American Politics

[QUOTE=PVMonger;2761533][B]"I always thought the red wave was going to fade after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade."[/B] Sure you did. That's why you made multiple posts criticizing Republicans for pushing extreme anti-abortion legislation in most Repub-run states. Oh, wait! I went back to the SCOTUS are v W time frame and counted all of your posts skewering Republicans. You know how many of them there were? [B]None. Zip. Null. Nada.[/B].

Stupid Repubs will continue down this anti-abortion path. Who knows if they'll be dumb enough to try to overturn voting rights and LBGTQ rights but given that the sum total of the IQ of all of the MAGAts in Congress is less than 100, I wouldn't put it past them. They will continue to trot out morons like Walker and DeSantis and MTG and BoBo and Gym Jordan and the rest of the dumber-than-dogshit election deniers. Repub Congresspeople are so stupid that they'll try to impeach every Democrat in Government over the next two years. That's because they don't have anything else and they don't know anything else and they're simply too fucking stupid to get out of their own way..[/QUOTE]They need a like button on this forum.

[QUOTE=Spidy;2761318]It's not surprising you love gridlock, after all, it's what Repubs do best. (....kkkk). I mean, "gridlock" is right out of the "right-wing playbook". Let's just waste taxpayers money while in office and do nothing meaningful, except blame the Dems, repeal meaningful law/bills put in place by Dems, taking America backwards to the 1800's , and lower taxes for the corporate welfare and the rich cronies. Sound about right.

Which is all a ruse or an attempt to make it look like a meaningful administrative tenure. So again, not surprising you love gridlock. [/QUOTE]You and Tooms apparently don't understand what gridlock means. It's when one party does not control the presidency, Senate and House at the same time. Politicians aren't as able to "waste taxpayers money", "repeal meaningful laws / bills", or "lower taxes for the corporate welfare and rich cronies" when there's gridlock. As I already said in a reply to another of your posts, I wonder why some people blame Republicans for the welfare for corporations and "rich cronies," when the Democrats are arguably more guilty than the Republicans in promoting crony capitalism and corporate welfare. Maybe that's why you see more Democrats at country clubs and more Republicans at construction sites and and on factory floors these days.

A good friend of mine who's a Democrat prefers divided government (that is, gridlock). He's looked closely at deficit spending and says it's the least when you have a Democrat in the White House and Republicans controlling the House. That's what we had during Clinton's second term, which was the only time we've balanced the budget in many decades. And that's what we'll have for the next two years, God willing.

[QUOTE=Spidy;2761318]The Brazilians, on the other hand, weren't buying into the right-wing playbook of, [i][b]"...it's election fraud, if we don't win[/b][/i], horse-pucky. Thereby categorically, refuting any such claims Pres. Bozo (Bolsonaro), had cooked up, from the "Trump playbook", about hacked/compromised election machines.[/QUOTE]What we saw happen in Brazil is what you and I hope won't happen in America in 2024. A crook, Lula, who actually spent time in jail, was elected Brazilian president by a small margin. If a court puts Trump in jail, which I hope won't happen, I wonder what would happen come 2024. I bet he'd run for president from his jail cell, and I bet the "martyr factor" would help him.

Bolsonaro did not follow the Donald Trump or Stacey Abrams post-election playbooks. While he may not have come out and directly said "I lost", he's cooperating with an orderly transition, and has asked his supporters to do the same.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2761683]

What we saw happen in Brazil is what you and I hope won't happen in America in 2024. A crook, Lula, who actually spent time in jail, was elected Brazilian president by a small margin. If a court puts Trump in jail, which I hope won't happen, I wonder what would happen come 2024. I bet he'd run for president from his jail cell, and I bet the "martyr factor" would help him.

[/QUOTE]He isn't a crook. He was jailed by a corrupt judge on faulty charges (no doubt masterminded by the real crook Bolsanero). His sentence was overturned and he was realeased, So yiou have no grounds to call him a crook.

