Elections; 2024 by THG

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 5:43 PM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 29, 2023 10:14 PM

Ted. You need to get some douche and try to clean out that AIDS riddled brain of yours.

Maybe a power washer. Anything less than 3,000 PSI won't do.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 30, 2023 6:38 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

One reason why U.S. politics is so contested is because a battle is taking place between two rival growth models. One growth model is represented by the economies of the two coasts – software, media, government, finance, real estate, and the like. The other model is found in the part of the country going from Alaska down the Dakotas through Appalachia, Texas, the panhandle, and so on. This has a growth model based around the transformation, excavation, and derivatives of carbon: farms, fertilizer, and fuel.

These two growth models are in fundamental conflict. The coasts would love green energy, but the more that the U.S. turns green, the worse it is for parts of the country that are heavily invested in carbon assets. As Jeff Colgan, Jessica Green, and Thomas Hale have argued, this gives rise to “existential politics.” Getting to cheap green electricity would effectively devalue or defund North Dakota and Shell. This existential fight is reshaping the Democratic and Republican coalitions.

Which is likely to win?

It’s on a knife edge. If the Democrats win next time around, they can keep on putting facts on the ground – building battery factories and associated technology plants in states like Georgia and turning them blue, or breaking off part of the Texas vote with benefits and infrastructure for wind power. But it’s enormously fragile. If Trump and the Republicans win, it may be the end of the green transition in the U.S. I don’t think people have woken up to that yet.

If Trump wins and the U.S. goes big on the carbon growth model, people there will get a massive short-term return on investment, because the world is carbon short right now, and it needs American liquid natural gas. But as the rest of the world decarbonizes, you know what it won’t need in a decade or so? Very much oil.

https://goodauthority.org/news/how-will-the-world-pay-for-the-green-tr
ansition/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 30, 2023 9:02 AM

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 30, 2023 11:57 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
One reason why U.S. politics is so contested is because a battle is taking place between two rival growth models. One growth model is represented by the economies of the two coasts – software, media, government, finance, real estate, and the like...

Except that is not "economy", that is FINANCE. Ignorant people conflate them all the time. Finance is fiddling with money in FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate).

An ECONOMY is based on production of real things: food, timber, steel, cement, fiber, batteries, chips, machine parts, and the like.
Not having an ECONOMY is why the USA is losing the war in Ukraine. Not having an ECONOMY is why we're dependent on China and the value of our dollar, so we can buy things on credit and run a negative balance of trade "forever".

Quote:
The other model is found in the part of the country going from Alaska down the Dakotas through Appalachia, Texas, the panhandle, and so on. This has a growth model based around the transformation, excavation, and derivatives of carbon: farms, fertilizer, and fuel.

These two growth models are in fundamental conflict. The coasts would love green energy, but the more that the U.S. turns green, the worse it is for parts of the country that are heavily invested in carbon assets.

Except that's a stupid characterization.
Farming, ranching, and forestry has a positive impact, and can have a highly positive impact on GHG, if managed properly.

Industry does need fuel, but there are ways to make it more efficient. One way to make it more efficient is to stop producing wasteful products, like superyachts, private jets, dysfunctional military hardware, and shoddy irreparable consumer goods.

Building production plants that are efficient and that make useful things of durable value is a lot better for the environment AND for our nation than offshoring it to China, India or wherever and having THEM emit GHC.

Part of the reason why "the coasts" might be in love with "green" is bc they have no idea where the "things" in their lives come from.

Food comes from farms. Chocolate milk does NOT come from brown cows! Electrcity comes from power plants. Solar cells come from factories. Clothes are made of fabric, and fabric is made on looms from thread, which comes from mills. Bread comes from bakeries.

Having source tested at all kinds of industries, I'm a lot more aware than most about how stuff is made.

It should be part of every high school curriculum, beside reading, writing, math, homemaking skills, critical thinking, and personal finance, to learn about the world of production. There should be a course on "how things are made" and nothing drives that point home like visiting something big: a refinery, a coking plant, a power plant, a cement kiln, a steel mill, a farm, a water purification plant, even a landfill.

Quote:
As Jeff Colgan, Jessica Green, and Thomas Hale have argued, this gives rise to “existential politics.” Getting to cheap green electricity would effectively devalue or defund North Dakota and Shell. This existential fight is reshaping the Democratic and Republican coalitions.

Again, misrepresenting the "sides". "Shell" is not ALL of production. There is a lot of production that ISN'T "Shell", or Exxon, or BPArco.

And getting clean cheap electricity?
GREAT, if it happens. But right now that's an irrelevant point bc it hasn't happened yet, and is not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. And in addition, there is lot of production that can't use electricity. You're not about to grow wheat or make cement with electricity.

This article is stupid beyond belief and plays to people's general ignorance and bias.
But the article is right about one thjng: this is existential for everyone, bc people can't exist without things, and things need to be produced.

So maybe the real goal is to get rid of people.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 1, 2023 6:34 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Imagine If You Could Have Averted World War II

By Andrew Tobias | December 1, 2023
https://andrewtobias.com/imagine-if-you-could-have-averted-world-war-i
i/

And just by reading an article like this — A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable (only in German) — and then joining with millions of others to make sure the would-be dictator was soundly defeated at the polls.

“There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States,” argues Robert Kagan in the Washington Post, “and it is getting shorter every day. So why is everyone behaving like normal?”

Read it and let me know what you think:

A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.

By Robert Kagan | Nov 30, 2023
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/30/trump-dictator-2024
-election-robert-kagan/

Robert Kagan, a Post Opinions contributing editor, is the author of “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again,” which will be published by Knopf in May.

Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination. In the RealClearPolitics poll average (for the period from Nov. 9 to 20), Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field combined by 27 points. The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense — he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls — stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence. The fact that many Americans might prefer other candidates, much ballyhooed by such political sages as Karl Rove, will soon become irrelevant when millions of Republican voters turn out to choose the person whom no one allegedly wants.

For many months now, we have been living in a world of self-delusion, rich with imagined possibilities. Maybe it will be Ron DeSantis, or maybe Nikki Haley. Maybe the myriad indictments of Trump will doom him with Republican suburbanites. Such hopeful speculation has allowed us to drift along passively, conducting business as usual, taking no dramatic action to change course, in the hope and expectation that something will happen. Like people on a riverboat, we have long known there is a waterfall ahead but assume we will somehow find our way to shore before we go over the edge. But now the actions required to get us to shore are looking harder and harder, if not downright impossible.

The magical-thinking phase is ending. Barring some miracle, Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president. When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favor. Until now, Republicans and conservatives have enjoyed relative freedom to express anti-Trump sentiments, to speak openly and positively about alternative candidates, to vent criticisms of Trump’s behavior past and present. Donors who find Trump distasteful have been free to spread their money around to help his competitors. Establishment Republicans have made no secret of their hope that Trump will be convicted and thus removed from the equation without their having to take a stand against him.

All this will end once Trump wins Super Tuesday. Votes are the currency of power in our system, and money follows, and by those measures, Trump is about to become far more powerful than he already is. The hour of casting about for alternatives is closing. The next phase is about people falling into line.

In fact, it has already begun. As his nomination becomes inevitable, donors are starting to jump from other candidates to Trump. The recent decision by the Koch political network to endorse GOP hopeful Nikki Haley is scarcely sufficient to change this trajectory. And why not? If Trump is going to be the nominee, it makes sense to sign up early while he is still grateful for defectors. Even anti-Trump donors must ask whether their cause is best served by shunning the man who stands a reasonable chance of being the next president. Will corporate executives endanger the interests of their shareholders just because they or their spouses hate Trump? It’s not surprising that people with hard cash on the line are the first to flip.

The rest of the Republican Party will quickly follow. Rove’s recent exhortation that primary voters choose anyone but Trump is the last such plea you are likely to hear from anyone with a future in the party. Even in a normal campaign, intraparty dissent begins to disappear once the primaries produce a clear winner. Most of the leading candidates have already pledged to support Trump if he is the nominee, even before he has won a single primary vote. Imagine their posture after he runs the table on Super Tuesday. Most of the candidates running against him will sprint toward him, competing for his favor. After Super Tuesday, there will be no surer and shorter path to the presidency for a Republican than to become the loyal running mate of a man who will be 82 in 2028.

Republicans who have tried to navigate the Trump era by mixing appeals to non-Trump voters with repeated professions of loyalty to Trump will end that show. As perilous as it is for Republicans to say a negative word about Trump today, it will be impossible once he has sewn up the nomination. The party will be in full general-election mode, subordinating all to the presidential campaign. What Republican or conservative will be standing up to Trump then? Will the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has been rather boldly opposing Trump, continue to do so once he is the nominee and it is a binary choice between Trump and Biden? There will be no more infighting, only outfighting; in short, a tsunami of Trump support from all directions. A winner is a winner. And a winner who stands a reasonable chance of wielding all the power there is to wield in the world is going to attract support no matter who they are. That is the nature of power, at any time in any society.

But Trump will not only dominate his party. He will again become the central focus of everyone’s attention. Even today, the news media can scarcely resist following Trump’s every word and action. Once he secures the nomination, he will loom over the country like a colossus, his every word and gesture chronicled endlessly. Even today, the mainstream news media, including The Post and NBC News, is joining forces with Trump’s lawyers to seek televised coverage of his federal criminal trial in D.C. Trump intends to use the trial to boost his candidacy and discredit the American justice system as corrupt — and the media outlets, serving their own interests, will help him do it.

