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NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Sun Feb 25, 2024 6:03 am | |
| Mrs NoCo made an astute observation last night. She said Tim Scott will probably be Trump's pick for VP, because Trump thinks the Negroes will vote for him if there's a Negro on the ticket. And of course if he happens to be wearing shiny gold-painted tennis shoes and has a mug shot. Watermelon! Most Republicans think he should put a woman on the ticket, so he can grab her by the pussy any time he wants ("When you're a celebrity they let you do that.") Also, the wimmen will vote for him if there a wimmen on the ticket. Babies! But I can't see Trump allowing a woman on the ticket. She might upstage him, or get press attention. No matter how obsequious, no matter how deferential, she'd never be as humiliated as a Negro having to bow and scrape to him (and his White Nationalist followers) in public.
Last edited by NoCoPilot on Sun May 26, 2024 7:04 am; edited 1 time in total |
| | | | richard09
Posts : 4341
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| | Subject: Re: .. Thu Mar 07, 2024 3:03 pm | |
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| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Sun Mar 10, 2024 9:09 am | |
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| | | | richard09
Posts : 4341
Join date : 2013-01-16
| | Subject: Re: .. Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:46 pm | |
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| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Thu Apr 04, 2024 6:57 am | |
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| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Fri May 03, 2024 5:41 am | |
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| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Sun May 05, 2024 6:33 am | |
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| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Sun May 05, 2024 6:31 pm | |
| - NoCoPilot wrote:
- Mrs NoCo made an astute observation last night. She said Tim Scott will probably be Trump's pick for VP, because Trump thinks the Negroes will vote for him if there's a Negro on the ticket. And of course if he happens to be wearing shiny gold-painted tennis shows and has a mug shot. Watermelon!
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tim-scott-avoids-2024-election-results-question_n_6637b5bbe4b03d2898dd496d?dnbI wonder if Tim will change his last name to Trump if he gets on the ticket? Isn't that what slaves did when a new master bought them? |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Mon May 06, 2024 1:05 pm | |
| Oy, I just had a thought.
If the Trumpster is forced to pull out of the race at the last minute (October) by a conviction of some sort (or jailtime for contempt), will his VICE have to take over at the top of the Republican ticket?
In that case, who he chooses could actually make a difference. Noem or Scott would be DOA at the polls. Rubio might actually get some votes. |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Tue May 14, 2024 8:19 am | |
| - “Thom Hartmann” wrote:
- The GOP’s favorite phrase when it comes to presidential politics appears to be, “Nobody knew at the time.”
Once a president is sworn into office, regardless of how much evidence there is of crimes and irregularities committed to get him there, both the press and the electorate just seem to want to ignore that evidence and move along. After all, there’s never been a successfully contested presidential election in American history.
Which is why the GOP will again count on getting away with their crimes against electoral democracy this fall. The big question for America will be, “What did we miss that we should have known at the time?”
We have, you’ll recall, seen this movie before:
— When Richard Nixon ran against incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1968, nobody knew at the time that Nixon’s campaign had reached out to the South Vietnamese leadership and promised to make them rich if they’d refuse to go along with the Paris talks and thus sabotage the peace deal that LBJ had worked out with them earlier that summer.
A week before the election, LBJ discussed it with Republican Senator Everett Dirksen, who agreed that, “This is treason.” Nonetheless, both men took the story to their graves; America didn’t learn about Nixon’s treachery until the LBJ library finally published the tape recordings of the phone call.
— When Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter, nobody knew at the time that Reagan’s campaign had cut a deal with the mullahs of Iran to hold the hostages, making Carter appear fatally weak and politically impotent.
We didn’t learn about Reagan’s treason until the then-president of Iran, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, emigrated to America and wrote a 2013 article for The Christian Science Monitor in which he laid out the plot. The story was corroborated a year ago in The New York Times by Texas’ former Lt. Governor, Ben Barnes, who’d been along for the ride to Paris where the deal between the Reagan campaign and Iranian leaders was consummated.
— When the 2000 election recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court was halted by five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court — handing the White House to George W. Bush by a disputed 537 votes — nobody knew at the time that Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, had commissioned a huge purge of voters, using a list of Texas felons that was 68% Black and Hispanic.
Harris did this because the national pool of Black and Hispanic names is relatively small: Black felons in Texas with names like Jim Washington or Jose Gonzalez are extremely likely to have similarly named counterparts in any other state with large Black and Hispanic populations like Florida.