When he gave up his presidency after 2 terms, he had an approval rating of 90%. He lifted 20 million Brazilains out of poverty. He pledges to preserve the Amazon RF. Why do you "hope won't happen in America (sic) in 2024" ?

[QUOTE=JustTK;2761691]He isn't a crook. He was jailed by a corrupt judge on faulty charges (no doubt masterminded by the real crook Bolsanero). His sentence was overturned and he was realeased, So yiou have no grounds to call him a crook.

When he gave up his presidency after 2 terms, he had an approval rating of 90%. He lifted 20 million Brazilains out of poverty. He pledges to preserve the Amazon RF. Why do you "hope won't happen in America (sic) in 2024" ?[/QUOTE]Trump's supporters have and will make similar arguments. I don't think Lula or Trump should be jailed. However they're both crooks, and neither deserves to be president of their countries. The approval rating of his Worker's Party successor, President Dilma Rouseff, was 9% when she left office.

Lula and other Workers Party politicians were up to their knees in the Odebrecht scandal. He was convicted and sentenced before Bolsonaro came to power. The investigation commenced and Lula's home was raided when Lula's anointed successor, Rousseff, was still president. Yes, the Brazilian judge, Moro, who brought charges against Lula was biased. So was the other judge, Fachin, who released him.

Here's the entry from Wikipedia. I don't know why Themlio and Marcelo Odebrecht would have lied.

Lula and the Worker's Party.

Themlio Odebrecht said in a written report to the Attorney General of Brazil's Office (PGR) that he discussed donations to Worker's Party's (PT) campaigns with former PT president Lula. Financial support, according to the contractor, came even before Lula became president. Marcelo Odebrecht said that the "Amigo" account for former President Luiz Inacio Lula the Silva, was created in 2010 with a balance of are $40 million. In his statement, he said he gave the money to Antonio Palocci, former Finance Minister and Rousseff's chief of staff, who had been the PT contact with Odebrecht since the prior administration, when themlio Alves Odebrecht and Pedro Novis had handled payments. He said that in the middle of 2010, at the end of the Lula administration, he knew that Dilma Rousseff was going to take over and that the balance of the account would be "managed by her at her request". Thus, he set apart a sum that would be destined exclusively for the former president. He said that Lula never asked directly for donations and that everything was done through Palocci, but it became clear that the donations were ultimately for the former president.

On 4 March 2016, Lula was questioned for three hours as part of the fraud inquiry into the dealings of Petrobras, and his house raided by federal police agents. Lula, who left office in 2011, denied allegations of corruption. Police said they had evidence that Lula, 70, had received kickbacks. Lula's institute called actions against him "arbitrary, illegal and unjustifiable", since he had been cooperating with the investigations. Lula, convicted of accepting bribes worth 3. 7 million reals (1. 2 million dollars), was sentenced on 12 July to nine and a half years in prison. He appealed the sentence to the Federal Regional Court-4, which increased his sentence to twelve years and a month. On 5 April 2018, Moro ordered his imprisonment, and he surrendered two days later.

[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Car_Wash[/URL]

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2761683][b]You and Tooms apparently don't understand what gridlock means. It's when one party does not control the presidency, Senate and House at the same time. [/b]Politicians aren't as able to "waste taxpayers money", "repeal meaningful laws / bills", or "lower taxes for the corporate welfare and rich cronies" when there's gridlock. As I already said in a reply to another of your posts, I wonder why some people blame Republicans for the welfare for corporations and "rich cronies," when the Democrats are arguably more guilty than the Republicans in promoting crony capitalism and corporate welfare. Maybe that's why you see more Democrats at country clubs and more Republicans at construction sites and and on factory floors these days.