Trump will thus enter the general-election campaign early next year with momentum, backed by growing political and financial resources, and an increasingly unified party. Can the same be said of Biden? Is Biden’s power likely to grow over the coming months? Will his party unify around him? Or will alarm and doubt among Democrats, already high, continue to increase? Even at this point, the president is struggling with double-digit defections among Black Americans and younger voters. Jill Stein and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have already launched, respectively, third-party and independent campaigns, coming at Biden in the main from the populist left. The decision by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) not to run for reelection in West Virginia but instead to contemplate a third-party run for the presidency is potentially devastating. The Democratic coalition is likely to remain fractious as the Republicans unify and Trump consolidates his hold.

Biden, as some have pointed out, does not enjoy the usual advantages of incumbency. Trump is effectively also an incumbent, after all. That means Biden is unable to make the usual incumbent’s claim that electing his opponent is a leap into the unknown. Few Republicans regard the Trump presidency as having been either abnormal or unsuccessful. In his first term, the respected “adults” around him not only blocked some of his most dangerous impulses but also kept them hidden from the public. To this day, some of these same officials rarely speak publicly against him. Why should Republican voters have a problem with Trump if those who served him don’t? Regardless of what Trump’s enemies think, this is going to be a battle of two tested and legitimate presidents.

Trump, meanwhile, enjoys the usual advantage of non-incumbency, namely: the lack of any responsibility. Biden must carry the world’s problems like an albatross around his neck, like any incumbent, but most incumbents can at least claim that their opponent is too inexperienced to be entrusted with these crises. Biden cannot. On Trump’s watch, there was no full-scale invasion of Ukraine, no major attack on Israel, no runaway inflation, no disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. It is hard to make the case for Trump’s unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it.

Trump enjoys some unusual advantages for a challenger, moreover. Even Ronald Reagan did not have Fox News and the speaker of the House in his pocket. To the degree there are structural advantages in the coming general election, in short, they are on Trump’s side. And that is before we even get to the problem that Biden can do nothing to solve: his age.

Trump also enjoys another advantage. The national mood less than a year before the election is one of bipartisan disgust with the political system in general. Rarely in American history has democracy’s inherent messiness been more striking. In Weimar Germany, Hitler and other agitators benefited from the squabbling of the democratic parties, right and left, the endless fights over the budget, the logjams in the legislature, the fragile and fractious coalitions. German voters increasingly yearned for someone to cut through it all and get something — anything — done. It didn’t matter who was behind the political paralysis, either, whether the intransigence came from the right or the left.

Today, Republicans might be responsible for Washington’s dysfunction, and they might pay a price for it in downballot races. But Trump benefits from dysfunction because he is the one who offers a simple answer: him. In this election, only one candidate is running on the platform of using unprecedented power to get things done, to hell with the rules. And a growing number of Americans claim to want that, in both parties. Trump is running against the system. Biden is the living embodiment of the system. Advantage: Trump.

Which brings us to Trump’s expanding legal battlefronts. No doubt Trump would have preferred to run for office without spending most of his time fending off efforts to throw him in jail. Yet it is in the courtroom over the coming months that Trump is going to display his unusual power within the American political system.

It is hard to fault those who have taken Trump to court. He certainly committed at least one of the crimes he is charged with; we don’t need a trial to tell us he tried to overturn the 2020 election. Nor can you blame those who have hoped thereby to obstruct his path back to the Oval Office. When a marauder is crashing through your house, you throw everything you can at him — pots, pans, candlesticks — in the hope of slowing him down and tripping him up. But that doesn’t mean it works.

Trump will not be contained by the courts or the rule of law. On the contrary, he is going to use the trials to display his power. That’s why he wants them televised. Trump’s power comes from his following, not from the institutions of American government, and his devoted voters love him precisely because he crosses lines and ignores the old boundaries. They feel empowered by it, and that in turn empowers him. Even before the trials begin, he is toying with the judges, forcing them to try to muzzle him, defying their orders. He is a bit like King Kong testing the chains on his arms, sensing that he can break free whenever he chooses.

And just wait until the votes start pouring in. Will the judges throw a presumptive Republican nominee in jail for contempt of court? Once it becomes clear that they will not, then the power balance within the courtroom, and in the country at large, will shift again to Trump. The likeliest outcome of the trials will be to demonstrate our judicial system’s inability to contain someone like Trump and, incidentally, to reveal its impotence as a check should he become president. Indicting Trump for trying to overthrow the government will prove akin to indicting Caesar for crossing the Rubicon, and just as effective. Like Caesar, Trump wields a clout that transcends the laws and institutions of government, based on the unswerving personal loyalty of his army of followers.

I mention all this only to answer one simple question: Can Trump win the election? The answer, unless something radical and unforeseen happens, is: Of course he can. If that weren’t so, the Democratic Party would not be in a mounting panic about its prospects.

If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office. Not only will he wield the awesome powers of the American executive — powers that, as conservatives used to complain, have grown over the decades — but he will do so with the fewest constraints of any president, fewer even than in his own first term.

What limits those powers? The most obvious answer is the institutions of justice — all of which Trump, by his very election, will have defied and revealed as impotent. A court system that could not control Trump as a private individual is not going to control him better when he is president of the United States and appointing his own attorney general and all the other top officials at the Justice Department. Think of the power of a man who gets himself elected president despite indictments, courtroom appearances and perhaps even conviction? Would he even obey a directive of the Supreme Court? Or would he instead ask how many armored divisions the chief justice has?

Will a future Congress stop him? Presidents can accomplish a lot these days without congressional approval, as even Barack Obama showed. The one check Congress has on a rogue president, namely, impeachment and conviction, has already proved all but impossible — even when Trump was out of office and wielded modest institutional power over his party.

Another traditional check on a president is the federal bureaucracy, that vast apparatus of career government officials who execute the laws and carry on the operations of government under every president. They are generally in the business of limiting any president’s options. As Harry S. Truman once put it, “Poor Ike. He’ll say ‘do this’ and ‘do that’ and nothing at all will happen.” That was a problem for Trump is his first term, partly because he had no government team of his own to fill the administration. This time, he will. Those who choose to serve in his second administration will not be taking office with the unstated intention of refusing to carry out his wishes. If the Heritage Foundation has its way, and there is no reason to believe it won’t, many of those career bureaucrats will be gone, replaced by people carefully “vetted” to ensure their loyalty to Trump.

What about the desire for reelection, a factor that constrains most presidents? Trump might not want or need a third term, but were he to decide he wanted one, as he has sometimes indicated, would the 22nd Amendment block him any more effectively from being president for life than the Supreme Court, if he refused to be blocked? Why should anyone think that amendment would be more sacrosanct than any other part of the Constitution for a man like Trump, or perhaps more importantly, for his devoted supporters?

A final constraint on presidents has been their own desire for a glittering legacy, with success traditionally measured in terms that roughly equate to the well-being of the country. But is that the way Trump thinks? Yes, Trump might seek a great legacy, but it is strictly his own glory that he craves. As with Napoleon, who spoke of the glory of France but whose narrow ambitions for himself and his family brought France to ruin, Trump’s ambitions, though he speaks of making America great again, clearly begin and end with himself. As for his followers, he doesn’t have to achieve anything to retain their support — his failure to build the wall in his first term in no way damaged his standing with millions of his loyalists. They have never asked anything of him other than that he triumph over the forces they hate in American society. And that, we can be sure, will be Trump’s primary mission as president.

Having answered the question of whether Trump can win, we can now turn to the most urgent question: Will his presidency turn into a dictatorship? The odds are, again, pretty good.

It is worth getting inside Trump’s head a bit and imagining his mood following an election victory. He will have spent the previous year, and more, fighting to stay out of jail, plagued by myriad persecutors and helpless to do what he likes to do best: exact revenge. Think of the fury that will have built up inside him, a fury that, from his point of view, he has worked hard to contain. As he once put it, “I think I’ve been toned down, if you want to know the truth. I could really tone it up.” Indeed he could — and will. We caught a glimpse of his deep thirst for vengeance in his Veterans Day promise to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream.” Note the equation of himself with “America and the American Dream.” It is he they are trying to destroy, he believes, and as president, he will return the favor.

What will that look like? Trump has already named some of those he intends to go after once he is elected: senior officials from his first term such as retired Gen. John F. Kelly, Gen. Mark A. Milley, former attorney general William P. Barr and others who spoke against him after the 2020 election; officials in the FBI and the CIA who investigated him in the Russia probe; Justice Department officials who refused his demands to overturn the 2020 election; members of the Jan. 6 committee; Democratic opponents including Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.); and Republicans who voted for or publicly supported his impeachment and conviction.

But that’s just the start. After all, Trump will not be the only person seeking revenge. His administration will be filled with people with enemies’ lists of their own, a determined cadre of “vetted” officials who will see it as their sole, presidentially authorized mission to “root out” those in the government who cannot be trusted. Many will simply be fired, but others will be subject to career-destroying investigations. The Trump administration will be filled with people who will not need explicit instruction from Trump, any more than Hitler’s local gauleiters needed instruction. In such circumstances, people “work toward the Führer,” which is to say, they anticipate his desires and seek favor through acts they think will make him happy, thereby enhancing their own influence and power in the process.

Nor will it be difficult to find things to charge opponents with. Our history is unfortunately filled with instances of unfairly targeted officials singled out for being on the wrong side of a particular issue at the wrong time — the State Department’s “China Hands” of the late 1940s, for instance, whose careers were destroyed because they happened to be in positions of influence when the Chinese Communist Revolution occurred. Today, there is the whiff of a new McCarthyism in the air. MAGA Republicans insist that Biden himself is a “communist,” that his election was a “communist takeover” and that his administration is a “communist regime.”

It’s therefore no surprise that Biden has a “pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agenda,” as the powerful chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), put it this year, and is deliberately “ceding American leadership and security to China.” Republicans these days routinely charge that their opponents are not just naive or inadequately attentive to China’s rising power but are actual “sympathizers” with Beijing. “Communist China has their President … China Joe,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted on Biden’s Inauguration Day. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has called the president “Beijing Biden.” The Republican Senate nominee in New Hampshire last year even called Republican Gov. Chris Sununu a “Chinese Communist Party sympathizer.” We can expect more of this when the war against the “deep state” begins in earnest. According to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), there is a whole cabal determined to undermine American security, a “Uniparty” of elites made up of “neoconservatives on the right” and “liberal globalists on the left” who are not true Americans and therefore do not have the true interests of America at heart. Can such “anti-American” behavior be criminalized? It has in the past and can be again.

So, the Trump administration will have many avenues to persecute its enemies, real and perceived. Think of all the laws now on the books that give the federal government enormous power to surveil people for possible links to terrorism, a dangerously flexible term, not to mention all the usual opportunities to investigate people for alleged tax evasion or violation of foreign agent registration laws. The IRS under both parties has occasionally looked at depriving think tanks of their tax-exempt status because they espouse policies that align with the views of the political parties. What will happen to the think-tanker in a second Trump term who argues that the United States should ease pressure on China? Or the government official rash enough to commit such thoughts to official paper? It didn’t take more than that to ruin careers in the 1950s.

And who will stop the improper investigations and prosecutions of Trump’s many enemies? Will Congress? A Republican Congress will be busy conducting its own inquiries, using its powers to subpoena people, accusing them of all kinds of crimes, just as it does now. Will it matter if the charges are groundless? And of course in some cases they will be true, which will lend even greater validity to a wider probe of political enemies.

Will Fox News defend them, or will it instead just amplify the accusations? The American press corps will remain divided as it is today, between those organizations catering to Trump and his audience and those that do not. But in a regime where the ruler has declared the news media to be “enemies of the state,” the press will find itself under significant and constant pressure. Media owners will discover that a hostile and unbridled president can make their lives unpleasant in all sorts of ways.

Indeed, who will stand up for anyone accused in the public arena, besides their lawyers? In a Trump presidency, the courage it will take to stand up for them will be no less than the courage it will take to stand up to Trump himself. How many will risk their own careers to defend others? In a nation congenitally suspicious of government, who will stick up for the rights of former officials who become targets of Trump’s Justice Department? There will be ample precedents for those seeking to justify the persecution. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, the Wilson administration shut down newspapers and magazines critical of the war; Franklin D. Roosevelt rounded up Japanese Americans and placed them in camps. We will pay the price for every transgression ever committed against the laws designed to protect individual rights and freedoms.

How will Americans respond to the first signs of a regime of political persecution? Will they rise up in outrage? Don’t count on it. Those who found no reason to oppose Trump in the primaries and no reason to oppose him in the general are unlikely to experience a sudden awakening when some former Trump-adjacent official such as Milley finds himself under investigation for goodness knows what. They will know only that Justice Department prosecutors, the IRS, the FBI and several congressional committees are looking into it. And who is to say that those being hounded are not in fact tax cheaters, or Chinese spies, or perverts, or whatever they might be accused of? Will the great body of Americans even recognize these accusations as persecution and the first stage of shutting down opposition to Trump across the country?

The Trump dictatorship will not be a communist tyranny, where almost everyone feels the oppression and has their lives shaped by it. In conservative, anti-liberal tyrannies, ordinary people face all kinds of limitations on their freedoms, but it is a problem for them only to the degree that they value those freedoms, and many people do not. The fact that this tyranny will depend entirely on the whims of one man will mean that Americans’ rights will be conditional rather than guaranteed. But if most Americans can go about their daily business, they might not care, just as many Russians and Hungarians do not care.

Yes, there will be a large opposition movement centered in the Democratic Party, but exactly how this opposition will stop the persecution is hard to see. Congress and the courts will offer little relief. Democratic politicians, particularly members of the youngest generation, will yell and scream, but if they are not joined by Republicans, it will look like the same old partisanship. If Democrats still control one house of Congress, they will be able to blunt some investigations, but the odds that they will control both houses after 2024 are longer than the odds of a Biden victory. Nor is there sufficient reason to hope that the disordered and dysfunctional opposition to Trump today will suddenly become more unified and effective once Trump takes power. That is not how things work. In evolving dictatorships, the opposition is always weak and divided. That’s what makes dictatorship possible in the first place. Opposition movements rarely get stronger and more unified under the pressures of persecution. Today there is no leader for Democrats to rally behind. It is difficult to imagine that such a leader will emerge once Trump regains power.

But even if the opposition were to become strong and unified, it is not obvious what it would do to protect those facing persecution. The opposition’s ability to wield legitimate, peaceful and legal forms of power will already have been found wanting in this election cycle, when Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans threw every legitimate weapon against Trump and still failed. Will they turn instead to illegitimate, extralegal action? What would that look like?

Americans might take to the streets. In fact, it is likely that many people will engage in protests against the new regime, perhaps even before it has had a chance to prove itself deserving of them. But then what? Even in his first term, Trump and his advisers on more than one occasion discussed invoking the Insurrection Act. No less a defender of American democracy than George H.W. Bush invoked the act to deal with the Los Angeles riots in 1992. It is hard to imagine Trump not invoking it should “the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs” take to the streets. One suspects he will relish the opportunity.

And who will stop him? His own handpicked military advisers? That seems unlikely. He could make retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if he wanted, and it is unlikely a Republican Senate would decline to confirm. Does anyone think military leaders will disobey commands from their duly elected, constitutionally authorized, commander in chief? Do we even want the military to have to make that call? There is every reason to believe that active-duty troops and reservists are likely to be disproportionately more sympathetic to a newly reelected President Trump than to the “Radical Left Thugs” supposedly causing mayhem in the streets of their towns and cities. Those who hope to be saved by a U.S. military devoted to the protection of the Constitution are living in a fantasyland.

Resistance could come from the governors of predominantly Democratic states such as California and New York through a form of nullification. States with Democratic governors and statehouses could refuse to recognize the authority of a tyrannical federal government. That is always an option in our federal system. (Should Biden win, some Republican states might engage in nullification.) But not even the bluest states are monolithic, and Democratic governors are likely to find themselves under siege on their home turf if they try to become bastions of resistance to Trump’s tyranny. Republicans and conservatives throughout the nation will be energized by their hero’s triumph. The power shift at the federal level, and the tone of menace and revenge emanating from the White House, will likely embolden all kinds of counter-resistance even in deep-blue states, including violent protests. What resources will the governors have to combat such attacks and maintain order? The state and local police? Will those entities be willing to use force against protesters who will likely enjoy the public support of the president? The Democratic governors might not be eager to find out.

Should Trump be successful in launching a campaign of persecution and the opposition prove powerless to stop it, then the nation will have begun an irreversible descent into dictatorship. With each passing day, it will become harder and more dangerous to stop it by any means, legal or illegal. Try to imagine what it will be like running for office on an opposition ticket in such an environment. In theory, the midterm elections in 2026 might hold hope for a Democratic comeback, but won’t Trump use his considerable powers, both legal and illegal, to prevent that? Trump insists and no doubt believes that the current administration corruptly used the justice system to try to prevent his reelection. Will he not consider himself justified in doing the same once he has all the power? He has, of course, already promised to do exactly that: to use the powers of his office to persecute anyone who dares challenge him.

This is the trajectory we are on now. Is descent into dictatorship inevitable? No. Nothing in history is inevitable. Unforeseen events change trajectories. Readers of this essay will no doubt list all the ways in which it is arguably too pessimistic and doesn’t take sufficient account of this or that alternative possibility. Maybe, despite everything, Trump won’t win. Maybe the coin flip will come up heads and we’ll all be safe. And maybe even if he does win, he won’t do any of the things he says he’s going to do. You may be comforted by this if you choose.

What is certain, however, is that the odds of the United States falling into dictatorship have grown considerably because so many of the obstacles to it have been cleared and only a few are left. If eight years ago it seemed literally inconceivable that a man like Trump could be elected, that obstacle was cleared in 2016. If it then seemed unimaginable that an American president would try to remain in office after losing an election, that obstacle was cleared in 2020. And if no one could believe that Trump, having tried and failed to invalidate the election and stop the counting of electoral college votes, would nevertheless reemerge as the unchallenged leader of the Republican Party and its nominee again in 2024, well, we are about to see that obstacle cleared as well. In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship.

Are we going to do anything about it? To shift metaphors, if we thought there was a 50 percent chance of an asteroid crashing into North America a year from now, would we be content to hope that it wouldn’t? Or would we be taking every conceivable measure to try to stop it, including many things that might not work but that, given the magnitude of the crisis, must be tried anyway?

Yes, I know that most people don’t think an asteroid is heading toward us and that’s part of the problem. But just as big a problem has been those who do see the risk but for a variety of reasons have not thought it necessary to make any sacrifices to prevent it. At each point along the way, our political leaders, and we as voters, have let opportunities to stop Trump pass on the assumption that he would eventually meet some obstacle he could not overcome. Republicans could have stopped Trump from winning the nomination in 2016, but they didn’t. The voters could have elected Hillary Clinton, but they didn’t. Republican senators could have voted to convict Trump in either of his impeachment trials, which might have made his run for president much more difficult, but they didn’t.

Throughout these years, an understandable if fatal psychology has been at work. At each stage, stopping Trump would have required extraordinary action by certain people, whether politicians or voters or donors, actions that did not align with their immediate interests or even merely their preferences. It would have been extraordinary for all the Republicans running against Trump in 2016 to decide to give up their hopes for the presidency and unite around one of them. Instead, they behaved normally, spending their time and money attacking each other, assuming that Trump was not their most serious challenge, or that someone else would bring him down, and thereby opened a clear path for Trump’s nomination. And they have, with just a few exceptions, done the same this election cycle. It would have been extraordinary had Mitch McConnell and many other Republican senators voted to convict a president of their own party. Instead, they assumed that after Jan. 6, 2021, Trump was finished and it was therefore safe not to convict him and thus avoid becoming pariahs among the vast throng of Trump supporters. In each instance, people believed they could go on pursuing their personal interests and ambitions as usual in the confidence that somewhere down the line, someone or something else, or simply fate, would stop him. Why should they be the ones to sacrifice their careers? Given the choice between a high-risk gamble and hoping for the best, people generally hope for the best. Given the choice between doing the dirty work yourself and letting others do it, people generally prefer the latter.

A paralyzing psychology of appeasement has also been at work. At each stage, the price of stopping Trump has risen higher and higher. In 2016, the price was forgoing a shot at the White House. Once Trump was elected, the price of opposition, or even the absence of obsequious loyalty, became the end of one’s political career, as Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Paul D. Ryan and many others discovered. By 2020, the price had risen again. As Mitt Romney recounts in McKay Coppins’s recent biography, Republican members of Congress contemplating voting for Trump’s impeachment and conviction feared for their physical safety and that of their families. There is no reason that fear should be any less today. But wait until Trump returns to power and the price of opposing him becomes persecution, the loss of property and possibly the loss of freedom. Will those who balked at resisting Trump when the risk was merely political oblivion suddenly discover their courage when the cost might be the ruin of oneself and one’s family?

We are closer to that point today than we have ever been, yet we continue to drift toward dictatorship, still hoping for some intervention that will allow us to escape the consequences of our collective cowardice, our complacent, willful ignorance and, above all, our lack of any deep commitment to liberal democracy. As the man said, we are going out not with a bang but a whimper.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 1, 2023 10:23 AM

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 1, 2023 12:35 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

“People complaining about my anti-Trump tweets need to understand: I love my country and I feel it’s my duty to oppose this demented sociopath with every fiber of my being.”
- MARK HAMILL

“Humiliating”: McCarthy visited Mar-a-Lago because "depressed" Trump wasn't "eating," Cheney says
Critics mocked the Republican for his “pathetic” visit to cheer up the former president
By Igor Derysh Senior News Editor | Published November 29, 2023 9:24AM (EST)

https://www.salon.com/2023/11/29/humiliating-mccarthy-visited-mar-a-la
go-because-depressed-wasnt-eating-cheney-says/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 2, 2023 7:22 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

This guy should be president because at least he pays taxes, unlike Trump

Why Cornel West is broke
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimadenham/2023/12/01/why-cornel-west-i
s-broke/?sh=59df9dec55aa

Cornel West has been a fixture of American society for more than three decades, publishing books, teaching at Ivy League institutions, commenting on cable news, collaborating on music with Prince—even popping up in sequels to the Matrix. Ubiquity provided liquidity, with West earning an estimated $15 million or so over the last 30 years. But oddly, as he mounts an independent run for president, his net worth resembles that of a first-year adjunct professor. “I live paycheck to paycheck,” says West.

A review of federal filings and property records confirms that West’s net worth is near zero. Other outlets have previously reported on his troubles paying taxes over the years. But no one so far has explained how someone so successful became so broke. With West in position to affect who becomes America’s next president, Forbes set out to answer that question, digging into heaps of legal and tax documents filed in various jurisdictions over six decades. Turns out much of the damage was self-inflicted.

West burst onto the national scene in the 1990s with Race Matters, a compilation of essays that sold more than 500,000 copies. He traveled the country to deliver speeches, hauling in more than $500,000 a year. Much of the money flowed to him with no taxes deducted. West blew it—on many things, especially women—leaving little left for Uncle Sam by the time tax season arrived. The liens piled up: $144,000 in 1998, $105,000 in 2000, $205,000 in 2001 and so on. “Almost like a reptile biting its tail,” he says now.

West lived in a Four Seasons condo in Boston, which he later admitted he could not afford, and rode around in a Mercedes or Cadillac. One of his four ex-wives accused West of maintaining a covert apartment in Boston for $5,000 a month to use as a love den. She also alleged that, despite not having any health conditions, he later took a medical leave from his job at Harvard to live a “secret life” with another woman in New Mexico.

In court documents filed in 2002 and 2003, West did not deny burning money on affairs, at least one of which produced a child. (He acknowledged he had an 18-month-old daughter at the time.) And in his 2009 memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West confirms some of the less-salacious details. But when asked in November to respond to claims he’d “hid or wasted” close to a million dollars, at least some of which went to support extramarital affairs, West offered via email that “The allegations were too ridiculous to attend to–then and now, my brother!” He did not respond to a follow-up inquiry that detailed his ex-wife’s specific allegations.

In 2002, he blamed his financial troubles on other factors, such as his soon-to-be ex-wife’s propensity to spend money on Chanel clothing, upscale dining and antique furniture. More recently, after news about his tax liens surfaced, West elaborated on the genesis of his debt problems, suggesting the student loans he incurred as an undergraduate put him in a “black hole” that he could never escape.

That’s nonsense. After three decades in the public eye, West has earned more than enough money to repay his student loans. Without enormous earnings, West would not owe the federal government so much in unpaid taxes (he still has about $483,000 in outstanding tax liens today). The real explanation for West’s financial problems: recklessness. Despite his professorial appearance — West is famous for his toothy smile and W. E. B. Du Bois-inspired, three-piece suits — he has spent and lived wildly, impregnating and abandoning multiple women, leaving him with significant divorce and child-support payments, some of which he failed to pay. If government leadership is largely about managing money and maintaining relationships, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the field who is less prepared for the job than Cornel West. Trump is less prepared.

Much more at https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimadenham/2023/12/01/why-cornel-west-i
s-broke/?sh=59df9dec55aa

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 2, 2023 7:52 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
This guy should be president because at least he pays taxes, unlike Trump

Not really though...

Quote:
Without enormous earnings, West would not owe the federal government so much in unpaid taxes (he still has about $483,000 in outstanding tax liens today).

He owes almost twice in taxes than I've actually earned in my lifetime.

Quote:
Why Cornel West is broke
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimadenham/2023/12/01/why-cornel-west-i
s-broke/?sh=59df9dec55aa

Cornel West has been a fixture of American society for more than three decades, publishing books, teaching at Ivy League institutions, commenting on cable news, collaborating on music with Prince—even popping up in sequels to the Matrix. Ubiquity provided liquidity, with West earning an estimated $15 million or so over the last 30 years. But oddly, as he mounts an independent run for president, his net worth resembles that of a first-year adjunct professor. “I live paycheck to paycheck,” says West.

I've grossed little over $250k my entire life. I haven't had any income for 4 1/2 years. I don't live paycheck to paycheck.

Reason #1: No wife (wives).
Reason #2: No ex-wife (ex-wives).
Reason #3: No kids.
Reason #4: Paid cash for house.
Reason #5: 25+ year old car that I bought for $2k cash back in 2008 and kept running until the government is going to make me sell it next year when it can't pass an emissions test.

But really West... It's the women man. I'm sure you had some fun times, but holy shit bro. I could have lived like a king off of the interest you could have been making until the sun burned out.

You couldn't get that shit out of your system by your late 20's?

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 2, 2023 7:54 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“People complaining about my anti-Trump tweets need to understand: I love my country and I feel it’s my duty to oppose this demented sociopath with every fiber of my being.”
- MARK HAMILL

Mark Hamill is back on Twitter again, huh?

Dude is a crack addict. He keeps quitting but he always comes back.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 3, 2023 6:03 PM

Republican Senator Rebuked in Home State Newspaper Column: 'Embarrassment'

Kennedy asked Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health, about gun violence in Chicago, a city conservatives frequently say has a high crime rate due to progressive prosecutorial policies. However, when Ranney explained that Kennedy's home state has a higher firearms death rate than Chicago, Kennedy dismissed her response as "word salad."

According to a study conducted by the Violence Policy Center, Louisiana had a gun rate death of 28.42 in 2022. Chicago had a gun rate death of roughly 25.82 for that same year, according to a Newsweek analysis of the city's 2022 crime data.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-senator-rebuked-in-
home-state-newspaper-column-embarrassment/ar-AA1kVVFx?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=EDGEXST&cvid=d9f00b976c4240d8bb858fea065bc425&ei=99

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-senator-rebuked-in-
home-state-newspaper-column-embarrassment/ar-AA1kVVFx?

Too funny. Hey Jack, are you paying attention? Jack likes to do the same thing here Kennedy likes to do.

T

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 3, 2023 9:39 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Republican Senator Rebuked in Home State Newspaper Column: 'Embarrassment'

Kennedy asked Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health, about gun violence in Chicago, a city conservatives frequently say has a high crime rate due to progressive prosecutorial policies. However, when Ranney explained that Kennedy's home state has a higher firearms death rate than Chicago, Kennedy dismissed her response as "word salad."

According to a study conducted by the Violence Policy Center, Louisiana had a gun rate death of 28.42 in 2022. Chicago had a gun rate death of roughly 25.82 for that same year, according to a Newsweek analysis of the city's 2022 crime data.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-senator-rebuked-in-
home-state-newspaper-column-embarrassment/ar-AA1kVVFx?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=EDGEXST&cvid=d9f00b976c4240d8bb858fea065bc425&ei=99

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-senator-rebuked-in-
home-state-newspaper-column-embarrassment/ar-AA1kVVFx?

THUGR: Too funny. Hey Jack, are you paying attention? Jack likes to do the same thing here Kennedy likes to do.

WHY IS LOUISIANA MURDER RATE SO HIGH??
LET'S LOOK AT THE THREE LARGEST CITIES ...

NEW ORLEANS

Quote:

In the following months, violence continued raging in the city, clocking in 280 homicides for calendar year 2022 and a homicide rate of 70 per 100,000 people, WDSU reported.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-orleans-closes-2022-sky-high-homicide-r
ate-decades-horrific
As already described, New Orleans is headed by a black female Dem Mayor, LaToya Cantrell, following a long line of Dems

BATON ROUGE

Quote:
Baton Rouge also registered one of the highest murder rates in the country..
39.61 per 100,000 people.

https://vanlifewanderer.com/2022/01/24/is-baton-rouge-safe-everything-
you-need-to-know-crime-stats-maps-and-tips/
Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, a black female Dem in a long line of Dems

SHREVEPORT

Quote:
The rate of murder in Shreveport is 0.1272 per 1,000 [127 per 100,000] residents during a standard year.

https://crimegrade.org/murder-shreveport-la/
Mayor Tom Arceneaux, 2022, a black Republican in a city primarily Dem since 1880.

Comparing STATEWIDE murder rates to CITYWIDE murder rates is indeed word salad.

YOU'RE funny, THUGR.
So I would be careful about calling others funny.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 3, 2023 11:04 PM

I mean, really...

Manipulating Ted with bogus statistics is like shooting fish in a barrel with a gatling gun.

Seriously, Ted.

Don't come at me, bro. You'll only embarrass yourself.

I didn't even need to debunk this one, since Sigs lowered herself and took time out of her busy day to take care of that for me.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, December 4, 2023 7:41 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

It's not just Biden

Matthew Yglesias | Dec 4, 2023
https://www.slowboring.com/p/its-not-just-biden

Joe Biden’s current polling is bad, and there are a lot of theories as to why.

I have some theories of my own, but relevant context for any theory is that Justin Trudeau’s polling in Canada is much worse. That could support a story about how political currents in the Anglophone world are tilting sharply against progressives, perhaps a backlash to wokeness and the welfare state. But a Conservative Party is in office in the UK, and their polling is, if anything, even worse than Trudeau’s. Back in October, New Zealand turned out their governing center-left party and the right scored a big win. But in the spring of 2022, Australian voters kicked out a conservative incumbent government and brought the center-left to power.

Which is to say incumbents have been losing across the English-speaking world.

The partisan politics of Ireland are a little hard to characterize, but right now the country is governed by an unusual coalition of the two main parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. The grand coalition is currently polling at a combined 37 percent, and if an election were held tomorrow (which it won’t be — it’s not scheduled until 2025), there would probably be an unprecedented Sinn Fein government as a result.

I’ve been tempted, based on this kind of casual empiricism, to assert that Biden’s bad numbers are a part of a nearly universal pattern in which every incumbent government is either unpopular or else already lost an election since the big inflation wave of 2021-2022. A more systematic review of the evidence (done with help from Maya) shows that’s not exactly correct. But it is approximately true. And I think it supports the view that the global fundamentals are just ugly for incumbents.

Voters wanted the end of the pandemic to mean immediate restoration of 2019 economic conditions, but that was not possible. And even in places where the rate of inflation has come down, people are still bitter about what transpired.

I think it’s useful to look at who has won re-election in 2022 and 2023:

Viktor Orban was re-elected in April 2022.

About a week later, Emanuel Macron was re-elected in France, but it was the best-ever result for the opposition National Front, and Macron’s party lost its majority in parliament.

In Portugal, a center-left minority government faced a crisis because left-wing parties wouldn’t back its budget proposal, and this led to an election in which a lot of left voters defected to the center-left, giving them a majority.

Pedro Sanchez’s center-left government in Spain lost its majority in July of 2023, but after months of talks, he was able to stay in power by making a deal with small separatist parties.

In Denmark, Mette Fredericksen’s coalition of progressive parties lost power, but she stayed on as prime minister by forming a grand coalition with some center-right parties.

The key thing is that out of these five, really only Hungary and Portugal represented strong results for the incumbent governments. By contrast, we’ve had clear turnovers of power in Australia, the Czech Republic, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, Bulgaria, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Poland, Estonia, and Finland. And though coalition talks have not yet finished, things in the Netherlands seem to be headed in the same direction.

In addition to the aforementioned unpopular incumbents in Canada and the UK, Fumio Kishida’s approval rating is underwater (32-35), and Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats are currently polling in third place in Germany.

All of which is to say that while there is a bit of a global trend toward anti-immigrant parties, the dominant global trend seems more toward incumbents being unpopular and losing.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, December 4, 2023 10:29 AM

Yup. We're done with globalism.

We're done with you.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, December 4, 2023 2:59 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yup. We're done with globalism.

We're done with you.

Trump said “I think if you had a real election and Jesus came down and God came down and said, ‘I’m gonna be the scorekeeper here,’ I think we’d win [in California], I think we’d win in Illinois, and I think we’d win in New York.”

Even Fox News couldn’t air Donald Trump’s election lies in full

By Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling | December 4, 2023

https://newrepublic.com/post/177281/fox-news-forced-fact-check-trump-e
lection-lies

During a couple of back-to-back campaign stops in Iowa, Trump reiterated claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and even went so far as to claim he wanted to “redo the election” and encourage his followers in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta to “watch those votes when they come in” in 2024.

Fox News took note.

“Well, the former president finally got around to some campaign promises amid lots of cheering, as you heard,” said Fox host Arthel Neville. “Many untruths; the 2020 election was not rigged, it was not stolen.”

The live react could be part of a turning tide for Fox, which earlier this year settled a historic lawsuit for failing to dispute similar election lies, paying a whopping $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems. The network is still in the throes of another, $2.7 billion lawsuit by Smartmatic, another voting machine company allegedly defamed by Fox’s conduct.

Still, it’s not the first time Trump and Neville have clashed—in 2019, the former president tweeted that Neville and fellow hosts Leland Vittert and Shepard Smith should quit Fox in favor of CNN.

That wasn’t the only headline Trump was after on Saturday. In the same tour, Trump claimed that he invented the term “caravan” and unironically claimed that he was God-chosen in the 2020 election.

“I think if you had a real election and Jesus came down and God came down and said, ‘I’m gonna be the scorekeeper here,’ I think we’d win [in California], I think we’d win in Illinois, and I think we’d win in New York,” Trump said.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, December 4, 2023 3:37 PM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, December 4, 2023 3:49 PM

You'd better hope that the Democrats go full 3rd-world dictatorship and lock up their opposition for life.

It's the only way that Trump isn't elected President less than a year from now.

Tick Tock.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 5, 2023 7:55 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You'd better hope that the Democrats go full 3rd-world dictatorship and lock up their opposition for life.

It's the only way that Trump isn't elected President less than a year from now.

Did you hear the rumor that LBJ used the CIA to kill JFK? That way "Trump isn't elected President less than a year from now." Just quoting you. Why would the CIA go with such a plan? This reason:

Trump Will Abandon NATO

By Anne Applebaum | December 4, 2023

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/trump-2024-reelec
tion-pull-out-of-nato-membership/676120/

If reelected, he would end our commitment to the European alliance, reshaping the international order and hobbling American influence in the world.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of “If Trump Wins,” a project considering what Donald Trump might do if reelected in 2024.

“I don’t give a shit about NATO.” Thus did former President Donald Trump once express his feelings about America’s oldest and strongest military alliance. Not that this statement, made in the presence of John Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, came as a surprise. Long before he was a political candidate, Trump questioned the value of American alliances. Of Europeans, he once wrote that “their conflicts are not worth American lives. Pulling back from Europe would save this country millions of dollars annually.” NATO, founded in 1949 and supported for three-quarters of a century by Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike, has long been a particular focus of Trump’s ire. As president, Trump threatened to withdraw from NATO many times — including, infamously, at the 2018 NATO summit.

But during Trump’s time in office, the withdrawal never happened. That was because someone was always there to talk him out of it. Bolton says he did; Jim Mattis, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo, and even Mike Pence are thought to have done so too.

But they didn’t change his mind. And if Trump is reelected in 2024, none of those people will be in the White House. All of them have broken with the former president, in some cases dramatically, and there isn’t another pool of Republican analysts who understand Russia and Europe, because most of them either signed statements opposing him in 2016 or criticized him after 2020. In a second term, Trump would be surrounded by people who either share his dislike of American security alliances or don’t know anything about them and don’t care. This time, the ill will that Trump has always felt toward American allies would likely manifest itself in a clear policy change. “The damage he did in his first term was reparable,” Bolton told me. “The damage in the second term would be irreparable.”

Institutionally, and maybe even politically, leaving NATO could be difficult for Trump. As soon as he announced his intentions, a constitutional crisis would ensue. Senate approval is required for U.S. treaties — but the Constitution says nothing about congressional approval for withdrawal from treaties. Recognizing this gap in the law, Democratic Senator Tim Kaine and Republican Senator Marco Rubio introduced legislation, which has already passed the Senate, designed to block any U.S. president from withdrawing from NATO without two-thirds Senate approval or an act of Congress. Kaine told me he feels “confident that the courts would uphold us on that and would not allow a president to unilaterally withdraw,” but there would certainly be a struggle. A public-relations crisis would unfold too. A wide range of people — former supreme allied commanders, former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former presidents, foreign heads of state — will surely rally to make the case for NATO, and very loudly.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 5, 2023 9:40 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump’s second term agenda: revenge
By David Frum | December 5, 2023

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/donald-trump-reel
ection-second-term-agenda/676119/

If Trump is elected, it very likely won’t be with a majority of the popular vote. Imagine the scenario: Trump has won the Electoral College with 46 percent of the vote because third-party candidates funded by Republican donors successfully splintered the anti-Trump coalition. Having failed to win the popular vote in each of the past three elections, Trump has become president for the second time. On that thin basis, his supporters would try to execute his schemes of personal impunity and political vengeance.

In this scenario, Trump opponents would have to face a harsh reality: The U.S. electoral system has privileged a strategically located minority, led by a lawbreaking president, over the democratic majority. One side outvoted the other. The outvoted nonetheless won the power to govern.

The outvoted would happily justify the twist of events in their favor. “We are a republic, not a democracy,” many said in 2016. Since that time, the outvoted have become more outspoken against democracy. As Senator Mike Lee tweeted a month before the 2020 election: “Democracy isn’t the objective.”

So long as minority rule seems an occasional or accidental result, the majority might go along. But once aware that the minority intends to engineer its power to last forever—and to use it to subvert the larger legal and constitutional system—the majority may cease to be so accepting. One outcome of a second Trump term may be an American version of the massive demonstrations that filled Tel Aviv streets in 2023, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to remake Israel’s court system.

And what might follow that? In 2020, Trump’s advisers speculated about the possibility of using the Army to crush protests against Trump’s plans to overturn that year’s election. Now those in Trump’s circle are apparently thinking further ahead. Some reportedly want to prepare in advance to use the Insurrection Act to convert the military into a tool of Trump’s authoritarian project. It’s an astonishing possibility. But Trump is thinking about it, so everybody else must—including the senior command of the U.S. military.

If a president can summon an investigation of his opponents, or summon the military to put down protests, then suddenly our society would no longer be free. There would be no more law, only legalized persecution of political opponents. It has always been Trump’s supreme political wish to wield both the law and institutional violence as personal weapons of power—a wish that many in his party now seem determined to help him achieve.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 5, 2023 10:54 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I hope Trump does everything to Dems that they did to him.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 12:19 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Trump Campaign Strikes Back At 'Dictator' Hit-Piece In WaPo, Gaetz Says 'Green-Lighting Assassination'
Tuesday, Dec 05, 2023 - 08:05 AM

Over the last week, several outlets published articles warning that a second Trump term would turn America into a dictatorship.

The Washington Post most notably ran a piece written by Robert Kagan, husband of Former State Department official Victoria Nuland (who was deeply involved in peddling the Steele dossier) titled "A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending."

Many suggested this was a clear call to assassinate the former US President.

Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination.

[…] Are we going to do anything about it? To shift metaphors, if we thought there was a 50 percent chance of an asteroid crashing into North America a year from now, would we be content to hope that it wouldn’t? Or would we be taking every conceivable measure to try to stop it, including many things that might not work but that, given the magnitude of the crisis, must be tried anyway?

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said in response on X, "They're obviously green-lighting assassination."

In addition to the post, The Atlantic and the NY Times have also published stories warning of a "Trump dictatorship" in recent days, with the Times suggesting that a second Trump term would likely be more radical than his first, The Hill reports.

"All of these articles calling Trump a dictator are about one thing: legitimizing illegal and violent conduct as we get closer to the election," wrote Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) on X. "Everyone needs to take a chill pill."

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-campaign-hits-back-against-d
ictator-hit-piece-wapo-gaetz-says-green-lighting

OH NOS! TRUMP MIGHT BE ELECTED PRESIDENT! WE NEED TO BECOME A DICTATORSHIP TO PREVENT THAT!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 6:23 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Republicans still think Democrats stole the 2020 election

https://jabberwocking.com/republicans-still-think-democrats-stole-the-
2020-election/

This is not news, but here's a recent poll finding about the 2020 election. It's for Republicans only:

Among Republican voters who support Trump in the primaries, 86% think he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election and 61% think there was outright fraud from Democrats.

Those are basically Trump cultists. But even among the non-Trump voters, 41% think Trump rightfully won the election. That's a majority of those who expressed an opinion.

For what it's worth, this is one of the answers to the question of why even moderate Republicans still plan to vote for Trump rather than Biden. In their view, it's Democrats who are a threat to democracy, and all Trump is doing is fighting back.

It looks like Republicans have pretty much given up on Ukraine, but not Israel:

Republicans only like wars that Republicans start. They get tired of wars supported by Democratic presidents pretty quickly, even if, as in this case, it means giving Vladimir Putin whatever he wants.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 10:34 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Republicans still think Democrats stole the 2020 election

They did. Through en-mass mail-in ballots per Covid rules in swing states that had as little as 10,000 votes decide the race, and allowing unsupervised ballot harvesting in drop boxes. How many ballots for Trump were thrown in the trash or burned in a firepit by the people collecting mail-in ballots door to door?

And let's not pretend like Democrats don't cry foul every time they lose an election dude. There are plenty of videos out there of prominent Democrats at a podium or in live interviews claiming elections were stolen every time they lost, going all the way back to Bush/Gore.

So I guess the real question here is, what's your fucking point?

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 11:25 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Republicans still think Democrats stole the 2020 election

They did. Through en-mass mail-in ballots per Covid rules in swing states that had as little as 10,000 votes decide the race, and allowing unsupervised ballot harvesting in drop boxes. How many ballots for Trump were thrown in the trash or burned in a firepit by the people collecting mail-in ballots door to door?

And let's not pretend like Democrats don't cry foul every time they lose an election dude. There are plenty of videos out there of prominent Democrats at a podium or in live interviews claiming elections were stolen every time they lost, going all the way back to Bush/Gore.

So I guess the real question here is, what's your fucking point?

Trump said the other day: “I think if you had a real election and Jesus came down and God came down and said, 'I'm gonna be the scorekeeper here,' I think we'd win [in California], I think we'd win in Illinois, and I think we'd win in New York.” https://news.yahoo.com/trump-says-jesus-came-down-002004647.html

That is pretty much the whole story from all Republicans. They lose when Democrats cheat because "God" (by which they mean themselves) wants Trump. You might disbelieve it but a Democracy can't function when that attitude is widespread.

Google 'where did Trump say god would elect him' and you will see this is not a recent change. Republicans have been doing that often and doing that will break the country.

Obviously to me, the Republicans think the country needs breaking. Also obvious, the Republicans are broken and malfunctioning people. They don't see themselves as malfunctioning, but they are very much broken inside their minds, which shows up outside, in their everyday life. 6ix, smoke some cigarettes today and lay around doing nothing to prove you are a superior performing person who deserves better in life. Maybe post something about Hollywood's failures at selling tickets. That is a good use for a short life. (No, it is NOT)

https://www.google.com/search?q=where+did+Trump+say+god+would+elect+hi
m

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 12:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I hope Trump does everything to Dems that they did to him.

- SIGNYM

The feds are going to use Trump's tweets dating back to 2012 that baselessly claimed election fraud against him

Trump is no longer on Twitter, but his old tweets keep coming back to haunt him.
Jack Smith plans to use Trump's tweets, from as far back as 2012, in his 2020 election trial.

The tweets show Trump's "plan of falsely blaming fraud for election results," a court filing alleges.

Former President Donald Trump may no longer be on Twitter (now known as X). But that doesn't mean his old tweets can't come back to haunt him.

The special counsel Jack Smith plans to use Trump's tweets, some of which date as far back as 2012, to convince a jury of the former president's peers that he engaged in a conspiracy to defraud the US and illegally overturn the 2020 election results, according to a new court filing from Smith's office.
The filing alleges that Trump's public statements "sowed mistrust in the results of the presidential election and laid the foundation for the defendant's criminal efforts."

Trump has a "historical record of making such claims," the filing alleges. It points to a November 2012 tweet from Trump which baselessly claimed that voting machines "had switched votes from then-candidate [Mitt] Romney to then-candidate [Barack] Obama."

When Trump launched his own campaign in the 2016 election, he repeatedly claimed that there would be widespread voter fraud.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-feds-are-going-to-use-trum
p-s-tweets-dating-back-to-2012-that-baselessly-claimed-election-fraud-against-him/ar-AA1l3107?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=891ec2b886e14a20954d673e22efb053&ei=44

You mean what Trump has done to himself don't you comrade? At least comrade kiki is dead so we don't have to suffer her bullshit as well. I hear COVID got her.

Too funny

T

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 1:36 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Donald Trump, the former president of the United States who tried to steal the 2020 election, says he’ll be a dictator on day one of a second term.

That’s not the rhetorical excess of the mainstream press, nor is it the cynical spin of a political rival. It’s just what Trump said.

During a town hall in Iowa last night, Fox News’s Sean Hannity tossed Trump what ought to have been softball question. “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Hannity asked. “Except for day one,” Trump replied.

This is a remarkable enough admission—practically every president abuses his power in some way, but few boast about it. What followed was even wilder.

“He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’” Trump riffed. “I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”

It’s not unusual for political candidates to accuse their opponents of being would-be fascists or authoritarians. Rivals of Franklin Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Barack Obama, among many others, warned about these men’s supposed dictatorial ambitions. (Of course, none of those presidents mounted a months-long effort to steal an election, capped by inciting a violent assault on the Capitol.)

What is unusual, and in fact crazy, is for the rival to respond: Yeah, you bet I will.

Predicting the apologetics that anti-anti-Trumpers will employ here isn’t too hard. They’ll insist that this is just rhetorical flourish. They’ll say it’s fine, because he’s promising to limit his self-acknowledged abuse of powers to the noble causes of energy independence and border security. They’ve been using these excuses for years now.

But the people to heed here are Trump and his close allies, who are deliberately employing inflammatory rhetoric. In the same interview, Hannity gave the former president another chance to make a simple, bland statement of respect for laws, and Trump refused. (This is not the first time Hannity has tried to toss Trump a life buoy, only for Trump to fling it away with glee.)

“Do you in any way have any plans whatsoever, if reelected president, to abuse power? To break the law? To use the government to go after people?” Hannity asked. Trump’s response: “You mean like they’re using right now?”

The turnabout onto President Biden is dubious but typical. What’s missing is the easy addendum: And of course I reject these excesses and will get the country back on track. The problem is that everyone knows the former president would abuse his power, even the anti-anti-Trump apologists. And for his diehard supporters, that’s the real sell this time around. He is promising them that he’ll throw out the rulebook and exact revenge on his opponents.

“This is just not rhetoric. We’re absolutely dead serious,” Steve Bannon said yesterday on his podcast. Take that for what you will; the former Trump strategist has a history of trolling. But even if it is just rhetoric, that’s little comfort, given how many Americans are fine with it. Bannon was speaking with the former Trump-administration utility player Kash Patel, who promised to go after the free press.

“Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections—we’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll come after you,” he said. Patel, who’s more intellectually agile than Trump, then walked it back a bit: “We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”

Who can be against people being prosecuted if they’ve truly committed crimes? But lying, though deplorable, is not a crime; no one rigged the election; and Patel’s posture is that he’ll find crimes to fit the defendants, not the other way around. The substance aside, Patel is following Trump’s lead: When accused of seeking to abuse power, he is happy to agree.

“This is why they hate us,” he smirked to Bannon. “This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators.”

For apologists, that’s deniability. For Trump’s fans, though, it’s not a joke—it’s the attraction.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/trump-says-hell-be-a
-dictator-on-day-one/676247/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 2:07 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I hope Trump does everything to Dems that they did to him.

THUGR:
Quote:
The feds are going to use Trump's tweets dating back to 2012 that baselessly claimed election fraud against him

Trump is no longer on Twitter, but his old tweets keep coming back to haunt him.
Jack Smith plans to use Trump's tweets, from as far back as 2012, in his 2020 election trial.

The tweets show Trump's "plan of falsely blaming fraud for election results," a court filing alleges.

Former President Donald Trump may no longer be on Twitter (now known as X). But that doesn't mean his old tweets can't come back to haunt him... blah blah blah...

You mean what Trump has done to himself don't you comrade? At least comrade kiki is dead so we don't have to suffer her bullshit as well. I hear COVID got her.

Too funny

Oh my! I know... and I don't mean "guess", I know for a fact that KIKI is alive and well.

You're a nasty person, and a liar, THUGR. Been owned by your own lies!

TRUMP is an intemperate person with galloping adult ADHD. I'm not about to defend his tweets. But there are things Trump did NOT do, that I hope he or his better- focused underlings manage to do soon:

* He did not enagage in a conspiracy with the FBI, CIA, the DOJ, MI6, a Presidential candidate and her law firm, and all of the M$M to baselessly and maliciously accuse a political rival of treason. Considering all of the shit that the DNC did, he COULD, actually, accuse them of treason, with cause.

* He did not round up Congress to baselessly and maliciously impeach anyone. But Hunter and Joe Biden (oh, and Hillary and Pelosi and others) have so much dirt on them, if the DOJ were impartial they would have been on trial years ago.

* He did not open the southern border, start a feckless war against Russia, direct the government, media, and social to engage in widespread censorship.

* Baselessly and maliciously accuse mostly peaceful protestors of "insurrection" and jail them on false charges and cherry- picked "evidence" while ignoring violent BLM/ ANTIFA rioters, and respond to race- based riots with appeasement, "defund the police", "taking a knee", and "reparations".

* Support pointless, unscientific, and potentially dangerous experimental vaccine mandates.

The DC swamp, the media, and the DNC have a lot ... A LOT... to answer for, including blantant international corruption, shredding our borders and our Constitution and imposing widespread censorship. THEY know what they did, EVEN IF YOU DON'T. No wonder they're terrified that their former victims may come back to haunt them!

Am I looking for vengeance on behalf of THE TRUTH, the Constitution, and America??
YOU BET!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 2:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Oh my! I know... and I don't mean "guess", I know for a fact that KIKI is alive and well.

Nope, she is dead. She stopped posting cold, because so is she.

T

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 6:00 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump’s ‘dictator’ remark jolts the 2024 campaign — and tests his GOP rivals on debate day

“Trump’s not even hiding the ball anymore,” an unguarded Biden said. “He’s telling us exactly what he wants to do. He’s making no bones about it.”

In a statement following Trump’s remarks, Biden’s campaign backed up that message. “Donald Trump has been telling us exactly what he will do if he’s reelected and tonight he said he will be a dictator on day one,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said. “Americans should believe him.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/06/trump-dictator-remark-2024-ca
mpaign-00130392

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 6:55 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh my! I know... and I don't mean "guess", I know for a fact that KIKI is alive and well.

THUGR: Nope, she is dead. She stopped posting cold, because so is she.

This is just as stupid as calling everyone you don't like a "Russian troll". Seriously, dood, have you no boundaries between reality and lies?

I KNOW for a fact KIKI is alive and well. Not gonna tell you how I know, tho!

KIKI stopped posting bc they decided that this site is toxic, and stupid.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 6:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Oh my! I know... and I don't mean "guess", I know for a fact that KIKI is alive and well.

Nope, she is dead. She stopped posting cold, because so is she.

T

You're a piece of trash human being just like Second then, huh Ted?

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 7:00 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump’s ‘dictator’ remark jolts the 2024 campaign — and tests his GOP rivals on debate day

“Trump’s not even hiding the ball anymore,” an unguarded Biden said. “He’s telling us exactly what he wants to do. He’s making no bones about it.”

In a statement following Trump’s remarks, Biden’s campaign backed up that message. “Donald Trump has been telling us exactly what he will do if he’s reelected and tonight he said he will be a dictator on day one,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said. “Americans should believe him.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/06/trump-dictator-remark-2024-ca
mpaign-00130392

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

You're a fucking idiot that believes everything he's told, taken completely out of context, because you are incapable of critical thought.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 7:04 PM

Scarborough on Trump's Dictator Comment: There's A Sickness With Some Americans Wanting Authoritarianism

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/12/06/scarborough_on_trum
ps_dictator_comment_theres_a_sickness_with_some_americans_wanting_authoritarianism.html

Yeah, Joe. You're Patient Zero.

You didn't rape and murder any more of your interns this week, did you?

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 7:05 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh my! I know... and I don't mean "guess", I know for a fact that KIKI is alive and well.

THUGR: Nope, she is dead. She stopped posting cold, because so is she.

SIX: You're a piece of trash human being just like Second then, huh Ted?

Don't let it bother you. This is THUGR just lashing out bc he feels stupid and defensive. (He could feel less stupid by maybe figuring out that he's being lied to by the M$M, but he's too insecure to venture out from mommy's womb.) Like I said, I know for a fact he's wrong, and to me he just looks more and more stupid the more he posts.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 7:10 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
When asked to clarify, [the "dictator" remark] Trump said he would use the presidency to close the border and increase oil drilling in the U.S.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-sean-hannity-dictator-day-on
e/

Oh, that's too bad!! I was hoping Trump was planning a MASS PURGE of the DOJ, FBI, DOD, CIA, and Foggy Bottom!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 7:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh my! I know... and I don't mean "guess", I know for a fact that KIKI is alive and well.

THUGR: Nope, she is dead. She stopped posting cold, because so is she.

SIX: You're a piece of trash human being just like Second then, huh Ted?

Don't let it bother you. This is THUGR just lashing out bc he feels stupid and defensive. (He could feel less stupid by maybe figuring out that he's being lied to by the M$M, but he's too insecure to venture out from mommy's womb.) Like I said, I know for a fact he's wrong, and to me he just looks more and more stupid the more he posts.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

Well... She and I didn't end off on the right foot. But I'm glad to hear she's alright.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 9:19 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

AFAIK no hard feelings.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 11:02 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
AFAIK no hard feelings.

Good. Tell her there's none here either.

That was some terrible shit they pulled on all of us.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, December 7, 2023 1:45 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Oh, that's too bad!! I was hoping Trump was planning a MASS PURGE of the DOJ, FBI, DOD, CIA, and Foggy Bottom!

Hoping to capitalize on the passions of their base, Texas Republicans introduced a bill in early 2023 that would require public school classrooms throughout the state to display the Ten Commandments “in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom.” This was part of a coordinated legislative effort to Christianize civics in the state. Texas had already enacted a law requiring classrooms to display donated “In God We Trust” placards (one local district made headlines by banning Arabic versions while accepting those written in English). At the same time, Republicans were pushing to replace public school counselors with religious chaplains. When it came time to muscle the Ten Commandments bill through the Senate, the bill’s sponsor called on—who else?—the “esteemed” pseudo-historian David Barton to testify. Barton did his part: The bill cleared the Senate on a party-line vote. Its failure in the House coincided with an ironic twist of timing: Weeks before the bill died, Bryan Slaton, a Republican representative and former SBC youth pastor who branded himself a champion for family values—criminalizing abortion, warring with LGBTQ “groomers,” and, yes, promoting the Ten Commandments in public spaces—was expelled by the House after an investigation found that he’d cheated on his wife with a nineteen-year-old aide who “could not effectively consent to intercourse” after he’d plied her with copious amounts of liquor.

Champions of Christian nationalism would have you believe that these efforts to rule the country are inherently theological; that they are in service of a broader effort to reclaim America for God. This is a lie. Christian nationalism is a contradiction in terms: Paul told the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” This assurance—that anyone who accepts Christ becomes a part of the Abrahamic family, residents of the promised New Jerusalem—transcends all known racial, ethnic, and national identities. This is why Paul wrote so explicitly to the people in Philippi, a Roman colony full of soldiers and state officials, imploring the Christians there to pledge allegiance to Christ alone. “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things,” Paul warned of those who would reject his plea. “But our citizenship is in heaven.”

There is nothing here to reclaim. This country—a drop in the bucket, like all the nations—was never God’s to begin with, because “God does not show favoritism,” as Peter said, “but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.” Attempts to devise some divine conception of the United States often end up demonstrating exactly the opposite. Take, for example, an Independence Day 2023 tweet from Josh Hawley, the disgraced Missouri senator whose lies and deceptive parliamentary maneuverings helped set in motion the violence of January 6. Celebrating the holiday with a “quote” from Patrick Henry, the senator tweeted: “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” It might have been humiliating enough for Hawley to learn that the founding father never spoke or wrote these words; what should have been downright mortifying was to realize, as the historian Seth Cotlar documented, that these words actually originated in a notoriously antisemitic and white-nationalist publication, the Virginian, 150 years after Henry’s death.

Hawley never bothered to apologize for the error. And why would he? The way many of his constituents see it, secular progressives, in their quest to destroy America’s Christian heritage, stopped playing by the rules a long time ago. Fire must be fought with fire. Standards must be suspended. A winner-takes-all mentality must be embraced. When the conservative activist (and future Trump administration official) Michael Anton wrote his 2016 essay, “The Flight 93 Election,” he argued that leftists had hijacked America; the only chance for its survival was if conservatives rushed the cockpit, knowing full well that they might just crash the plane themselves. Notably absent from that essay was any reference to Christ, or to Christianity, or even to God. And yet the argument Anton makes—that imminent destruction justifies the unthinkable acts that may themselves lead to imminent destruction—has come to define the modern religious right.

Download Tim Alberta’s free book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?&req=Tim+Alberta

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, December 7, 2023 4:33 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I'm sorry, but WTF does Christian nationalism have to do with Washington DC??? I imagine very little!

People in Washington conspired to thwart a democratic election; use the DOJ, CIA, and FBI to spread malicious rumors and lies; use the media to spread fake news, censor real news; DOJ to whip up ridiculous charges against Trump and peaceful protesters, holding many in solitary under unconscionable conditions for months before trial; converting nonviolent behavior into "terrorism"; whitewash evidence of crimes committed by Hillary, Hunter, Joe, and others; impose policies of "the interagency" over those voted for by the American electorate...

I'm sure ALL of the people who did these things not only violated the terms of their employment, they failed to defend and protect the USA and made a mockery of the Constitution and the concept of justice. They DESERVE to be fired if not charged with crimes.

I'm sure truth, justice, and democracy mean NOTHING to you since you're an inveterate liar, a monumental hypocrite, and you despise everyone who isn't you.

But they still mean something to me, and they should mean something to everyone bc were supposed to be able to trust that the system works for everyone, not just a select few. That's the glue that's supposed to be holding us all together.

But I know why you have such a soft spot for Ukraine: you're as corrupt as they are.
Maybe you should move there!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, December 7, 2023 6:46 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Why Trump Refuses to Deny He Plans to Become a Dictator

By Jonathan Chait | Dec. 6, 2023

Donald Trump’s threats to use the presidency as a vindictive weapon to punish his enemies have grown so naked that his allies now find it inconvenient. They are irritated — not with Trump, but with the news media for reporting on his undisguised plans. They recognize “I am your retribution” is comic-book-villain dialogue, not an effective message for swing voters. Their goal is to give the party some plausible deniability that the man they are planning to install atop the executive branch will not attack the foundations of the republic.

Trump, however, is refusing to cooperate with the charade.

Trump’s allies insist that coverage of his plans is actually a scheme to seed violence against Trump. “All of these articles calling Trump a dictator are about one thing: legitimizing illegal and violent conduct as we get closer to the election,” proclaims Senator J.D. Vance. “This extreme and dangerous genre — of claiming Trump is Hitler (because, they say, he might do what Democrats are doing right now) — should probably be given the name ‘Assassination Prep,’” warns the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway.

The whole pretense of these complaints is that Trump has done or said nothing dangerous or unusual, and that reporting on his plans and public statements is a form of dangerous incitement. They are all but begging Trump to give them a shred of deniability. He can simply say, even with a wink, that he doesn’t wish to become America’s Putin. He won’t give them even that — because, to Trump, being called “dictator” is a compliment his ego won’t permit him to deny.

More at https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/12/why-trump-refuses-to-deny-he-p
lans-to-become-a-dictator.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, December 7, 2023 9:54 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Why Trump Refuses to Deny He Plans to Become a Dictator

By Jonathan Chait | Dec. 6, 2023

Donald Trump’s threats to use the presidency as a vindictive weapon to punish his enemies have grown so naked that his allies now find it inconvenient. They are irritated — not with Trump, but with the news media for reporting on his undisguised plans. They recognize “I am your retribution” is comic-book-villain dialogue, not an effective message for swing voters. Their goal is to give the party some plausible deniability that the man they are planning to install atop the executive branch will not attack the foundations of the republic.

Trump, however, is refusing to cooperate with the charade.

Trump’s allies insist that coverage of his plans is actually a scheme to seed violence against Trump. “All of these articles calling Trump a dictator are about one thing: legitimizing illegal and violent conduct as we get closer to the election,” proclaims Senator J.D. Vance. “This extreme and dangerous genre — of claiming Trump is Hitler (because, they say, he might do what Democrats are doing right now) — should probably be given the name ‘Assassination Prep,’” warns the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway.

The whole pretense of these complaints is that Trump has done or said nothing dangerous or unusual, and that reporting on his plans and public statements is a form of dangerous incitement. They are all but begging Trump to give them a shred of deniability. He can simply say, even with a wink, that he doesn’t wish to become America’s Putin. He won’t give them even that — because, to Trump, being called “dictator” is a compliment his ego won’t permit him to deny.

More at https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/12/why-trump-refuses-to-deny-he-p
lans-to-become-a-dictator.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Because everything you brainlets are saying Trump is going to do when he's in office is exactly what you've been doing since Biden* was in office.

--------------------------------------------------

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, December 7, 2023 11:43 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Because everything you brainlets are saying Trump is going to do when he's in office is exactly what you've been doing since Biden* was in office.

6ix, writing this sentence is more proof you are crazy and stupid. It is no surprise that bad things have happened to you (and Trump) because that is what happens to crazy and stupid people. But you think you are not crazy and stupid, so you'll never make the connection between what you are and what happens to you. Never. (Neither can Trump make that connection. But his inherited money and the lawyers that money allowed him to hire have protected him from consequences.)

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, December 7, 2023 12:03 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Because everything you brainlets are saying Trump is going to do when he's in office is exactly what you've been doing since Biden* was in office.
6ix, writing this sentence is more proof you are crazy and stupid. It is no surprise that bad things have happened to you because that is what happens to crazy and stupid people. But you think you are not crazy and stupid, so you'll never make the connection between what you are and what happens to you. Never.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

You haven't refuted his argument, have you?
All you have is name-calling. Just like THUGR.
How about describing for us, IN DETAIL, how it is NOT the same?

BTW, considering how you post I'm beginning to think SIX is right: I think you "borrowed" an identity and history from someone you know well- your dad?- and you sit in your mom's basement posting lies and hate speech all day long.
Either that or you're going senile or plain, nucking futs.

You don't post like anyone with a history of accomplishment of ANY sort, just a massive pile of insecurities.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, December 7, 2023 12:07 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I'm sorry, but WTF does Christian nationalism have to do with Washington DC??? I imagine very little!

People in Washington conspired to thwart a democratic election; use the DOJ, CIA, and FBI to spread malicious rumors and lies; use the media to spread fake news, censor real news; DOJ to whip up ridiculous charges against Trump and peaceful protesters, holding many in solitary under unconscionable conditions for months before trial; converting nonviolent behavior into "terrorism"; whitewash evidence of crimes committed by Hillary, Hunter, Joe, and others; impose policies of "the interagency" over those voted for by the American electorate...

I'm sure ALL of the people who did these things not only violated the terms of their employment, they failed to defend and protect the USA and made a mockery of the Constitution and the concept of justice. They DESERVE to be fired if not charged with crimes.

I'm sure truth, justice, and democracy mean NOTHING to you since you're an inveterate liar, a monumental hypocrite, and you despise everyone who isn't you.

But they still mean something to me, and they should mean something to everyone bc were supposed to be able to trust that the system works for everyone, not just a select few. That's the glue that's supposed to be holding us all together.

But I know why you have such a soft spot for Ukraine: you're as corrupt as they are.
Maybe you should move there!

DETAILS OF THE DEEP STATE'S CONSPIRACY TO SHRED AMERICA AND IMPOSE MORE TYRANNY ON AMERICANS. AND I HAVEN'T EVEN CONSIDERED DC"S COVID RESPONSE YET.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, December 7, 2023 12:31 PM