Patterico's Pontifications

11/1/2024

Weekend Open Thread

Filed under: General — Dana @ 10:01 am

[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

Trump on Liz Cheney: "Let's put her with a rifle standing there with 9 barrels shooting at her. Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face." pic.twitter.com/Mtx1fbLtwE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 1, 2024

Everyone okay with a former (and possibly our next) president and Mr. Protector of Women, targeting an American in this way? Are you okay with him rallying MAGAland like this? Or is it okay because she is on his “enemy from within” list?

A mentally unwell individual seeking retribution against Americans has no business being in the Oval Office.

Liz Cheney responds to Trump’s comments:

This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant. #Womenwillnotbesilenced #VoteKamala

Here is Patterico’s observation of the Trump tweet:

Yeah! I mean he has signaled his agreement with Liz Cheney facing a military tribunal, but in this case his gleeful portrayal of a rifle pointed at Liz Cheney’s head has an alternate explanation! (Mr. Bone Spurs wants a rifle pointed at her head in war.) Outrageous! https://t.co/nMA4x28E5z

— Patterico (@Patterico) November 1, 2024

Moreover:

People are responding to this seeming to think I don’t understand he painted this gleeful image as one of Cheney being in a war. I said that right in the tweet! But if you can’t see the malicious pleasure he takes in this violent imagery, you might be a hyperpartisan.

Second news item

Preparing for a loss: It’s “rigged,” yet again:

Trump’s allies – and the former president himself – are increasingly pushing debunked claims of voter fraud, spreading their rhetoric through podcasts with massive audiences, megachurch sermons and political rallies in key states. Some Trump backers, including pastors associated with Christian nationalist ideas, have described the election as a fight between good and evil, describing Harris as the antichrist or suggesting that God has anointed Trump as the victor.

If he loses the election, it won’t be pretty.

Third news item

Warnings if Harris wins the election:

“Are you feeling good about where things stand?” Dan Abrams, the founder of Mediaite, inquired. . .

Steve Cohen (D-TN) warned that if Vice President Kamala Harris defeats former President Donald Trump next week, “there may be blood.”

“But I think Trump won’t stop at anything, and we’ll be in courts, and we’ll be in litigation, and he’ll be telling people again to go to the Capitol if you want to have a country and fight like hell. I mean, we’re gonna have– there may be blood, and I’m concerned. And I said something to the caucus yesterday on a group call: they’re going to put up high, sturdy fences between, I think, the Electoral College and the swearing-in, the inauguration.

But I think they ought to get them up back up there Monday week. There could be behavior that’s untoward and violent anytime if Trump doesn’t win. He claims he wins, they say he doesn’t win, there could be chaos.

Fourth news item

The man who wants to become the next President doing what he always does:

Former President Trump filed a lawsuit against CBS News Thursday, alleging the network engaged in election interference by doctoring a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Harris, per a court filing.

Driving the news: Trump is seeking $10 billion in damages for CBS’s alleged “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference,” which the lawsuit claims were intended to confuse the public and “attempt to tip the scales” toward Democrats in the 2024 presidential election.

Distract, distract, distract.

Fifth news item

President Zelensky’s understandable frustration with the lack of response to North Korean troops entering the battle:

“And if there is nothing — and I think that the reaction to this is nothing, it has been zero — then the number of North Korean troops on our border will be increased,” he warned.

South Korea has long claimed that North Korea, a nuclear-armed state, has been providing weapons to Russia, and it alleges that North Korean soldiers began mobilizing after Kim Jong Un signed a defense agreement with Putin in June.

Sixth news item

GOP report on campus anti-semitism rules officials:

The report also criticized senior leadership at Harvard University for failing to condemn Hamas following the group’s attack on Israel on October 7 –– saying that the school’s public statement –– published on October 9 –– was edited down to cut the word “violent” when describing Hamas’ incursion.

The report noted that Columbia’s leadership offered greater concessions to encampment organizers than the school publicly divulged –– “touting aggressive actions on antisemitism to the media,” but not adequately disciplining students that were involved in the “criminal takeover” of Hamilton Hall on April 30 this year.

In a statement from Columbia, a spokesperson from the school said that the university “strongly condemns antisemitism and all forms of discrimination,” adding that “calls for violence or harm have no place at our university.” The spokesperson also said that under Interim President Katrina Armstrong, the school has established a “centralized Office of Institutional Equity” to handle all cases of discrimination and harassment.

Lawmakers contributing to the investigation also reported that university leaders were hostile toward congressional oversight on antisemitic behavior at colleges, treating the issue like a “public relations” problem rather than a “serious” one.

Seventh news item

Threatening retaliation:

Iran will deliver a “definitive and painful” response to Israel’s recent attack on its territory, likely before the US presidential election on November 5, CNN reported Wednesday, citing an anonymous senior source.

The source, apparently an Iranian with knowledge of deliberations in Tehran, told the network: “The response of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Zionist regime’s aggression will be definitive and painful.”

Eighth news item

From a leading MAGA pundit:

Jesse Watters said on Fox’s The Five show that his wife, Emma DiGiovine, “pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as an affair,” when the panel discussed the vice president’s new ad encouraging wives to make their own choice in the voting booth.
. . .

Watters went on to say the scenario of his wife voting for Harris “violates the sanctity of our marriage—what else is she keeping from me, why is she lying about it?”

As the other panelists began to talk over each other, Watters added: “Why would she say she was voting Trump and then vote Harris? And then I caught her and she said, ‘I’ve been lying to you for the last four years.’ It’s over Emma. That would be D Day.”

What an absolute insult to his wife and their marriage. From the party of “family values,” it’s amazing he would openly admit his disrespect in this way.

Ninth news item

The continuing dehumanization of Afghan women:

“Even when an adult female prays and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear,” Khalid Hanafi said in an audio clip released on Monday.

He also reiterated an earlier decree forbidding women from singing, saying: “How could they be allowed to sing if they aren’t even permitted to hear [each other’s] voices while praying?”

“They [the Taliban] are waging an all-out war against us, and we have no one in the world to hear our voices,” a former civil servant told the paper from Kabul. Now, “we cannot even hear each other’s voices”.

. . .

Women’s voices are “deemed to be potential instruments of vice”, said The Guardian. In this light, it’s “concerning” that international organisations have been “trying to normalise relations with the Taliban”, said former Afghan parliamentarian Shukria Barakzai. They are “whitewashing” the Taliban, disregarding its “widespread human rights violations”.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to not have the freedom to talk to anyone I want, wear what I want, and vote for the candidate of my choice without having to answer to anyone. And I really can’t imagine having a man in my life who is afraid of women and their agency.

Have a good weekend.

—Dana

Comments (281)

281 Responses to “Weekend Open Thread”

First “news” item:

MEDIA: Trump says he wants to place Liz Cheney in front of a firing squad.

REALITY: Trump is taking about how DC politicians send our kids off to war from comfortable offices while never putting themselves in those war zones.

When will an Aaron Rupar soundbite deception ever get fact checked before it goes to market?

Paul, in the last thread said he waited until the best information about the 51 intelligence officers came out before he ultimately staked his claim on the Biden laptop. I think that is fair and I have no reason to dispute him. Now using the “one standard” approach, how is Rupar’s deception going to get admonished?
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:10 am
Trump literally said to hand Cheney a rifle. That’s not what you do when you try to execute someone.
SaveFarris (8940bf) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:11 am
AP sources: White House altered record of Biden’s ‘garbage’ remarks despite stenographer concerns

The change was made after the press office “conferred with the president,” according to an internal email from the head of the stenographers’ office that was obtained by The AP. The authenticity of the email was confirmed by two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

The supervisor, in the email, called the press office’s handling of the matter “a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.”

“If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” the supervisor wrote, adding, “Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff.”

The edit of the transcript came as the White House scrambled to respond to a wave of queries from reporters about Biden’s comments. The president’s remarks clashed with Vice President Kamala Harris’ near-simultaneous speech outside the White House in which she called for treating Americans of differing ideologies with respect…

… According to the email, the press office had asked the stenographers to quickly produce a transcript of the call amid the firestorm. Biden himself took to social media to say that he he was not calling all Trump supporters garbage and that he was referring specifically to the “hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally.”

The stenographers office is charged with preparing accurate transcripts of public and private remarks of the president for preservation by the National Archives and distribution to the public.

The two-person stenography team on duty that evening — a “typer” and “proofer” — said any edit to the transcript would have to be approved by their supervisor, the head of stenographers’ office.

The supervisor was not immediately available to review the audio, but the press office went ahead and published the altered transcript on the White House website and distributed it to press and on social media in an effort to tamp down the story.

White House senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates that evening also posted on X the edited version of the quote and wrote that Biden was referring ”to the hateful rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally as ‘garbage.’”

The supervisor, a career employee of the White House, raised the concerns about the press office action — but did not weigh in on the accuracy of the edit — in an email to White House communications director Ben LaBolt, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and other press and communications officials.

“Regardless of urgency, it is essential to our transcripts’ authenticity and legitimacy that we adhere to consistent protocol for requesting edits, approval, and release,” the supervisor wrote.

This probably has everyone here upset and concerned.
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:18 am
Hello.
Dana (21559e) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:21 am
I don’t really care that Biden said what he said. He’s not running for the presidency. It was a dishonest move by the press office, certainly, but the person this hurts is Kamala Harris. I’m sure she’s furious about the (intentional??) provocation.
Dana (21559e) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:24 am
Hello to you. 🙂
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:24 am
It was a dishonest move by the press office

Do you worry that if they can be so dishonest about something unimportant, that there dishonesty may have no bounds?
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:26 am
…their…
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:26 am
This is why, even if you have serious misgivings about Trump but still consider yourself a conservative, you have a moral imperative to vote for him on Tuesday.

If Trump were to be elected again, the media would be frothing at the mouth: investigating every apostrophe, every dotted i and crossed t, every person he’s ever looked at to try and find any sort of misdemeanor to hang him with. They will be relentless about everything and if there ever were any corruption, it’d be blasted 24/7 in 80 print type.

And if they can’t find anything, they’ll pull a “He wants to kill Liz Cheney” and just make it up.

If Harris were to be elected, the media would return to compliance mode, accepting every White House press release as God-given edicts never to be questioned. Cabinet Secretaries and Admin officials would be free to engage in the most blatant of corruptions and outside of a few twitter feeds, you’ll never hear a word about it. In fact, anyone who dares question our betters will be thrown in jail for contempt and insurrection.

If you care about accountability in government, there’s only one choice.
SaveFarris (8940bf) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:31 am
I don’t really care that Biden said what he said. He’s not running for the presidency.

Is he CURRENTLY the President?

Careful, don’t be an election denier!
SaveFarris (8940bf) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:32 am
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/31/us/harvard-oct-7-emails-israel-hamas-attack.html

Two days after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel last year, senior administrators at Harvard University wrestled with how to respond. Drafting a public statement, they edited out the word “violent” to describe the attack, when a dean complained that it “sounded like assigning blame.”

They debated whether to explicitly disown a declaration by some Harvard student groups that Israel was responsible for the violence, but ultimately decided not to.

They didn’t want to take sides. They avoided condemning absurd, even anti-Semitic statements, that refused to place the blame for murder correctly, because there would be pushback from what can be called anti-Semites, and there were too many of them.

That’s precisely when calling out is needed. Condemning Hitler is hollow nowadays. It’s hatred and lies that have support that needs to be condemned. But that’s not easy.

Meanwhile, the pro-terrorist people had complaints of their own, which Harvard acknowledged the next year:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/us/harvard-antisemitism-muslim-bias.html

There was “a pervasive climate of intolerance” against pro-Palestinian students.

Quote from news article

…the investigation into anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias on campus found that the freedom of expression of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students had been broadly suppressed, leaving them in “a state of uncertainty, abandonment, threat and isolation” and in “a pervasive climate of intolerance.” The report said that many students felt the words “Palestine” and “Palestinian” had become taboo on campus.

You might wish.
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:51 am
SaveFarris (8940bf) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:31 am

even if you have serious misgivings about Trump but still consider yourself a conservative, you have a moral imperative to vote for him on Tuesday.

because if he loses the election, it won’t be pretty? That can be thwarted by him genuinely winning.
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 10:56 am
Eighth news item:

………… A Politico analysis of data from four battleground states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia — found that, so far, women have accounted for roughly 55 percent of votes cast, while men have hovered at around 45 percent. That ten-point difference could bode well for Vice-President Kamala Harris; even among Republicans, the analysis found more women have cast an early ballot than men.

This didn’t appear to sit well with Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who desperately wrote on X that the “early vote has been disproportionately female. If men stay at home, Kamala is president.” He urged men to “GO VOTE NOW” if they want to stop Harris from reaching the Oval Office. He also took particular offense to several pro-Harris ads reminding women that their vote is a private affair and that no one — not even their Trump-supporter husbands — need to know about it. ………. But to Kirk, the ads are “disastrous,” “nauseating,” and “the embodiment of the downfall of the American family.”

Right-wing commentator Mike Cernovich has also been furiously posting about the importance of men turning out to vote. “Women are voting early, outperforming men. The current MAGA cope is, ‘Men vote on election days.’ Not in 2022, they didn’t,” he wrote on X. “Especially not YOUNG MEN who listen to podcasts like Joe Rogan. They don’t vote. GET THEM TO THIS TIME.”
……………..
White nationalist Nick Fuentes, a big Donald Trump fan who has privately dined with the former president at Mar-a-Lago, also proudly proclaimed, “This election proves that women should not have the right to vote.”

…………… The most recent New York Times/Siena poll found that Harris has a 16-point lead over Trump with female voters, while male voters support Trump over Harris by 14 points.

More on Jesse Watters:

Waters (sic) knows a thing or two about affairs: He was married when he began a relationship with his now-wife, a producer almost 15 years his junior who he says he began dating after letting “the air out of” her car’s tires so she’d accept a ride from him.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:02 am
#9

This is why, even if you have serious misgivings about Trump but still consider yourself a conservative, you have a moral imperative to vote for him on Tuesday.

If Trump were to be elected again, the media would be frothing at the mouth: investigating every apostrophe, every dotted i and crossed t, every person he’s ever looked at to try and find any sort of misdemeanor to hang him with. They will be relentless about everything and if there ever were any corruption, it’d be blasted 24/7 in 80 print type.

And if they can’t find anything, they’ll pull a “He wants to kill Liz Cheney” and just make it up.

If Harris were to be elected, the media would return to compliance mode, accepting every White House press release as God-given edicts never to be questioned. Cabinet Secretaries and Admin officials would be free to engage in the most blatant of corruptions and outside of a few twitter feeds, you’ll never hear a word about it. In fact, anyone who dares question our betters will be thrown in jail for contempt and insurrection.

If you care about accountability in government, there’s only one choice.

This is silly. Ever hear of Fox News? The Wall Street Journal? You think they disappear? Who took out Biden? Partly the liberal media, who knew Biden wasn’t right anymore, and kept on and on about it. Your media accountability thesis is bunk.

Also, part of accountability in government is legislators willing and empowered to demand that accountability. The GOP is less and less willing to do that. If Trump wins, I believe both Senate and House is Republican. The Legislative and the Judiciary will cave to Trump. With harris, there will be a hostile judiciary and (most likely) a Republican Senate. That’s your accountability.
Appalled (485049) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:06 am
I realize that Biden is the current president, but he’s a lame duck with very little time left. I’m more concerned about the people with four full years ahead of them.
Dana (863796) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:06 am
No one can ever claim Trump is a conservative, either politically or morally.
Rip Murdock (032ced) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:12 am
This election sucks.

A. A crazy fukwit
B. The same lies as last time.

Both parties deserve to die.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:12 am
Iran will deliver a “definitive and painful” response to Israel’s recent attack on its territory, likely before the US presidential election on November 5, CNN reported Wednesday, citing an anonymous senior source.

I heard that before.

Ate they trying to elect Trump? I mean, that’s the kind of mistake they made in 1980.

According to U.S. intelligence officials, Putin favors Trump, but Iran favors Harris. (And China is concentrating on down ballot races, hoping that pro-Taiwan elected officials)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/us/politics/russia-china-iran-false-election-claims.html

Russia and Iran are focused on the presidential vote, though on opposite sides, with the Russians favoring Mr. Trump and the Iranians favoring Vice President Kamala Harris.

The officials said that a wider variety of countries were also trying to sway congressional races, including Russia, Cuba and China. The officials said China had already interfered in “tens” of races but did not favor either party. Instead, China’s efforts focused on undermining candidates who have been particularly vocal in their support of Taiwan….Russia has also not focused on party affiliation in congressional races, working instead to support candidates skeptical of aid to Ukraine — many, though not all, of them Republicans. Iran, the officials said, is not focused on congressional races but has previously created websites threatening election officials.

More recently:

lose)”https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/us/politics/russia-election-misinformation.html

Over the past few months, intelligence officials have said that Iran favors Ms. Harris. Iranian-backed hackers took information from the Trump campaign and tried to spread it. U.S. intelligence agencies tracked a potential Iranian assassination plot to assassinate Mr. Trump.

But in recent weeks, Mr. Watts said, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or I.R.G.C., has been relatively quiet at least when it comes to spreading disinformation.

“This is the week we would expect the I.R.G.C. doing a hack and leak, a cyberoperation or a provocation,” Mr. Watts said. “And we have not seen it yet.”

Has the Axis of Evil arrived at a unified position on the election?

They are. or were. also on different sides in the Sudan, with Iran backing the military government and the Russian Wagner Group supporting a major rebellion – the “Rapid Support Forces”

https://mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1057.htm

נִיב שְׂפָתָיִם; שָׁלוֹם שָׁלוֹם לָרָחוֹק וְלַקָּרוֹב, אָמַר יְהוָה–וּרְפָאתִיו. 19 Peace, peace, to him that is far off and to him that is near, saith the LORD that createth the fruit of the lips; and I will heal him.

כ וְהָרְשָׁעִים, כַּיָּם נִגְרָשׁ: כִּי הַשְׁקֵט לֹא יוּכָל, וַיִּגְרְשׁוּ מֵימָיו רֶפֶשׁ וָטִיט. 20 But the wicked are like the troubled sea; for it cannot rest, and its waters cast up mire and dirt.

כא אֵין שָׁלוֹם, אָמַר אֱלֹהַי לָרְשָׁעִים. {פ} 21 There is no peace, saith my God concerning the wicked. {P}

They fight against each other.
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:19 am
No one can ever claim Trump is a conservative, either politically or morally.

Well, if “conservative” means opposing change, wanting to continue down the same path as before, then Harris is the conservative, if only due to a slower drift towards socialism.

