Good
Not a fan of Biden, but..
So Long, McDonald Tramp.
American media, including Fox News, and the international press this morning called the 2020 US presidential election for Joe Biden, signalling President Donald Trump's impending defeat. The decision came after the Democrat contender for the White House secured enough votes in key battleground Pennsylvania to take him over the …
either of my cats would make a better president
Likewise any of mine. Except the youngest one - she's a bit feisty..
(Oh - and the one that craps on the front door mat - she's probably not suitable given her complete lack of anything resembling brains[1]. But she's *very* cute..)
[1] Which is why she's the only one of the seven cats that can't handle the road outside the house. Which is why she only has a small stump of a tail left and a pelvis held together with titanium with no head of femur on her left-hand rear leg. She still climbs onto the garage roof though and chases her daughter round the house.
Eight years of mediocrity got you Trump. Someone who Biden still had to struggle, even though he was 'the worst US president' in history.
Biden will do nothing for regular americans, will not even go to Flint to wet his lips.
Next version of Trump will be so much worse...
Get out while you can.
OK, Can agree that Obama was not exactly an overachiever, but the fact is that EVERYTHING he tried to do was blocked on principle by Mconnell, Ryan and the republicans - he was only able to squeeze the Affrodable Care Act due to McCain breaking the republican ranks. There was nothing resembling negotiation/compromise that can make for constructive legislation during those 8 years....
There was a Dem majority everywhere where it matterer for 6 months and he still didn't push anything through to help normal people.
Instead people got Obamacare, which was a Republican plan, instead of public healthcare.
Not strange, as Obama himself mentioned the he considered his policy's moderate republican.
Really hope things get better for people living there, but you couldn't pay me enough to move and live in the US and don't see this changing with the next couple of decades.
"Really hope things get better for people living there, but you couldn't pay me enough to move and live in the US and don't see this changing with the next couple of decades."
I suppose this depends more on the behavior of Mitch Mcconnell and his buddies more than anyone else at this point - are we going to have another gridlock situation, or can both parties get serious about improving the lives of average Americans? There is a fork in the road....
You could not pay me enough to live in the US either, and I am an American from southern California - that makes 30 years now in exile (with a second EU passport) - USA is best enjoyed from a safe distance ;>) .
Why would McConnell mess with "success"? He held up Obama judicial appointments then when he got a republican president he got that conservative judges he wants. I wouldn't be surprised if he blocks every Biden appointment at all levels of the court, hoping that in 2024 or 2028 a republican will win and he gets 4 or 8 years worth of judges.
And Everything blocked was a good thing.
Paris Accord? US dropped more CO2 than anyone else... why? Natural Gas vs Coal in US power plants.
Paris Accord was more about xfer of wealth than solving the problem.
Syria?
Middle East Peace?
Oh so much more.
Trump may be an idiot and puts foot in mouth far too many times... but look what he's done.
What "middle east peace"? Trump's dopey son in law was in way over his head trying to broker middle east peace, so he gave up on trying to make peace with Palestine, or Lebanon, or the other major sponsors of terror and problems for Israel and got a couple agreements with countries that have don't have a dog in the fight. It is like brokering a peace treat between Canada and Japan.
Actually
Obama takes that title.
History will not be kind to Obama but would be kind to Trump.
70 million living Americans voted for Trump.
Can't say that about Biden's voters. Seems there are rumors that the deceased preferred China Joe to Trump.
While everyone wants to push on... there's a slight problem... not all of the vote count is in, and the margins in certain states are thin enough to call for a recount.
This bodes bad for Biden.
Many who voted in person were republican voters.
Ballots by mail has some hurdles where ballots get tossed for not being compliant with the election rules.
So in a recount situation... the vote by mail will face a tougher scrutiny. (e.g. an election official curing a ballot instead of tossing it aside for a missing witness address)
Then you have the issue of the voting machines that had a 'glitch'. In one county in MI, 5,000 votes went to Biden and not Trump.
