Senate Going Postal: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

By your own words and actions, you do support fascism and fascist policies, and your military service is not a get out of jail card, nor is killing fascists a substitution for an education.

 

Well, yes, that's the strategy that is commonly used. You take some young politician who didn't have time to make regrettable things which can be used against them and you present them as the new face, the homo novus who's going to make things right. With Obama it worked out well.

 

Pete is also polling much higher in Iowa than he is nationally. I think twice as high. Maybe even a little better than that. It'll make it really easy for the media to construct a narrative about his surge when they use national polls to talk about his Iowa performance. I'm already bracing for stories coming out of Iowa where Warren comes in first but a little below her national numbers and Pete comes in third or fourth, but well ahead of national numbers, and the story is "WARREN POLLS WELL BUT DOESN'T TURN OUT VOTERS" and "MAYOR PETE IS SURGING - HE'S THE NEXT OBAMA!"

 

Speaking of the establishment...



This is actually too srs for the ****posting thread.

 

I dunno. I smell an attempt to sell us a Warren/Buttigieg 'unity ticket' that will pretend to bring together the center and left but in reality ends up being an empty, inexperienced vessel that big money can pour all its influence into while checking the two boxes of having a woman and an LGBTQ individual on the ticket for next year.

More likely though, is the establishment trying to use Buttigieg as a missile to take down Sanders. It's abundantly clear after last night that Biden's not up to the task, so the Big Donors have to be fighting off diarrhea attacks looking for an alternative. Mayor Pete kinda fits the bill. He's almost like a white gay Obama channeling 'hope and change' from 2008, but trying really hard to sound less scary and in reality would govern even closer to the center than Obama did if elected.

 

I posted this somewhere else, but apt here.

We all basically expect Biden to implode more than he already is. Mayor Pete's polling 4th in IA at the moment, and essentially in a statistical tie with Sanders for third. If voters in Iowa get cagey about Sanders' health (leave aside he's been static and/or slightly downward in all but one poll in IA recently) post-heart attack, and Biden fully implodes... it's not a crazy suggestion to think that Pete finishes second in IA.

 

There are plenty of Neo-Nazis in Germany proud of that title.

But the fact remains that I'm not a Nazi nor white supremist. Neither is Trump.

Why'd you take my name out of the quote? Did you think I'd miss it?

Your crazed shouts of slurs don't make them true.

My service isn't a get out of jail free card. I didn't say that it was. But my actions demonstrate that I'm not a fascist. My own actions have led to the deaths of many fascists.

I do not support fascist causes a my actions have shown.

Don't believe me?

Then ask one of the hundreds of dead fascists whom I bare some of the responsibility of killing if they think I support their policies and theology. I think that's where the true answer lies.

 

He can win Iowa directly. From what we know by now, there is no reason to exclude it or even to consider it unlikely.

 

Assuming that's true - does it really matter? Stalin's actions did too, yet Stalin was a vicious tyrant who killed them only because they were threatening him, not because they were threatening innocents.

"Who you've killed" is not that important.

 

You think that's bad? 23andMe finally has more details for Middle East, and my 8% Middle Eastern bit is actually Turkish, which now make it super awkward considering how much of a Rojava supporter I am.

 

Rodders. I and many others do not believe you are a fascist or white supremacist.

We do however believe you listen to and endorse a man whose proposals and policies have a white supremacist undercurrent.

Trump is IMO racist and the lawsuits against him indicate that even if he isn't calling people the "n" word, he at least wouldn't rail on someone who did.
Black people on this board, those who are able to identify racism with far greater ease than those of us who are of another substantially paler pigment that is our typically pasty selves are far better placed to call out if someone is racist over and above us white individuals. And they frequently call him out as racist.

You call us out as suffering from TDS but we can consistently outline why we have issues with him, hell I'm from the UK and I can't stand the man but you and a couple of others on the board come across as though you would be happy to have Trumps babies. You have bought into his cult and won't criticise anything he does even when it's particularly egregious.

In the UK I'm a Liberal Democrat, I'm a party member and pay my dues. I voted for Jo Swinson to be the leader of my party and yet I will and do call her out on the crappy things she did when in coalition with the Torys.I may understand why it was done but it was still crappy and needs to be criticised.
I can't recall you do anything other than defend Trump, this blind defence is one of the reasons why people believe you to be one way when in all likelihood you're not.

 

What's important is the context. What's important is that someone who "fights" from the safety of a keyboard not accuse innocent people of feelings, thoughts and beliefs that they don't actually have.

A keyboard is nice. It's safe. Even if you have an effect, you don't have to take responsibility for it. In my world, in my life, I live and they die, or they live and I die. Either way, I bear the burden of the responsibility for the rest of my life.

There are real consequences from what I did. Real pain. Real impact. For both me and for the enemy I fought. I did it for God, country, family and democracy. So if I get a little passionate when my motives are slandered, I'd hope you can understand, from the safety and security of your keyboard, why that is.

Let's be fair: My language I used for Trump leaving Syria was as stern and the language I used to criticize Obama when he pulled out of Iraq. But this time there's no debate, no push back. Otherwise, if someone wanted to defend the move I'd argue for pages and pages about it.

But it's Trump. No one agrees with anything he does on this board. So when I agree it was a mistake, I don't get to prattle on endlessly like I do.