A good friend of mine who's a Democrat prefers divided government (that is, gridlock). He's looked closely at deficit spending and says it's the least when you have a Democrat in the White House and Republicans controlling the House. That's what we had during Clinton's second term, which was the only time we've balanced the budget in many decades. And that's what we'll have for the next two years, God willing..[/QUOTE]No, that isn't what Gridlock means:

[URL]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gridlock[/URL]

Actually, didn't you use to call what you described "split government"? Now you think it's "Gridlock"?

Good lord.

Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema are both members of the Democratic Party. They would not budge on a couple of important aspects of Democrat Joe Biden's brilliant American Rescue Plan.

Guess what they created on those aspects?

Yep. Gridlock.

No, it isn't Split Government either.

Now, if I gave you a participation trophy for that one I would be insulting every clumsy kid who ever got a participation trophy. Which is not my style. So I hope you understand why I can't give you one.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2761703] I don't think Lula or Trump should be jailed. However they're both crooks, and neither deserves to be president of their countries. The approval rating of his Worker's Party successor, President Dilma Rouseff, was 9% when she left office.

Lula and other Workers Party politicians were up to their knees in the Odebrecht scandal. Yes, the Brazilian judge, Moro, who brought charges against Lula was biased. So was the other judge, Fachin, who released him.
[/QUOTE]Its a pity you didn't submit some of your evidence during the trial. If he is a crook, he should be punished. Maybe you can send it to glenn greenwald. He is very up on all this.

How do you know fachin was biased? Did he also have his verdict examined and overturned?

And which part of lula's achievements do you not want to see in USA? Alleviating poverty? Or tremendous approval, or protecting nature above big business?

[QUOTE=Spidy;2761328]The chorus of right-wing FOXY News pundits and others with their "Red Wave / Tsunami" rhetoric and brainwashing, was another attempt to begile Americans into thinking "the polls" are these "beacons precise accuracy".

Good to see Americans standing up for democracy at the ballot-box, and exercise their right to [B]"vote-out-the-bums"[/B], be it Dems or Repubs.[/QUOTE]Individual polls can sometimes be wildly off from the election results, even days before election day. But this time around, as usual, the Consensus of polls on that Generic Ballot Control of Congress question were quite accurate to within a normal +/-Margin of Error 3-4 percentage points.

Where they made the big Error on the Margin was in under-sampling likely or new Dem voters / over-sampling likely Repub voters with their insistence on dragging in "save the day for the Repubs" demonstrably Repub-leaning polls like Rasmussen, Trafalgar and Emerson too often.

As I pointed out here several times along the way.

Sure, the new Dem voters they under-sampled cared about preventing the Repub Party from continuing to outlaw Sex For Pleasure around the country.

And, sure, they didn't want to support Anti-America, Anti-democracy, America-hating Fascist candidates and put them in seats of power.

But they also care deeply about Inflation, the Economy, Crime, Immigration, etc. All of those repeated Repub and pro Repub Bothsider campaign talking points.

It's just that they were not so ill-informed and blithering stupid to blame Biden and the Dems for Trump's Pandemic, mass murder, millions upon millions of jobs destroyed and his subsequent Global Supply-Chain Hyper-Inflation.

And they could hardly blame Biden and the Dems for those high Red State Crime Rates.

Or for Trump's decimation of our Immigration systems on his way out.

The "tell" on all of that was the fact that, despite the pollsters' Error in under-sampling likely new Dem voters and everyone hating everyone and everything in the wake of Trump's horrific 4-year stewardship, the polls showed that the American people hated Biden least of all the pertinent leaders and agencies.

Which I also pointed out here several times along the way.

[QUOTE=JustTK;2761715]Its a pity you didn't submit some of your evidence during the trial. If he is a crook, he should be punished. Maybe you can send it to glenn greenwald. He is very up on all this. How do you know fachin was biased? Did he also have his verdict examined and overturned?[/QUOTE]FYI, I wasn't involved in the Odebrecht scandal, so I have no evidence to present. I've read this and through the years some other articles that indicate Lula's a crook.

