• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

The Race For 2024

Tigers! said:
All I wish to know (eventually) is that Fred Nurk of the No-hopers party and Mary Bloggs of the My head is up my bum party are the candidates for the election. Then give us the results in Nov. 20xx.
All else is pointless, wasteful noise to me. Please spare us your torment.
Click to expand...

This is uncharitable. The U.S. helped with rescue efforts after the earthquake in Turkey. And would probably help Australia if/when kangaroos, mice, toads or crocodiles become a major threat.

I think every year divisible by four should automatically cause the U.S. to be registered as a humanitarian disaster area. We'll need emergency imports of cannabis, ethanol, Xanax and sex workers. We may also need physicians trained in suicide assistance if you can find a way to offer them legally.

We're well into the pre-announcement period -- it's less than 21 months until November -- and many smart Americans are already joining me in Southeast Asia.
 
T.G.G. Moogly said:
You can't blame Banana Donnie for all the stupid. Yes, he certainly possesses his share but the GOP clusterfuck is a group effort. The illiterates were looking for another leader and they found one in Orange. The good thing is there seems to be some GOP folks who recognize the stupidity that trademarks their own party. Whether there are enough to cause it to completely implode is doubtful.
Click to expand...
They had their chance to re-brand after George W Bush left office. They could have elected some marginally intelligent young hot shot to run against Obama's re-election, and it might have even worked.

But, probably not. Fundamentally, a clueless populist is exactly who rural conservatives want in office, not some momentary aberration of judgement. And it's certainly too late now to undo the damage to their reputation, at least as far as the incoming generation of younger voters is concerned. Fool me once, right?
 
Swammerdami said:
This is uncharitable. The U.S. helped with rescue efforts after the earthquake in Turkey. And would probably help Australia if/when kangaroos, mice, toads or crocodiles become a major threat.
Click to expand...
LOL. Hey Swammi, you should do stand-up.
 
Swammerdami said:

This is uncharitable. The U.S. helped with rescue efforts after the earthquake in Turkey. And would probably help Australia if/when kangaroos, mice, toads or crocodiles become a major threat.
Click to expand...
Those creatures have been a threat for years but you'd never know as it is drowning by the 3-ring circus called the US politics.
Swammerdami said:
I think every year divisible by four should automatically cause the U.S. to be registered as a humanitarian disaster area. We'll need emergency imports of cannabis, ethanol, Xanax and sex workers. We may also need physicians trained in suicide assistance if you can find a way to offer them legally.
Click to expand...
Call it abortion services. That will get it through some areas.
 
Copernicus said:
Tigers! said:
Patooka said:
Tigers! said:
There is a difference between having a vested interest and being sucked into a black hole. We are sucked into the black hole.

I am quite pleased that the US has regular elections. More power to them. What I am not pleased about is the assumption that the rest of the world cares as much as they do.
For example in Australia we will get breathless commentary, ad nauseum and ad infinitum, about the primaries in Akron, Ohio (why did I mention Akron, Ohio. Because in the last US election we were told about it. )
Do not know, do not care about Akron, Ohio or any other place beyond the black stump.

All I wish to know (eventually) is that Fred Nurk of the No-hopers party and Mary Bloggs of the My head is up my bum party are the candidates for the election. Then give us the results in Nov. 20xx.
All else is pointless, wasteful noise to me. Please spare us your torment.
Click to expand...

That's because people prefer to be entertained rather than informed.

In the case of Australian media, it's very much "what will get a reaction from the viewers that our advertisers will approve?" US politics is a very lazy go to well to draw from. It has drama and some other network in the states has already done the hard yards investigating so very little leg work is involved. I would prefer something like channel Nine reporting something about the US election and than expanding on it. Like for example how Trump's attitude towards trans people in the military would affect AUKUS (spoiler; it will), but instead it's just soap opera masquerading as news. US politics is important to Australia, the media just does a fucking terrible job explaining why.

Fuck, I would like Australian media to further probe into why investigations towards the former NSW Premier and Deputy Premier magically disappeared, or the shrinking amount of arable land near the Murray Darling River because of the massive comeback of blue green algae, but that's a bridge too far I guess. People would rather be entertained than informed.
Click to expand...
Sadly that is all too true. Though i would postulate that the US political circus is not entertaining , just tedious. There are so many people in Australia who could tell you all about the US political system but are illiterate concerning the Aust. political system. I know too many people who think we should copy the US system. Sheer madness.
We will still drown in the torrent of nonsense emanating from that circus.
The Murray Darling system is indeed in trouble and the reports, money spent has not given us much at all.
Click to expand...

