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The Race For 2024

In the words of the immortal Bart Simpson,
"I didn't do it! And nobody saw me. And you can't prove it!"
Tom
 
{snip}but it’s quite the stretch to use the term “fascism” for the process used so far just because you disagree with it.

"It's not fascism when we do it" :hysterical:
If you believe the process described is fascism please present your argument. And keep in mind “sure, Jan” is not an argument.
 
So, what is it called when a bunch of dumbasses, I mean regular folks, are out protesting while flying flags that say, "Biden isn't the president". I saw that on the news this morning. Somebody needs to tell these imbeciles, I mean country folks, that Biden has been the president for over 3 years. Apparently, our educational system has failed these idiots, I mean these fine exurban residents. I doubt they even know what fascism is, never mind how to spell it.
 
Swalwell's questioning of Hunter.

Eric Swalwell's questions to Hunter Biden.

Do you think any of them realised they were being played?

S: Any time your father was in government, prior to the Presidency or before, did he ever operate a hotel?
B: No, he has never operated a hotel.

S: So he’s never operated a hotel where foreign nationals spent millions at that hotel while he was in office?
B: No, he has not.

S: Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?
B: My father has never employed any direct family members, to my knowledge.

S: While your father was President, did anyone in the family receive 41 trademarks from China?
B: No.

S: As President and the leader of the party, has your father ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party a daughter-in-law or anyone else in the family?
B: No. And I don’t think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC.

S: Has your father ever in his time as an adult been fined $355 million by any State that he worked in?
B: No, he has not, thank God.

S: Anyone in your family ever strike a multibillion dollar deal with the Saudi Government while your father was in office?
B: No.

:hysterical:
 
Mango Mussolini said:
"We have languages coming into our country -- we don't have one instructor in our entire nation that can speak that language. These are languages, it's the craziest thing, they have languages that nobody in this country has ever heard of,"
Unknown language??? Quick! Somebody call an anthropologist!
Why? Wouldn't a linguist be of more help? My father did cultural anthropology and I can't imagine him being of any use with an unknown language. A physical anthropologist would be even worse.

And so what if people have languages they don't have an instructor for? I wouldn't be one bit surprised if they don't have an instructor for some of the dialects my wife speaks. What would they need of an instructor? Where are they going to find someone they need that dialect to communicate with? Virtually all speakers will also speak Mandarin.
 
We've been through this before.
We have. Jack Smith could have charged Trump under 2383. He did not. So it is a moo point - like a cow's opinion, it does not matter.

Look, I am no more a fan of Trump than you are. But this legal piling on with questionable tactics, from logical hoops to charge a misdemeanor as a felony (by a DA who charges legitimate felonies such as armed robberies as misdemeanors) to trying to disqualify him from the ballot, may and likely will backfire.

Some of the cases are strong - the documents case and the false elector case. It would have been much better if the focus had stayed on this. By having so many different cases floating around, some of them weak, it lends credence to Trump's claim that it is a political witch hunt. It will likely make Trump more popular, and thus more dangerous in November.

He is already ahead in most polls. He does not need more inadvertent help.
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No, but it specifies, in Section 5, that Congress has the authority to enforce the provisions of the amendment.
No, it doesn't. Congress can only overrule the disability.
Wrong.
COTUS said:
Section 5.
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
And in what way have they enforced it in Federal law? And in the absence of any law does the amendment not take effect?
 
And in what way have they enforced it in Federal law? And in the absence of any law does the amendment not take effect?
There is an insurrection statute. If it is so clear that Trump is an insurrectionist, why hasn't DOJ charged him under it?

I don’t know but that’s a side issue. Does the amendment require someone to be charged and convicted of insurrection to be applied?

Constitutional interpretation and federal insurrection statutes are really not some county judge's bailiwick. What's next? An NYC night court judge declaring Trump ineligible?

That’s an ad hom. If the judge’s ruling is incorrect it can and will be appealed. Even the Cook County judge stayed her own order pending the Supreme Court’s decision, properly recognizing the ultimate authority here.

