[Tsundoku]

 Macros, on 25 August 2020 - 09:00 PM, said:

Out of morbid curiosity I hit up the highlights of the RNC night 1.Fuck me if you didn't know they were being serious it would be awesome satire.Trump's swift action saved thousands of lives during the pandemic.Socialism has failed everywhere (except like everywhere it works socialism does not equal "communist" Russia, protip it was a brutal dictatorship you fuckwads)I had to nope out.I genuinely do not understand how anyone can listen to those smug self serving losing bastards

Lack of education.
Too much fundamentalist religion.
Way too much mass media consumption, and consumption itself for the sake of consumption.
The cult of celebrity ... ad nauseam ad infinitum ...

 Azath Vitr (D, on 25 August 2020 - 11:39 PM, said:

In his desperation to boost the ratings, will he promise to announce at least one new surprise pardon every day?...

Probably trying to set a whole lot of precedent to make it habitual for when he needs it.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 26 August 2020 - 08:25 AM

[Primateus]

This woman seems to have been a "Top Speaker" at the current RNC...

[Aptorian]

She must be a big fan of The Handmaids Tale for all the wrong reasons.

[Primateus]

Portland Police giving up on policing alt-right groups.

Yup, that does sound like something a militarized police would do.

[Malankazooie]

TIL Kimberly Guilfoyle was once married to Gavin Newsom (current CA governor). I never knew that. What a strange pairing.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'The president and his team openly flouted ethics laws on Tuesday night. They don't care. In fact, they love the anger it produces.

[...] An impromptu naturalization ceremony put on as part of the Tuesday night festivities [...] was likely a violation of federal law that prohibits government employees from using taxpayer resources for political purposes (though the White House insisted it wasn't). And it gave Trump and his legions of devoted fans a reason to tweet American flag emojis and make fun of political reporters who noted the flagrant misuse of taxpayer resources.

Trump's aides and advisers revel in their increasingly frequent violations of the Hatch Act. Senior Trump administration officials widely view the law as a joke, and have often traded quips over how consequence-free their infractions have been and how much Democrats harp on the violations, two ex-officials said. Some Trump lieutenants have privately bragged about their alleged violations as a proud rite of passage.

[...] Tuesday night's naturalization ceremony, which featured acting Department of Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf acting in an apparently official capacity, was the most egregious flouting of the law during the festivities. But it was just one of a handful of convention events that blurred the line between the Trump administration and its political machine. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's televised speech from a Jerusalem rooftop also drew allegations of Hatch Act violations, and early on in Tuesday evening's programming, Trump touted his pardon power and its beneficiaries as a political selling point while standing inside the White House.

[...] "If you care about living your life without restraints, about rebelling against those who would suppress your voice, and building YOUR American Dream," Tiffany Trump, the president's daughter, said at one point, "then the choice in this election is clear."

[...] Team Trump had recently commissioned polling specifically on the topic of "cancel culture," and found numbers they saw as reassuring. Polling was conducted in July and August and focused on questions on political correctness and "cancel culture" in Big Tech, entertainment, and news media and on college campuses, one of the sources said. The data was presented directly to the president multiple times, including earlier this month. And he has privately delighted in the numbers, insisting that this could be an issue that speaks to voters beyond his standard GOP and conservative base voting blocs.'

https://www.thedaily...-press?ref=home

Wow. Conflating ethics laws with 'cancel culture'....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 26 August 2020 - 07:05 PM

[Malankazooie]

Ugh, watched some highlights from the RNC. It's painfully awkward and uncomfortable to watch any of it. Beijing Biden is such a stupid put down.... sick burn dude!

When and why is this nickname dumbshit even a thing? I know Trump started it with the 2016 debates with the other Republican candidates, but why does it still hang on? It's about the most juvenile and lazy thing ever and that a person running for president would lower the IQ of his followers by going that route is just sad... yeewgly sad, pathetic.

This post has been edited by Malankazooie: 26 August 2020 - 11:16 PM

[Tsundoku]

It's cutely optimistic that you think the IQ of his followers can get lower.

[Cause]

The thing I find suprising about trump is that he has extreme popularity besides the fact that he has no charisma. Listening him give a speech is painful. He drags out his words and than suddenly places extreme emphasis on some random word. I find listening to him painful.

Some people have a gift, their voices are just enticing. Trump for me is the opposite.

[amphibian]

What he's good at doing, which is what Hitler and other fascists have tapped into, is creating a narrative of anger and one of his own benevolence in fixing things.