Tigers, I'm sorry that you got stuck writing so many posts in this thread because so many other people are obsessed with our presidential politics. I can clearly see that, if it weren't for us going on and on about it, you would not be going on and on about it, making so many of us feel that we need to say something back to you and then waiting for you to tell us that this is so tedious that you can't stand all the other people making a fuss over it.
Click to expand...
I have an interest in the US politics as it does have an effect on Australia. I also pay attention to UK, NZ, European & Israeli politics due to the impact they have in Oz.
But the sheer tsunami of trivial, irrelevant information flowing out of the US dwarfs all others combined.

It is also dispiriting to realise just how many Australians are obsessed by the USA. Too many lack the intellect to make any sense of it but because it can out of the US it must be good.
 
Swammerdami said:
I think every year divisible by four should automatically cause the U.S. to be registered as a humanitarian disaster area. We'll need emergency imports of cannabis, ethanol, Xanax and sex workers.
Click to expand...
That actually sounds like a lot of fun!
 
Swammerdami said:
We may also need physicians trained in suicide assistance if you can find a way to offer them legally.
Click to expand...
Actually, it could be done without much training. At it's heart the Canadian euthanasia approach is what's normally done for intubation--it's just they leave out the intubation part. A couple of drugs are added for the sake of onlookers but aren't actually relevant.
 
www.politico.com

GOP primary candidates must agree to loyalty pledge in order to debate, RNC chair says

“We're saying you're not going to get on the debate stage unless you make this pledge,” Ronna McDaniel said.
www.politico.com www.politico.com

Any candidate who wants to take part in the GOP’s first primary debate in Milwaukee later this year will have to sign a pledge promising to support whoever wins the nomination, Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel said Sunday.

“We’re saying you’re not going to get on the debate stage unless you make this pledge,” McDaniel said during an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” McDaniel, who recently won her fourth term as RNC chair after a contentious battle against Harmeet Dhillon, said that Republican voters are tired of “infighting” within the party, and “want to see us come together.”
Click to expand...

That's so cute that she thinks Trump or really any Republican would honor her little pledge. Most of them have violated their oaths of office already with their glorious insurrection. It would be so sweet if Trump loses the nomination and then leads a riot at the RNC. It would be right if the party goes down in literal flames.
 
Several of the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates had written books, whether for their candidacy or else some years earlier.
Here are all the candidates, from  2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries in order of date of withdrawal from the race, for all but the final one:

Richard Ojeda, Eric Swalwell, Mike Gravel, John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Seth Moulton, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bill de Blasio, Tim Ryan, Beto O'Rourke, Wayne Messam, Joe Sestak, Steve Bullock, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, Marianne Williamson, Cory Booker, John Delaney, Andrew Yang, Michael Bennet, Deval Patrick, Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden
 
 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries - Marianne Williamson wrote books, as did likely possible candidates Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders.

Turning to  2024 Republican Party presidential primaries all three declared candidates have written books: Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Nikki Haley. Of possible candidates, all these ones have written books: Ron DeSantis, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Mike Pence, Kristi Noem, Chris Christie, Larry Hogan, Larry Elder, and Tim Scott.


Guardian:
It is a mirthless read, lacking even the gleeful invective of Never Give an Inch, the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s own opening shot on the road to 2024. Predictably, DeSantis berates the left as unpatriotic and ruinous, all while prostrating himself before his former patron.

“I knew that a Trump endorsement would provide me with the exposure to GOP primary voters across the state of Florida,” he admits, discussing his campaign for governor in 2018. “I was confident that many would see me as a good candidate once they learned about my record.”

It’s all about bowing and scraping.

“Trump also brought a unique star power to the race. If someone had asked me, as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, to name someone who was rich, I – and probably nearly all my friends – would have responded by naming Donald Trump.”
Click to expand...
Seems like RDS is desperate for Trump voters.
 
From The Guardian:
He depicts big tech as censorious, concentrated and “woke”. He reiterates his disdain for Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and George Soros, financier and liberal patron.
Click to expand...
I'm not impressed by right-wingers' efforts to imitate Bernie Sanders. After claiming that capitalism is a morally perfect economic system and that business leaders are completely virtuous and saintly, they expect us to take seriously their anti-capitalism.
DeSantis criticizes Zuckerberg’s Center for Technology and Civic Life for funding election operations. He contends that such private-public partnerships undermine public faith in electoral integrity and give Democrats a boost. He says nothing about Citizens United, the 2010 supreme court decision that set corporate money loose on US elections, other than to distinguish campaign donations from ballot mechanics.
Click to expand...
So it's a crime against humanity to finance Democrats' campaigns, but not to finance Republicans' campaigns.

"DeSantis also fails to examine the ties that bound the Mercer family – DeSantis donors and Trump stalwarts – with Facebook and Zuckerberg." - it figures.