If “conservative” means wanting to undo recent change, going back to the good old days, then neither party is conservative.

If “conservative” means “small government” we haven’t had that since the 90’s, at the latest.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:20 am
As for Trump, his “policies” are pretty much whatever sounds good in the moment. Only immigration issues and some tariffs will be remembered by February.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:23 am
This is silly. Ever hear of Fox News? The Wall Street Journal? You think they disappear?

Let’s ask the 2020 New York Post whether a right-leaning news outlet can be disappeared…

Who took out Biden? Partly the liberal media, who knew Biden wasn’t right anymore, and kept on and on about it.

Technically, it was Nancy Pelosi. But to your point…

That was only AFTER the debate. As recently as 2 weeks prior, the media lectured in masse that any footage of Biden that didn’t show him at the top of his game as a “cheap fake”. The only reason the media started reporting about Biden’s incapacity was that they were fully on Team Blue and knew that leaving Biden in the Captain’s chair would lead to certain defeat. With anyone else at the helm, they at least had a brat, joyful shot.

If Trump wins, I believe both Senate and House is Republican. The Legislative and the Judiciary will cave to Trump.

Just like they did last time, right?

Oh wait, I remember the Hawaiian judges that shot down every Trump EO.
Oh wait, I remember the Republican House/Senate that refused to end Obamacare, refused to fund the wall, refused to permanent-tize the tax cuts, refused to call out the Mueller prosecution for the clown show that it was.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/politics/republican-rebellion/index.html

The reason Harris and Never Trump can’t gain any sort of traction on this fearmongering is that every person eligible to vote is at least 18 years old and thus has a pretty clear memory of the first Trump administration. (Everyone, of course, except for Joe Biden.)
SaveFarris (8940bf) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:24 am
> Only immigration issues and some tariffs will be remembered by February.

Those, and using the power of the state to go after anyone who has ever crossed him.
aphrael (be1cf4) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:38 am
No admonishing of Rupar yet?

I’ll check back later. I am certain it will happen here.
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:38 am
See ⬇️ for fake “OMG Voter Fraud”.

In 2020 the only proven voter fraud was done by the Bund.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:40 am
The alteration in question consists of adding an apostrophe to Biden’s remarks, to make “supporters” into “supporter’s”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/01/us/politics/biden-garbage-transcript.html

According to the initial transcript prepared by the stenographers, Mr. Biden said “the only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his, his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

Republicans seized on the remark, saying Mr. Biden was insulting all Trump supporters. White House officials tried to clarify that Mr. Biden was talking about Mr. Hinchcliffe’s comments alone.

But when Biden said supporters – even if he meant plural, he didn’t mean all of Trump’s supporters. Even if he meant the word to be plural – that there was more than one of them like that, and he stopped himself and substituted the word “his,” which can either mean Tony Hinchcliffe or (less likely) Donald Trump himself, but is in the singular and has to mean one person’s “demonization.” (which is the wrong word to use because there was no demonization of Puerto Ricans there, but just implied revulsion maybe.

It was an incomplete and ultimately ungrammatical sentence and was anyway, clearly meant as a retort.
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:41 am
If Trump were to be elected again, the media would be frothing at the mouth: investigating every apostrophe, every dotted i and crossed t, every person he’s ever looked at to try and find any sort of misdemeanor to hang him with.

[. . .]

If Harris were to be elected, the media would return to compliance mode, accepting every White House press release as God-given edicts never to be questioned. Cabinet Secretaries and Admin officials would be free to engage in the most blatant of corruptions and outside of a few twitter feeds, you’ll never hear a word about it. [. . .]

This is similar to something I was saying eight years ago when the choice was between Hillary! and Trump: that the one thing which made me more sanguine about a potential Trump Administration is that they would come under the media microscope in the way that a Hillary Rodham Clinton Administration simply would not. I think it is a very legitimate point here in 2024 as much as it was in 2016, but it is still not enough for me to overlook the sheer havoc which Trump might unleash upon us in a second term.

By the same token, I do not accept the P.J. O’Rourke argument that he used when endorsing Hillary Clinton, that while she is dead wrong she is at least dead wrong in conventional ways. Anybody who has seen the manner in which Joe Biden has flouted convention and ruled autocratically even to the point of openly defying the Supreme Court has to have grave pause at the prospect of letting Kamala Harris — a woman who was insisting five years ago that she could ban certain models of firearms by Executive Order, who supports continuing to use blatantly unconstitutional methods for lavishing financial benefits on her supports, who threatens coequal branches of government if they won’t toe the progressive line — anywhere near the locus of power.

We have a really, really, really bad choice ahead of us, and I continue to believe the only honorable thing to do is send a strong message to both major parties by refusing to vote for either of their insipid Presidential candidates.
JVW (b301cc) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:54 am
JVW (b301cc) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:54 am

We have a really, really, really bad choice ahead of us, and I continue to believe the only honorable thing to do is send a strong message to both major parties by refusing to vote for either of their insipid Presidential candidates.

Discussion in the press seems to treat this as, at most, a choice between the better or lesser of two evils, but one can be worse on some points and the other on other points.
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:01 pm
he stopped himself and substituted the word “his,” which can either mean Tony Hinchcliffe or (less likely) Donald Trump himself,

From the official tampered transcript:

Donald Trump has no character. He doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community. He’s failed businessman. He’s — he only cares about the billionaire friends he has and accumulating wealth for those at the top.

You know, he says immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country. Give me a break. He wants to do away with the birthright citizenship. Who the hell else said that in the last 100 years?

And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Well, let me tell you something. I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr- — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.

Now, Trump has di- — tried to divide the country based on race, ethnicity, anything that does harm, to take their eye off the ball about what the terrible things he’s done and will do.

Do you think you can type your claim again with a straight face, Sammy?
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:05 pm
We have a really, really, really bad choice ahead of us, and I continue to believe the only honorable thing to do is send a strong message to both major parties by refusing to vote for either of their insipid Presidential candidates.

I’ve been doing that for 3 elections now.

Probably the worst thing about this election (other than again containing Donald Trump) is that Harris is trying to run on the SAME lie Biden told in 2020:

I will govern from the center and unite the country. Country before party!
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:14 pm
Three reasons Trump will have more of a free rein to do whatever he wants in a second term:

•A Republican Senate is a near mortal lock, and the majority could be more than just a couple of seats, which would preclude the possibility of a successful impeachment trial;

•Trump would be ineligible for reelection, so he wouldn’t need to take public opinion (and media coverage) into account; and

•His presidential immunity from prosecution, both from indictment while he is President and afterwards, for any actions he may take removes the threat of prison time. Even if he takes illegal actions while President he can pardon himself.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:16 pm
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:14 pm

As have I.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:18 pm
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/1/2024 @ 6:15 am

it was always legitimate to question Giuliani as a source, and obviously Bannon, too.

What Bannon said was wrong. Giuliani brought in Bannon to explain things and he misinterpreted what was in the Hunter Biden files.

Hunter Biden did not turn over half his salary to Joe Biden – he was not a bagman – and he hadn’t supported the Biden family for 30 years.

That was based on a text message he sent to his daughter Naomi on January 3, 2019 evidently replying to a request for money in which he said he would not be like “Pops”, demanding half his salary and that he supported his family for 30 years. I think they might have been in the same message,

Bannon also found the 10% in reserve for the “Big Guy” which was only a proposal and Hunter was probably lying to his Chinese associates.

This is Giuliani’s misinterpretation of the evidence (courtesy of Steve Bannon, I think)

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/10/rudy-giuliani-releases-text-message-hunter-biden-daughter-naomi-unlike-pop-joe-biden-wont-make-give-half-salary-video
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:26 pm
BuDuh #28:

Who cares?

Biden:

Isn’t the President after January 20;

Isn’t noted for clear speaking;

Isn’t, in the worst case, demonizing a person’s homeland or ethnicity.
Appalled (485049) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:29 pm
Bannon also found the 10% in reserve for the “Big Guy” which was only a proposal and Hunter was probably lying to his Chinese associates.

Was the “10% for the big guy” part of a communication to the Chinese associates?
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:29 pm
No admonishing of Rupar yet?

I’ll check back later. I am certain it will happen here.

BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:38 am

I wouldn’t bother. Like the fictitious militia attacks on FEMA, it’s a front page lie that might get corrected on page C17 a week later but by then who cares.
lloyd (6e01e4) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:29 pm
Who cares?

You do.
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:30 pm
I am confident in the new consistency that was discussed on the previous open thread. One standard, no belly aching over sources, and strictly content based conversations with zero name calling.

Everyone here is sure to rise to the occasion. Maybe AJ will return triumphantly to see the Patterico of old has resurrected itself.
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:34 pm
Those, and using the power of the state to go after anyone who has ever crossed him.
aphrael (be1cf4) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:38 am

Speaking of which, Bannon got released this week after spending four months in prison for something that has had zero repercussions for most anyone else who committed the same offense. Peter Navarro got released a few months ago for the same thing.

Which just shows once again that every Nevertrump accusation is a confession.
lloyd (6e01e4) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:36 pm
Three reasons Trump will have more of a free rein to do whatever he wants in a second term:

*A Republican Senate is a near mortal lock, and the majority could be more than just a couple of seats, which would preclude the possibility of a successful impeachment trial;

Uh, Rip, Donald Trump took office in January 2017 with a GOP Senate Majority of 52 Senators, about what he would be forecasted to have in January 2025.

•His presidential immunity from prosecution, both from indictment while he is President and afterwards, for any actions he may take removes the threat of prison time. [. . .]

Don’t repeat the nonsense that Democrats and their media allies are trying to spread: the Supreme Court decision specifically said a President’s immunity is only for official acts taken while undertaking official duties of the office. And yeah, they did give the President fairly broad latitude for what constitutes an official act taken in the President’s capacity as Chief Executive, but Democrats’ shrill claims that he can order his opponents imprisoned or even assassinated is outright ridiculous. There is plenty of wrongdoing that a Donald Trump — or a Kamala Harris for that matter — can undertake from the safety of the Oval Office, but let’s not whip up the hysteria that the Court now allows the President to act like a dictator.

And it’s fair to worry that the GOP Senate (or House for that matter) won’t act as a counterbalance on some of Trump’s dopier ideas, but please tell me when the Democrat Senate or House dialed back the authoritarian impulses of Barack Obama or Joe Biden. And it’s a virtual cinch they wouldn’t bother to try to restrain Kamala Harris either; if anything, they would egg her on.
JVW (b301cc) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:36 pm
I’ve added Patterico’s reaction to Trump’s comments about Liz Cheney to the post.
Dana (ff36d1) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:37 pm
@33 Appalled: “Who cares?”

If only Routh didn’t.
lloyd (6e01e4) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:38 pm
We should fear Trump’s words and ignore Nevertrump’s actions. Between Trump and Darth Cheney Jr., only one has sent thousands to get their heads blown off, and for nothing.
lloyd (6e01e4) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:43 pm
As for treason, John Brennan accused Trump of that when Trump was president. Nevertrump cheered. Brennan, who once voted for a communist, won’t have to wrestle with that decision in 2024 because he’s got Kamala to vote for.
lloyd (6e01e4) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:47 pm
Worth repeating:

Liz Cheney
@Liz_Cheney

@KamalaHarris has a more liberal voting record than Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren. Her radical leftist views — raising taxes, banning gun sales, taxpayer $ for abortion and illegal immigrant health care, eliminating private health insurance — would be devastating for America.

Liz tagging #Womenwillnotbesilenced #VoteKamala is absolutely precious.
lloyd (6e01e4) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:55 pm
Who cares?

Biden: Isn’t the President after January 20;

“Who cares? Trump isn’t president in 15 days.” — Appalled, 1/05/2021
SaveFarris (8940bf) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:57 pm
Biden Calls On Deplorable Garbage Nazis To Tone Down The Rhetoric.
lloyd (6e01e4) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:58 pm
From Dana’s link to Patterico’s tweet:

Logo

Okie Kim
@TheDoll618

Joe Walsh
@WalshFreedom
6h
Trump did NOT call for Liz Cheney to be executed.

This is what’s so wrong with our politics today. Look, you know how I feel about Trump, and I’ve been out there every day for 2-3 months campaigning my ass off to help get @KamalaHarris elected, but this short clip is so deceptive. Trump is NOT calling for Liz Cheney to be executed in front of a firing line. He’s not. Listen to the entirety of what he said. In Trump’s typically stupid, ugly fashion, he’s trying to make a point about Cheney’s stance on war. But Aaron (who I like & respect), by posting ONLY this 11 second clip, makes it look like he’s calling for her to be executed. He’s not. He’s an utterly horrible human being who’s utterly unfit for office, but the truth should always matter. And the truth is that Trump is not calling for Liz Cheney to be executed. But…this 11 second clip will have a gazillion views, and the truth will have just a handful of views.

Patterico
@Patterico
44m
Replying to @TheDoll618

As the kids say (do they still say it?): Duh

Good for Patterico. I appreciate that he believes Trump chose his words specifically; no need to argue about his opinion. What is important, to me, is that he also agrees with Joe Walsh’s statement on Rupar’s mendacity.
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:59 pm
Dana, do you agree with Joe Walsh’s statement?
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:01 pm
#45 —

Not according to Trump, who on 1-5 was still working hard at not leaving on 1-20-2021.

That said, I actually don’t understand your analogy. Care to explain?
Appalled (485049) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:04 pm
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:05 pm

Do you think you can type your claim again with a straight face, Sammy?

I didn’t see any more of the context than I quoted.

It looks more like that the demonization of Latinos That Biden refers to, is Trump’s and it is not clear what he meant by “supporters” but it goes like this:

And just the other day, a speaker [singular] at his rally called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Well, let me tell you something. I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr- — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.

I think Joe Biden never finished the sentence with the word “supporters”, and then he went on to speak of Donald Trump himself. He was only speaking of Donald Trump and some of his supporters, meaning to slightly generalize what one speaker said.

When people try to get to the bottom of what Donald Trump said somewhere, the Democrats have taken to calling it “sane-washing.” But it’s the right thing to do.

Incidentally, Joe Biden got so tangled up with his words, that he almost said that he was from Puerto Rico, when what he meant to say that where he was from (Delaware) that they thought that Puerto Ricans, or perhaps Latinos in general. were good, decent, honorable people. (And therefore not garbage.)

But the “speaker” (the bad comedian) the people there were garbage, just the island.

By the way, what Trump did say was:

https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/live-updates/2024election-updates-harris-trump-locked-virtual-dead-heat-114983801/trump-says-current-border-policy-make-us-garbage-can-for-the-world-115125215?offset=71

“We’re like a garbage can for the world,” Trump said. “And every time I come up and talk about what they’ve done to our country, I get angrier and angrier. [It’s the] first time I’ve ever said ‘garbage can.’ But you know what? It’s a very accurate description.”

This is. of course, the exact same thing that’s on the Statue of Liberty, in slightly different words:

…“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost [sic] to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

– Emma Lazarus, in 1883.

I don’t think that Ronald Reagan criticized that poem. In fact at the Republican National Convention in 1984 he said that Statue of Liberty would be put back (it was undergoing renovation)
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:05 pm
his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.

Sammy, do you believe Biden was talking about the comedian or Trump in this sentence?
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:11 pm
JVW (b301cc) — 11/1/2024 @ 12:36 pm

Don’t repeat the nonsense that Democrats and their media allies are trying to spread: the Supreme Court decision specifically said a President’s immunity is only for official acts taken while undertaking official duties of the office. And yeah, they did give the President fairly broad latitude for what constitutes an official act taken in the President’s capacity as Chief Executive, but Democrats’ shrill claims that he can order his opponents imprisoned or even assassinated is outright ridiculous.

I never said anything about Trump imprisoning or assassinating his opponents. I just repeated the facts-that Trump will have broad immunity for constitutional actions as President. I only noted that there is no constitutional bar to prevent Trump from pardoning himself, just as Biden could do the same (though I think it would be highly unlikely.)

As far as what the Senate will be one next Congress, we’ll find out soon enough.

I’m not interested in whataboutism regarding the Democrats. I’m more interested in what may happen over the next four years.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:13 pm
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-accepting-the-presidential-nomination-the-republican-national-convention-dallas

The President. We cheered in Los Angeles as the flame was carried in and the giant Olympic torch burst into a billowing fire in front of the teams, the youth of 140 nations assembled on the floor of the Coliseum…. athletes representing 140 countries here to compete in the one country in all the world whose people carry the bloodlines of all those 140 countries and more. Only in the United States is there such a rich mixture of races, creeds, and nationalities—only in our melting pot.

And that brings to mind another torch, the one that greeted so many of our parents and grandparents. Just this past Fourth of July, the torch atop the Statue of Liberty was hoisted down for replacement. We can be forgiven for thinking that maybe it was just worn out from lighting the way to freedom for 17 million new Americans. So, now we’ll put up a new one.

The poet called Miss Liberty’s torch the “lamp beside the golden door.” Well, that was the entrance to America, and it still is. And now you really know why we’re here tonight.

The glistening hope of that lamp is still ours. Every promise, every opportunity is still golden in this land. And through that golden door our children can walk into tomorrow with the knowledge that no one can be denied the promise that is America.

Wasn’t quite true then, (although he maybe meant no one already in America) but now Trump is repudiating it altogether, and warning of danger, and even wants discriminatory criminal laws about murder.
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:14 pm
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:11 pm

Sammy, do you believe Biden was talking about the comedian or Trump in this sentence?

In the uncompleted sentence fragment whose last word was “supporters”, the comedian and perhaps some other speakers or campaign surrogates, and about Trump in what follows (about demonization of Latinos.)

Never was he talking about Trump’s supporters in general (that is his voters)
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:19 pm
perhaps some other speakers or campaign surrogates,

Where did that come from? Seems like you are inserting something.
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:22 pm
I have to run, Sammy.
BuDuh (2be974) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:23 pm
The New York Times singled out:

Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller, a Trump adviser and an architect of the former president’s immigration policy, told the crowd that Mr. Trump would “stand up and say the cartels are gone, the criminal migrants are gone, the gangs are gone, America is for Americans and Americans only.”

“America for Americans” was a slogan used by the Ku Klux Klan.

Well, by the word “Americans” the KKK meant only some American citizens, but what Miller is advocating is a kind of class or caste (or membership in an exclusive club) status. Geographicalism, not racism as Democrats accuse them of. It may borrow ideas from vicious racism but it’s not racism.
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:24 pm
56. Me too.
Sammy FInkelman (e4ef09) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:24 pm
Uh, Rip, Donald Trump took office in January 2017 with a GOP Senate Majority of 52 Senators, about what he would be forecasted to have in January 2025.

