All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tami]

As Jeb Bush once said about Trump in a debate: “he’s a chaos candidate and he’ll be a chaos president.”

Only makes sense a chaos President would have a chaos transition, especially when he’s lost to someone he doesn’t respect.

I was curiosu about what was going on with Jeb Bush, so I checked him out on Twitter....answer, nothing much. No deep thoughts, no comments on what's going on in the world, nothing. I guess he's retreated from reality.

[numberthirty]

I was curiosu about what was going on with Jeb Bush, so I checked him out on Twitter....answer, nothing much. No deep thoughts, no comments on what's going on in the world, nothing. I guess he's retreated from reality.

Not so sure that it's that. Could be that he just sees that there isn't much of a place for him on the home team right now.

He's never really struck me as the sorta "True Believer..." that would pull what Buchanan did back in the day.

[Iron Maiden]

Yeah there’s no way at he does anything quietly. He hasn’t stopped campaigning since 2015. He will continue to hold his hate rallies and try to get as much attention as possible. I would love to think that the media would stop covering his antics now that he’s lost but I’m sure he’ll continue to get plenty of free promotion. he will say that he’s running again in 2024 to take back the country from the democrats who stole the election. He’ll continue the conspiracy theories about voter fraud. But it will all probably be just a bargaining chip for his planned media venture.

He will be 78 in 2024, so here’s hoping that all the Adderall and the horrible diet finally catch up with him and he doesn’t have the strength to cause chaos in the next election cycle.

That is my thought also. The older he gets, the faster things are going to catch up with him. His father developed Alzheimer's at around 80 or so and Trump may develop since it can be inherited from a first degree relative. He certainly has had some mental glitches during his long rallies, getting tongue tied or talking about the Revolutionary Army capturing airports, etc. And that McDonalds & KFC diet as you mentioned. I think his periods of relative lucidity (for him) are diminishing and his reluctance to make public appearances may be a sign of some kind of retreat from reality.

[PaulBullion]

Putin: Exists.

Gray Lensman:

Trump doesn't respect ANYONE.

#

[PaulBullion]

Yeah. The simple, yet terrifying truth is that Trump would’ve been re-elected, perhaps easily re-elected if he hadn’t screwed up his response to the virus. The dumbass literally shot himself in both feet, and the country suffered as a result.

As I keep pointing out again and again: While we might not like polls anymore, they did give Biden a bigger lead over Trump before the pandemic started, not a smaller one. The economy was going into recession. Trump had not kept any promises. He had the approval rating of a president who does not get re-elected.

We would have had a very different conversation during the campaigns, but the outcome may have very well been the same.

[PaulBullion]

Chad Wolf was not legally serving as acting Homeland Security secretary when he signed rules limiting applications and renewals for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and those rules are now invalid, a federal judge ruled Saturday.


...
The ruling is another defeat for the Trump administration, which is now unlikely to be able to address DACA and the fate of Dreamers. The administration tried ending the program in 2017, but the US Supreme Court blocked their attempt in June. The memo invalidated on Saturday had sought to buy time while the administration decided its next steps.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/14/p...4T23%3A25%3A21

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I dunno... I think it was Dave Chapelle I saw recently say something I'd been thinking a while during our Covid shutdown, that this has been what has dominated the media through the year, but prior to this it was having another mass shooting every other week if not every few days. It had been going on for years.

Just even try to imagine, what if that had been what was still going down, when all of the protests about police violence started? How would those two national narratives have played out, if running simultaneously?

I mean, it might have worked out in his favor, if people were afraid they were really seeing a new civil war starting in the streets ... but, just like it was hard for him to claim he had no responsibility for how bad Covid hit us, it's also possible he would not have been able to dodge the blame for rampant violent clashes in the streets. You know, particularly since the alt-right side outright say they're following his lead, and he won't denounce them.

As I keep pointing out again and again: While we might not like polls anymore, they did give Biden a bigger lead over Trump before the pandemic started, not a smaller one. The economy was going into recession. Trump had not kept any promises. He had the approval rating of a president who does not get re-elected.