True to form, DeSantis brands the “national legacy press” as the “pretorian guard of the nation’s failed ruling class” and seconds Trump’s claim that the “fake news media” is the “enemy of the American People”. Yet for all of this media-bashing in the name of supposed truth, the governor omits the role of Fox News in propagating fake news about the presidential election and defamation cases brought against the news channel.
Click to expand...
So Fox News is good, because its people follow the right-wing party line, while the mainstream news media is bad, because its people don't.
 
Now to the comparison of the cocaine bear and Ron DeSantis's book “The Courage to Be Free”.

He has chapter titles like “The Magic Kingdom of Woke Corporatism” (Disney), “The Liberal Elite’s Praetorian Guard” (the mainstream news media), “Power in a Post-Constitutional Order.”

"After a few stories about Little League, DeSantis’s time at Yale, meeting his future wife, and his years in Congress, any glimmer of a human through-line vanishes." He has an anecdote about getting water from the Sea of Galilee to baptize his children with. "But odd and off-putting as that anecdote is, in the dozens of pages that follow you begin to long for anything resembling it, anything that would indicate that the book was written by a human being."

Instead, “In Florida, we recognized the implications of the ESG movement on both policy and constitutional accountability by prohibiting the state’s pension fund managers from using ESG criteria when making investment decisions.” Also, “The failure to robustly wield authority permits the unaccountable leviathan to metastasize,” about the Federal Government.

The only character is Ron DeSantis. He has a wife and children and some other acquaintances whom he describes as having shown up to give speeches on his behalf to thunderous applause ... DeSantis gives little indication of his personality, other than that he feels he invariably knows the right thing to do in all situations, though he does include the self-deprecating aside that “for me, I rejected the idea that I would strike a balance between academic achievement and athletic success, because I was not willing to give less than 100 percent to either baseball or my academics.”
Click to expand...
He ought to have become a baseball player. :D

More about his book,
It is terrifying! The writing almost lulls you to sleep. (“At the end of the day, the re-mooring of the constitutional ship of state will provide the needed foundation for the reinvigoration of a society rooted in freedom, justice, and the rule of law.”) But then you jerk awake realizing that Ron DeSantis has just said, in the most convoluted way possible, that the Constitution has already lapsed and he is thus justified in imposing his will on the people because he is right and they will thank him for it! Not to mention how blithely he suggests that his state’s response to covid-19 was an unqualified success.
Click to expand...
In effect, Fascism.

The book shows us that he has two enemies, people who disagree with him and the word "to be", replacing many instances of that word with "to represent", like “Yale represented such a serious culture shock for me.”
 
Patooka said:
I don't know why Nikki Haley thinks she has a chance. She's asking for votes from the same crowd that loved saying Barrack Hussein Obama. Pretty soon we're going to see her described as Nimrata Haley nee Randhawa.

I guarantee it. Fuck, it's a 50/50 bet Ted Cruz will say it with zero self awareness.
Click to expand...
She's aiming at VP, gettign Trump's gratitude by siphoning off enough votes from a stronger canditte to give in the most votes and therefore the delegates in state after state of Repug primaries.
 
From the other WaPo review,
Now DeSantis has published “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” a sometimes substantive, consistently scorn-filled work thick with contempt for “elites,” a Democratic Party that he calls a “woke dumpster fire,” “the legacy media,” “Big Tech” and much, much more.

...
He finds common cause with Trump in labeling the media “the enemy of the people.”
Click to expand...
After noting what a Trumpie he was in that book,
After all, there are so many others to attack, foremost among them America’s “elites,” in all their various forms — “progressive elites,” “woke elites,” “public health elites,” the “scientific-technological elite,” “bureaucratic elites” and “power-hungry elites.” The word “elite” gets used more than 20 times in the book’s introduction, which is 12 pages long.

Expressing this disdain requires a bit of gymnastics for DeSantis, who is himself a product of two of the nation’s most elite institutions, Yale University and Harvard Law School.
Click to expand...
When he ran for Congress for Florida, he called degrees from such universities “political scarlet letters.”
At Yale and Harvard, he encountered professors who “reigned as potentates, sure in the smugness of their positions, but utterly unaware of the lives of most Americans, including those that they professed to care about.”
Click to expand...

From the NYT,
As governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis has been casting himself as a Trump-like pugilist. But the overall sense you get from reading his new memoir is that of the mechanical try-hard — someone who has expended a lot of effort studying which way the wind is blowing in the Republican Party and is learning how to comport himself accordingly.

Not that he admits any of this, peppering “The Courage to Be Free” with frequent eruptions about “the legacy media” and “runaway wokeness.” But all the culture war Mad Libs can’t distract from the dull coldness at this book’s core. A former military prosecutor, DeSantis is undeniably diligent and disciplined. “The Courage to Be Free” resounds with evidence of his “hard work” (a favorite mantra), showing him poring over Florida’s laws and constitution in order to understand “the various pressure points in the system” and “how to leverage my authority to advance our agenda through that system.” Even the title, with its awkward feint at boldness while clinging to the safety of cliché, suggests the anxiety of an ambitious politician who really, really wants to run for president in 2024 and knows he needs the grievance vote, but is also trying his best to tiptoe around the Trump dragon.
Click to expand...
 