I think the Republicans will win more Senate seats, given the fact that Senate races in WI (D +2); PA (tied); OH (D +2) and NV (R +1) are essentially toss ups; but your point well taken. It was the same group that voted acquitted Trump twice. Had they not done so we wouldn’t be in this mess now.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:29 pm
I never said anything about Trump imprisoning or assassinating his opponents. I just repeated the facts-that Trump will have broad immunity for constitutional actions as President.

No you didn’t; you claimed so much more. Here is an exact quote of what you said:

•His presidential immunity from prosecution, both from indictment while he is President and afterwards, for any actions he may take removes the threat of prison time. Even if he takes illegal actions while President he can pardon himself.

“. . . for any actions he make take. . .” is not the same as “for any official actions he make take.” And yes, he probably can officially pardon himself just like any other President could, but only for Federal crimes and not for state, county, or civic crimes. And if we have learned anything over the past four years it is that local jurisdictions are just rarin’ to take a crack at him.
JVW (b301cc) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:39 pm
Expect the GOP to Win Big in the Senate

………….
…………. Candidates in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are fighting for the support of undecided voters. These voters tend to account for between 5% and 10% of states’ electorates, enough to sway the result of a close race. These crucial voters look a lot more like Mr. Trump’s supporters than Kamala Harris’s.

According to our latest Pennsylvania poll, 51% of undecided Senate voters intend to vote for Mr. Trump, compared with 23% for Ms. Harris. This pattern replicates itself across our internal research. In Ohio, 78% of undecided voters in the Senate race would opt for Mr. Trump, in Montana 59%, and in Arizona 77%. Overall, twice as many undecided voters in Senate races back Mr. Trump over Ms. Harris.
……………
(These voters) tend to be older, low-information, less-educated Trump voters. Come Election Day, we expect them to vote Republican down the ballot.
…………….
In our internal polls of Ohio, Montana and Pennsylvania, more than 60% of undecided Senate voters lean toward the Republican candidate when pushed for an answer. That puts the Republican candidate in these states in the lead or within reach of victory.
……………
…………… In the 2024 election, undecided voters could take the GOP from a 51-seat majority to a comfortable 53, or even more. This hidden dynamic will guarantee the Senate for the GOP.
##########
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:40 pm
It was the same group that voted acquitted Trump twice. Had they not done so we wouldn’t be in this mess now.

This is very true, and it is to their discredit that they did not. However, it was a ridiculously shortsighted tactical error that had the Democrats earlier trying to impeach Trump for his overtures to Ukrainian leaders which caused the GOP to reflexively defend him. Had the only impeachment attempt been the one of January 2021, who knows what would have happened.

And while we are at it, imagine if the Democrat Senate had gone along with the impeachment of Bill Clinton on perjury and obstruction of justice charges back in 1998 and voted to convict and remove him. There was plenty of evidence to prove that these charges were valid. Combined with what happened to Richard Nixon, that would have set into place the idea that the White House may not stonewall or even obfuscate a legitimate Congressional inquiry, and that would have also had the salutary effect of strengthening the hand of the legislative branch against the executive branch. Had that happened, the precedent would have been there to impeach and convict a President who sought to obstruct a legitimate legislative or judicial inquiry, and we would have rid ourselves of two of the most odious people to have served in the Oval Office.
JVW (b301cc) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:47 pm
Hey asset. What do you think about this?

https://www.politico.eu/article/europes-greens-tell-jill-stein-to-pull-out-of-us-election-to-defeat-trump/
Appalled (485049) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:49 pm
Kinzinger’s answer to Joe Walsh.

In the context of criticizing Cheney as a warmonger, the recipient of five draft deferments who called America’s war dead “suckers” and “losers” was implying that she was a coward who would be unwilling to face the danger into which she sent others. Cheney is among the bravest people I know, but it’s important to note that Trump wasn’t just musing on her character. He didn’t phrase his thought as a hypothetical—I wonder how she’d feel if—but as an imperative: “Let’s put her.”

What I condemn is the violent image Trump put forth, which is completely irresponsible and, to paraphrase, Trump is saying he would put Cheney in a spot with a rifle in her hand, facing a nine-to-one disadvantage of enemy soldiers actively shooting her in the face, where the only result of a such an exchange is her certain death, all because she has a different foreign policy position from Trump, where her position is supporting a country defending itself from a Russian gangster and mass murderer and terrorist.

Is Trump’s a good faith discussion of a difference of opinion, or is it the violent talk of a manchild who’s still having a temper tantrum that a fellow party member “betrayed” him and rejected his Big Lie and his attempted coup. To me, it’s more the latter. It’s the death wish fantasy of a bully and a sick f-ck. How in any scenario does this not disqualify this lying fraud of a bully from the most powerful job on earth? IMO, there is no moral imperative for any conservative or any person of common decency to vote for him.

Oh, and let’s not forget that this isn’t the first time that Trump has publicly wished violence on Ms. Cheney. Last July, he said “ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON”, a crime that carries the death penalty. What’s more, Trump declared her guilty first and then said “RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.” In other words, a show trial, where somehow a military court would more expeditiously serve Trump’s “justice”.
Sick. F-ck.

More Kinzinger, whether you like it or not…

Liz is more than a political figure. She’s a mother, a daughter, a wife, and a friend. Like all of us, she wants to live in a country where her children are safe and where people respect differences of opinion. She deserves to do her work and live her life without fearing for her safety or that of her family. But Trump, standing against American history, sees no difference between disagreement and treason. This is a classic sign of autocratic rule, where leaders wield threats and intimidation against their opponents to quash dissent.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:51 pm
#62

I agree with you about Clinton. if he had been forced out, because a group of Democrats (like Sen Joe Biden) did to Bill what Goldwater did to Nixon in 1974, I think this alternative history would have been kinder to Democrats. Gore would have won in 2000. Hillary would not have been the Democratic candidate in 2016.

That said, Trump did not come out of nowhere. America’s populist disaffection would have found its candidate, and it might well have been Trump. However, our system of government might have been in a better position to handle him.
Appalled (485049) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:56 pm
Just to complete the visual that Trump started, what would it look like after those nine barrels did their job on Cheney’s face. Having seen enough violent films in my day, I envision a bloody stump where Cheney’s head used to be.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:58 pm
Had the only impeachment attempt been the one of January 2021, who knows what would have happened.

Given the lack of evidence when the impeachment occurred of Trump’s involvement, I think the result would have been the same (especially since Trump was no longer President.) Then again, the Senate Republicans would probably still have acquitted Trump even with the evidence developed by the January 6th hearing, for the same reasons that Clinton was acquitted by the Democrats.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:58 pm
Combined with what happened to Richard Nixon……..

Of course, Nixon was never impeached.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:00 pm
•Trump would be ineligible for reelection, so he wouldn’t need to take public opinion (and media coverage) into account;

But those Senators who refuse to convict him when he has the army level East L.A. ARE up for re-election.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:01 pm
he also agrees with Joe Walsh’s statement on Rupar’s mendacity.

I have never been able to figure out Twitter’s thread order. It’s in the headers, I guess, but I don’t have the inclination to solve the puzzle.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:07 pm
I only noted that there is no constitutional bar to prevent Trump from pardoning himself

No clear authority, either.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:08 pm
………the precedent would have been there to impeach and convict a President who sought to obstruct a legitimate legislative or judicial inquiry………

The current House failed to set that precedent when they punted the Biden impeachment. They couldn’t even draft articles of impeachment.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:11 pm
@64:

Well, I agree with Kinzinger here, but it muddies Walsh’s point. Walsh is not defending Trump. He is pointing out that the viral clip is a LIE. Kinzinger doesn’t dispute that, but picks a different bone and somehow this is being used to defend the perversely edited clip.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:13 pm
@65:

Agreed.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:14 pm
(especially since Trump was no longer President.)

Constitutionally meaningless. It was just a fig leaf for hiding the facts.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:16 pm
I only noted that there is no constitutional bar to prevent Trump from pardoning himself

No clear authority, either.

Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:08 pm

Since there is no bar, the authority must exist. If the Founders wanted to bar that authority, it would appear in the Constitution.

As you have pointed out, the Presidency has accumulated massive power, including power not specifically authorized in the Constitution.

Even if a self-pardon was illegal, there is no way anyone can challenge it.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:17 pm
At best a President who pardons himself could be impeached and prevented from serving again, but in Trump’s case that would be pointless.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:20 pm
Since there is no bar, the authority must exist. If the Founders wanted to bar that authority, it would appear in the Constitution.

Did they bar his authority for shooting an opponent? I guess it’s legal then.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:21 pm
Did they bar his authority for shooting an opponent? I guess it’s legal then.

Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:21 pm

Not legal, but not unconstitutional.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:46 pm
Did they bar his authority for shooting an opponent? I guess it’s legal then.

Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:21 pm

Only if it’s considered an official act. 😉
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:48 pm
Is there any doubt in anybody’s mind that if called upon Liz Cheney would pick up a rifle and face down nine enemies, while Cadet Bone Spurs would call his mommy to rush over with the letter from his podiatrist? And a change of diapers?
nk (89646e) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:50 pm
One New Yorker who hopes Trump wins.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:51 pm
Item 1 My understanding trump was talking about cheney sending 10,000 men to their deaths ( it isn’t quite that many) in Iraq and afganistan in the full context. (ACE) Can we get a discription of the context? Btw DU is down for the election again.
asset (2bbf8c) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:57 pm
That said, I actually don’t understand your analogy. Care to explain?

I forgot you’re a Harris supporter so I’ll type slower.

If Biden isn’t responsible for his public pronouncements 3 months before leaving office, then Trump isn’t responsible for his public pronouncements 2 weeks before leaving office. Meaning Trump bares no culpability for his speech on 1/6.

Do you care about Biden now?
SaveFarris (a5c2a6) — 11/1/2024 @ 5:10 pm
Is there any doubt in anybody’s mind that if called upon Liz Cheney would pick up a rifle and face down nine enemies, while Cadet Bone Spurs would call his mommy to rush over with the letter from his podiatrist? And a change of diapers?

Unlike Cheney, Trump actually has faced down rifles. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it. You must be one of those low-information voters I keep hearing about.

When Trump faced rifles …

https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.EjvQmAHTONbCmzz6_bdR7wHaEK&pid=Api&P=0&w=711&h=400
SaveFarris (a5c2a6) — 11/1/2024 @ 5:13 pm
Ha, ha, ha, ha!

He hid behind the podium and half a dozen Secret Service agents while three innocent people he had used as staged decoration took the bullets.

And, then, when the shooting was over and the shooter dead by police rifles, the showman in him came out strong and he took the stage back with a dramatic gesture.

I give him credit for being a ‘trouper” who knows the show must go on.
nk (89646e) — 11/1/2024 @ 5:23 pm
Trump talks in Rorscharch blots. He gives his people what they are inclined to hear with enough splatter for sane-washing it.

I have never said that he is not good at foolish people. In fact, I will say right here and now that he is the most expert conman to ever prey on the American people.
nk (89646e) — 11/1/2024 @ 5:31 pm
nk (89646e) — 11/1/2024 @ 5:23 pm

Besides, nk, it was only firecrackers.
lloyd (3c9a41) — 11/1/2024 @ 6:28 pm
@87 The biggest con was Liz’s WMD, and thousands took a bullet to the head for it.
lloyd (3c9a41) — 11/1/2024 @ 6:30 pm
Well, nk, I admit to making dumb decisions, dumb choices. Take NVDA that I sold all 1000 shares I had back in the single digits. The 1000 shares then would be 10,000 now and NVDA is worth more today than the ENTIRE Canadian stock exchange.
At least I didn’t roll it all into a Trump Bible- as tempting as that might have been.
steveg (7095e5) — 11/1/2024 @ 6:37 pm
I could have bought a Trump Bible and a bunch of Truth Social while wearing Trump sneakers and a Black and Gold MAGA hat.
And yes Liz Cheney is from the family of one of the most vindictive a war profiteers this side of Russia- but its stupid to put a rifle pointing at anyone these days. Not that Trump gives an f what anyone thinks.
steveg (7095e5) — 11/1/2024 @ 6:44 pm
I think the context of what Trump said was PARAPHRASE “lets put warhawk Liz in a place where people are shooting back, with 9 rifles aimed at her face and see if she is still a warhawk. People who are warhawks aare not the people facing rifles”

https://x.com/i/status/1852524173093933252
steveg (7095e5) — 11/1/2024 @ 7:12 pm
The irony about Trump’s chickenhawk comment about Liz Cheney is that he can turn on a dime and be a chickenhawk his ownself, and his cult will go right along with. Quote:

“If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country — in this case, Iran — that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens. We are going to blow it to smithereens.”

–Donald J. Trump, all of a sudden warmonger, 9/25/2024
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/1/2024 @ 7:33 pm
Kennedy grinned in his world-weary way. “Boloney, Mac. No matter how you slice it, it’s still boloney,” he said.
nk (bb1548) — 11/1/2024 @ 7:54 pm
Never Trumpers prove conservative bona fides by voting for 4 more years of open borders, and degraded military budgets. Because someone that opposes open borders and wants beefed up military budgets isn’t perfect.

Conservative purists opposed purchasing the Louisiana territory, opposed ally status for Russia in WWII, want US troops in Taiwan, think its a sacrilege to demand that NATO members meet their 2% pledges, and are still trying to find something they’ve “conserved” in the past 50 years.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (b6ff8f) — 11/1/2024 @ 8:04 pm
ABC news tonight left out trump saying cheney was a war hawk sending others to die and started with 9 barrels staring at her to change the meaning. The media wonders why it is called vermin.
asset (d9026e) — 11/1/2024 @ 11:05 pm
https://www.theenvironmentalblog.org/2024/10/puerto-rico-trash-problem/

The amazing thing in all the bad faith arguments is that no one even mentioned the reason behind the bad joke.
NJRob (b31871) — 11/2/2024 @ 5:18 am
Hey asset. What do you think about this?

https://www.politico.eu/article/europes-greens-tell-jill-stein-to-pull-out-of-us-election-to-defeat-trump/

Appalled (485049) — 11/1/2024 @ 1:49 pm

They know a fellow traveler when they see one.
NJRob (b31871) — 11/2/2024 @ 5:25 am
https://www.theenvironmentalblog.org/2024/10/puerto-rico-trash-problem/

The amazing thing in all the bad faith arguments is that no one even mentioned the reason behind the bad joke.

NJRob (b31871) — 11/2/2024 @ 5:18 am

John Tarantino is a fast writer. The MSG rally was on October 27 and he had the article out on October 30.

Actually, that’s not at all unusual. It is the hallmark of a professional writer. Be quick, be commercial, and deliver on demand.

Erle Stanley Gardner dictated his first Perry Mason book The Case Of The Velvet Claws in three-and-a-half days but modestly claimed four days because, he said, he had spent half a day beforehand thinking it out.
nk (3be84d) — 11/2/2024 @ 5:45 am
Only a month ago, if you criticized FEMA’s Helene response, you were spreading disinformation and inspiring roving bands of marauders.

Now that everyone’s attention is focused elsewhere, it’s safe to admit: Yeah, the massive criticism of FEMA was entirely justified.

https://twitter.com/AlexThomp/status/1852526787139358781

Hundreds of thousands of people who are trying to recover from disasters nationwide have been unable to get through to federal call centers or have stayed on hold for excessive periods of time in the weeks since Helene barreled into southern Appalachia last month.

Overwhelmed by Helene and Hurricane Milton, the centers failed to answer nearly half of the incoming phone calls over the course of one week recently. For the calls that were answered, it took more than an hour for federal workers to pick up, on average.

The disaster agency’s ability to provide financial relief has become a burning issue in the presidential election. Former President Donald Trump campaigned recently in two heavily damaged swing states — Georgia and North Carolina — and made misleading statements about the Biden administration’s response. [COMPLETELY ACCURATE STATEMENTS AS THIS ARTICLE NOW ADMITS – ed.] But as the federal calls data shows, the hurricane response has encountered genuine problems amid a steady toll of disasters.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which published the call data Tuesday, also disclosed that it’s struggling with staffing levels a month after the hurricanes heavily damaged states from Florida to Tennessee.
SaveFarris (488fe4) — 11/2/2024 @ 6:28 am
Conservative purists opposed purchasing the Louisiana territory, opposed ally status for Russia in WWII, want US troops in Taiwan, think its a sacrilege to demand that NATO members meet their 2% pledges, and are still trying to find something they’ve “conserved” in the past 50 years.

This is your MAGA version of NeverTrump bigotry and invidious overgeneralizations about conservatives who rejected Trump.

Catoggio expressed TrumpWorld and his MAGA “logic” pretty well, and it’s about who bent the knee and who hasn’t. Policy and principles are in the backseat, including the topic of war and our national defense.

It should go without saying by now, but Trump doesn’t divide the world between hawks and doves, Republicans and Democrats, or whichever other ideological fault line you prefer. He divides the world between friends and enemies. That partly explains why, as I wrote yesterday, his “populism” is an inch deep in substance. If given the option to ally himself with a “radical war hawk” who idolizes him on the one hand or an “America First” isolationist who finds him problematic on the other, there’s not an iota of doubt which he’d choose.

We’re talking about a man who, in his first term, staffed up with the likes of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Nikki Haley, each of them every inch Liz Cheney’s equal as Reaganite hawks. To this day, some of Trump’s favorite Republican cronies in the Senate are among the chamber’s staunchest interventionists. Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio are welcome guests at his events despite the fact that their approach to foreign policy veers closer to George W. Bush’s than to J.D. Vance’s.

Liz Cheney herself proves the point. No matter how many times Trump claims that her supposedly bottomless appetite for war has led her to despise him, the fact remains that she endorsed him in 2016 and again in 2020 and voted no on his first impeachment. Nor did he appear to have any problem with seeing her ascend the ranks of the House Republican leadership, her “radical war hawk” preferences notwithstanding. Only when she supported impeaching him for the coup attempt that led to January 6 did he start daydreaming about enemy rifles being pointed at her face.

His dispute with her has nothing to do with foreign policy and everything to do with the fact that, to paraphrase John Kelly, Cheney doesn’t believe Trump should have the ability as president to do anything he wants, anytime he wants. “The candidate of peace” doesn’t care about peace, he cares about total personal impunity and will demagogue anyone who won’t grant it to him with any political weapon available.

“Warmonger,” “RINO,” “communist”: In his telling, there’s always an ulterior motive when someone seeks to hold him accountable. Of all the ways in which Trump is guilty of psychological projection toward his opponents, none is more considerable than how he dresses up personal grudges as ideological disputes.