Hopefully the SC will issue its opinion soon so we can all stop arguing about it.
 
Maryland - 64.7% of the vote, but 87.5% of all seats. That's a Δ of 22.8 percentage points.
Dems in NY tried a radical gerrymander, but a court mandated fair maps. Indeed, their 2022 map was fair. Dems won 55.6% of the vote and got 57.7% of the seats - a Δ of only 2.1 percentage points. Of course, Dems are trying to gerrymander again, and now have a much more friendly court due to Hochul's appointments.
Massachusetts is completely gerrymandered. Dems have 69.4% of the vote, but 100% of the seats. That's a Δ of 30.6 percentage points.

This is NOT a useful statistic for guesstimating gerrymandering. The portion of seats for the majority will normally be larger or much larger than the portion of the state-wide vote.

If one seeks a single simple statistic to guesstimate gerrymandering, a good approach is to find the district which has the MEDIAN Rep/Dem vote ratio and compare that ratio with the ratio in the state-wide vote.
 
On YouTube I see more than one "expert" political strategist who thinks that the Democrats will sweep in November with many Republicans staying home (or voting for Biden). Disgust with Trump is huge, as exit interviews in New Hampshire show. Things figure to get even worse for Trump (so better for humanity) as he loses more court cases, and as his dementia worsens.

That is very very sweet news! ... If true.

I'll believe it when I see this optimism reflected in prediction markets, which right now stand at:
Polymarket (with about $22 million total bet) shows Trump 55%, Biden 39%.
Betfair (with $11 million bet) shows Trump 46%, Biden 34%.

Five weeks later, the prediction market numbers are even slightly worse. :flooffrown:

One peculiar constant at both markets I checked is that Michelle Obama is shown with a 5+% chance of becoming the next POTUS! (This pushes Gavin Newsom down to the #4 likelihood slot.) Is this really a thing?

I would LOVE for the Obamas to get a third term, but I do NOT think Michelle will be "drafted" and if she does run, I think Americans' racism will kill any chance for victory.
 
I do NOT think Michelle will be "drafted" and if she does run, I think Americans' racism will kill any chance for victory.
If you ask a white winger they’ll assert that racism would kill their chances if Michelle ran, because it would turn out the black racist voters who would vote for her no matter what her policies, and would stay home rather than vote for Joe again. I’m pretty sure she’d beat Trump to a pulp in an election, anyhow.
 
One peculiar constant at both markets I checked is that Michelle Obama is shown with a 5+% chance of becoming the next POTUS! (This pushes Gavin Newsom down to the #4 likelihood slot.) Is this really a thing?
I guess you could make a little bit of money betting against her. But it would really be a little bit of money.
I would LOVE for the Obamas to get a third term, but I do NOT think Michelle will be "drafted"
I do not think she has any desire to run for office. If she did, I think she should have ran for some lesser office first.
and if she does run, I think Americans' racism will kill any chance for victory.
Why? This supposed racism hasn't prevented Obama from winning twice.
 
Some people think "checks and balances" will prevent Trump and his Lickers from a forceful Fascist take-over of the U.S. government. While such optimism may be enviable, it is NOT in accord with reality. Read what Romney told us about some of his fellow GOP Senators.

Thom Hartmann said:
How would you react if one day you were sitting at home and the phone rang and when you picked it up you heard a man shout: "Kill yourself now so we can save ammo!" Moments later, an email arrives that says: "I hope the Federal government hangs you and your daughter from the Capitol dome, you treasonous piece of shit! I pray that I will be sitting close enough to hear your necks snap."
This is what happened to "Shaye" Moss and Ruby Freeman when Trump and Giuliani decided to blame Trump's loss in Georgia on them, incorrectly claiming they were stuffing ballots for Biden. Just a few hours later, a mob with torches and a bullhorn showed up at Freeman's house, although she'd already left after being warned by the FBI that she was on the "kill list" of a January 6th defendant they'd just arrested.