Watching Kris Kobach or other people speak about how they've spoken to Trump about this or that is like watching them sell a story about how they've spoken to a god. It's scary shit and the slipperiness of being a deity means that even if whatever fails or is racist or anything wrong, it just gets spoken about as if the deep state or liberals or whoever actively sabotage Trump. The complete lack of details of efforts, the active support of racists (Miller, himself, so many more) and pedophiles (Epstein and Maxwell), the failure of even the wall (poorly built, lots of corruption, ineffective), the abandonment of Puerto Rico, the destruction of the postal service, the 250,000+ dead from COVID-19 (low end of the excess deaths) and more - it's not sticking with his supporters because they can't fit that into the anger and the benevolence story that he's stuck to their brains.

Then there's the people who know exactly what he's doing and want more of it because it makes them wealthier both on purpose and by how his mismanagement gives them opportunity to get wealthier.

He is a bottom 2 president in terms of ability. His best historical comparison is Andrew Johnson, the phenomenally racist president who fucked over black people for centuries by not continuing Reconstruction as Lincoln would have if killed. Trump hasn't gotten to the point of 1.5 million dead and millions displaced like GWB, but his handling of COVID-19 has added so many dead and hurt to the count that didn't need to be there.

And it's happening because he lets certain people be angry in a way that they find very appealing, even if the words or actions don't make sense.

[Malankazooie]

Tonight's the night and the feeling is right! We're gonna have Trump on 100 people! Take a moment to soak that in and then make sure you have blocked your calendars to watch the crazy. An Adderall and pure uncut Peruvian booger sugar rant that will echo through the ages. - *snaps-a-Z* - It gonna be kuh-ray-zeee.

[Malankazooie]

So what's next? DNC/RNC make it official for the general campaigning to hit full steam. Are there going to be debates? When?

Was tooling around in my garage this weekend and some old ladies, without masks, were going door to door with flyers. They came up on my front walk and I told them to keep going, not interested.

The weekend prior, a dude with a coal rolling, truck nuts swinging, american flag waving small dick hate rig was going around with a loud speaker. He didn't come near my street. I would have stopped him and warned him I would call the police for disturbing the peace.

[Macros]

So trump averaged a false statement every 56 seconds at the RNC.

Can he bottom out lower or is this a plateauing of lying ability?

[Tsundoku]

That's 55 seconds per porkie he wasted. He'll be all "Challenge accepted!"

[Malankazooie]

So, what's this new 24 hour news cycle attention towards Trump having mini-strokes and Mike Pence told to be ready to assume control? I guess it happened last November? Trump denies it but in denying it, he is the one who brought up the "mini strokes" thing, which was never mentioned prior, so he basically telegraphed that is exactly what was going on at that time? He then had his personal doctor make a statement denying it.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Trump encourages North Carolina residents to vote twice to test mail-in system

The president said it would be a way to check whether anti-fraud efforts are "as good as they say."

Trump suggested that people in North Carolina should vote twice in the November election, once by mail and once in person, escalating his attempts to cast confusion and doubt on the validity of the results.

"If it's as good as they say it is, then obviously they won't be able to vote. If it isn't tabulated, they'll be able to vote. So that's the way it is. And that's what they should do," he said.

It is illegal to vote more than once in an election.

[...] "President Trump encourages supporters to vote absentee-by-mail early, and then show up in person at the polls or the local registrar to verify that their vote has already been counted," Trump campaign official Tim Murtaugh said. "It's amazing that the media can go from insisting that voter fraud doesn't exist to screaming about it when President Trump points out the giant holes in the Democrats' voting schemes."

[...] Barr said he was unaware of the specific laws in North Carolina, and he did not respond directly to questions about Trump's earlier comments.

Trump made similar claims about mail-in ballots during his 2016 campaign, essentially encouraging his supporters to commit voter fraud.

At a rally in Colorado just days before he was elected, Trump told supporters to obtain new ballots because "do you think those [mail-in] ballots are properly counted?"'

https://www.nbcnews....arDxfdxyNuGg2cs

'Intentionally voting more than once in a federal election is a third-degree felony in most states and probably also violates federal election-fraud laws.'

https://slate.com/ne...vote-twice.html

So Trump can't just pardon them all. In North Carolina it's a felony:

https://www.ncsl.org...ble-voting.aspx

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 03 September 2020 - 01:03 AM

[Malankazooie]

Some follow-up

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

 Malankazooie, on 31 August 2020 - 07:03 PM, said:

So what's next? DNC/RNC make it official for the general campaigning to hit full steam. Are there going to be debates? When?

* * *

First debate will be September 29. Chris Wallace will be the moderator, which I guess Trump is butthurt about because in a previous interview Wallace actually did his job and asked Trump tough questions. You know, that thing journalists are supposed to do?. (cognitive test is classic Trump and will be brought up whenever his disaster as president is examined). I'm sure the Fox New drooling on self/mouth breathers saw red about that one. Probably needed an extra dollop of brown sugar in their afternoon oatmeal before nap time.