We would have had a very different conversation during the campaigns, but the outcome may have very well been the same.

I know all that, and yet, Trump got eight million MORE votes in 2020 than he had in 2016, something that blew my mind. Despite all the stupid **** he had done that screwed over the country, perhaps to an irreparable degree, Trump was enamored enough by voters to make the election more of a contest than it should've been, even though he lost the Electoral College by almost a hundred.

[Steel Inquisitor]

That is my thought also. The older he gets, the faster things are going to catch up with him. His father developed Alzheimer's at around 80 or so and Trump may develop since it can be inherited from a first degree relative. He certainly has had some mental glitches during his long rallies, getting tongue tied or talking about the Revolutionary Army capturing airports, etc. And that McDonalds & KFC diet as you mentioned. I think his periods of relative lucidity (for him) are diminishing and his reluctance to make public appearances may be a sign of some kind of retreat from reality.

Other factors are that his Trump's are coming due, the only bank who will give him the time of day (Deutch) making noises about cutting him off, he's still got numerous civil lawsuits outstanding, he's alienated all the wealthy billionaires who would be vital in funding a news network he wants to create to attack Fox News, the Trump empire is on its last legs, Putin hates having loose ends, he's targeted by New York for corrupt business practices - and the latter includes all his close family members. Running for president may be the worst thing happening to him since without that he wouldn't have so much attention that he does now. His monkey paw is getting hungry for flesh.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Other factors are that his Trump's are coming due, the only bank who will give him the time of day (Deutch) making noises about cutting him off, he's still got numerous civil lawsuits outstanding, he's alienated all the wealthy billionaires who would be vital in funding a news network he wants to create to attack Fox News, the Trump empire is on its last legs, Putin hates having loose ends, he's targeted by New York for corrupt business practices - and the latter includes all his close family members. Running for president may be the worst thing happening to him since without that he wouldn't have so much attention that he does now. His monkey paw is getting hungry for flesh.

All that and more. Trump was flying under the radar (relatively speaking) in terms of public attention save for The Apprentice, the original plan for his presidential run was intended only as a vehicle to increase his brand recognition for that media network he was working on, but those plans went sideways when he won the election, putting him in the mother of all fishbowls. The killer is you can't tell me Trump didn't know all his skeletons would come dancing out of the closet when he became president and E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G in his past would be put under a microscope, and yet, he still plowed ahead, thinking he'd never wind up in the sort of trouble he's in now. In short, Trump's colossal ego wound up being the noose around his neck.

[Gray Lensman]

As I keep pointing out again and again: While we might not like polls anymore, they did give Biden a bigger lead over Trump before the pandemic started, not a smaller one. The economy was going into recession. Trump had not kept any promises. He had the approval rating of a president who does not get re-elected.

We would have had a very different conversation during the campaigns, but the outcome may have very well been the same.

The thing with the polls isn't that they have suddenly become inaccurate, but that we have had a few years of extremely accurate ones before reverting back to the mean this year. Polls typically have a margin of error of 3% or more, and personally I think Trump's constant referral of anything unfavorable to him as fake may have led his voters to be less responsive to pollsters this time around.

[Username taken]

I’m reading too much about Majorie Taylor Greene, the Qanon nut just elected to the house.

This is exactly how the media mainstreams and platforms these ideas..by sensationalizing everything she’s says. Knowing the US today, it’ll make more sense to simply ignore some of the nonsense this woman is saying rather than trying to convince everyone she’s crazy. Millions of people don’t feel her nonsense is crazy and with media distrust at an all time low the people constantly covering her are actually helping her get her ideas into the world.

The media did an excellent job of giving Trump similar attention by acting in 2016 like he’s some crazy man and look how that turned out.

[Tendrin]

They did it again.

Observers were stunned this week when Minnesota GOP legislative officials urgently warned only Republicans about a serious COVID-19 outbreak in the State Senate. No one said a word to Democratic politicians or staff who shared the same spaces.