Thus, when those Texas names were compared via a “loose match” (didn’t require a birthday or middle name match) with Florida voters’ names, disproportionate numbers of Black and Hispanic Florida voters were deemed to be possible felons who’d somehow recently moved to Florida from Texas, and tens of thousands were removed from the voter rolls. As the US Commission on Civil Rights noted:
- Quote :
- “14.4 percent of Florida’s black voters cast ballots that were rejected. This compares with approximately 1.6 percent of nonblack Florida voters who did not have their presidential votes counted. … n the state's largest county, Miami-Dade, more than 65 percent of the names on the purge list were African Americans, who represented only 20.4 percent of the population.”
[size]
— When Donald Trump was certified the winner of the 2016 election, nobody knew at the time that Russia had illegally poured millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours into targeting swing state voters identified by the RNC, whose names were handed off to Russian Intelligence by Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
When Robert Mueller’s FBI team determined this crime had helped put Trump in the White House, and that Trump had personally intervened in investigations ten separate timesin ways that could be prosecuted as criminal obstruction of justice, Bill Barr kept the news from America until the story had largely faded from the headlines.
What will it be this November? We have some clues.
— With the blessing of five Republicans on the 2018 Supreme Court, Republican-controlled states with large Black and Hispanic populations are purging voter rolls like there’s no tomorrow. Just between 2020 and 2022, fully 19,260,000 Americans — 8.5% of all registered voters — were purged. The purge rate in Red states was 40% higher than the rest of the country. We won’t know this year’s purge numbers until well after the election is over.
— The GOP is trying to organize an “army” of 100,000 rightwing warriors to show up at polling places to “oversee” elections and challenge voters they think look suspicious. They’ll also be challenging signature matches on mail-in ballots, particularly in Blue cities in Red states.
— Republican elected officials from the state level all the way up to the US Senate are refusing to say that they’ll accept or certify the result of the election this fall if Donald Trump doesn’t win. Multiple Republican members of Congress have asserted that only the House of Representatives should decide the presidential election this year (which would throw the election to Trump regardless of who the voters or electoral college choose).
— In multiple states, Republicans have passed laws allowing them to manipulate and change the location of polling places, criminalize voter registration drives, replace Democratic and nonpartisan election officials with partisan GOP hacks, and in Georgia and Arizona throw out ballots from entire precincts. As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt noted for The Atlantic: “Throwing out thousands of ballots in rival strongholds may be profoundly antidemocratic, but it is technically legal, and Republicans in several states now have a powerful stick with which to enforce such practices.”
— Typically, when politicians engage in nakedly deceptive politicking or election theft they’re outed in the press and punished at the polls. Since 2020, however, Republicans have rewarded their politicians who tell lies and engage in underhanded tactics, suggesting there will be no limits to what the Trump campaign might do or say in the weeks leading up to the election, including the use of deepfakes and AI.
— Saudi Arabia and Russia — both allies of Trump — have cut oil production by over 1.4 million barrels a day to drive up gasoline prices leading up to this November, just like they did in a dress rehearsal during the fall of 2022. History shows that gas prices spiking over $5 or even $6 a gallon will have a measurable impact on inflation and thus the election.
— Russia fielded a small army of online trolls to assist Trump’s electoral efforts in 2016 and 2020. Expect the same in November, except this time, according to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, China is also getting into the act on the GOP’s behalf.
— Benjamin Netanyahu defied President Obama when he was engaged in delicate negotiations with Iran, visiting the US and addressing Congress at the invitation of Republicans. He’s expected to do the same slap-in-the-face gesture this fall to Biden, along with defying the president’s wish that Israel minimize civilian casualties in Gaza. Netanyahu will do everything he can to ensure Trump comes back into office if for no other reason than keeping himself out of prison; demoralizing young progressive voters will almost certainly be at the top of his list.
But these are all things we know about right now, even if there’s little we can do about most of them.
Given the Nixon/Reagan/Bush examples, our biggest concern should be to find the things we’d otherwise look back on after the inauguration and say about them, “Nobody knew at the time…”[/size] |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Thu May 16, 2024 3:16 pm | |
| Republicans and Democrats aren't even playing the same game.
