most Americans he talked with were “vague about just what fascism really means. He found few Americans who were confident they would recognize a fascist if they saw one.” The War Department was concerned that ignorance about fascism could make it possible for it to emerge in the United States and issued recommendations for how to prevent it.

As a simple definition, the War Department described fascism as the “opposite of democracy. The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people. Fascism is government by the few and for the few.” Fascists remain in power through “skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security . . . At the very time that the fascists proclaimed that their party was the party of the ‘average citizen,’ they were in the pay of certain big industrialists and financiers . . . They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled against each other.”

The War Department acknowledged that the United States had

Native fascists who say that they are ‘100 percent American’ . . . At various times and places in our history, we have had sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which experience has shown can be properly identified as ‘fascist’.

The War Department warned,

An American fascist seeking power would not proclaim that he is a fascist. Fascism always camouflages its plans and purposes . . . Any fascist attempt to gain power in America would not use the exact Hitler pattern. It would work under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-American- ism’.

The War Department identified three attitudes and practices that fascists share in common. Fascists pit “religious, racial, and economic groups against one another in order to break down national unity . . . In the United States, native fascists have often been anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Negro, anti-Labor, anti- foreign-born.” Fascists also “deny the need for international cooperation” and that “all people — regardless of color, race, creed, or nationality have rights.” They “substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count.” Finally, for fascists, the “indiscriminate pinning of the label ‘Red’ on people and proposals which one opposes is a common political device.”

Learning to identify American fascists and detect their techniques was not going to be easy, but

it is vitally important to learn to spot them, even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy . . . In its bid for power, it is ready to drive wedges that will disunite the people and weaken the nation. It supplies the scapegoat — Catholics, Jews, Negroes, labor unions, big business — any group upon which the insecure and unemployed are willing to blame.

They become frightened, angry, desperate, confused. Many, in their misery, seek to find somebody to blame . . . The resentment may be directed against minorities — especially if undemocratic organizations with power and money can direct our emotions and thinking along these lines.

The goal of the fascist doctrine is to prevent “men from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.”

Fascists may talk about freedom, but

freedom . . . involves being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, December 18, 2023 11:01 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Shut the fuck up, idiot.

I'm so done having this stupid conversation with you.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Monday, December 18, 2023 11:05 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Trump keeps breaking his own record over the span of 3 Presidential elections and is now +3.5 in the polling aggregate.

And all those polls happened before CNN reported this...

CNN: Oil and gas prices surge as BP stops Red Sea shipments following Houthi attacks

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/18/investing/bp-pauses-transit-through-red
-sea/index.html

Oh... and a Japanese steel company just bought US Steel.

https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/nippon-steel-to-acquire-u-s-steel-f
or-55-shr-854c6f73?mod=hp_lead_pos1

Merry Christmas!

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Monday, December 18, 2023 11:10 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

The Hill: Remind me…who is threatening our democracy?

Biden’s alarming harassment of Elon Musk

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4361551-bidens-alarming-harass
ment-of-elon-musk/

Quote:
Even as President Biden accuses Donald Trump of threatening our democracy, he is employing agencies of the federal government to harass and punish Elon Musk, whom he seems to consider a political opponent. Why? Because the mercurial entrepreneur has the temerity to criticize Biden and champion free speech.

The blatant hypocrisy on display each and every day is only allowed because so many people like Second and Ted willingly turn a blind eye to it.

Even The Hill noticed it and posted an article about it.

The Hill ain't Vox or Salon, but they're no FOX News either.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Monday, December 18, 2023 5:30 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

CNN is shitting their collective pants right now.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/18/opinions/big-world-elections-2024-andel
man/index.html

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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