The outbreak amid a number of GOP senators and staff appeared to be linked to a Republican senator who tested positive after attending a party caucus earlier this month.

Senate Republican Chief of Staff Craig Sondag alerted Republicans to the outbreak in a memo Tuesday, and instructed all GOP Senate staffers to work from home, The Star Tribune reported Saturday.

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/minne...051551943.html

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The Myth of the Latino turnout for Trump turns out to be just that, a myth:
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/...trump-11961256

“The main story is that in an election which saw historic turnout, people of color — and especially Latinos — had an unprecedented increase in voting,” he said. “After decades of political experts talking about the growing Latino vote, this year it actually happened.”

In Texas, Democratic President-elect Joe Biden performed well among Hispanics in urban areas, according to official precinct analysis by the University of ************Los Angeles Latino Policy & Politics Initiative. In El Paso County, Biden received more than 75% of the vote in precincts with high concentrations of Latinos.

The former vice president’s margin among Latinos was also high elsewhere. In Dallas County, as much as 78% of the vote went for Biden in heavily Latino precincts, as did 75% in Tarrant County.

...

Matt Barreto, co-founder of political research firm Latino Decisions, said much of the mainstream media painted a damning picture of the nation’s Latino electorate. They should have instead focused on white voters.

Rather than looking at the record-high Latino voter turnout, Barreto said analysts cherry-picked certain Latin-majority districts that increased Trump's share, such as Miami-Dade County.

But Miami-Dade, which has a high Cuban American population, only makes up 3% of the nation’s diverse Latino electorate, Barreto said. That’s about as representative of Latinos as Vermont is of all American white people.

...

“I think that white observers are perplexed, because of Trump’s racism, why some Latinos voted for Trump,” Barreto said. “But some Latinos are Republicans … and they are going to vote for the Republican nominee. It’s as simple as that.”

Around 70% of Latinos nationwide voted for Biden, which is nearly as well as former President Barack Obama performed in 2012, Barreto said. By contrast, just 60% of Latinos voted for then-Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004.

The reports about Latinos delivering Texas for Trump were “definitely very upsetting to people,” said Valerie Martinez-Ebers, a University of North Texas political science professor who also directs its Latino and Mexican-American Studies program. In Texas, the majority of Latinos supported Biden.

“The fact of it is, is that Latinos didn’t cost Texas,” she said.

Trump did make some inroads with certain Latino subsets, such as male voters and evangelicals, but Martinez-Ebers said they weren't significant.

Latinos are not a “monolithic group,” she said, so it’s a mistake to assume they’ll always vote for Democrats. There is a big gender gap among Texas Hispanics, for instance; support for Trump increased among male Latinos, but women were overall opposed to his “machoism and cavalier attitude about the pandemic.”

,,,

Also, pollsters shouldn’t use the Rio Grande Valley as a bellwether for the rest of the state, Martinez-Ebers said. It only makes up 15% of the Latino electorate here and is a unique area.

By contrast, in Texas’ large cities, Democrats matched or exceeded former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's share in majority Latino precincts, she said. Many exit polls were off because pollsters did not approach voters in Spanish-speaking Hispanic precincts. Instead, they frequently focused on metro areas, which aren’t representative of Latinos who live in segregated neighborhoods.

If anything, white voters delivered Trump his Texas win, Martinez-Ebers said. Perhaps pundits should direct their focus elsewhere.

As Democracy Now!’s Juan González said, fixating on Latinos ignores the fundamental question of this election: “Why the heck did 58% of white Americans vote for Donald Trump, including 55% of white women?”

This is what happens when a bunch of overpaid self-proclaimed smartguys in a slow-motion election cycle have their thinkpieces out before the data comes in.

[Amadeus Arkham]

Trump admits Biden won.



https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonal...56491056279552

I bet you this is the closets he’ll ever give to a public concession speech.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Trump admits Biden won.



https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonal...56491056279552

Freudian slip there.

I am not even interested in looking up this spooky sounding Dominion thing, sure as I am that nothingburger it was, is, and shall remain forevermore.