 

I clearly missed the part when you called Trump out but to be fair it was a very obvious misstep there and the following ramifications have been and are proving to be awful.

There have been occasions where I have and many others have agreed with a stance Trump has taken. A clock is right twice a day in all honesty but in general he is just awful.

 

The Keep America Great thing is hilarious. Mission accomplished, huh? All that talk from Trump about what terrible shape America is in, and he changed all that in less than four years? Wow. Amazing. I guess all Trump had to do to make America great again was to ban Muslims from entering the country, throw brown kids in cages, fail to build the wall, fail to fix healthcare, fail to improve infrastructure, fail to fix the gun violence epidemic, and of course lower taxes so the inequality gap can widen.

America is great again despite our fake news media? The doublethink is really spectacular.

What it really communicates is that all that was needed to Make America Great Again was to put a loudmouth jerk serial sexual assaulting racist white man in office to validate white male supremacy and invalidate “political correctness” and “social justice warriors”. That’s it. Racism and sexism won, therefore America is great again.

 

This Politico article gave me the feels. I already had a lot of respect for AOC but this was one of those moments where a politician can really show courage of conviction. We expect politicians to make pragmatic, sometimes cynical decisions, and the question is whether we trust them to know when and when not to compromise. I trust her a lot now.

As the 78-year-old Sanders laid in a hospital bed in Nevada after a heart attack, with his presidential campaign in jeopardy, his campaign manager Faiz Shakir received a call and passed his phone to the Vermont senator. It was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She told Sanders she was coming aboard his campaign, months before she was expected to issue an endorsement.

Also, some things I've been thinking about. Everybody is (rightly) pointing out that Bernie's poll numbers are not great. A few points: 1) He's consistently polled around 10-20% nationally and in early states throughout the contest so far, sometimes better, 2) This is in the context of a media blackout. All the legacy media is grossly and deliberately ignoring his campaign while giving inordinate coverage to candidates without a shot in hell, 3) Imagine what would happen if legacy media was forced to cover him, like if he finished 1st in IO and NH. Think that's impossible? Well try to remember back to the 2016 primary, he regularly outperformed the polling, sometimes by double digits, and his people never actually disbanded . . . .

 

Under Barack Obama, the United States saw its reputation improve in the world and hold steady. That stability ended abruptly this past year as the nation’s position on the overall ranking dropped 10 spots to 38th place.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karste...-the-u-s-feels-the-trump-effect/#50247f922fa1

 

Yeah, white Europeans really liked Obama. Brown people in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.....not so much. For uh, reasons I'm sure people here understand.

 

I spoke to a Dutch Moroccan guy today, who sells websites. He said he wouldn't let them get built in Holland. Too expensive.
He gets them built in... India and Malaysia.

 

exactly. It's why I maintain that WWII contained a clear villain, but no real hero side. Heroic actions of course, bravery to be sure, but did the US fight for lofty goals like freeing France......or just to cement their own control over the Pacific which they felt belonged to them? Heck Churchill is perhaps the perfect example, the guy tried to force India to fight and die, sent Leach to his death needlessly and treated him and any descent and mercy as a personal slight, tried to sink the French fleet, murdered resistance members in Greece to spite communism so he could return the monarchy, and so so many other things that show him as not just flawed, not just out for himself, but willing to throw lives away knowingly - simply for his own satisfaction and glory. Often not even with lofty goals to hide behind personally, just publicly when he felt like exonerating himself. There is a reason the Royal Navy had so many leaders who rotated and got fired or given suicide assignments.

The point is, killing fascists is a heroic act to be sure, however killing fascists does not necessarily make one heroic. Churchill and Stalin in particular are blatant war criminals, and plenty did not even hide behind ideology for their bloodlust. Same goes for most wars, I love the Union, but I don't pretend like a large number of troops did horrible things and/or did not give a bleep about the slaves.

Heroic causes, don't intrinsically make heroic men

 

Called the President a terrorist/
Corporate sponsors like, "How the **** you gon embarass us?"/
It aint my fault, I was just repeating this professor emeritus/
From America/
But my tone was/
Like an Afghani kid without a home/
Blew that bitch up with a drone/
An Iraqi with no daddy/
Palestians throwing stones/
The **** you think they call him?/
Imma leave that all alone...

Sorry had to use this chance to quote Lupe Fiasco

 

Agreed. And as a supporter, I find it absurd she wasn’t ready for this one. Colbert even hit her on this two weeks ago. And Chris Matthews before that. For a wonk who loves to talk policy, start spouting numbers!

The average co-pay for a Doctor is X
The average cost for a prescription drug out of pocket is Y
The cost of a specialist is Z
It costs ... to go to the ER and this much for an ambulance ride.

BURY them in the numbers and then add and by the way, as Bernie wrote in his damn bill, this covers dental, eye, and hearing. Only elective surgery would be out of pocket.

Warren is best when she is rattling those numbers and she should be doing that. She does need to come out fighting and ready for this one in November. And she needs to clobber Klobuchar.

The reason people argue Warren “won” is the desperate shots from some as well as that last interaction with Joe. But in my opinion, major loss in healthcare when she should have been ready for it.

 

AOC called Bernie when he was in the hospital and said she was going to endorse him. How awesome is that?

 

The most awesome