Democrats still assume that voters are intelligent, well-informed, and able to make decisions in their best interest. They continue to put forward qualified candidates for the toughest job in the world, well-seasoned politicians who understand the difficulties of international diplomacy. Hillary Clinton was over-qualified, Joseph Biden is over-qualified, Barack Obama was well-qualified, John Kerry was over-qualified, Albert Gore was over-qualified.
The GOP, on the other hand, assumes the stoopid electorate votes for a famous name, or for a man they'd like to have a beer with. Reagan was a washed-up B-movie actor with zero political experience, George W. Bush was a spoiled frat-boy who failed in everything except getting drunk. The other guy was a reality TV personality with a history of shady deals.
Turns out, an uneducated populace is prone to being brainwashed.
If Biden loses, as Hillary did, the Dems have nobody to blame but themselves. There are PLENTY of well-qualified candidates with better "beer factor" that Joe or Hillary (take Obama as an example). Candidate likeability MUST be the first determinate, and only from among that pool can you choose a final candidate.
Hell, the Republicans don't even do that. Most of their show clown candidates had no clue what the party operatives were doing while they slept in the Oval. |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Fri May 24, 2024 6:25 am | |
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| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Sun May 26, 2024 7:14 am | |
| The balance of influence—I will say "influence" here instead of "power"—has shifted.
The country has always had rich & powerful individuals. Their influence has waxed and waned as political winds blow. But in the past 40 years, since the Reagan Revolution shifted the tax burden from all citizens to just the poor, the influence and sway of the billionaire class has exploded. Especially after Citizens United, since their manipulation of politics no longer needs to be reported or even publicly acknowledged.
There are still only a tiny number of obscenely-wealthy families—around 400—but their influence is so outsize now that the general public doesn't have much of a say in policy or candidates.
And... these super-influencers no longer have to be US citizens or even vote. A lot of them are Saudi or Russian, and their interests are aligned accordingly. |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Wed May 29, 2024 7:57 pm | |
| Dennis Quaid thinks Trump makes more sense. https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/29/politics/video/dennis-quaid-trump-support-lcl-digvidThe CNN discussion afterward touches on what may be—still—Trump's greatest strength. People see the government, politics, as broken and Trump is an outsider who can "fix" it. That is, not so coincidentally, EXACTLY how Hitler was elected, for the exact same reason. People like Quaid apparently see things in miniature, not pulling back for the big picture. They see all of the problems in the world, and want to blame the current administration (regardless of who it is at the time) for those problems. However, if American politicians are not to blame for the problems, that also means they cannot fix them. Burning down a house to solve a rat problem is like committing suicide over a temporary depression. |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Mon Jun 03, 2024 5:32 am | |
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| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Wed Jun 05, 2024 4:26 pm | |
| Russia's use of artificial intelligence to influence low-information high-credulity voters* is light years ahead of where it was in 2016. - Thom Hartmann wrote:
- Imagine that a large-scale state-owned AI capable of mimicking millions of people simultaneously was deployed across multiple social media sites to imitate reporters, government officials, scientists, politicians, and average people, all with the purpose of subtly convincing users to alter their perception of Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
It would be millions of times more effective than the clumsy efforts of Putin’s St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency (IRA) troll farm that convinced enough Americans in six targeted states to vote for Trump that they appear to have helped hand him the 2016 election.
That project took hundreds of people and hundreds of thousands of man-hours (who went quiet during Russian holidays); a single AI running at scale could accomplish the same thing, appearing as hundreds of thousands of “people,” with an AI-configured supercomputer and a few hundred kilowatts of electricity, all without taking a minute off for a coffee, bathroom, or holiday break.
And most people would never be the wiser, just like the millions of Americans who interacted with Putin’s English-proficient pro-Trump and anti-Hillary IRA trolls in 2016. * - I want to say "low-IQ voters" but then I remembered, by definition half the populace is IQ 100 or below. |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Mon Jun 10, 2024 5:47 pm | |
| One thing I haven’t heard mentioned is what Trump will do with major privately held businesses after the election if he wins.
Putin, Orban, Xi, Hitler, Mussolini all his heroes seized all the successful businesses for themselves, taking their profits for themselves and exiling or disappearing their founders.
Elon Musk watch out. |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Sun Jun 16, 2024 6:14 am | |
| Last night on The Daily Show—which I can now watch the next morning—Charlemagne Tha God opined that Democrats weren't exciting voters because they weren't speaking plainly. Trump is a simmering disaster but he's full of swear words and wacky analogies. People are entertained when he speaks.
