Recent Posts

Show posts from buddies only

Well, when you spend the last few years hanging out with right wing grifters who make culture war issues their bread and butter, of course you're going to say stupid things like this.

[Preparing for a possible conviction, Trump and his team remain optimistic it doesn’t hurt him in election]

Preparing for a possible conviction, Trump and his team remain optimistic it doesn’t hurt him in election

As the jury is set to begin deliberating today, former President Donald Trump and his team are preparing for a possible conviction in his criminal New York hush money case. While there remains hope for a hung jury, legal advisers have privately warned Trump and his team to prepare for a possible conviction in the case.

Privately, Trump has asked allies what they think the outcome will be, while complaining that the trial is rigged against him. The former president has speculated that he will be convicted, citing the judge’s jury instructions as well as the fact the jury is comprised of residents of Manhattan, given the area’s liberal lean.

Despite the potential outcome, Trump’s advisers remains largely confident that the former president, his team and high profile Republicans have done the work in laying the groundwork in their messaging that the case was political from the start and that Trump was not ever going to get a fair trial. While advisers acknowledge that this is uncharted territory, ultimately, because of this messaging, they do not believe there will be a big impact on the general election in November.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-hush-money-trial-05-29-24/index.html

https://x.com/nationalzoo/status/1795786127074328954?s=46

As we know, China controls the population of pandas and only lends them to countries as a positive tool of diplomacy (i.e., panda diplomacy). Given everything going on in the world right now, particularly in Taiwan, does anyone find it surprising we are getting new pandas? The trend over the past 10 years has certainly been in the opposite direction.

He's absolutely right there's a Cultural Revolution-like element to this. And that is bad.
I'm still voting Biden though.

Are you concerned there won't be enough people brave enough to serve as Confederate re-enactors on the 200th anniversary of the American Civil War once the dust settles, and the anti-Lost Cause Movement has triumphed utterly? 

I think we've replaced one wrongful dogma with another equally wrongful dogma.
I prefer what Thomas Sewell has said over both.
Everything I see in the anti Confederate statue movement makes me want to side against it. American Red Guards. They don't understand history. They don't stop at Lee or Jackson. They went after Lincoln and Washington too. They want to rebuild our civic ethos from the ground up. Sorry, I'm not up for that. Give them an inch they'll go a mile.
Year Zero. That's what the idea is.

History repeats itself. The woke mob was also responsible for renaming all these streets. Such disrespect for history is disturbing.

So you think that our Founding Fathers are on par with Hitler?

The Confederates were perfectly equivalent to Nazis.

It's actually an apt comparison here because (thankfully, this is finally changing) we had American military installations named after leaders of an armed rebellion that killed more American soldiers than the Nazis did. Your sanctimonious white knighting for the Confederate cause here is ridiculous.

He's absolutely right there's a Cultural Revolution-like element to this. And that is bad.
I'm still voting Biden though.

Are you concerned there won't be enough people brave enough to serve as Confederate re-enactors on the 200th anniversary of the American Civil War once the dust settles, and the anti-Lost Cause Movement has triumphed utterly?  

I think we've replaced one wrongful dogma with another equally wrongful dogma.
I prefer what Thomas Sewell has said over both.
Everything I see in the anti Confederate statue movement makes me want to side against it. American Red Guards. They don't understand history. They don't stop at Lee or Jackson. They went after Lincoln and Washington too. They want to rebuild our civic ethos from the ground up. Sorry, I'm not up for that. Give them an inch they'll go a mile.
Year Zero. That's what the idea is.

You misspelled his name but that's probably appropriate since what spews out of his mouth belongs in a sewer.

Kind of live in an area so described. Anecdotally, I am seeing nothing showing this.