If you’re ever tempted to take his rhetoric about war and peace seriously, consider the double standard he and other MAGA Republicans routinely practice toward displays of American strength.

Every time the Biden-backed Ukrainian military inflicts some damage on Russia, bleats of “World War III!” reliably sound from the populist intelligentsia. At one point this year, J.D. Vance stooped so low as to say that “if Donald Trump wanted to start a nuclear war with Russia, Mike Pence would be at the front of the line endorsing him right now.” We must take care not to provoke a fellow nuclear power, you see.

Yet when Trump was asked a few weeks ago by the Wall Street Journal how he would have handled Russia’s invasion, he claimed to have had this exchange with Putin while president: “I said, ‘Vladimir, if you go after Ukraine, I am going to hit you so hard, you’re not even going to believe it. I’m going to hit you right in the middle of fricking Moscow. … You’re going to be hit so hard, and I’m going to take those f— domes right off your head.’”

You can worry earnestly about World War III or you can attack Russia “in the middle of fricking Moscow,” but you can’t do both. I invite you to imagine the reaction among the very principled doves of the populist right if “radical war hawk” Liz Cheney—or President Joe Biden—had proposed bombing the Kremlin if Putin dared lay a finger on poor Ukraine.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/2/2024 @ 6:42 am
Divides the world between friends and enemies. Not like everyone else does that. It’s why the left screams hyperbolic statements that have no bearing on reality. It’s why NeverTrump uses every bad faith argument to attack their perceived adversary. It’s why Mitch McConnell refuses to spend money to support Republican candidates in competitive Senate races.

Allahpundit can shove his narcissistic, holier than thou attitude back where the sun doesn’t shine. He’s a hippocrite as much as anyone.
NJRob (b31871) — 11/2/2024 @ 7:24 am
https://x.com/BrentScher/status/1852346355512971692

Hugh Hewitt, one of those “good Republicans,” walks off the set of the propaganda show he’s on and properly calls them out for it afterward.

The usual suspects will continue spouting propaganda.
NJRob (b31871) — 11/2/2024 @ 7:44 am
Nk can’t argue against any of the fact cited I see.
NJRob (b31871) — 11/2/2024 @ 7:45 am
Your fellow Americans aren’t enemies, Rob. There are opponents and adversaries who disagree with you, but they’re not your enemies. That’s the difference, and it’s an un-American unpatriotic difference. Am I your enemy? Yes or no.

Like him or no, Saletan always brings the receipts. Trump is pandering to Muslims in Michigan about their protector (except he didn’t say whether you like it or not), but he’s “the worst anti-Muslim bigot ever nominated for president by a major party”.

To begin with, Trump supported the Iraq war. In September 2002, Howard Stern asked him, “Are you for invading Iraq?” Trump replied, “Yeah, I guess so.” He expressed just one misgiving: “I wish the first time it was done correctly.”

Now Trump insists that he opposed the war—a falsehood he’s peddled throughout his time in politics. But he adds that when our forces were in Iraq, we should have plundered the country. Two weeks ago, he complained to an audience of businessmen that the Americans who managed the war ignored his advice to “keep the oil.”

Trump is also misrepresenting his record on Gaza. While Harris presses for a cease-fire, Trump has been telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “do what you have to do.” In fact, Trump has accused President Joe Biden of “trying to hold [Netanyahu] back.,” when we “should be doing the opposite.”

But Trump’s biggest lie is his pretense of protecting Muslims. Unlike Harris, who has never expressed animus against Muslims, Trump has a long record of Islamophobic bigotry.

In 2010, Trump used financial leverage to try to block construction of a Muslim community center near the site of the 9/11 terror attack in Manhattan. (The project had been denounced by many Republicans as a “Ground Zero mosque,” even though it was two blocks away from the 9/11 site and would only peripherally include a mosque.) Trump insisted that the project be moved further away.

In 2011, when Trump was thinking about running for president against Barack Obama, he insinuated that Obama was a secret Muslim and that this would be a strike against him. “He doesn’t have a birth certificate,” Trump told Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. “He may have one, but there’s something on that birth [certificate]. Maybe religion. Maybe it says he’s a Muslim.”

Four years later, when Trump ran for president, he explicitly called for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” He based this idea in part on security concerns. But he also warned Americans that Muslims “want to change your religion.” And he suggested that some mosques should be closed.

In March 2016, Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “Islam hates us.” Four months later, he argued that American Muslims were collectively responsible for Islamic terrorism and should be punished for it. “The people in the community know what’s going on, whether it’s in a mosque or whether it’s in the community,” he declared. He added: “If a community isn’t going to report when they know something’s going to happen, those people have to suffer the consequences.”

As president, Trump implemented a modified version of the proposed Muslim ban. (He toned it down after courts rejected a more stringent version.) The implemented version didn’t ban all Muslims, but it covered seven majority-Muslim countries. To this day, he has never apologized for his slurs or threats against Muslims.

In fact, Trump is still exploiting prejudice against Islam. In this year’s Republican presidential primaries, he attacked Nikki Haley for opposing his Muslim ban. And even now, at his campaign rallies, he routinely mocks Obama’s middle name, Hussein.

Two months ago, in a speech to the Israeli-American Council, Trump pledged to “bring back the travel ban.” He also vowed to “ban refugee resettlement from terror-infested areas like the Gaza Strip.” And in a dig at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Trump implicitly smeared and derided Palestinians. “Chuck Schumer is a Palestinian,” Trump jeered. “I saw him the other day. He was dressed in one of their robes . . . Chuck Schumer is Hamas all the way.”

THAT’S THE REAL TRUMP: an unrepentant Islamophobic demagogue.

I depart with Saletan on the Israel-Hamas War, because a ceasefire is pro-Hamas, not pro-Muslim, IMO. Bibi does need to do what he has to do to get the hostages back and eliminate Hamas from the face of the earth. Train those barrels on their Islamist faces.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/2/2024 @ 7:46 am
Yes to @16, doubts about @19.

Likewise, I could never understand what is “conservative” about Trump. Socially conservative? That can hardly describe a thrice married man who cheated on all three wives. Fiscally conservative? If that were the case, then why did the government red ink continue to overflow–and even increase–during his regime? “Conservative” implies that certain things should be “conserved.” I would argue that ought to include the environment. Is Trump a champion of environmental conservation? One of the most nauseating things about him is his pretense to be religious, though when asked what his favorite verse in the Bible was, he answered “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” apparently unaware that Jesus argued against that when He said “You have heard it said of old …. But I say unto you, love your enemies etc.” Anyone ought to be able to see through his sham religiosity, even though he sells wildly overpriced Bibles as another way to grift.

Both “conservative” and “liberal” are loosely used labels, often devoid of any identifiable meaning, as is obvious when “conservative” is applied to Trump.
Roger (a9b3a6) — 11/2/2024 @ 8:34 am
The Donetsk Cowboy and Daniel Martindale are enemies from within, both Americans who provided aid and comfort to a Russian terrorist-in-chief and war criminal.

And speaking of the Russian terrorist state, this is what it’s like to live under their occupation.

Research by a team of reporters involving dozens of interviews with former detainees, human rights organizations and Ukrainian officials from the Office of the General Prosecutor, the intelligence service and ombudsmen, reveals a highly institutionalized, bureaucratic and frequently brutal system of repression run by Moscow to pacify an area of 40,000 square miles in Ukraine, roughly the size of Ohio.

The abuses almost always occur unseen and unheard by the outside world, as Russia-controlled areas are largely inaccessible to independent journalists and human rights investigators. But human rights organizations and Ukrainian prosecutors and government officials have managed to monitor the situation closely, drawing on accounts from civilians who are either still living there or who have found a way to leave.

The ultimate aim of Moscow’s efforts, rights advocates said, is to extinguish Ukrainian identity through such tactics as propaganda, re-education, torture, forced Russian citizenship and sending children to live in Russia.
[…]
Ukrainians who have escaped Russian occupation said it was like living in a cage, where travel is restricted and many live in fear of arbitrary violence or detention. Information is controlled and inhabitants are subjected to relentless propaganda in the media, in schools and in the workplace.

This is literally cultural genocide, scarcely different from Russian history of empire and conquest, and no different than Xi and the Uighers.
In this campaign, Trump said that “our allies are worse than our so-called enemies” so, if he wins I expect Trump’s next meet-up with Putin will look something like this, with expect Trump’s turd polishers defending the Putin’s knob polisher.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/2/2024 @ 8:47 am
There is nothing in this campaign left except for the worst propaganda on either side, whether it is fear of hordes of drug gangs and rapists pouring over the border and getting checks from Harris, or claims that Trump will use the army to round up and/or shoot his opponents.

Really what we have is a mediocrity fronting for the hard Left versus a senile whirling dervish who promises whatever comes to his “mind.”

Both parties should be ashamed.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/2/2024 @ 8:52 am
Vote for someone else.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/2/2024 @ 8:53 am
Remember the Southport massacre, when three young girls were murdered? Maybe not. What you probably remember are the protests and riots in response, and the finger wagging by the media and politicians about uninformed citizens jumping to conclusions. The murders happened because the suspect is severely autistic and just snapped, was the story. Turns out the rioters were mostly right.

Southport stabbing suspect charged with terror offence and production of poison

The teenager accused of the fatal stabbing of three girls at a dance class in Southport has been charged with production of a deadly poison and a terror offence, the chief constable of Merseyside Police has said.

Axel Rudakubana, 18, will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court by videolink on Wednesday charged with production of a biological toxin, ricin, and possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing to commit an act of terrorism, although the attack has not been declared as a terrorist incident, police said.

The charges come after searches of his home in Banks, Lancashire, Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The terror offence relates to a PDF file entitled Military Studies In The Jihad Against The Tyrants, The Al Qaeda Training Manual, Ms Kennedy said.

Rudakubana is already charged with the murders of Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, who were fatally stabbed during a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Hart Street, Southport, on July 29.

He is also charged with the attempted murder of eight other children, instructor Leanne Lucas and businessman John Hayes, as well as possession of a knife.

The information above had been known for months.
lloyd (49ba1d) — 11/2/2024 @ 9:04 am
PA election litigation:

The Supreme Court on Friday handed a loss to Republicans by allowing Pennsylvania voters who sent mail-in ballots that were flagged as being potentially defective to submit a separate provisional in-person ballot.

The justices rejected, with no noted dissents, a Republican request to put on hold a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling from last week.
…………..
Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s conservatives, wrote a brief statement saying that, although it is an issue of “considerable importance,” there were several reasons for the court not to get involved at this stage. His statement was joined by two other conservatives, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch.

……………..Although it is unclear exactly how many ballots the legal theory would affect if it applied to the general election, it could be several thousand and have major legal ramifications if any statewide contests are close in the key swing state.
……………..
Many of Pennsylvania’s counties, which administer elections, already allowed for voters to cast provisional ballots if their mail-in ballots lacked a secrecy envelope even before the recent state Supreme Court ruling. Some did not.

The state court had concluded that mail-in ballots that machines detect as lacking secondary “secrecy envelopes” required under Pennsylvania law are void, therefore allowing the voter to cast a provisional ballot, a finding that Republicans had argued against.
…………….
In their filing at the Supreme Court, Republicans said that state law requires any ballots that do not meet the strict standards to be rejected and does not allow for voters to get a do-over. Under their interpretation of the law, that would include not just ballots lacking the secrecy sleeve, but also ballots that are not dated, not dated correctly or lack a signature.

The litigation raises a legal question of interest to conservatives on the Supreme Court about whether the ruling from Pennsylvania’s high court unlawfully encroaches on the Legislature’s authority to set election rules under the U.S. Constitution.

The issue was the subject of a Supreme Court ruling last year (Moore v. Harper, 600 U.S. 1) that largely rejected the “independent state Legislature” theory, which says legislatures have unfettered authority over elections, while leaving the door open to revisit the matter in future.
…………….

In another case, the PA Supreme Court ruled that undated or incorrectly dated mail-in ballots will not be counted.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/2/2024 @ 9:22 am
As Larson E. Whipsnade’s dear old grandfather Lithvak said just before they swung the trap, “You can’t cheat an honest man. Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump.”
nk (3be84d) — 11/2/2024 @ 9:25 am
In another case, the PA Supreme Court ruled that undated or incorrectly dated mail-in ballots will not be counted.

Was there no link with quotables written in an unfavorable way to the Republicans that prevailed?
BuDuh (4214e4) — 11/2/2024 @ 9:28 am
“The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which published the call data Tuesday, also disclosed that it’s struggling with staffing levels a month after the hurricanes heavily damaged states from Florida to Tennessee.”

Sounds like they’re underfunded.
Davethulhu (591411) — 11/2/2024 @ 9:29 am
Likewise, I could never understand what is “conservative” about Trump. Socially conservative? That can hardly describe a thrice married man who cheated on all three wives. Fiscally conservative? If that were the case, then why did the government red ink continue to overflow–and even increase–during his regime? “Conservative” implies that certain things should be “conserved.” I would argue that ought to include the environment. Is Trump a champion of environmental conservation? One of the most nauseating things about him is his pretense to be religious, though when asked what his favorite verse in the Bible was, he answered “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” apparently unaware that Jesus argued against that when He said “You have heard it said of old …. But I say unto you, love your enemies etc.” Anyone ought to be able to see through his sham religiosity, even though he sells wildly overpriced Bibles as another way to grift.

Both “conservative” and “liberal” are loosely used labels, often devoid of any identifiable meaning, as is obvious when “conservative” is applied to Trump.

Roger (a9b3a6) — 11/2/2024 @ 8:34 am

Indeed. His only ‘conservative’ argument is to whatabout how liberal his opponents are. But Trump is a die hard lefty. Because he was president, there are far more liberal judges, spending has gone up, the economy has been held down, and liberty has been restricted.

There is no moral leadership either.

Yet is this a good reason to support Kamala? Whatabouts are inherently repulsive, but ignoring them is deceptive sometimes.

The left, particularly the nevertrumpers, really wanted Trump to be the nominee, to prevent Desantis from becoming president. They will point to the results of their scheme as proof Desantis wasn’t viable, yet they are terrified of any bridge-building between the populists and the fiscal conservatives. They are terrified of these people able to meet both sides of an awkward coalition. These folks pretend Bush and Bill Clinton were some dark age. We gotta get back to that.
Dustin (4b502c) — 11/2/2024 @ 9:30 am
Sounds like they’re underfunded.

Too bad Ukraine needed the money more.
BuDuh (4214e4) — 11/2/2024 @ 9:31 am
Looks like mail-in voting is working as intended. The intent being making a litigation mess of our elections. Good job, folks.
lloyd (d006b9) — 11/2/2024 @ 9:34 am
Election Day is no longer election day. It’s just the day we hand everything off to lawyers and judges.
lloyd (7f1036) — 11/2/2024 @ 9:37 am
101: Paul: When you’re right, you’re right: – -Trump is totally unjustified in referring to some people as “enemies.” The screaming people that chased his Admin officials out of restaurants, pounded on the doors of the Supreme Court, called Kavanaugh a gang rapist, lit up Portland, and Minneapolis for weeks, mobbed the White House (forcing Trump into a basement safe room), and torched cars and smashed windows on the day of his swearing in are good people to be sure.

People who indicted a president for the 1st time in 248 years, even for repaying a loan on time, who want to trim the 1st Amdt, abolish the 2d and the Electoral college, send US troops to guarantee the security of every border but our own, and want to vest “disinformation” power is some government board are obviously people with the best of intentions for all of us.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (b6ff8f) — 11/2/2024 @ 10:15 am
>The intent being making a litigation mess of our elections.

Nonsense.

The intent is to make it convenient for people to vote so that inconvenience does not deter turnout.

California has had no-excuse absentee voting for as long as i’ve been a voter. In 1962 2.6% of the vote was cast by mail ballot, but by 1992 (my first election) this had gone up to 17.15%. In the 1990s, more than 20% was cast by mail ballot, and by 2006 it was above 40%. It’s been above 50% since 2012. We were on our way to joining Washington in having universal vote-by-mail *before* the pandemic; the pandemic just accelerated it.

There hasn’t generally been a litigation mess in California as a result of mail-in balloting. But, then too, it’s never been a *partisan* issue here; both parties supported its original adoption, and the bill in 2020 which authorized the temporary expansion due to the pandemic had no substantial opposition from either party. Even in 2021, while Republicans in the legislature voted against, there hasn’t been much grumbling or legal action; the program is *enormously* popular because it turns out most people prefer that way.

That said, there also hasn’t been a huge increase in turnout, so it’s failing at its original intent — it’s making it easier for people who were going to vote anyway to do so. (And attempting to roll it back, at this point, would almost certainly trigger a referendum and would then fail).
aphrael (f5496b) — 11/2/2024 @ 10:46 am
> The left, particularly the nevertrumpers, really wanted Trump to be the nominee, to prevent Desantis from becoming president.

I do not know a single person on the left who wanted Trump to be the nominee. I’m *really* curious what you base this theory on.
aphrael (f5496b) — 11/2/2024 @ 10:48 am
> Even if he takes illegal actions while President he can pardon himself.

That was always true, though.
aphrael (f5496b) — 11/2/2024 @ 10:52 am
Thank you, Harcourt. One standard, no?

The left, particularly the nevertrumpers, really wanted Trump to be the nominee, to prevent Desantis from becoming president.

I’m one of those NeverTrumpers, and (1) I never wanted Trump to be nominated because words such as never* have meaning, and (2) I would’ve voted for DeSantis in a heartbeat, but was never afforded that choice, and I doubt NeverTrumpers are on board with that. I’ve been a Dispatch subscriber since they started, a place where most of the writers are NeverTrump, and I’ve never heard a single one express such a sentiment as yours.

Maybe you can show us which NeverTrumpers “really wanted Trump to be the nominee, to prevent Desantis from becoming president”, perhaps with a few names and links.

* at no time in the past or future; on no occasion; not ever.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/2/2024 @ 10:58 am
stupid Hitler beclowns himself again.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:28 am
@120 “The intent is to make it convenient for people to vote so that inconvenience does not deter turnout.”

Ridiculous. Voting is a civic duty, something most of us would do even when inconvenient. The integrity of our elections should not be held hostage by those who won’t vote unless they can doordash it.

Those claiming it had anything to do with Covid are simply lying. Those who think it had nothing to do with a cynical calculation that it would harm Trump’s chances are lying. The legions of Nevertrumpers who previously drew a hard line on voter ID, but suddenly don’t care as of 2020, are telling on themselves.
lloyd (bbce9c) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:33 am
This is the kind of not very subtle racist “joke” that would have disqualified someone who doesn’t have the full backing of the Bund.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:42 am
@120 And, the process for absentee ballots as it existed for decades is very different than mail-in. It’s ridiculous to draw an equivalence.
lloyd (bbce9c) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:46 am
Klink, who calls everyone who disagrees with him a Nazi, thinks the toxic rhetoric should stop.
lloyd (bbce9c) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:57 am
Klink, who calls everyone who disagrees with him a Nazi, thinks the toxic rhetoric should stop.