Nobody is entertained by a Biden speech.
Obama was ente4tain8ng.
Like it or not, this is the TikTok era and politicians need to pander to the 5-second attention span and fifth grade education level of the electorate. |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Thu Jun 20, 2024 9:27 pm | |
| Mrs NoCo thinks Biden will win by a landslide, that all of the polls will be proven false.
Of course she only consumes Democratic-minded media, which is to say liberal fact-based media.
The book I'm reading, "Minority Rule," talks about all of the systematic changes Republicans have put in place since 2020 in the name of "voter integrity." The opposite of course is true -- they have rigged the next election so it'll be almost impossible to lose.
Even if the popular vote is a landslide for Biden, I don't think Republicans will accept it.
And, having seen Biden interviewed by Lester Holt tonight, he is not a strong +andidate. He's a mumbling bumbling old man. He may well lose next week's debate disastrously.
So. Prepare yourself for the "50 year reich." |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Fri Jun 21, 2024 4:23 am | |
| Or, consider the alternative. Biden wins re-election in a landslide. Democrats take the House and widen their margin in the Senate. Democrats control two of the three pillars of government.
What do they do? Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, making registration nearly universal. Pass the Equal Rights Amendment, which has been languishing since, what, 1972? Codify Roe. Repeal Citizens United. Impeach Thomas & Alito for ethics violations, and Barrett, Kavanaugh and Gorsach for lying under oath in their confirmation hearings.
What would the Heritage Foundation do? They'd lose their shit.
They'd ramp up violence across the country, agitating for a second Civil War. Their supporters are a minority, but a big minority. They would not go quietly into the good night.
It would be almost worse if Biden wins. |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Fri Jun 21, 2024 11:03 am | |
| It’s funny, reading this book on Minority Rule, both sides want the same thing. Election integrity. Faith in elections. Every vote counts.
The only difference is, Democrats think everybody should be able to vote. We want a democracy.
Republicans think only certain qualified people should be able to vote. White people. Male people. Property owners. People with the “right stuff.” They want a republic.
Democrats think what's best for the majority of the voters is what's best for the country.
Republicans think what's best for them－rich white males－is what's best for the country.
This is a divide as old as the country, and won't be fixed by any one election. |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Sat Jun 22, 2024 7:52 pm | |
| Why aren't Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger making pro-Biden TV ads? |
| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Sun Jun 23, 2024 11:40 am | |
| DJT says he backs the Ten Commandments in schools. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-endorses-ten-commandments-in-schools_n_66773a79e4b00383ac7dd4f9Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Including money. Thou shalt make no false idols. Including life-sized portraits of yourself. Thou shalt not take the name of your god in vain. God-damn it. Thou shalt keep the sabbath day holy. No political rallies. Honor your mother and your father. But change his will after he dies. Thou shalt not commit murder. But you could stand on 5th Avenue and shoot someone and you wouldn't lose any votes. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Unless thou givest them all hush money. Thou shalt not steal. Your company on the other hand.... Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor. Unless he's running against you. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's ass. Unless she's got a really nice ass. - Quote :
- "Has anyone read the ‘Thou shalt not steal’? I mean, has anybody read this incredible stuff? It’s just incredible,” Trump said at the gathering of the Faith & Freedom Coalition.
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| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Fri Jun 28, 2024 6:08 am | |
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| | | | NoCoPilot
Posts : 21082
Join date : 2013-01-16
Age : 70
Location : Seattle
| | Subject: Re: .. Sat Jun 29, 2024 9:29 am | |
| Fuck me. Are the Democrats TRYING to lose the election? https://www.aol.com/news/could-kamala-harris-winner-democrats-110003718.html - Quote :
- To even discuss Biden stepping down while COMPLETELY IGNORING THE VP … is a serious look into how we see the importance, capacity and seriousness of women of color,” writer Tanzina Vega, said on X.
Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, is the highest-ranking female elected official in US history and the first Black and first Asian American to serve as vice president. No, it's about winning this election. Social progress can wait until after the existential danger has passed. - Quote :
- For the past three and a half years, Harris’s barrier-breaking vice-presidency has divided Democrats. Negative press, some of it self-inflicted, compounded by sexist and racist attacks, and a challenging policy portfolio weighed on public perception of the former California senator. Nearly 50% of voters have an unfavorable view of Harris
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