If you compare 2012 to 2016, the 60ish counties that have the least number of voters and make up 25% of Indiana's electorate, Trump's winning margin from them doubled in size. So Romney won them by a combined ~180k while Trump won them by a combined ~370k. Biden slightly improved in the middle counties but the bottom tier he performed marginally worse than Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile these Democratic Party rural county affiliates have completely atrophied the last 15 years. It's mostly ignored on this message board but local political party organization absolutely does matter as far as electoral performance. I don't consider my local Democratic Party county affiliate to be functional. No one is running for office locally outside of 1 guy that is running for state legislature and will get completely trashed. No one is running for county office and from 2018 onwards they have ran a grand total of 1 county government candidate in 4 elections counting this year.

2016:

Prez: Trump (R) 72.1, Clinton (D) 21.4, Johnson (L), 5.1, Write-in 1.4
Sen: Young (R) 63.3, Bayh (D) 28.9, Brenton (L) 7.8
Gov: Holcomb (R) 64.2, Gregg (D) 31.8, Bell (L) 3.9
Cong: Banks (R) 77.4, Schrader (D) 15.5, Snyder (L) 7.0

2018:

Sen: Braun (R) 67.3, Donnelly (D) 28.5, Brenton (L) 4.1, Write-in 0.1
Cong: Banks (R) 74.3, Tritch (D) 25.7

2020:

Prez: Trump (R) 73.1, Biden (D) 24.1, Jorgensen (L) 2.6, Write-in 0.2
Gov: Holcomb (R) 66.0, Rainwater (L) 18.3, Myers (D) 15.7
Cong: Banks (R) 76.4, Coldiron (D) 23.5, Write-in 0.1

2022:

Sen: Young (R) 74.5, McDermott (D) 21.2, Sceniak (L) 3.8, Write-in 0.5
Cong: Banks (R) 72.5, Snyder (D) 22.2, Gotsch (I) 5.3

Notice the performance of Bayh, Gregg, and Donnelly compared to every other Democrat on that list. Anecdotally for this one county, the Joe Biden presidency has not been Bayh, Gregg, or Donnelly. For comparison to above, McCain won the county in 2008 60.0 to 38.6 and Romney won the county in 2012 68.2 to 29.4.

Biden's saving grace for rural areas is I don't think his share of the vote will go up at all and may go even a little lower, but Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will run and his votes will reduce Biden's losing margins. (The reverse should be true to some degree where Biden is naturally more dominant however.) But I see nothing to support your hypothesis based on what I see on the ground as one involved in politics to a minor degree. Democrats continue to have no message for rural areas and that leads to them losing those areas by 50-point-plus margins.

I mostly agree returning to my parent's home in rural New Hampshire with one exception. Dobbs brought to life the Democratic performance in state legislative races where they went from around 33% to 44% while the rest of the ticket remained non existent. It's often not enough to win seats, but some previously apolitical folks have run for legislature posy Dobbs in 2022 and recieved crossover support.

However, I also know plenty who voted Democratic for legislature for the first time in 2022, may do so in 2024 but would never think of voting for Biden.

Right to Life are grassroots strong here. If Democrats choose to campaign on abortion Biden might get less votes than RFK Jr.

Achieving your goal and it turning out to be a disaster isn't a good way to maximize turnout, actually.

we are going to see some Tories run more as individuals rather than Tories, and statistically there probably will be some success stories where this works.

Lots tried it in 1997 as well, only a few succeeded at all (and they were generally MPs who had some prior reputation for "independence" - those with an 11th hour reinvention almost universally failed)

Yes. William Hague's vote held up in 1997 and MP's like Patrick McLoughlin in West Derbyshire for similar reasons.

Biden will drag Casey under the line.

Seek help.

Israel are saying they have the proof that the fire was not their weapons.

Yes, a likely story.

We're all trying to find the guy who did this.

we are going to see some Tories run more as individuals rather than Tories, and statistically there probably will be some success stories where this works.

Lots tried it in 1997 as well, only a few succeeded at all (and they were generally MPs who had some prior reputation for "independence" - those with an 11th hour reinvention almost universally failed)