Mitt Romney, speaking with writer McKay Coppins for his book " Romney: A Reckoning," told him the story of multiple Republican senators who were so terrified of violence at the hands of Trump's fascist followers that they set aside their consciences and voted against convicting him of trying to blackmail Zelenskyy and, later, trying to overthrow the government of the United States. "One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump's second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family's safety.... Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can't do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right."

... Similarly, multiple judges [are] also unwilling to have their families suffer the death threats and harassment that comes with being an "enemy of Trump." When the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court finally found the spine to vote him off the ballot, within hours the threats began . Now they're having to pay for security for themselves and their family members, and go to sleep every night dreading the possibility that a lone wolf Trump supporter -- like the one who broke into Paul Pelosi's home and attacked him with a hammer -- may be looking for them, too.
As NBC News reported, Trump's followers reacted to the Colorado justices with predictable ferocity: "'This ends when we kill these f--kers,' a user wrote on a pro-Trump forum that was used by several Jan. 6 rioters. "'Kill judges. Behead judges. Roundhouse kick a judge into the concrete,' read a post on a fringe website. "Slam dunk a judge's baby into the trashcan.'"
...
This is how fascism takes over a nation from within: with violence and the fear of violence.
...
There is no movement advocating political violence on either the American left or in the center. It is entirely confined to the American right, and the media needs to admit that and the FBI needs to recalibrate their efforts.
...
Ever since the Reagan Revolution, in their zeal to cut their own taxes and stop regulation of the fossil fuel and other polluting industries, [billionaires and their puppets have] been hammering the message that our government has been seized by "deep state socialists" bent on destroying our country. Republicans and the billionaires who own them have repeated this conspiracy theory so often for the last few decades that an entire religion, Qanon, as arisen around it.
...
As fascist followers act out their violent threats against their leaders' perceived enemies, they get an inner sense of strength and the feeling that they've joined a community: that diminishes their own fear for a short while.
The more an "other" -- political enemies; racial, religious, and gender minorities; women -- are blamed for the ills of the nation, the more vigilante-style violence against them is justified and the more violent the future becomes....
This is what Trump and the GOP he's captured are working toward: the silencing of dissent and accountability, replacing them with fear and a guilty complicity. Just take a look at the state of social media today, particularly Xitter and Facebook, which have dialed back on their content moderation and thus loosed the fascists on anybody who dares criticize Trump or the GOP....
 
OMFG I am beginning to think @AdamWho is right when he says Trump won't make it to the nomination.
Watching a compendium of Trump gaffes from this past weekend - the guy is starting to make Biden sound better and better. He loses his train of thought and his mouth just starts making weird noises, while his hand pretend he's saying something - it's a godawful display of cognitive decline. At this rate, by next January he will be unable to repeat the oath he would be required to take if he won the election.
I wonder what is going on in Santa Monica that keeps its residents from noticing.
OMFG.




OMFG!
 
I don't know. I hate cherry picked clip videos. I saw a couple videos which to me seemed more like clickbait, implying he is just rambling... when he typically rambles as it is. They were mentioning his talking about Argentina, but that wasn't as random as they made it out to be.

He is having trouble with the Obama / Biden thing. Says he is doing it on purpose, but it doesn't seem like that at all. The really odd thing is that he never ran against Obama. I would expect a person to mistake the current race with the last one, but this race is the last one too.

His statements at the border when he was power fisting the migrants across the river, and then he says those people like him... that isn't dementia... but it appears to be close to delusion, and honestly much more worrisome. With Trump, you are never quite certain when he is lying to make people think something, verses his genuine beliefs.
 
More bad news for the folks that want to save democracy with fascism;

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday that Donald Trump can stay on the election ballot in Colorado, handing the former president a landmark legal victory in his quest to return to the White House. It was a fatal blow for a group of states trying to kick Trump off the ballot and came just 24 hours before 15 states vote on Super Tuesday. In an immediate reaction Trump declared on his Truth Social network: 'BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!'

Daily Mail

NINE to ZERO.
 
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