RDS wrote a book before "The Courage to Be Free":
Back in 2011, a year before DeSantis first ran for Congress, he published “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers” — an obvious dig at Barack Obama, whom DeSantis lambasted for his “thin résumé” and “egotism” and “immense self-regard.” It was a curious book, full of high-toned musings about “the Framers’ wisdom” and “the Madisonian-designed political apparatus.”
Click to expand...

RDS thanks “a hardworking team of literary professionals who were critical to telling the Florida story,” his team of ghostwriters, but they could only work with what they had available to them.
For the most part, “The Courage to Be Free” is courageously free of anything that resembles charisma, or a discernible sense of humor. While his first book was weird and esoteric enough to have obviously been written by a human, this one reads like a politician’s memoir churned out by ChatGPT.

DeSantis’s attempts at soaring rhetoric are mostly too leaden to get off the ground.
Click to expand...
Then his heavy-handed wielding of executive power as FL gov. “Be willing to lead, have the courage of your convictions, deliver for your constituents and reap the political rewards.”

He removed Tampa's prosecutor for refusing to prosecute abortion cases, calling him a “Soros-backed attorney” who was guilty of “a clear case of incompetence and neglect of duty.”
It’s unclear what happened to the DeSantis of a decade ago, a boilerplate libertarian and founding member of the House Freedom Caucus who was mainly preoccupied with fiscal austerity and privatizing Medicare and Social Security. His 2011 book contained numerous tributes to “limited government.” Now, he says, in his typically windy way, anything he does that looks suspiciously intrusive is in fact a cleansing measure, purging public life of excess politicization: “For years, the default conservative posture has been to limit government and then get out of the way. There is, no doubt, much to recommend to this posture — when the institutions in society are healthy. But we have seen institution after institution become thoroughly politicized.”
Click to expand...
So if he doesn't like it, it's "politicized". "Freedom" is only to do what he likes, it seems.

He proposes turning 50,000 currently apolitical civil servants into “at-will employees who serve at the pleasure of the president.” Which is blatant politicization. Or is it only politicization when it gets in the way of King Ron?
 
Finally,
Reading books, even bad ones, can be a goad to thinking, but what DeSantis seems to be doing in “The Courage to Be Free” is to insist that Americans should just stop worrying and let him do all the thinking for them. Any criticism of his policies gets dismissed as “woke” nonsense cooked up by the “corporate media.” (Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and News Corp, which owns the publisher of this book, doubtless don’t count.) “I could withstand seven years of indoctrination in the Ivy League,” DeSantis says, only half in jest.
Click to expand...

Never Give an Inch review: Mike Pompeo as ‘heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass’ | Books | The Guardian
Never Give an Inch is Pompeo’s opening salvo in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. On cue, he puckers up to Trump, the only declared candidate so far, and thanks Mike Pence, a likely contestant, for bringing him into the fold. But where others are concerned, Never Give an Inch doubles as a burn book.
Click to expand...
He slams them very hard.
Trump, Pompeo says, branded Bolton a “scumbag loser”. Pompeo thinks Bolton should “be in jail, for spilling classified information”. The Room Where it Happened, Bolton’s tell-all book, evidently ruffled feathers. As for Pompeo’s own relationship with classified documents? “I don’t believe I have anything classified.” It’s not exactly a blanket denial.

Turning to Haley, Pompeo dings her time as UN ambassador – “a job that is far less important than people think” – and her performance in that post.

“She has described her role as going toe-to-toe with tyrants,” he observes. “If so, then why would she quit such an important job at such an important time?”
Click to expand...
On other leaders:
Pompeo is happy, of course, to blame Obama for alienating Viktor Orban from the US and western Europe, and to sympathize with the Hungarian leader’s efforts to “root his time in office in his nation’s history and Christian faith”.

...
Pompeo is a fan of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s defeated former leader, who he says “largely modeled his candidacy for president on President Trump”.

...
Pompeo also takes Pope Francis and the Catholic church to task over their relationship with China, and derides both the reformist Pope John XXIII and the liberation theology movement of the 1970s.

...
As expected, Pompeo basically ignores the insurrection Trump stoked and the attack on Congress it produced. He refers to “mayhem at the Capitol” on 6 January 2021 and targets the “left” for looking to exploit the day’s events, but says nothing of Trump’s concerted effort to subvert democracy and overturn an election.
Click to expand...
Is he that desperate for the Trumpie vote?
The appetite for a Pompeo presidency seems … limited. Like Ron DeSantis, he is grim and humorless. Unlike the governor of Florida, Pompeo has no war chest.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom