American Politics

[QUOTE=ShooBree;2523210]So you're saying that hiring Joe Biden's son was a way to buy protection from Joe Biden. Sounds as corrupt as it gets![/QUOTE]Hopin' and askin' ain't gettin'.

I said perhaps that is what Burisma was hoping for as is the case with every company that hires or appoints someone on their board with a famous last name.

But if merely hoping is an act of corruption then wag your finger of shame and disapproval at Burisma. Even Barr did not see a reason to assign a special council to investigate the Bidens more than the routine investigation and, so far, bupkiss that has turned up.

Same as his dismissal of Trump's unfounded claims of voter/election fraud as so much horseshit.

[QUOTE=Tavares;2522949]Don't tell me that Trump won the election BIG, a landslide, as he used to say! Get real, your candidate and idol LOST the election, 7 million votes behind Biden. I am really sorry for people that resort to insults out of desperation. You can call us names but that won't change the outcome, from Wednesday the americans will have a decent if not charismatic guy at the White House.[/QUOTE]Where did I say Trump should have won? But to your larger point is as long as there were only 6 million fraudulent votes that is okay.

Yeah, you are really showing me how smart you are. You care more about who won then the power of your vote.

[QUOTE=Paulie97;2522967]I completely agree. I'll add that some people are under the impression that if they lie often enough and for long enough, and especially if they cut on the cap key and use exclamation marks.[/QUOTE]So if there were 6 million fraudulent votes, you were okay with that? Oh wait, I forgot who I was taking to. You are so arrogant you do not think anyone should get a vote.

30,534 lies told by Trump in 1,458 days.

Disconcerting of course, but what is even more disconcerting is all the sheeple that believe them. That represents a real threat to our democracy, as we've seen most glaringly in recent days.

[URL]https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?itid=lk_inline_manual_1[/URL]

[QUOTE=Golfinho;2523185]Barr's a long-time Republican Party insider you've seen his resume, right?

Trump was his own worst enemy, in failing to compromise and accept political alliances. The current situation isn't and shouldn't be all about Donald Trump. It's being made that way by the Democrat Party for political capital. Like they created the conspiracy story of Russian election meddling for political capital.

Meanwhile, the forces that should really concern us are consolidating: with censorship. Tech monopolists Amazon, Apple & Google have removed Parler, a competitor to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. With corporations enabled to direct elected officials to do their bidding, the classic definition of fascism becomes installed: the Corporate State. Don't be misdirected: so-called 'white supremacy' is not fascism, it may a component, a means to an end but is not in and of itself fascism. And, note the irony that an ethno-religion based on actual supremacy is in the forefront flogging the narrative of 'white supremacy.'[/QUOTE]Like most people, you don't have a clue what fascism is. Or isn't. I suggest that you read the following Britanica article (remember to access the links on the left side). When you are done, you'll see how much of the definition applies to DJT. [URL]https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism[/URL].

[QUOTE=ScatManDoo;2523293]Donald Trump is STILL ranting that he won the election with less than 48 hours left in office. And calling GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy a 'puzzy' because 10 of his caucus voted to impeach.

President Donald Trump is still ranting that he won the election with less than 48 hours to go before he leaves office.

The New York Times reported Monday that Trump is especially mad at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as he nears his exit.

Trump called McCarthy a "pussy" for not being able to keep his members in line last week during Wednesday's impeachment vote.

Ten House Republicans voted alongside Democrats to impeach Trump for a second time, over his role in the January 6 MAGA riot.

McCarthy went on the House floor and assigned some blame to Trump, but also argued against impeaching the president.

That didn't matter to Trump, who has lashed out at his longtime political allies in recent weeks, also calling Vice President Mike Pence a 'puzzy'.

Trump is refusing to attend President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on Wednesday and will land in Florida before Biden is sworn-in.[/QUOTE]Of course the election was not rigged. It is impossible to rig an election. This election was handled fairly just like the elections in China and Russia. Also just as fair as the recent Uganda election. Now I suppose some of you are going to tell us that China and Russia are rigged too.

[QUOTE=Canada;2523489]Of course the election was not rigged. It is impossible to rig an election. This election was handled fairly just like the elections in China and Russia. Also just as fair as the recent Uganda election. Now I suppose some of you are going to tell us that China and Russia are rigged too.[/QUOTE]Of course the democratic primaries were not rigged to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination. It is impossible to rig an election.

Yikes, many elderly in Norway died after taking the COVID-19 vaccine. 23 dead to be exact.

A commitment to citizenship also requires a firm rejection of those ridiculous two words: "both sides. " That both sides "do it," whatever "it" may be, is an anesthetizing balm for tribalists faced with uncomfortable evidence of wrongdoing. Yes, violent protest is always wrong. And yes, both the right and left have visible activists who accept or promote it. But to equate violence by a small group of antifa protesters in Portland with a presidentially-instigated insurrection in Washington the. See. Is not just wrong, it's madness.

A close cousin of the "both sides" opium poisoning our minds is whataboutism. Whataboutism holds no water as a moral defense when offered by toddlers battling for crayons. But it is now the go-to political get-out-of-jail-free card. For every clear breach of law or decency by Trump there is a bottomless inventory of transgressions by some Democrat to make everything right. Through some unholy alchemy, breaking a window in the Capitol is excused by a broken window in Portland.

No party or individual has a monopoly on sin or virtue. After the Civil War, the Democratic Party worked to reestablish murderous White supremacy in the South. There were no "both sides. " Meanwhile, last week, and over the last four years, the Republican Party supported and excused every anti-constitutional depredation of Trump, such as his desire to baselessly contest ballots that were lawfully cast and affirmed by the Electoral College, including on the very day of the insurrection. There were no "both sides."

That "they do it, too" is not a defense in kindergarten, in court or in the politics of a supposedly great democracy.

[URL]https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/opinions/america-almost-lost-democracy-protect-it-himes/index.html[/URL]

[QUOTE=Elvis2008;2523328]Where did I say Trump should have won? But to your larger point is as long as there were only 6 million fraudulent votes that is okay.

Yeah, you are really showing me how smart you are. You care more about who won then the power of your vote.[/QUOTE]Of course there were a few fraudulent votes as always. And of course I am against rigged elections like in Russia whose leader Trump admires so much. He envies Mr. Putin as well because he would have liked to run the USA the same way the russian dictator does.

The point I would like to make once and for all is that the election was free and fair as state authorities declared and courts confirmed over and over again. The irony is that Trump could have won the election if he hadn't lied like there was no tomorrow and swept the pandemic under the carpet, if he had reached out to people instead of pandering to his supporters' basic instincts and making enemies everywhere because he can't stand being criticised, out of a inferiority complex he was apparently born with.

For me he is / was undoubtedly the worst american president ever, because he is ignorant, a liar and a crook, primitive, in a word, scum. I sincerely hope he will be barred from holding office in the future. The world will be grateful, with the exception of Putin, the rocket man, Bin Salman of SA and up to a point Xi as well.

[QUOTE=PVMonger;2523479]Like most people, you don't have a clue what fascism is. Or isn't. I suggest that you read the following Britanica article (remember to access the links on the left side). When you are done, you'll see how much of the definition applies to DJT. [URL]https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism[/URL].[/QUOTE]This whole oxymoronic idea of "liberal Fascism" is a joke that serious historians and political scientists give no credibility to. It was put forth in 2008 by a conservative journalist, Jonah Goldberg in his book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. Golfinho is obsessed with the idea, but like with most any subject, he lacks a grip of even the basics. He's not worth investing much time with. Here are some reviews of the book and it's novel, non-historical arguments.

Austin W. Bramwell wrote in The American Conservative:

Repeatedly, Goldberg fails to recognize a reduction ad absurdum. In no case does Goldberg uncover anything more ominous than a coincidence. In elaborating liberalism's similarities to fascism, Goldberg shows a near superstitious belief in the power of taxonomy. Goldberg falsely saddles liberalism not just with relativism but with all manner of alleged errors having nothing to do with liberalism. Not only does Goldberg misunderstand liberalism, but he refuses to see it simply as liberalism. Liberal Fascism reads less like an extended argument than as a catalogue of conservative intellectual clichés, often irrelevant to the supposed point of the book. Liberal Fascism completes Goldberg's transformation from chipper humorist into humorless ideologue.

Curtis Yarvin wrote about the book:

One reason the Jonah Goldbergs of the world have such trouble telling their right from their left is that they expect some morphological feature of the State to answer the question for them. For anyone other than Goldberg, Stalin was on the left and Hitler was on the right. The difference is not a function of discrepancies in administrative procedure between the KZs and the Gulag. It's a function of social networks. Stalin was a real socialist, Hitler was a fake one. Stalin was part of the international socialist movement, and Hitler wasn't.

In The Nation, Eric Alterman wrote:

The book reads like a Google search gone gaga. Some Fascists were vegetarians; some liberals are vegetarians; ergo some Fascists were gay; some liberals are gay. Fascists cared about educating children; Hillary Clinton cares about educating children. Aha! Like Coulter, he's got a bunch of footnotes. And for all I know, they check out. But they are put in the service of an argument that no one with any knowledge of the topic would take seriously.

In The American Prospect, journalist David Neiwert wrote:

In his new book, Goldberg has drawn a kind of history in absurdly broad and comically wrongheaded strokes. It is not just history done badly, or mere revisionism. It's a caricature of reality, like something from a comic-book alternative universe: Bizarro history. Goldberg isn't content to simply create an oxymoron; this entire enterprise, in fact, is classic Newspeak. Along the way, he grotesquely misrepresents the state of academia regarding the study of fascism.

David Oshinsky of The New York Times wrote:

Liberal Fascism is less an exposé of left-wing hypocrisy than a chance to exact political revenge. Yet the title of his book aside, what distinguishes Goldberg from the Sean Hannitys and Michael Savages is a witty intelligence that deals in ideas as well as insults—no mean feat in the nasty world of the culture wars.

Michael Tomasky wrote in The New Republic:

So I can report with a clear conscience that Liberal Fascism is one of the most tedious and inane—and ultimately self-negating—books that I have ever read. Liberal Fascism is a document of a deeply frivolous culture, or sub-culture. However much or little Goldberg knows about fascism, he knows next to nothing about liberalism.

Philip Coupland, whose paper "H. G. Wells's 'Liberal Fascism'" was used as a source for Liberal Fascism, criticized Goldberg's understanding of the term:

Wells did not label his 'entire philosophy' liberal fascism, not in fact and not by implication. Liberal fascism was the name which he (and I) gave to his theory of praxis, that is his method of achieving his utopian goal, not the goal itself. Wells hoped for activists who would use what he considered to be 'fascist' means (technocratic authoritarianism and force) to achieve a liberal social end. In contrast, a 'liberal fascist' would pursue fascist ends but in a 'liberal' or at least more 'liberal' way.

[QUOTE=Tavares;2523564]The point I would like to make once and for all is that the election was free and fair as state authorities declared and courts confirmed over and over again.[/QUOTE]You mean this court system? In a landmark case, the United States Supreme Court decided 7–2 against Scott, finding that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States.

Blowing off thousands of affidavits of people who allege possible fraud is hardly reassuring. Those people needed to be deposed and then the people could decide if there was fraud.

I never said Trump won. What I have said is that all the electoral votes from Georgia could have easily gone to Trump. Then you look at the same pattern of kicking out Republican observers in all the other close states which just so happen to all go for Biden save for North Carolina and something stinks.

But it is what it is.

So here is my question to you Tavares: what do you think is going to happen in the next time? This asshole Barron in Georgia has already kicked out a neutral Republican observer before this election. What happens next time he tries this stunt? I think it is going to be a blood bath.

[QUOTE=Golfinho;2523508]Of course the democratic primaries were not rigged to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination. It is impossible to rig an election.[/QUOTE]LOL. Yeah Golinho, I was thinking the same thing. This is actually the Democratic establishment's 3rd go around. OTOH, Trump won even though the Republican establishment hated him.

What was funny was how open everyone was so open about what happened in 2020 with Bernie and how he got screwed.

I just want to show you something that cracked me up from the NY Times. Start of quote:

Early in the pandemic, many health experts — in the USA And around the world — decided that the public could not be trusted to hear the truth about masks. Instead, the experts spread a misleading message, discouraging the use of masks.

Their motivation was mostly good. It sprung from a concern that people would rush to buy high-grade medical masks, leaving too few for doctors and nurses. The experts were also unsure how much ordinary masks would help.

But the message was still a mistake.

It confused people. (If masks weren't effective, why did doctors and nurses need them?) It delayed the widespread use of masks (even though there was good reason to believe they could help). And it damaged the credibility of public health experts.

"When people feel as though they may not be getting the full truth from the authorities, snake-oil sellers and price gougers have an easier time," the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote early last year.

Now a version of the mask story is repeating itself — this time involving the vaccines. Once again, the experts don't seem to trust the public to hear the full truth.

Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They're not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn't change their behavior once they get their shots.

These warnings have a basis in truth, just as it's true that masks are imperfect. But the sum total of the warnings is misleading, as I heard from multiple doctors and epidemiologists last week.

"We're underselling the vaccine," Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said.

"It's going to save your life — that's where the emphasis has to be right now," Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are "essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease," Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said. "It's ridiculously encouraging."

End of quote.

Can you believe this was from the New York Times? That they actually printed an article and Trump was not to blame for Covid? That others in government may have made a mistake?

If you work in government, it must be a scary time. Blaming all your screwups on Trump looks like it is now no longer fashionable.

[QUOTE=Tavares;2523564]The point I would like to make once and for all is that the election was free and fair as state authorities declared and courts confirmed over and over again. The irony is that Trump could have won the election if he hadn't lied like there was no tomorrow and swept the pandemic under the carpet, if he had reached out to people instead of pandering to his supporters' basic instincts and making enemies everywhere because he can't stand being criticised, out of a inferiority complex he was apparently born with. [/QUOTE]Yep, I thought the same thing too, right before COVID-19, came on the scene. "Agent Orange" and the Republicans had a very good chance to repeat.

But COVID-19 was IMHO, their "Achilles' heel". The onslaught of COVID-19, turned out to be serendipitous stroke of political irony for the Democrats. In the wake of COVID-19, record number of voters, in the 10's of millions, turned to MAIL-IN voting.

[b]COVID-19 and MAIL-IN voters[/b] [i](and a heavy dose of presidential hubris)[/i], in one swift stroke, took down the Republicans and their gerrymandering, voter suppression and voter redistricting schemes. 7+ million more votes, for the win.

[QUOTE=Golfinho;2523185]Tech monopolists Amazon, Apple & Google have removed Parler, a competitor to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.'[/QUOTE]It has nothing to do with "monopolies," and everything to do with the fact that Parler is a rogue service that facilitated violent speech and planning that proceeded an attack on the US Capital, not to mention the stolen election lies that more mainstream platforms finally had enough of. Free speech isn't absolute, plus the US Constitution doesn't touch private companies in this matter. And since you list several different and independent social media and tech entities you cut against the concept of "monopoly. " I suppose behind this is supposed to be yet another unproven, diabolical conspiracy theory.

Successful, well managed companies tend to grow. That's called capitalism, the best of all the imperfect systems. If you think anti-trust laws are being violated then by all means make your case and promote implementation. Squawking half-baked ideas and conspiracy theories in a monger forum won't get you far.

That said, the fact that you stick up for scum like Parler betrays your sense of community with the wingnuts who can't get enough feasting on lies.