[URL]https://www.cato.org/blog/why-did-global-media-give-brazils-lula-free-pass-corruption[/URL]

When a country starts throwing ex presidents in jail, it looks like a banana republic. The bar should be high to throw a president in jail, and from what I've read, neither Trump nor Lula did anything that would merit incarceration. Probation and fines, yes. But not jail. I don't know about Brazil, but the USA incarcerates far too many people.

How do you know Fachin wasn't biased? From the link above,

"There is also the matter of Justice Fachin, who hardly can claim political impartiality himself. When Rousseff appointed him to the Supreme Court in 2015, O Globo, a Brazilian daily, reported that, in 2010, Fachin, then a law school professor at the Federal University of Paran, had signed and openly supported a lawyers manifesto urging voters to back Rousseff. It was necessary, the manifesto claimed, to guarantee the continuity of Da Silvas political program."

I don't know who Glenn Greenwald is and I'm too lazy to look him up. I suspect he doesn't have much power within the Brazilian judicial system.

[QUOTE=JustTK;2761715]And which part of lula's achievements do you not want to see in USA? Alleviating poverty? Or tremendous approval, or protecting nature above big business?[/QUOTE]I've read good things about what Lula and his party did to improve the social safety net. I don't know jack about his policies and haven't said anything about them. He apparently didn't have tremendous approval or he would have won by more than 2 percentage points, running against a president who presided over a dismal economy because of the COVID pandemic. And he certainly must have done a lot to help big business, or at least Odebrecht. But that's all irrelevant. If a person's a crook, he or she is not fit for office.

[QUOTE=Tiny 12;2761683]Bolsonaro did not follow the Donald Trump or Stacey Abrams post-election playbooks. While he may not have come out and directly said "I lost", he's cooperating with an orderly transition, and has asked his supporters to do the same. [/QUOTE] Not sure what you're talking about here, Stacey Abrams? But if you follow Brazilian politics (as I often do), then you'll know they call ex-Pres. Bozo, the "Trump of the Tropics". Ex-Pres. Bozo, like Trump was declaring there will be election fraud for the last 2+ years and submitted no substantiated evidence to his claims. His evangelical right-wing strongman politics, is "Trumpian" on steroids.

[QUOTE=Tiny 12;2761683]What we saw happen in Brazil is what you and I hope won't happen in America in 2024. A crook, Lula, who actually spent time in jail, was elected Brazilian president by a small margin. If a court puts Trump in jail, which I hope won't happen, I wonder what would happen come 2024. I bet he'd run for president from his jail cell, and I bet the "martyr factor" would help him.[/QUOTE] Unlike the substantial mountainous, demonstrative, direct and forensic evidence against Trump, the evidence against the newly elected-Pres. Lula, was all hearsay and circumstantial, without any significant burden of proof in a criminal investigation.

As I've said before, while I don't think Donnie [b]"the Devil"[/b] J. Dummkopf, will go to jail, but I hope he gets a good drubbing in the courts.

Spidy and JustTK, I may owe you an apology, about Lula. I just googled "Glenn Greenwald Lula. " I'm too lazy to wade through the results, but maybe you're right. I'm not sure whether he's a crook or not. Spidy, you certainly have looked at this much closer than I have.

[QUOTE=Spidy;2761754]Bozo, like Trump was declaring there will be election fraud for the last 2+ years and submitted not substantiated evidence to his claims. His evangelical right-wing strongman politics, is "Trumpian" on steroids.[/QUOTE]

From what I've read, Bolsonaro, post-election, is not trying to overturn Brazilian democracy. He accepted the will of the majority of the voters. That's the difference.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2761683]You and Tooms apparently don't understand what gridlock means. It's when one party does not control the presidency, Senate and House at the same time. Politicians aren't as able to "waste taxpayers money", "repeal meaningful laws / bills", or "lower taxes for the corporate welfare and rich cronies" when there's gridlock. ... [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Spidy;2761318]...Let's just waste taxpayers money [b]while in office and do nothing meaningful[/b], except blame the Dems, repeal meaningful law/bills put in place by Dems, taking America backwards to the 1800's , and lower taxes for the corporate welfare and the rich cronies. [/QUOTE]Thanks for the [B]Repub-splaining[/b] on gridlock...I think? At the very least, I'm sure Elvis, will have benefited from it.