Did I?

If you don’t want to be called a member of the Bund, don’t support stupid Hitler.

If he didn’t want to be stupid Hitler, he shouldn’t speak like a moronic Nazi.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/2/2024 @ 12:02 pm
Accurately describing things and putting the correct label on them might make the Bund angry, but being a member self selected the label.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/2/2024 @ 12:03 pm
@130 Naming yourself after a Nazi is direct self selection. You tell on yourself with every comment.
lloyd (e31e0f) — 11/2/2024 @ 12:13 pm
How citizens vote is mostly a state matter, with the exception of overseas military personnel). Fifteen states require a specific reason to request an absentee ballot.

Only eight states allow all elections to be conducted entirely by mail: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington State. However, there have been no such statewide elections in California. Oregon has been conducting mail only elections since 1998.

Most states had some sort of absentee voting long before the pandemic or Donald Trump occurred. And there is no evidence that extended voting periods or absentee voting discriminate against on party or another. In fact, states from New Mexico to Delaware (with the exceptions of Alabama and Mississippi) have early in-person voting.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/2/2024 @ 12:17 pm
You understand that Hogan’s Heroes was a fictional American sitcom right?
Werner Klemperer was jewish too.

Also, stupid Hitler and the Bund live in this reality, they/you are saying these things in earnest.

Not knowing the difference between reality and make believe is an indicator of a mental deficiency.

You may want to check with a healthcare professional, and no, that isn’t RFK Jr.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/2/2024 @ 12:27 pm
It’s impossible to attribute good faith to the MAGAs claiming that Trump was only objecting to Liz Cheney over foreign policy (which apparently hadn’t been a source of contention before the second impeachment) and that he was expressing a noble concern about the human cost of war – notwithstanding his obvious lack of empathy in general and the specific ways he has shown callousness toward wounded warriors and relatives of the fallen.

“But people aren’t given a rifle when they face a firing squad!” say MAGAs. Fair point. But soldiers in battle are quite unlikely to find themselves staring at nine rifles trained directly at their face – a scenario much more like a firing squad.

Either way, Trump took delight in imagining a personal enemy meeting a violent death. And every one of his apologists must know, deep down, that it isn’t because she’s trying to get more Americans killed in war.

She does, however, believe in giving material aid to a friendly country struggling to survive a brutal imperialistic assault by a sworn adversary of the U.S. MAGAs cynically claim that such aid is “warmongering.” Many of them are objectively on Russia’s side, and some have gotten Russian money to promote a line that favors Trump and Russian despotism – while claiming to be the true American patriots.

But Russia’s manipulation of Trump and infiltration of Western conservatism is another long story.
Radegunda (ddd71b) — 11/2/2024 @ 1:04 pm
Hey look, it’s the President of the United States advocating violence against his political opponents!

https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1852802221295165849
SaveFarris (488fe4) — 11/2/2024 @ 1:10 pm
If you don’t want to be called a member of the Bund, don’t support stupid Hitler.

See, he only calls the people who disagree with him a Nazi. What could be fairer?
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/2/2024 @ 1:35 pm
Typical Bund, stupid Hitler says, “shoot her in the face”

Biden says “are the kind of guys you’d like to smack in the ass.”

Totally same.

Whatabout squirrel.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/2/2024 @ 1:36 pm
You understand that Hogan’s Heroes was a fictional American sitcom right?

So, dress as Klink for Halloween sometime and tell us how it goes. (“Wait, wait, it’s a FICTIONAL Nazi!”)
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/2/2024 @ 1:37 pm
See, he only calls the people who disagree with him a Nazi. What could be fairer?

Again, again, again. The Bund, you only support stupid Hitler, your only being called a Nazi by the voices in your head.

Those voices are your conscious telling you that those words sound like those one guys, back in those times, bad hombres those.

Tell me, what does “poisoning the blood of our country” mean?

Tell me, what does “America is for Americans, and Americans Only” mean?
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/2/2024 @ 1:44 pm
So, dress as Klink for Halloween sometime and tell us how it goes. (“Wait, wait, it’s a FICTIONAL Nazi!”)

Such of bunch of delicate snowflakes. Embrace your Bundness, be strong and proud of your Bundness.

If you’re feeling shame, that, again, is your conscious telling you something.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/2/2024 @ 1:47 pm
So, dress as Klink for Halloween sometime and tell us how it goes. (“Wait, wait, it’s a FICTIONAL Nazi!”)

Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/2/2024 @ 1:37 pm

Not well.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/2/2024 @ 2:00 pm
This bit from Yeats has been much on my mind of late:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

I wish you all well. I am very frightened about the future, no matter what happens on Election Day.
Simon Jester (28f934) — 11/2/2024 @ 2:06 pm
Biden has the newly-minted Presidential immunity and 75 days after Election Day within which to SEAL the deal.
nk (3be84d) — 11/2/2024 @ 2:10 pm
By which I mean to oversee an orderly transition and insure a peaceful transfer of power on January 20, 2025.
nk (3be84d) — 11/2/2024 @ 2:12 pm
What did you think I meant?
nk (3be84d) — 11/2/2024 @ 2:12 pm
The UK Tories have a new leader:

Britain’s Conservative Party announced on Saturday that it had selected Kemi Badenoch as its leader, putting a charismatic, often combative, right-wing firebrand at the helm of a party that suffered a crushing election defeat in July.

Ms. Badenoch, 44, whose parents were immigrants from Nigeria, becomes the first Black woman to head a party that has had three other female leaders — Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss. She succeeds Rishi Sunak, who became the first nonwhite British prime minister after taking over the Tories, Britain’s oldest party, in 2022.
………….
There is no guarantee, despite her swift ascent, that Ms. Badenoch will ever get to 10 Downing Street. The Labour Party’s landslide victory gave it a huge majority in Parliament and the Tories face at least four years in opposition before the next election is due.
…………….
In a lively, occasionally bitter, leadership contest, Ms. Badenoch defeated Robert Jenrick, another former cabinet minister, by a vote of 53,806 to 41,388 among the party’s 130,000 or so dues-paying members (about 73 percent voted). ………..

Ms. Badenoch has vowed to rebuild the Tory Party on more authentically conservative foundations, saying her training as a computer engineer had taught her how to fix problems. She speaks often of “first principles” like freedom and individual responsibility. And she has not hesitated to wade into thorny issues like transgender rights or Britain’s colonial legacy, deploring “woke” ideology and “nasty identity politics.”

In her brief speech, Ms. Badenoch vowed to “reset our politics and our thinking” and to be “honest about the fact that we made mistakes.” But she did not lay out any new policy positions, in keeping with her refusal during the contest to be pinned down on specific policies.

“It’s quite unusual to go into a leadership contest eschewing the idea that you need to put together policies for the party,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics and an expert on the Conservative Party at Queen Mary University of London.

Ms. Badenoch, he said, was also distinguished by her outspoken style and willingness to get into fierce debates over issues. He has described her as a “thinking man’s Thatcherite cultural warrior.”
………….
And it is not clear, given the size of Labour’s majority, how much Ms. Badenoch can hope to achieve as leader of the opposition, a post that is sometimes described as the worst in British politics because of the dearth of power and shrunken media attention.
………….
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/2/2024 @ 2:13 pm
@126 is Der Drumpfelschnitzel talking about Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks:

Trump: Your team is very good. I would say the Greek is a seriously good player, do you agree? And tell me, who has more Greek in him? The Greek or me? I think we have about the same right?

Who can say, Donnie? It’s mama’s baby, daddy’s maybe. It is the fortunate child which knows who their father is.
nk (3be84d) — 11/2/2024 @ 2:36 pm
Angel On My Shoulder (1946)
Paul Muni: The way you talk, you must’ve had a good education.
Claude Rains: A most liberal one.
Paul Muni: I only went through the third grade.
Claude Rains: I went through the whole gamut of learning. I know everything.
Paul Muni: Stuck on yourself, huh? What’s your name?
Claude Rains: Well, I have a number of aliases. I have a long record under the name of Mephistopheles.
Paul Muni: Greek, huh?
Claude Rains: Well, there are some who claim I’m more of one nation than another, but that’s not true, Eddie. I’m of all nations, I play no favorites.
nk (3be84d) — 11/2/2024 @ 2:40 pm
Fourth news item:

Trump’s FEC complaint against CBS has about the same chance of success as his lawsuit against CBS and his FEC complaint against the (former) Biden presidential campaign and the Harris campaign regarding the transfer of campaign funds.

That is to say, none at all. It’s all performance art.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/2/2024 @ 4:14 pm
It’s also a bit like this:

I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the sacred store
Where I’d heard the music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play

And in the streets, the children screamed
The lovers cried and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the music died
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/2/2024 @ 4:47 pm
And it is not clear, given the size of Labour’s majority, how much Ms. Badenoch can hope to achieve as leader of the opposition, a post that is sometimes described as the worst in British politics because of the dearth of power and shrunken media attention.

It’s not the size that matters….
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/2/2024 @ 4:49 pm
149. I am less sanguine about the lawsuit. It was filed before Matthew Kaczmaryk in Amarillo, and the supervising Justice for the Fifth Circuit is Martha Ann’s husband.
nk (3be84d) — 11/2/2024 @ 5:19 pm
Does Trump even know it was filed? I mean, after all, there is no bigger champion of the First Amendment:

“I don’t know anything about it. First time I’ve heard of it. It’s up to the lawyers. I don’t know what they do. I haven’t talked to them.”
nk (3be84d) — 11/2/2024 @ 5:23 pm
123: at least you’re always civil. The Col seems to have lost it. Have a nice rest of the weekend.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (b6ff8f) — 11/2/2024 @ 6:50 pm
I am less sanguine about the (CBS) lawsuit. It was filed before Matthew Kaczmaryk in Amarillo, and the supervising Justice for the Fifth Circuit is Martha Ann’s husband.

nk (3be84d) — 11/2/2024 @ 5:19 pm

Forum shopping. I expect that it will end up being dismissed as Trump will refuse to be deposed.

Any claim made by the lawsuit justifying filing in Texas is tenuous at best:

The lawsuit said it was filed in Texas because CBS engages in “substantial and not isolated business activities” there. “The Interview was aired in Texas, remains accessible to the general public in Texas, and has been viewed by individuals in Texas,” the complaint said.

Since neither CBS or Trump have a business connection to Texas, it will ultimately be moved to New York or Florida before being thrown out of court.
Rip Murdock (13c0d4) — 11/2/2024 @ 7:15 pm
I don’t know if Trump would fit properly into the nazi category or not, but he certainly has admiration for totalitarian dictators and seems to want to be one and he seems to be fairly xenophobic, so I don’t know that he would fit properly outside the nazi category either. Probably he’d fit best among the economic barons of the Gilded Age, but I don’t think he’d actually be tough enough to survive them. William Randolph Hearst and/or Teddy Roosevelt would take him apart.
Nic (120c94) — 11/2/2024 @ 7:35 pm
New Selzer poll has Harris fans abuzz. +3 in Iowa. The same poll had Trump over Hillary +7 in 2016. This is seen as a sign that pollsters might have heretofore missed support for Harris among older rural women.

I’m also hearing buzz that Geo W. Bush might endorse Harris soon.
JRH (b05069) — 11/2/2024 @ 8:08 pm
R.I.P. Greg Hildebrandt, fantasy and SF artist who, with his brother Tim, did iconic artwork for The Lord of the Rings, as well as the original Star Wars movie poster
Icy (4863f3) — 11/2/2024 @ 8:19 pm
> Ridiculous. Voting is a civic duty, something most of us would do even when inconvenient.

I have a two hour each direction commute, and regularly have meetings both at 8am and 4pm. It is *extremely* likely that, absent early voting and/or absentee voting, I could not manage to meet my work commitments *and* vote.

I am far from alone.

I have a close friend who is (a) working and (b) effectively a single mother (because her husband is more or less absentee, preferring to focus on work and drinking with friends), and (c) has two kids who are active in high school swimming (which takes up an enormous amount of *parental* time). It is extremely likely that, absent early voting and/or absentee voting, she could not manage ot meet her work commitments, her family commitments, and vote.

She is far from alone.

Like I said above, a decade ago, more than half of the votes in California elections were cast by mail ballot. This has been a slow developing trend in California elections for decades, and the primary reason for it is that it is a substantially better voter experience. It would be absolutely impossible to repeal it in California now; it is such a popular thing that there would be a referendum and the change would be voted down something like 70-30.

> And, the process for absentee ballots as it existed for decades is very different than mail-in. It’s ridiculous to draw an equivalence.

I can only speak for California on this, because California is where most of my voting experience has been, and where I have followed legal developments the most closely. I *worked as an election official in every election from 1992-2008 inclusive*, and I volunteered with election integrity monitoring groups in both 2012 and 2016.

The process is largely the same: the county mails you a ballot, you fill it out, place it in the envelope, sign the envelope, and return it. The county does some sort of signature match verification and either (a) counts your ballot or (b) rejects the ballot. Ballots received prior to 5pm or so on election day are signature matched and verified prior to the precinct ballots coming in, and are run through the counting machines as soon as the polls closed. Ballots received on election day or in the three days after it (but postmarked by election day) are signature matched and counted after the precinct ballots are cast. “late absentees” (the ones received on election day or in the next three days) are validated against the precinct roster so anyone who voted in precinct, their absentee isn’t counted.

The changes are:

* there are now bar code tracking systems where you can go to a website (or sign up for either text or email alerts) to find out when your ballot has been mailed, when your ballot has been received, whether it has been accepted or rejected, and when it has been counted

* it’s now easier to return your ballot, because there are drop boxes everywhere; used to be you had to go to the county elections office, return it to a polling place on election day, or use the postal service.

* rather than having to sign up in advance (in the 80s you had to sign up for every election, then for a while that was true unless you were old, then sometime in the late 90s or early 00s you could just sign up once and be a permanent absentee voter), everyone gets mailed a ballot. (but again, in 2014, more than half of the votes were cast absentee, even under the old sign-up-once-to-be-permanent-absentee system).

* it used to be that the precinct books were marked with the names of people who had gotten absentee ballots and they could only vote provisionally in precinct unless they could surrender their unvoted absentee. now everyone can only vote provisionally in precinct unless they can surrender their unvoted vote by mail ballot.

what we have in California today is a natural evolution of the absentee system. we started pilot testing universal vote by mail in one county in *2012* and expanded it slowly in every election after that; it was like 15% of the counties in the state in 2018, and all of the political momentum was towards broadening it over time.

> Those claiming it had anything to do with Covid are simply lying.

Again, I can only speak for California, where it was a natural evolution of what was already happening. The difference was that in California there was a real fear by many voters that going to polling places was a potential health (and/or life) risk, and the temporary (until 2021) expansion passed with like three people in the legislature voting against. We were going to this end point eventually *anyway*, we had been testing it via slow phased rollout for a decade; covid sped the timeline up by something like five to seven years, that’s all.

> Those who think it had nothing to do with a cynical calculation that it would harm Trump’s chances are lying

In California, Trump had no chances to harm. No Republican has won a statewide election in California since 2006, and that was Arnie; no Republican other than Arnie has won a statewide election in California since *1998*. Trump never polled more than 35% statewide. He is *enormously* unpopular in the state’s urban and suburban areas, and while there are regions which support him, they’re not regions which have enough population to direct statewide outcomes.
aphrael (bcbcb0) — 11/2/2024 @ 10:36 pm
> However, there have been no such statewide elections in California.

This is not entirely true. All state elections since June 2020 have involved every voter being mailed a ballot, with an option to vote in person. Per https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/historical-absentee, fewer than fifteen percent of ballots have been cast by anything other than vote-by-mail since the law changed. But note, too, that *even before 2020* the trend had been towards more and more vote by mail usage.
aphrael (bcbcb0) — 11/2/2024 @ 10:36 pm
@157. That Selzer poll shook up the prediction markets, but paraphrasing Tom Nichols, I refuse to give in to optimism. As of this afternoon, Atlas Strategies still has Trump up in every battleground state. If Selzer is within the margin of error (i.e., Iowa is a tossup), that likely means a Harris win in the E.C., and I won’t believe that until I see it.
lurker (c23034) — 11/2/2024 @ 10:39 pm
There’s also this.
lurker (c23034) — 11/2/2024 @ 10:46 pm
@159 “The process is largely the same”

No, it is not. For decades, you get an absentee ballot by requesting it. Mail in ballots are sent to all registered voters.

I said nothing about early voting. Early voting and mail in voting are two different things. In California, the polling stations opened almost a week ago. Anyone saying they are inconvenienced if there is no mail in voting are likely just lying. They can request an absentee ballot if necessary, as they’ve been able to do for decades. No one is inconvenienced.
lloyd (db48a5) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:02 pm
> No, it is not. For decades, you get an absentee ballot by requesting it. Mail in ballots are sent to all registered voters.

In California for close to a quarter century you could file a piece of paperwork that said “always mail me a ballot”, *once*, and then you were done.

Close to half the state had done that by the mid-2010s.

It hasn’t been true that you have to request an absentee ballot every election for most of my voting life.

> Early voting and mail in voting are two different things.

Usually authorized and set up by the same legislation, with the same underlying motivation.
aphrael (bcbcb0) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:17 pm
@164 ‘In California for close to a quarter century you could file a piece of paperwork that said “always mail me a ballot”, *once*, and then you were done.’

And by the mid-2010s California had become a one party state. It isn’t a swing state like the ones where virtually all the mail in voting litigation is focused, and where the outcome of that litigation can decide who becomes president.
lloyd (bbce9c) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:32 pm
@164 “Usually authorized and set up by the same legislation, with the same underlying motivation.”

So what? The point is voting at a polling station, whether on Election Day or earlier, doesn’t have the issues that mail in voting has that make it the subject of litigation and doubts about integrity.
lloyd (bbce9c) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:38 pm
Yes, and?

You were arguing that the *intended purpose* of mail-in voting is to cause litigation.

That allegation is nonsense, at least in California.

It’s also very unlikely to be the intended purpose in Utah, which has adopted mail-in voting within the last four years.

It was very clearly not the purpose in Washington when Washington allowed counties to choose it on a county-by-county basis in 2005.

Or in Oregon, when they conducted their first all-mail election in *1996* and when the *voters themselves demanded it via a ballot initiative in 1998*.