#

And

 Malankazooie, on 02 September 2020 - 05:40 PM, said:

So, what's this new 24 hour news cycle attention towards Trump having mini-strokes and Mike Pence told to be ready to assume control? I guess it happened last November? Trump denies it but in denying it, he is the one who brought up the "mini strokes" thing, which was never mentioned prior, so he basically telegraphed that is exactly what was going on at that time? He then had his personal doctor make a statement denying it.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Organizer of Trump boat parades in Florida facing charge of threatening neighbor

[...] The neighbor, Paul Edenbaum, told Jupiter Police that he was eating with his wife at the Marina Cafe last month when Gavidia pointed at him and approached their table.

Edenbaum said his neighbor threw his hands in the air and allegedly said "f--- you, you f------ little Jew," before calling his wife a misogynistic slur and leaving.

According to Edenbaum, he received a text full of explicit language from Gavidia several minutes later.

"You f----- with the wrong guy I'm coming for you," the message read in part, according to the police report. "I've got nothing to lose but you have plenty like your life, you have no idea who I am I want to get your little f------ friends flicking me off calling me names while we're at the f------ Marina Cafe."

Another text message from Gavidia reportedly read: "Dude are we no longer friends because I support the president??? I come up say hello and you act like a dick."

[...] Gavidia said he had three verbal altercations with Edenbaum in August and admitted to law enforcement that he sent the text messages.'

https://thehill.com/...LBvYxhqCCpeqm14

'Trump is chaos, and chaos is Donald Trump. We were told this before a single vote was cast in 2016, when Jeb Bush, in perhaps his finest (only?) rhetorical sally warned America from the debate stage, "He's a chaos candidate, and he'd be a chaos president."

A few days ago, Kellyanne Conway confirmed that this prediction had come to pass when she said, "The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order."

[...] chaos is Trump's brand; that is how he governs, to the extent that he governs at all. It is undeniable that Donald Trump sows chaos, but it is less clear that he reaps it.

In fact there is ample evidence Donald Trump doesn't truly harvest the chaos or in any way affirmatively use it to create wins for himself or his agenda. It actually seems that the more things spin out of control, the more they hurt Trump's standing with party stalwarts and Republican voters.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, chaos rained down, and Trump weighed in—to poor effect. He was hurt by those statements; advisers quit and the public soured on him.

https://www.washingt...39f5_story.html

When cops pepper-sprayed protesters outside Lafayette Square in Trump's quest for a photo-op, it was his own image that took a beating.

https://www.vanityfa...d-cost-him-2020

[...] Perhaps you can argue that in generating a miasma of distraction, the public finds it difficult to attend to any individual failure—but failures they all are. Perhaps you can argue that chaos is a way for Trump to manage the defeats or distract from the collapses. But remember the claim about Trump and chaos isn't that he uses it to limit his downside exposure; it's that he cunningly wields it, or, as I said before, that he reaps it.

Is chaos a tool for Trump, or an aftereffect of the fact that he just lies so much and sues so much and fights so much, and hires the likes of Michael Cohen to fix so much? Let's take Cohen, sometimes a bumbler, sometimes a goon, but sometimes a fixer who has lived up to that name. Cohen, over the years, did fix problems by making them go away, but not by blowing them up and drawing attention to them. That would have fit the notion of Trump as Neptune and chaos as his swirling ocean, but it's not what Cohen did.'

https://slate.com/ne...ot-benefit.html

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 03 September 2020 - 05:49 PM

[Aptorian]

I was ordering books for a display on the US and the American election today.

It probable says a lot that we have two books about Biden. One he wrote himself about the death of his son. One about him and Obama.

We have about 30-40 books about Trump and his administration. 6 of which Trump wrote "himself".

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

From 2012:

'2012 Is Bullshit; 2020 Is When We'll Really Be in Trouble

Scientist Peter Turchin's work suggests that the next state of upheaval in the US is set to hit in 2020 based on historical violence cycles.

[...] Historical studies show that society goes through long-term cycles of violence: There's a build-up for roughly a century, then a period of violence, or upheaval, for ten or 15 years. Then people get tired of it and the next generation goes back to being peaceful. It's then the grandchildren of that generation—who never experienced the severity of upheaval firsthand—who are likely to start causing problems again. My theory suggests that it will be 2020 when the US hits a new peak of violence.

[...] In your view, what causes these upheavals?

Historically, the trouble has always come from people with power, and the number of those people who want the most power. There are too many political entrepreneurs who are all trying to get power, and they get frustrated, which is how revolutions start: when members of the elite try to overturn the political order to better suit themselves.'

https://www.vice.com...-0003000-v19n10

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 04 September 2020 - 04:04 PM