Tiny 12, perhaps I should have been clearer. I was relating / equating, the above examples (in quotes) of what Repubs do when they have power in all 3-houses, as being the same as gridlock. Meaning that, "nothing meaningful is accomplished" when Repubs are in power and that's why you and Elvis love the fact we have may now have gridlock.

Again, this gridlock example is very apropos of the [B]Excellent EihTooms Challenge,[/B] he put forth (check back a few days) and has yet to be disputed.

[QUOTE=Spidy;2761760]Again, this gridlock example is very apropos of the [B]Excellent EihTooms Challenge,[/B] he put forth (check back a few days) and has yet to be disputed.[/QUOTE]A few days ago? How about a month ago. And again, as an anarcho capitalist, neoliberal, Libertarian and small government Republican, I believe the challenge is stupid. I applaud the parties more for the legislation they didn't pass. Gridlock kicks ass!

[QUOTE=Tiny 12;2761761]A few days ago? How about a month ago. And again, as an anarcho capitalist, neoliberal, Libertarian and small government Republican, [b]I believe the challenge is stupid [/b] ...[/QUOTE]Is it really, though? I beg to differ, as I translate what I think you're really trying to say, but too afraid to come out and just say as much.

Sounds to me like you're saying, this is my Repub wise guy way of saying, [i]"I give up! Stumped and stupefied by the Dems, yet again.....Ahhhh!" (...kkkk!),[/i] when saying you think its stupid, without the evidence and effort to disprove his compelling and persuasive statements and arguments.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2761753]

I don't know who Glenn Greenwald is and I'm too lazy to look him up. I suspect he doesn't have much power within the Brazilian judicial system.
[/QUOTE]Greenwald is one of the most important acrive independent journlists in the world. He handled the release of the whisltblowerr documents for Edward Snowden in the face of USA Govt hostlility. He also handled the leak of documents that exposed the corruption of Operation Car Wash. The corrupt anti-corruption operation that ended with the imprisonment of Lula. He was criminally charged in both USA and Brazil for both actions, but all charges were eventually dropped. Very courageous guy. People don't tend to display so much courage unless they are on the right side of the law and morality. He is on Lula's side.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2761761][b]A few days ago? How about a month ago. [/b]And again, as an anarcho capitalist, neoliberal, Libertarian and small government Republican, I believe the challenge is stupid. I applaud the parties more for the legislation they didn't pass. Gridlock kicks ass![/QUOTE]Huh! What now?

Also see EihTooms' post below, or the full post [B]posted 1-day ago, here:[/B] [URL]http://www.internationalsexguide.nl/forum/showthread.php?2467-American-Politics&p=2761569&viewfull=1#post2761569 [/URL].

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2761569]... Do tell us which of them spent their first two years trying to get things done in the face of ALL of those factors, not just some of them, all of them, aside from Joe Biden.

I'm sure [b]you and Tiny can put your minds together and come up with the names [/b] of which ones and include it in the same post with that citation of a meaningful and now revered legislation proposed, fought for and passed when Repubs held the White House, the Majority in the Senate and the Majority in the House.

You make a mockery of the concept of Gridlock by suggesting any POTUS in modern times came into office and was faced with less potential of it in his first two years than Biden.[/QUOTE]EihTooms, Once again, [b]Great Challenge.[/b]

Doubtful, very doubtful, but two-minds are better than one. That said, miracles and unicorns have been seen from time to time.