Or in Hawaii, where the legislature adopted it in 2019 (but there was no realistic impact on Trump because he never had a chance their, either).

Or in Colorado, which adopted it in 2013 (effective 2016) in legislation which rhetorically claimed that the purpose was to *reduce the cost of election administration* (which was, in fact, reduced by something close to 40%, per a study by the Pew Trust).

You made a wildly inaccurate and absurd claim. Maybe you intended it to be scoped to *just certain swing states that adopted it in 2020*, but you didn’t scope it that way.

The states which had adopted universal (or near universal) mail-in voting prior to 2020 were not doing so because corrupt politicians were trying to induce legal battles; most of those states *had no legal battles whatsoever*. The legal battles didn’t start until Trumpists, in 2020, noticed that a lot of Democrats were voting by mail and decided to try to make an issue of it.
aphrael (bcbcb0) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:41 pm
One of the funny things here is I long opposed widespread absentee voting on the grounds that it makes it possible for a usive spouses to coerce votes, makes it easier to sell votes by making proof of votes possible, and makes it easier for labor unions and employees to coerce votes, because it can interfere with the secrecy of the ballot.

I lost the argument, though, because the overwhelming majority of voters prefer to be able to vote from the comfort of their homes.
aphrael (0530e4) — 11/3/2024 @ 12:00 am
@167 “The legal battles didn’t start until Trumpists, in 2020, noticed that a lot of Democrats were voting by mail and decided to try to make an issue of it.”

BS

There was litigation in 2020 by Democrats about drop box locations and voting rules regarding postmarks, to name just a couple of examples. There are cases now in this election brought by Democrats, and fought by Democrats.
lloyd (d006b9) — 11/3/2024 @ 12:02 am
The Bund is claiming the 1=37, the Bund should provide examples to compare and contrast.

Or the Bund is doing what the Bund does; claim THE WATER IS BOILING, but we look and there are only ice cubes. Technically, a word was correct, water, but I don’t think it’s the same thing.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/3/2024 @ 12:41 am
@98 they are thinking about themselves like methane gas exploding into the atmosphere in siberia from global warming. Cut flesh to cut meat. (japanese saying) The corporate democrats, dnc and donor class hate trump ;but fear the left taking over an angry dispirited liberal/moderate democrats if kamala loses. Especially in moderate senators lose as in 1980.
asset (9f1fa3) — 11/3/2024 @ 1:28 am
@125 democrats in past have agreed on national voter ID for citizens only to use to vote. Rethugs said NO! It has to be state ID’s that we can manipulate to keep as many democrats from voting as possible. Ask your local rethugliKKKan congresscriter if he supports a national voter ID to prevent non citizens from voting?
asset (9f1fa3) — 11/3/2024 @ 1:39 am
My vote for Jill Stein green party looks better every day! Hope she takes out kamala. AOC will be first woman president!
asset (9f1fa3) — 11/3/2024 @ 1:43 am
Mr. Former President Donald Trump said that Vote By Mail is bad except in Florida where that is how he votes, and anybody who says that Vote By Mail is not bad except in Florida where that is how Mr. Trump votes is a leftist, liberal, commie, China-loving, Never Trump, RINO who has strayed from the Path of Righteousness and fallen into the snares of childless cat ladies and open borders warmongers.
nk (8a8ccd) — 11/3/2024 @ 4:20 am
This time around, Michael Wolff has tapes, specifically tape-recorded conversations between him and Jeffrey Epstein in 2017, two years before he was arrested for diddling minor-aged girls and after Trump was elected.

Epstein painted a complicated portrait of Trump. He called him “charming,” and “always fun,” capable of extraordinary salesmanship, and suggested he was personally in favor of Trump’s policies on “the transgender stuff.” But he alleged Trump was a serial cheat in his marriages and loved to “f— the wives of his best friends.”

He also claimed that while Trump has friends, he was at heart a friendless man incapable of kindness. And he alleged that Trump had had scalp reduction surgery for baldness and called himself “The Trumpster.”

Asked by Wolff, “How do you know all this?” Epstein replied, “I was Donald’s closest friend for 10 years.”
[…]
He offers a portrait of Trump womanizing, yelling at staff and living a basically friendless life with only his daughter Ivanka, his secretary and his bodyguard truly loyal to him.

Trump, he said, was almost “functionally illiterate” but did read the Page Six gossip column in the New York Post. He was “incapable” of reading a balance sheet, and any “act of kindness” would have been an accident, Epstein said

But it is Epstein’s description of Trump’s conduct toward women which is likely to attract most attention, given the pair’s long friendship, and the 28 women who have made accusations against the former president of sexual misconduct (all of which he denies). Many of the attacks are alleged to have occurred when he and Epstein were friends.

On the tape Epstein can be heard saying, “He’s a horrible human being. He does nasty things to his best friends, best friends’ wives, anyone who he first tries to gain their trust and uses it to do bad things to them.”

On one occasion, Epstein alleged, Trump took a woman to what he called “the Egyptian Room” in an Atlantic City casino. Epstein alleged, “He came out afterward and said, ‘It was great, it was great. The only thing I really like to do is f— the wives of my best friends. That is just the best.’”

He alleged that he and Trump would pick up women by combining to split them from their male companions. “We always used to go to Atlantic City to try to find girls in the casino,” he said. “And if there was a guy, I would say, ‘I’m here to invite the guy to go out to dinner.’ And he’d say, [to the woman], ‘Let me show you the casino.’ And as he walked out, he put his arm around the girl’s shoulder, and the bodyguard would walk up and Donald, whoosh, take the girl away.”

Epstein also alleged that Trump had an elaborate scheme to procure sex with his friends’ wives. He would call the men into his Trump Tower office to ask them about their sex lives and offer them sex with beauty pageant contestants, the pedophile said. He would do this while the wives were—unknown to their husbands—listening on speakerphone, so that he could then seduce the wives on the basis their husbands had betrayed them, Epstein claimed.

The part that I question is that Trump is capable of elaborate schemes, because his Fake Elector scheme was anything but elaborate, but maybe it’s different if he’s trying to get laid. More.

The tape mixes sexual allegations with other aspects of Trump’s life. Early in the recording Epstein is heard to say, “You probably know he had a scalp reduction. He’s getting the same male pattern baldness that we all have. He had his scalp reduced. It’s hysterical.” Trump has long refused to release full medical records while his White House medical reports did not disclose any prior surgeries.
[…]
And Epstein offers his eyewitness account of Trump Tower and Trump’s office where, he said, Trump had “fake honors” on the wall. Trump, he claimed, would yell at his personal assistant Rhona Graff, “who’s a loyal, perfect, secretary,” as well as Matthew Calamari Snr., his bodyguard, and Michael Cohen, his attorney who is now an enemy. Epstein compared Trump to “an emotionally challenged 9-year-old,” and said, “He screams and yells at Rhona more than anybody else. His screaming is how he treats people. He has a tantrum, not a temper. If you don’t understand him, it’s frightening. Once you understand him, it’s sort of silly.”

Epstein also told Wolff he had positive things to say about Trump. “He’s charming. In a devious way, he’s charming,” he said. “To some extent it’s a typical tragedy where he believes his own bulls—. He has delusions of grandiosity, then he takes it on board.” He added that he had a “self-deprecating nature” and was “not vulgar.”

“He’s funny,” Epstein said. “Self-awareness means you’re self-aware. He’s aware of that person, Donald Trump. He talks about The Trump, The Trumpster. ‘Trump’s getting laid.’”

Despite Epstein speaking of his “Democratic friends,” he offered praise for some aspects of Trump’s time in office, and said, “I think he’s doing a pretty good job at certain things and he’s not getting credit for it. All the transgender stuff, the bathroom stuff, giving police back their weapons.”
[…]
Startlingly for a man who became one of the world’s most notorious sex offenders, Epstein on the tapes offers a damning judgment of Trump, telling Wolff, “The moral compass just does not exist.”

The timing of this is curious. Instead of a few days before the election, why not a few weeks earlier, when the no longer surprising October Surprises usually come out?
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/3/2024 @ 7:52 am
It give less time for people to rationalize that if any of this were true, the 2015/16 spying Obama Feds would have clobbered Trump’s chances against Hilary. Instead they pushed a fake pee story.
BuDuh (913a03) — 11/3/2024 @ 8:15 am
It was very clearly not the purpose in Washington when Washington allowed counties to choose it on a county-by-county basis in 2005.

Speaking from experience, mail-in voting in WA State has been pulled off with scarcely a hitch. There was an in-depth study of vote fraud a few years ago and, out of 3.1 million ballots, only 142 were illegal, a rate of 0.005%.
The most controversial election was 2004, before widespread mail-in voting, where Christine Gregoire edged out Dino Rossi by barely three digits, because of the disturbing amount of incompetence (not fraud) at King County.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/3/2024 @ 8:15 am
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/11/03/rogan_stumps_sen_john_fetterman_someone_is_moving_illegal_immigrants_to_swing_states_and_democrats_want_them_to_vote.html
BuDuh (913a03) — 11/3/2024 @ 8:18 am
There was an in-depth study of vote fraud a few years ago and, out of 3.1 million ballots, only 142 were illegal, a rate of 0.005%.

I would be interested to see that study.
BuDuh (913a03) — 11/3/2024 @ 8:19 am
From another source on some of the content of Wolff’s tapes:

Leaked audio appears to reveal Jeffrey Epstein detailing inner workings of Trump White House

Epstein is heard in the audio telling Wolff how then-president Trump played his administration officials off against each other.

“His people fight each other and then he poisons the well outside,” he says.

Offering examples, he names then-Trump officials Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway: “He will tell 10 people ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kellyanne has a big mouth – what do you think?’

“‘[JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to [financier] Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson.’”

Epstein continues: “So Kelly[anne] – even though I hired Kellyanne’s husband – Kellyanne is just too much of a wildcard. And then he tells Bannon, ‘You know I really want to keep you but Kellyanne hates you.’”

I did not know that George Conway worked for Epstein. Is that scandalous?
BuDuh (913a03) — 11/3/2024 @ 8:31 am
Speaking from experience, mail-in voting in WA State has been pulled off with scarcely a hitch. There was an in-depth study of vote fraud a few years ago and, out of 3.1 million ballots, only 142 were illegal, a rate of 0.005%.
The most controversial election was 2004, before widespread mail-in voting, where Christine Gregoire edged out Dino Rossi by barely three digits, because of the disturbing amount of incompetence (not fraud) at King County.

Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/3/2024 @ 8:15 am

Sound politics at the time showed plenty of fraud beyond the margin of victory. The lawsuit was unfairly dismissed because there was no way to prove the illegal votes went to Gregoire even though it was obvious the felon vote did
NJRob (b31871) — 11/3/2024 @ 8:45 am
How did you not know this, it’s the reason Conway is famous? The Bund memory holes an entire four years. stupid Hitler was president for four years, we know what he’s like, as the sane people left, it left stupid Hitler with only the Bund to advise him.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/3/2024 @ 8:46 am
One of the United States’ foremost white supremacists is urging his followers to support Vice President Harris in the presidential election next week.

Richard Spencer, an avowed racist, antisemite and admirer of Nazism who coined the term “alt-right” and was a featured speaker when he took part in the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Va., called Harris the “best manager of the American empire.”

Spencer — who also gained international recognition after yelling “Hail Trump! Hail our people!” and being greeted with Nazi salutes during a white nationalist event in November 2016 — also condemned former President Trump’s strong support of Israel.
BuDuh (913a03) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:07 am
The WA Post examined vote fraud in three 100% mail-in states, CO, UT and WA, and the overall fraud percentage was 0.0025%.

WA State rejects tens of thousands of ballots every election for signature mismatches, then voters have the opportunity to verify their ballots. A few years ago, my ballot wasn’t rejected but the county or state asked me to update my signature, which is reasonable because my signature has changed over the years.

There was an October 2020 study of dead people voting in WA State.

Among roughly 4.5 million distinct voters in Washington state between 2011 and 2018, we estimate that there are 14 deceased individuals whose ballots might have been cast suspiciously long after their death, representing 0.0003% of voters.

The study goes into detail about how the state keeps the voter rolls up-to-date and accurate, and there’s a deterrent effect, which is being hit with a Class C felony and up to five years behind bars if you cast illegal ballots, and that’s just at the state level.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:12 am
Spencer … also condemned former President Trump’s strong support of Israel.

Once in office, Harris’ support will evolve.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:13 am
the disturbing amount of incompetence (not fraud) at King County.

West Coast incompetence always favors the Left.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:14 am
Michael Wolff has tapes

Tapes of hearsay, and hearsay of hearsay.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:17 am
My vote for Jill Stein green party looks better every day! Hope she takes out kamala. AOC will be first woman president!

In an era where Harris cannot close the deal because the Left offers no attractions, against a clown who also offers no attractions, the Left argues that “we just weren’t Leftist enough!”

If only there was a candidate for the 60% who say “Meh!”
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:19 am
Sound politics at the time showed plenty of fraud beyond the margin of victory. The lawsuit was unfairly dismissed because there was no way to prove the illegal votes went to Gregoire even though it was obvious the felon vote did.

Good grief, Rob. Here you are, 3,000 miles away and you’re still pretending you know more about what happened in WA State politics than a politically engaged lifelong resident. I met and spoke with Sharkansky, who ran Sound Politics. There were plenty of questions about King County, but scarcely any evidence of illegal ballots. Just like with Trump’s bogus claims about fraud, the court threw it out for lack of evidence.

BTW Rob, I’m still waiting for you back up your smear that, “You pushed the 51 intelligence officials garbage hook, line and sinker. You took the bait because you wanted the lie to be true.”
Show your work, Rob, back up your assertion. Try and use facts.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:21 am
I lost the argument, though, because the overwhelming majority of voters prefer to be able to vote from the comfort of their homes.

Voting should be Friday-Tuesday, in person, with the State providing home voting visits to shut-ins. Absentee voting can also be done in-person at special absentee voting kiosks. It’s fairly simple software.

In my state I can vote at any location in my county and my districts automatically load given my name and address. Again, simple software. No reason it can’t be used at a wider level.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:24 am
@189:

Who needs illegal ballots when you can just count the ones you want? Miami-Dade 2000 was a clear demonstration of that.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:26 am
Thanks Paul. I will study it later.

Separately, did you have any idea that George Conway worked for Epstein? I can’t find anything in the search engines.
BuDuh (913a03) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:34 am
Also, Dino Rossi has been a business partner with a friend of mine for well over a decade, and he likened the 2004 governor’s race to Bush v. Gore, not Trump’s Big Lie. Unlike Trump, Rossi has always been a classy guy.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/3/2024 @ 9:59 am
aphrael (bcbcb0) — 11/2/2024 @ 11:41 pm

The states which had adopted universal (or near universal) mail-in voting prior to 2020 were not doing so because corrupt politicians were trying to induce legal battles; most of those states *had no legal battles whatsoever*. The legal battles didn’t start until Trumpists, in 2020,

This is what anyone with some knowledge and a memory, knows, although maybe some people just heard about massive absentee voting in 2020.

noticed that a lot of Democrats were voting by mail and decided to try to make an issue of it.

They didn’t just notice it, They tried to exacerbate it before the election in order to make claims if having not lost look more credible. They succeeded in that, at the price maybe of turning victory into defeat, at least in Georgia.

Steve Bannon may have been behind thatstrategy,,
Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:03 am
Garry Kasparov, who was born in Soviet Russia and lived in Putin’s Russia until 2013, when it became no longer tenable for him to live there, is voting against Trump.

Donald Trump has been breaking down the guardrails of American democracy for nearly a decade now. Generations to come will reap the consequences. His presidency—and his three campaigns for the office—have demonstrated that the institutions so many of us took for granted are, in large part, based on custom and tradition, not written law. As Ronald Reagan famously said, freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction.” The political system we hold dear is deeply fragile, and depends on our constant commitment to uphold it.

Trump hasn’t even won the election yet—and his victory is far from assured—but we are already seeing signs of preemptive obedience that should look familiar to many refugees from repressive regimes like me. Both the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times canceled endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this month at the behest of their owners, a de facto silencing of two major national newspapers. It should come as no surprise that business owners are careful to avoid upsetting someone who has frequently called for his detractors to be locked up, or in the case of Liz Cheney, have guns “trained on her face.”

Given my experience, I am not willing to stand idly by and watch the beacon of hope that I am grateful to now call home slide into the authoritarianism of my childhood. This election is a choice between a candidate who has vowed to fight for America’s institutions, and one who is deeply dangerous—a candidate who I believe will bring total mayhem and destruction to this country.

In a follow-up tweet, this…

I’m a lifelong anti-Communist, anti-authoritarian dissident who has been honored at the institutes and libraries of Truman, Churchill, Goldwater, and Reagan. When I endorse Harris, you might question the assertion that she’s a “Marxist”. Trump remains the clear & present danger.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:22 am
https://virtualtout.com

Here is the current electoral vote forecast (270 needed to win):

Democratic: Harris/Walz (301)
Republican: Trump/Vance (237)

Giving Harris Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, and Trump Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina, and the rest, including Iowa and New Hampshire, as previously forecast, would give Harris 270 Electoral votes and Trump 268, excluding any faithless electors.
Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:25 am
Charles Stirewalt, who was sacked by FoxNews under orders by Trump, for correctly calling Arizona, weighs in on how to view the results this Tuesday night. A key is how Georgia and North Carolina will turn out, which we’ll know around 9:30pm EST.
The podcast with Jonah and Stirewalt is pretty good.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:33 am
@195

Garry Kasparov, who was born in Soviet Russia and lived in Putin’s Russia until 2013, when it became no longer tenable for him to live there, is voting against Trump

Paul, that’s quite a scoop since Kasparov is not a US citizen.
lloyd (48fdef) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:34 am
Giving Harris Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, and Trump Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina, and the rest, including Iowa and New Hampshire

https://www.realclearpolling.com/maps/president/2024/no-toss-up/electoral-college

287-251 Trump, with PA going to Trump.

One thing to note: Harris is polling significantly lower that Biden 2020, and Biden squeaked through at the end by a handful of votes. Maybe polling is better now, but if there is any statistical offset it is probably still there. A lot of people are shy about admitting they’re voting for Trump.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:35 am
Though, Kasparov has advocated having non-citizens vote in US elections. That’s a very democratic pro-American position, of course.
lloyd (48fdef) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:35 am
Whoever wins PA, wins.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:35 am
Though, Kasparov has advocated having non-citizens vote in US elections.

Foreign aid would be far more robust if that was so.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:36 am
Unlike Trump, Rossi has always been a classy guy.

A “Trump” is a unit of measure of assholity. Most jerks only score a few milliTrumps.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:38 am
Regrets

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday said he thought he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after he lost the 2020 election that he has not conceded.

“We had the safest border in the history of our country the day that I left. I shouldn’t have left. I mean, honestly, because … we did so well, we had such a great — so now, I mean every, every polling booth has hundreds of lawyers standing there,” Trump said during a rally in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
…………..
Rip Murdock (22dc41) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:42 am
Paul, that’s quite a scoop since Kasparov is not a US citizen.

You’re right. Supporting, not voting.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:50 am
After deep thought and reviewing the scientific literature, Trump has endorsed RFKJr’s proposal to ban fluoride in drinking water.

“Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds okay to me. You know it’s possible,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News’ Dasha Burns, when asked about Kennedy’s proposition.
…………..
Trump also said Kennedy would have a big role crafting public health policy in any Trump administration.
…………..
Asked by NBC News whether “banning certain vaccines might be on the table” if Trump were president and Kennedy was in his administration, Trump left the door open.
………….
Rip Murdock (85a0ee) — 11/3/2024 @ 1:00 pm
Interesting to find out that a Chinese student in Michigan registered to vote- and voted- even though ineligible. Vote still counts. (Person should be deported)
Speaker Johnson is saying ineligible people are being solicited to sign up and vote. Even if they are caught later, the still vote counts. No way to prove who they voted for. Speakers gonna speak, but in order to have people believe in the security and honesty of the vote, we need to go to ID. Something like 80% of eligible voters favor ID
https://news.gallup.com/poll/403052/eight-americans-favor-early-voting-photo-laws.aspx

This non citizen voting could/would make a huge difference in House Districts like AOC’s where ineligible people may outnumber the eligible, and the eligible may be low propensity. 24,600 voted in the election for the seat, and AOC won in a massive landslide.
However, if the race was a predicting to be a tight 2% in the weeks before the election – at 13,400 to 13,200 you could swing the district with 260 votes. So what if they find people were not supposed to have voted- the vote counts

Not having ID laws undermines faith in the system, calling people racist for wanting ID is vile (hispanics and blacks favor voter ID).
Joe Rogan reaches 14M people, and he noted the other day that the perception people have of the anti-ID faction is that it must be because they want to cheat
steveg (217850) — 11/3/2024 @ 1:22 pm
One thing to note: Harris is polling significantly lower that Biden 2020, and Biden squeaked through at the end by a handful of votes. Maybe polling is better now, but if there is any statistical offset it is probably still there. A lot of people are shy about admitting they’re voting for Trump.

Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 10:35 am

On the one hand, I imagine a lot of Trump voters don’t want to admit it. On the other, I think Trump is using push polling.

Bottom line, the polls aren’t that reliable, and they haven’t been reliable for a while. I honestly am amazed that Trump has a chance at all. As usual, I interpret that as a sign Trump’s opponent is terrible at winning support.
Dustin (4b502c) — 11/3/2024 @ 1:42 pm
@207 “Even if they are caught later, the still vote counts.”

The Chinese national was only caught because he told on himself. The 1000+ non citizens in Oregon were only caught because there was an audit — an audit other states aren’t doing. The laws of probability tell us that there are more irregularities than what just fell in our lap.
lloyd (c8e8b7) — 11/3/2024 @ 2:27 pm
Kamala reveals her vote on tough on crime Prop 36:

“So I have my ballot, it’s on its way to California, and I’m going to trust the system that it will arrive there, and I am not going to talk about the vote on that, because, honestly, it’s the Sunday before the election, and I don’t intend to create an endorsement one way or another around it.”

What a weasel.
lloyd (c8e8b7) — 11/3/2024 @ 2:37 pm
I honestly am amazed that Trump has a chance at all. As usual, I interpret that as a sign Trump’s opponent is terrible at winning support.

Trump is terrible, but the Democrats aren’t offering a direction that people want.

Biden won in 2020 with “Trust me” and a promise to govern from the center. He didn’t, and his term was mediocre, marking time in most areas. Then he tried to hide his afflictions and got caught.

Now, we have Harris with “Trust me” and a promise to govern from the center. Fool me once ….

Is it any wonder that people are conflicted and that Harris isn’t able to close the deal?
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 2:42 pm
It is as if the two parties have decided to make elections meaningless. They offer up two stooges and let us choose. The jokes on them — one of the stooges is a Real Stooge.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 2:47 pm
I will be upset no matter which one wins, and more upset when they begin to govern.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 2:50 pm
Of course Kamala voted against Prop 36. If she had voted for it, that would be worth announcing to bolster her centrist cred. Even the LA Times has projected overwhelming support for it. At 60% approval, a lot of Democrats are voting for it. That means she’s to the left of most voters in ultra blue California. But no, she’s not hard Left. No, no way.
lloyd (c8e8b7) — 11/3/2024 @ 3:12 pm
You know, it is almost as if the Loser wanted to increase crimes by illegals:

In his first week in office, Trump signed an executive order rescinding Obama-era orders that directed the Department of Homeland Security to focus its resources on detaining and removing noncitizens who committed serious crimes. Trump said he would not “exempt classes or categories of removable aliens.” His goal, he said, was enforcement “against all removable aliens.”

What did that mean in practice? Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were no longer required to focus on felons. They could arrest anyone caught here illegally, and they did — from pizza delivery drivers to domestic-violence victims to spouses of U.S. citizens with no criminal records.
. . .
From January 2017 to February 2020, the Trump administration released more than 58,000 convicted criminals into the United States, including more than 8,600 violent criminals and 306 murderers. Contrast that with the Biden administration, which reinstated enforcement priorities: Overall, the average month under Trump saw twice as many releases as under Biden.

And, unfortunately, it is possible to see why the Loser might want that increase.
Jim Miller (6f3142) — 11/3/2024 @ 3:32 pm
Jim Miller (6f3142) — 11/3/2024 @ 3:32 pm

Those that murdered Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley and others weren’t convicted criminals before they took the lives of their victims. I guess that makes Harris and Biden’s disastrous border policies a great success since they don’t show up in your statistics.
lloyd (c8e8b7) — 11/3/2024 @ 4:02 pm
Today there was a guy on the corner with a bunch of pro-Trump anti Harris sign, cornucopia of the rest of the fringe issues, but mostly anti-war.
I’ll give the guy credit due, because he is outnumbered 3-1 and he upped the ante by dressing in a shortened black nuns frock with a giant peace sign rhinestone bling necklace, banging his pot belly.
Yeah buddy. Its Halloween, and you’ve got a nuns frock in your closet hemmed at just below your junk- just in case. Executing rights to life liberty and pursuing happinesses while dressing and performing as an idiot magnet.
So on my way back from the store I hate-Home Depot- I see this stereotypical 30-‘s-40’s aged white woman- absolutely livid- pointing her finger, waving arms giving him what appeared to be, a diseased piece of her mind.
Now she probably parked in the Home Depot lot and walked over to confront him because no one walks to Home Depot. It was glorious sitting at the red light listening to the pitch of her voice, not rising and falling but rising and rising until she sounded like wicked witch of the west sending off the winged monkeys. Idiot trolls out idiot bait and catches idiot- ah, life is as it should be. Maybe they will marry and have kids.
steveg (7095e5) — 11/3/2024 @ 4:22 pm
stupid Hitler, what a stupid Nazi
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/3/2024 @ 4:29 pm
I just dropped off my ballot in the drop-box in front of the county courthouse, and my picks were…
Prez: Liz Cheney (R)
Governor: Reichert (R), former county sheriff, in the US House for a dozen years, conservative but not an election denier, and we haven’t had GOP governor here in 40 years.
Senate: Not Cantwell. Dr. Raul Garcia (R), an ER doc.
House: Not DelBene. Brewer (R), who has some real estate experience and is not an election denier.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/3/2024 @ 4:46 pm
A further point:

Biden said:

The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s

His supporter’s or his supporters’ [words – the thought is unfinished.]

It cannot refer to his supporters themselves because the word “is” there requires a sinhular noun, or else it would be “are.”

And “garbage” itself is a singular collective noun.
Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e) — 11/3/2024 @ 4:50 pm
“No President has done more for FARMERS, and the Great State of Iowa, than Donald J. Trump,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network on Sunday morning. “In fact, it’s not even close! All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, BY A LOT.”

Selzer’s polls in 16 and 20 were more accurate than any other.

Selzer & Co. conducted their final 2016 presidential poll in Iowa in early November, showing Donald Trump ahead of Hillary Clinton by seven percentage points. Most other polls at the time showed a much closer race. Trump won Iowa by 9.4 percentage points.

Selzer’s final Iowa poll ahead of the 2020 presidential election showed Trump ahead of Joe Biden by seven percentage points, and Republican Senator Joni Ernst ahead of Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield by four percentage points. This was the only poll conducted in fall 2020 to show Trump ahead by more than two points, while Ernst’s race was considered a toss-up. Trump won Iowa by 8.2 percentage points, while Ernst was re-elected by a 6.6 points. In a post-election interview with Bloomberg, Selzer suggested that her polls’ consistently high performance may be related to making fewer assumptions about the electorate, and said, “I assumed nothing. My data told me.”

So, I know, it’s a shock, but stupid Hitler is lying. It’s the 1,934,656th lie he’s told this year, vs…uh…2 truths, he likes fries, and he doesn’t exercise.

He doesn’t know literally anything, well other than no means grabembythepu$$y, that’s why he’s stupid Hitler.

stupid Hitler
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/3/2024 @ 4:51 pm
Trump lies every time he opens his mouth.

Harris lies every time she keeps it shut.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 4:59 pm
My prediction has always been a Trump loss since well before Nevertrump tried to blow his head off twice, and that hasn’t changed. We’ll get a Socialist as president and a Communist curious VP, because folks who claim to not be Leftists voted for it.
lloyd (25d86f) — 11/3/2024 @ 5:19 pm
Harris lies every time she keeps it shut.

Do the math on that one for me.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/3/2024 @ 5:36 pm
So she’s telling the truth when she’s talking, but telling a lie when not talking?

So…all she says about stupid Hitler is true.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/3/2024 @ 5:39 pm
@225 Maybe someone needs to translate it into German for you.
lloyd (25d86f) — 11/3/2024 @ 5:49 pm
@225 Maybe someone needs to translate it into German for you.

Sure, or maybe you could answer a question, or form an opinion, or…nah, must.play.bund
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/3/2024 @ 6:03 pm
Do the math on that one for me.

She lets her useful idiots assure everyone she’s still a moderate when she declines to answer questions about her still being a moderate.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 6:41 pm
For example:

“So I have my ballot, it’s on its way to California, and I’m going to trust the system that it will arrive there, and I am not going to talk about the vote on that, because, honestly, it’s the Sunday before the election, and I don’t intend to create an endorsement one way or another around it.”
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 6:42 pm
So it’s as bad as stupid Hitler lying out loud and his Bund follows through is the same bad. Any Bad=All Bad?
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/3/2024 @ 6:59 pm
It cannot refer to his supporters themselves because the word “is” there requires a sinhular noun, or else it would be “are.”

And “garbage” itself is a singular collective noun.

Very interesting… what do you make of the highlighted sentence from the same transcript?

Donald Trump has no character. He doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community. He’s failed businessman. He’s — he only cares about the billionaire friends he has and accumulating wealth for those at the top.

You know, he says immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country. Give me a break. He wants to do away with the birthright citizenship. Who the hell else said that in the last 100 years?

And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Well, let me tell you something. I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr- — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American. It’s totally contrary to everything we’ve done, everything we’ve been.

Now, Trump has di- — tried to divide the country based on race, ethnicity, anything that does harm, to take their eye off the ball about what the terrible things he’s done and will do.
BuDuh (4214e4) — 11/3/2024 @ 7:16 pm
@207 CANCELL the election in Michigan they found someone who voted illegally!
asset (dcc99e) — 11/4/2024 @ 12:20 am
@209 You cleverly leave out 1000 caught. Registered or voting?
asset (dcc99e) — 11/4/2024 @ 12:23 am
Great, stupid Hitler is just telling you all it’s going to be nasty.

Trump on his second term: "It'll be nasty a little bit at times, and maybe at the beginning in particular" pic.twitter.com/ObUwtreiFC— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 4, 2024
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/4/2024 @ 3:28 am
That is Rikers Island’s reputation.
nk (dc83c7) — 11/4/2024 @ 3:36 am
Thirty six hours, give or take. Will there be Appalachian maids playing the dulcimer in haunted caverns and wailing for their demon lover?
nk (dc83c7) — 11/4/2024 @ 5:58 am
RIP legendary musician, composer, arranger, and record executive Quincy Jones (91).
Rip Murdock (ef0954) — 11/4/2024 @ 7:14 am
Another young brave Iranian woman stands up to the theocrats. She has to know that she faces death or imprisonment.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/4/2024 @ 7:18 am
@71

I only noted that there is no constitutional bar to prevent Trump from pardoning himself

No clear authority, either.

Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/1/2024 @ 2:08 pm

It’s pretty clear and was discussed by the founders.

Most of what the constitution does is limit what the government can do. But when it does affirmatively declare what gov officials can do, it’s pretty clear.
whembly (086d13) — 11/4/2024 @ 7:20 am
NBC files FCC ‘equal time’ notice after Kamala Harris appears on ‘SNL’

Networks putting their thumb on the scales to the very end.
lloyd (fda9cc) — 11/4/2024 @ 7:24 am
Revealing that Kamala thought the SNL audience was the one she had to win over.
lloyd (fda9cc) — 11/4/2024 @ 7:25 am
Revealing that you think stupid Hitler wouldn’t stab you in the dink to get the invite.
Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/4/2024 @ 7:35 am
Matt Walsh isn’t wrong here:

there was a time when Democrats were floating Kamala Harris as a potential Supreme Court pick. Shortly after the death of Antonin Scalia, the Los Angeles Times published an article about how she may be on Barack Obama’s shortlist. Speculation reached a “fever pitch,” they reported. Harris said she was flattered by the consideration, even as she declined the opportunity.

That’s a footnote in American history that’s worth revisiting, now that Election Day is almost here. Imagine the kind of people who would tell us, with a straight face, that Kamala Harris should replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. On the one hand, you have one of the leading legal minds in all of American history. On the other hand, you have Kamala Harris, who is incapable of telling us anything of substance…

It’s the perfect illustration of how brazenly — and for how long — Democrats have attempted to elevate Kamala Harris far beyond her competence…
steveg (7095e5) — 11/4/2024 @ 8:24 am
#243

Actually, Walsh is wrong. Having seen the Harris campaign in action, this is garbage (to use an overused word):

On the other hand, you have Kamala Harris, who is incapable of telling us anything of substance…

She’s liberal. That makes her wrong, not stupid.
Appalled (f045b9) — 11/4/2024 @ 8:43 am
She’s liberal. That makes her wrong, not stupid.

It was stupid to go with Walz over Shapiro.
It was stupid to wait an entire month before doing a media hit.
It was stupid to continue to defend Joe Biden when it would have been the perfect opportunity to distance herself from his disasters.
It was especially stupid not to 25th Joe Biden the day after the June debate.
It was stupid to, having the “What would you do differently than Joe?” teed up for you MULTIPLE times, STILL not finding an answer.
It was stupid to make “We’re Not Going Back!” her campaign slogan. People WANT to go back to a closed border, low inflation, and dwindling crime.
It was stupid to make the “Trump is exhausted” argument right before she took the week off from campaigning.
It was stupid to pass on Rogan and choose SNL (with 1/3rd of Rogan’s audience) instead.
It was stupid for her to not take advantage of the McDonald’s news cycle and let Trump be the one to connect with the average voter.
SaveFarris (8940bf) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:00 am
Speaking of SNL, this one is pretty good.

I wonder why Trump’s bailing on 60 Minutes didn’t trigger the FEC guy.
Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:03 am
NBC files FCC ‘equal time’ notice after Kamala Harris appears on ‘SNL’

Networks putting their thumb on the scales to the very end.

lloyd (fda9cc) — 11/4/2024 @ 7:24 am

And NBC quickly gave the Trump campaign an equal amount of time (90 seconds) following Sunday’s NASCAR race and Sunday night football game.

On Sunday, NBC broadcast a NASCAR playoff race, but some viewers noticed toward the end of the broadcast (technically right after the race ended but while coverage was still ongoing) that Trump appeared in an unusual ad, speaking directly to camera while wearing a Red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, and claiming that electing Harris would cause a “depression” and that viewers should “go and vote.”
……….
Trump was given 60 additional seconds of campaign time during NBC’s Sunday Night Football coverage. While the game was already over, the spot — which was the same one that aired during the NASCAR coverage — aired during the post-game coverage (and shortly after a paid campaign ad).
……….
It is worth noting that the rule “does not require a station to provide opposing candidates with programs identical to the initiating candidate,” per FCC regulations, but rather comparable time and placement.
###########

The Trump campaign response was far more substantial than a 90 second appearance in a comedy sketch.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:05 am
SF #246:

All that amounts to “it’s stupid because I say so”.

To take point 1, if Kamela chooses Shapiro, you’d likely say that’s dumb because Kamela’s losing Michigan. In point 2, if Kamela did the press availability, you’d say that was stupid because she allowed the political press to define her. #3 and #4 are political impossibilities, as you know. #5 is actually a difficult question for any VP running for President. Can you imagine JD vance fielding it in 2028?

Your side just wants to believe Kamela is a stupid woman who got where she was ONLY because she dated Willie Brown back in the day. if you ask me, that’s pretty stupid.
Appalled (f045b9) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:35 am
It’s pretty clear and was discussed by the founders.

Please tell me when they discussed self-pardons. Since I’ve read their debates, I’m not going to let this pass. They were really suspect of the pardon power and, had they even considered this utter nonsense, they WOULD have struck it out.

They were explicitly concerned with the power it gave a criminal Executive to pardon his underlings to prevent their testifying at a later trial. But they took for granted that he could not pardon himself.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:50 am
So it’s as bad as stupid Hitler lying out loud

It’s one of the reasons she cannot close the deal.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:52 am
On the other hand, you have Kamala Harris, who is incapable of telling us anything of substance

Unwilling, not incapable.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:55 am
I have to say that Trump was better served by a NASCAR appearance than being dissed on SNL.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:57 am
But (the Founders) took for granted that he could not pardon himself.

Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:50 am

Considering how the constitutional relationships between the three branches (and between the government and the people) have evolved over the last 237 years, they took a lot for granted.
Rip Murdock (85a0ee) — 11/4/2024 @ 10:05 am
When they discussed the issue, they were worried that a criminal Executive could pardon his henchmen, and thereby escape prosecution after he left office. Implicit to this discussion was the supposition that the former president would be still liable to prosecution.

This argues that he could not pardon himself. It also calls into question at least part of the recent immunity decision (regarding activity outside of his job description).
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/4/2024 @ 10:16 am
Here is Harris’s real problem:

Direction of Country polls (RCP average)

Right direction 26.6%
Wrong direction 63.1%

Running on a “more of the same” platform has some serious headwinds.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/4/2024 @ 10:19 am
Appalled,

I’m not in the “stupid Kamala” camp — she may not have a first-rate mind, but she’s hardly an idiot. That said, picking Walz was a mistake because it hurt her with Independents who were already suspicious of her ideology being too far Left.

Socialism is not just neighborliness any more than the IRS is there to help you deal with your finances.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/4/2024 @ 10:27 am
Kevin M —

You can debate her VP pick all over the place. I had not heard of Walz or Shapiro before the Harris campaign got underway, so I have no true way to judge which person was a better fit. I am deeply skeptical that picking Shapiro rather than Walz would have really moved votes in Pennsylvania. I have a hunch some folks were willing to say that, once the Kamela hasn’t talked to the news media or Kamela hasn’t announced any policies excuses passed with time. If she had picked Shapiro, you would have probably the same group complaining that she had picked someone unacceptable in Michigan.
Appalled (f045b9) — 11/4/2024 @ 10:57 am
Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:50 am

They were explicitly concerned with the power it gave a criminal Executive to pardon his underlings to prevent their testifying at a later trial. But they took for granted that he could not pardon himself.

What they took for granted is that no one could pardon anyone in advance of a conviction, or at least, at the minimum, a specific crime.

So a president could not pardon himself because there was nothing for him to be pardoned from!! (yet)

But we let President Gerald R. Ford get away with a general pardon of Nixon of any crimes against the United States committed up to that date.(I don’t know if that is the first time this ever happened)
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 11:01 am
Related: There was Andrew Johnson – who issued what was still not quite a general pardon:

https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/dbva/items/show/149#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20controversial,occurred%20on%20June%202%2C%201865.

One of the most controversial uses of the presidential pardon occurred when President Andrew Johnson issued sweeping pardons to thousands of former Confederate officials and soldiers after the American Civil War officially ended on April 9, 1865. The final surrender of all Confederate troops occurred on June 2, 1865. President Johnson issued a proclamation on May 29, 1865, extending amnesty to most former Confederate officials and soldiers. Despite the term “amnesty,” the move was somewhat punitive on Johnson’s part. He wanted to allow most Confederate soldiers to receive amnesty while punishing those who played more important and visible roles in the Confederacy. If a soldier qualified for a pardon, he had to swear a loyalty oath to the United States and free any slaves that he owned. The president included fourteen exception categories to the general pardon. They included soldiers who had attended the United States military and naval academies, former Confederate governors and other officials, high ranking officers, and participants in the rebellion who had property valued at more than $20,000. These individuals could still seek amnesty, but had to file a petition with the President.

John C. Shelton was [a] Stafford County farmer who had owned enslaved laborers [Note: this cumbersome phrase is used here because people in academia decided not too long ago to get bothered by the term “slaves.” as if that word was saying the slavery was legitimate and rightful so they came up with this substitution] at the time of the 1860 census.

He was not included in the general amnesty as a result of the thirteenth clause excluding those “persons who have voluntarily participated in said rebellion and the estimated value of whose taxable property is over $20,000.” He filed a petition on April 13, 1866, stating that he did not bear arms or hold office in service to the Confederacy. President Johnson issued a pardon to James Shelton on July 5, 1866. The pardon was signed by both President Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward.

And then Jimmy Carter pardoned anyone who violated the Military Selective Service Act between August 4, 1964, and March 28, 1973. Both those who had been convicted, those who had been indicted and against whom charges were pending, and even those who had not even been charged. But at least this was for specified offenses.
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 11:06 am
Did not close the blockquote. The last paragraph, about Jimmy Carter’s pardon of the Vietnam era draft evaders, is mine. (Gerald Ford had his own separate earned forgiveness program.)

A similar amnesty was passed by Congress after every war that had a draft.
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 11:10 am
246. Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:03 am

I wonder why Trump’s bailing on 60 Minutes didn’t trigger the FEC guy.

First of all, it was a legitimate news interview program. Secondly, they offered the same opportunity to Donald Trump.

I was not aware that the equal time rule still existed. Perhaps it does, but applies only to personal appearances by the candidates themselves. Maybe it is only the “Fairness Doctrine” that’s gone and has been since about 1987. (and maybe the “Equal time” rule is why radio talk show hosts running for public office have to quit their jobs or take a leave of absence in order to run, and Donald Trump had to quit hosting “The Apprentice” – by that time “Celebrity Apprentice”)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule

The equal-time rule (47 U.S. Code § 315 – Candidates for public office[1]) specifies that American radio and television broadcast stations must provide equivalent access to competing political candidates. This means, for example, that if a station broadcasts a message by a candidate, it must offer the same amount of time on the same terms (in say, prime time,) to an opposing candidate.[2]

This sounds like it applies either to personal appearances, or content controlled by the candidate.

Wikipedia on the Fairness Doctrine:

The fairness doctrine of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, was a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints.[1] In 1987, the FCC abolished the fairness doctrine,[2] prompting some to urge its reintroduction through either Commission policy or congressional legislation.[3] The FCC removed the rule that implemented the policy from the Federal Register in August 2011.[4]

The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited as a contributing factor in the rising level of party polarization in the United States.[5][6]

It made Rush Limbaugh possible.

Limbaugh declared “I am equal time.

There were conservative talk radio show hosts before, like Bob Grant.
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 11:27 am
When they discussed the (pardon) issue, they were worried that a criminal Executive could pardon his henchmen, and thereby escape prosecution after he left office. Implicit to this discussion was the supposition that the former president would be still liable to prosecution.

This argues that he could not pardon himself………..

Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/4/2024 @ 10:16 am

A president can pardon his “criminal henchmen” as there is no such exemption in the Pardon Clause of the Constitution.

Constitutional interpretation isn’t (or at least shouldn’t) be based on what supposedly the Founders intended; it should be based on the actual words in the Constitution. Otherwise anyone can find support for their arguments in the supposed intention of the Founders, without referring to a specific clause in the Constitution.
Rip Murdock (ef0954) — 11/4/2024 @ 11:54 am
> Only immigration issues and some tariffs will be remembered by February.

Of all the legislative promises.
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 12:03 pm
231.BuDuh (4214e4) — 11/3/2024 @ 7:16 pm

Very interesting… what do you make of the highlighted sentence from the same transcript?

Biden on Trump:

Donald Trump has no character. He doesn’t give a damn about the Latino community. He’s failed businessman. He’s — he only cares about the billionaire friends he has and accumulating wealth for those at the top.

The only thing in that paragraph that comes close to the truth. Many businesses Donald Trump ran failed, some due to circumstances beyond his control.

But some did not and are still viable, mainly golf courses and hotels. And his television show was a success.
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 12:13 pm
228. Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/3/2024 @ 6:41 pm

She lets her useful idiots assure everyone she’s still a moderate when she declines to answer questions about her still being a moderate.

Donald Trump is the opposite-in person he’s somewhat moderate but his henchmen assure people he’s extreme.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-campaign-legal-immigration-policies-dfc09979

Trump Allies Draw Up Plans Targeting Legal Immigration

Such moves would reintroduce controversial policies from his first term as part of an effort to limit entry of migrants

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump routinely promises he will end illegal immigration. Behind the scenes, his closest advisers and allies are also drawing up plans that would restrict many forms of legal immigration, some of which could affect the ability of businesses to hire foreign workers.

Outside advisers including Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration agenda when he was in the White House, and such groups as the America First Policy Institute have been preparing executive orders, regulations and memos for a future homeland security secretary to sign that would narrow legal ways to migrate. That is according to interviews with a dozen former Trump administration officials, a review of public plans published by the campaign, and outside groups aligned with the campaign.

While public attention centers on the hot-button topic of illegal migration, how Trump and his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, approach lesser-known legal-immigration issues could have a broad impact, from Americans looking to bring foreign family members into the country to businesses that rely on visas to fill jobs ranging from software engineering to seasonal positions at theme parks….

…he plans haven’t taken on the same level of urgency that Trump has placed on controlling illegal immigration or enacting mass deportations. And some of the steps could face pushback from newfound allies in the business and tech community, including Elon Musk. The billionaire has repeatedly championed legal immigration but said illegal migration should be reduced.

Ideas being explored include a pause in accepting new applications for categories of immigration that currently have large backlogs. They range from asylum to requests for employment-based green cards for Indian technology workers, leaving those immigrants out of legal options.

Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to several requests for an interview or clarification of his positions for this article. A campaign spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, said in an emailed statement, “President Trump has repeatedly said that he supports legal immigration and wants as many people to come into the country, as long as they come LEGALLY.”
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 12:22 pm
To take point 1, if Kamela chooses Shapiro, you’d likely say that’s dumb because Kamela’s losing Michigan.

She can afford to lose Michigan more than she can afford to lose Pennsylvania. And Shapiro is an absolute political talent who is clearly on the bigger and better track. Of all the potential 2028 candidates (Whitmer, Newsom, Pete, Pritzker, Polis, Kelly, Brown), he’s the one most poised to succeed.

In point 2, if Kamela did the press availability, you’d say that was stupid because she allowed the political press to define her.

The political press IS ON HER SIDE. And she STILL comes off looking grossly unprepared. You have to be extra stupid to pull that off.

#5 is actually a difficult question for any VP running for President. Can you imagine JD vance fielding it in 2028?

HW could do it.
Gore could do it.

Why can’t Harris?
SaveFarris (8940bf) — 11/4/2024 @ 12:29 pm
So what if they find people were not supposed to have voted- the vote counts

No it doesn’t if it could have affected the outcome, if the race can be rerun.
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 12:46 pm
246. Paul Montagu (f97d41) — 11/4/2024 @ 9:03 am

I wonder why Trump’s bailing on 60 Minutes didn’t trigger the FEC guy.

First of all, it was a legitimate news interview program. Secondly, they offered the same opportunity to Donald Trump.

I was not aware that the equal time rule still existed

There are exceptions to the equal time rule (47 U.S. Code § 315):

No obligation is imposed under this subsection upon any licensee to allow the use of its station by any such candidate. Appearance by a legally qualified candidate on any—

(1)bona fide newscast,
(2)bona fide news interview,
(3)bona fide news documentary (if the appearance of the candidate is incidental to the presentation of the subject or subjects covered by the news documentary), or
(4)on-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events (including but not limited to political conventions and activities incidental thereto),

Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/4/2024 @ 12:51 pm
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/us/arrestees-trump-workplace-immigration-raid-mississippi.html

…The raid was one of many carried out across Mississippi that day in August 2019, part of the largest workplace sweep in more than a decade and the biggest under President Donald J. Trump. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took 680 people into custody at poultry plants across central Mississippi.

Now, in his bid to return to the White House, Mr. Trump has pledged to deport millions of people in what would be the largest such effort in U.S. history. Workplace raids similar to the 2019 sweep in Mississippi would be a key element in large-scale deportations, his advisers have said.

But five years after the Mississippi raids, Mr. Orozco-Juarez, 40, is back in the United States, living in Carthage. Gone for 19 months, he said he was determined to find a way back to his family. Today, he works at a different chicken plant, paid $12.50 an hour to clean blood and meat scraps from the machinery used to debone carcasses. He now has a work permit, but he still faces the possibility of deportation, and he has been speaking out about the conditions many undocumented workers endure.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/22/us/elections/trump-deportation.html

Many economists have taken up the question of how immigration affects the labor market. The answers that emerge are layered. Research shows that immigrants often create jobs by driving up demand for food, cars and services. When economists studied the effects of 400,000 deportations of unauthorized immigrants between 2008 and 2013, they found that for every 100 people removed from the labor market because of deportations, there were nine fewer jobs for U.S.-born workers.

Yes, of course. The asylum seekers, or migrants, are causing greater than expected economic growth.

https://www.investors.com/news/economy/gdp-q3-pce-inflation-adp-jobs-report-federal-reserve-sp-500/
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:02 pm
Re: Fluoride. There’s an issue what with so much fluoridated toothpaste, some children are getting too much fluoride. The first sign is discolored teeth.

But anyway health policy is one issue where the first Trump Administration might repeat, what with some officials stopping the worst ideas.
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:10 pm
So what if they find people were not supposed to have voted- the vote counts

No it doesn’t if it could have affected the outcome, if the race can be rerun.

Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 12:46 pm

When has an election been “re-run” because of illegal voters?
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:11 pm
#266

SaveFerris.

Kamela is not dumb. if you watched the debate and saw her successfully bait Trump into utter incoherence, you would know that. (For the record, I don’t think Trump stupid either)

If you saw the Fox interview and see her get her viral moment out of Brett Baier, you would know that.

Please….
Appalled (f045b9) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:15 pm
241. lloyd (fda9cc) — 11/4/2024 @ 7:25 am

Revealing that Kamala thought the SNL audience was the one she had to win over.

She wanted to increase turnout for herself in Pennsylvania – it was mentioned in the skit – and maybe wanted to feel happy and enjoy herself..
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:15 pm
https://ballotpedia.org/Redo_election

North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District (2018)
Reason for redo election: Absentee/mail-in electoral fraud
Time between initial and redo election: 308 days
On Nov. 6, 2018, Dan McCready (D) and Mark Harris (R) ran for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District. Harris received 139,246 votes to McCready’s 138,341, a 905-vote margin. Following the results, state election officials began investigating potential absentee/mail-in voting electoral fraud.[5] On Nov. 26, the North Carolina State Board of Elections refused to certify the election results, citing its responsibility “to assure that an election is determined without taint of fraud or corruption and without irregularities that may have changed the result of the election.”[6]

According to the Brookings Institution, the electoral fraud allegations included some voters claiming “that individuals came to their homes and collected their unsealed ballots. Others allege that they received absentee ballots that they never requested. In addition, multiple individuals have come forward to claim that they were paid by a Republican political operative … to collect absentee ballots from voters; under North Carolina law, it is, with limited exceptions, illegal to collect and return someone else’s absentee ballot.”[7]

After holding a series of evidentiary hearings, the Board of the Elections voted on Feb. 19, 2019, to redo the election. This included a new primary after the North Carolina Legislature passed a law in Dec. 2018 requiring a primary for any special election.[8]

Harris did not participate in any stage of the redo election. McCready faced Dan Bishop (R) on Sept. 10, 2019. Bishop defeated McCready, receiving 96,573 votes to McCready’s 92,785.
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:19 pm
Russia Suspected of Plotting to Send Incendiary Devices on U.S.-Bound Planes

Western security officials say they believe that two incendiary devices, shipped via DHL, were part of a covert Russian operation that ultimately aimed to start fires aboard cargo or passenger aircraft flying to the U.S. and Canada, as Moscow steps up a sabotage campaign against Washington and its allies.

The devices ignited at DHL logistics hubs in July, one in Leipzig, Germany, and another in Birmingham, England. The explosions set off a multinational race to find the culprits.

Now investigators and spy agencies in Europe have figured out how the devices—electric massagers implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance—were made and concluded that they were part of a wider Russian plot, according to security officials and people familiar with the probe.

Security officials say the electric massagers, sent to the U.K. from Lithuania, appear to have been a test run to figure out how to get such incendiary devices aboard planes bound for North America.
………..
European authorities allege that Russia is behind an expanding campaign of sabotage, including arson in the U.K. and the Czech Republic, attacks on pipelines and data cables in the Baltic and tampering with water supplies in Sweden and Finland.

Earlier this year, the U.S. warned Germany that Russia planned to kill the chief executive of Rheinmetall, the German armaments giant that supplies Ukraine.

In the months after the fires at the DHL logistics hubs, the heads of both U.K. intelligence agencies called out Russia’s sabotage operations. In September, Richard Moore, the head of MI6, the U.K.’s foreign-intelligence service, said that the Russian spy agencies had “gone a bit feral in some of their behavior.”

A month later, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, the U.K.’s domestic spy agency, warned that Russia was orchestrating “arson, sabotage and more dangerous actions conducted with increasing recklessness.”

Downing commercial passenger or cargo planes would be a big step up and some Western intelligence agencies have questioned whether such a plot could be the result of Russian spies carrying out a plan without the full authorization of the Kremlin, according to people familiar with the matter.
………..
The incendiary devices that ignited in July only narrowly missed being on aircraft used by DHL, the people said. German police who tested replicas of the incendiary devices said that once magnesium ignited it would be difficult to extinguish with the firefighting systems most planes have, people familiar with the German investigation said, and pilots would have been forced to make an emergency landing.

Germany-based DHL uses cargo and passenger airplanes to transport packages………
………..
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:24 pm
Israeli police arrest the bottle deposit crooks top aid for leaking fake classified material to prevent ceasefire. (CNN)
asset (dab2e5) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:25 pm
Kamela is not dumb. if you watched the debate and saw her successfully bait Trump into utter incoherence, you would know that. (For the record, I don’t think Trump stupid either)

If you saw the Fox interview and see her get her viral moment out of Brett Baier, you would know that.

She definitely did bait Trump on the crowd size bit, I’ll give you that. And then she baited herself with the “I’m speaking” bit that Trump turned around on her.

We all saw the Baier interview. Where she couldn’t answer simple questions and showed she can’t speak outside her bubble and ran away like a coward when it got too tough.

Also, she just tried to tell a Muslim interviewer to eat bacon.

https://nypost.com/2024/11/04/us-news/harris-botched-interview-with-muslim-influencer-by-celebrating-bacon-as-a-spice/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=nypost
SaveFarris (8940bf) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:44 pm
asset (dab2e5) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:25 pm

Israeli police arrest the bottle deposit crooks top aid for leaking fake classified material to prevent ceasefire. (CNN)

The leak claimed that (there were plans by Hamas?) to take hostages out of Gaza. It wasn’t even real Israeli intelligence. You can only speculate about the reason and who the leaker was trying to help.
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:45 pm
This person had been denied a security clearance by Israel and was as some kind of special consultant. It only proves that people don’t trust each other in the Israeli government (and they shouldn’t)
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:48 pm
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/4/2024 @ 1:19 pm

They won’t be “re-doing” a presidential primary for a single illegal vote. My solution would be to deduct one vote from Trump and Harris to account for it.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/4/2024 @ 2:26 pm
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/4/2024 @ 2:26 pm

My solution would be to deduct one vote from Trump and Harris to account for it.

That leaves the same difference between them.
Sammy Finkelman (c2c77e) — 11/4/2024 @ 5:08 pm

11/1/2024

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