I wonder what would happen if from the recall, Trump wins?
That would really blow a lot of people's minds and it can happen.
Of course now watch Joe Biden take credit for the announced COVID vaccine.
Reagan was surrounded by really good people though. Even if you didn't agree with their politics, they knew their stuff, so to whatever extent he was declining it didn't affect the operation of the country.
Contrast with Trump, who started with some decent people but over time surrounded himself with the very worst and utterly unqualified yes men, and is willing to overrule (or fire) any of them on a whim without notice via tweet
Well, he's "Irish"[1] and against Brexit, so might not be so good for the UK, although probably a better option than Trump and his "great deal, the best deals"
[1] His ancestors left Ireland 170 years ago. I'm not sure just how "Irish" he is, but he's proud of his roots. (He doesn't mention the French bit though)
you're an American when your a mutt
Same thing for the UK - my surname comes from (probably) the Forest of Dean, my mothers side is pretty much all Welsh, my Dad was from Yorkshire.
And I have a blood group that is very common in Celtics whereas my wife (Devon/Cornish extraction) has a blood type most common in the Iberian Peninsula.
Anyone that talks about purity of bloodlines is a moron. None of us have 'pure bloodlines' - especially those restricting their gene pool to keep things 'pure'.
They only vote for unfunded tax cuts for billionaires and debt ceiling increases to pay for the tax cuts. You won't get any infrastructure bills let alone trade bills through a Republican senate.
Democrats needs to go get those voting machines forensically inspected. Get the court orders in place, *now*, to stop those servers being wiped and to get those machines imaged for later forensic analysis. They need to remember Kemp's election run by Kemp in Georgia, see what happened when you sued to get the servers and Kemp had wiped them, and Kemp declared he Kemp had indeed won.
VERIFY the vote, do not blindly trust that vote. Verify everything, check everything, be confident in the totals because you've checks and double checked and triple checked. Not because you're afraid to go look, but because you're tired of checking and you're confident in it.
It had such a heavy skewing of red votes in those voting machines. Almost enough to overthrow the mail-in ballot result. Almost as if someone did some estimates and aimed for just over 50%, a plausible win, and simply miscalculated.
So go verify those voting machines. Check every paper trail to the voting machine to the totals. Where they're still not running paper audit trails, throw stats analysis at it, have the servers inspected, challenge if there are discrepancies.
That vote shouldn't even have been close.
"shy Trump voter"? Don't make me laugh.
There's an equivalent to Rule 34 for this: Any political conspiracy theory you can imagine has already been posted on the Internet.
My guess is that a really thorough forensic analysis of all the voting equipment in the US would find a fair number of errors and irregularities, and quite possibly the odd case of tampering, but not enough to change many races, if any at all. US election security is lousy but so far from a monoculture that it's expensive (in terms of money, labor, and other resources) to gain control over any decent-sized portion of it.
Again, I'm just guessing (though I have read some academic studies in this area), but I suspect it wouldn't be enough to flip the Senate.
We'll see what happens with mid-terms, but historically those often go against the president's party. As usual, it will mostly depend on turnout, and turnout is mostly psychological - though Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters have certainly been significant in recent years.
I think the "Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters" is simply political rhetoric. It is mostly based on the ID laws and the misguided notion that some large portion of voters are unable to obtain an ID. FFS, the state IDs are offered at every BMV office. Many states offer free IDs for hardship cases. The average cost is $16, less than a case of beer. There are indeed 10s of millions of people who cannot obtain one, but it is because they are in the country illegally. Think of it this way, should the same people who are allowed to vote without an ID be allowed to withdraw cash from a bank account without an ID? Sorry, but these ID requirements are measures to safeguard the voting process, not "efforts to disenfranchise voters". Really? Are you suggesting that the majority of people who do not have the wherewithal to walk into the BMV and request an ID would vote for the Democratic candidates?
Amazing... every point you made has no connection with reality of Black people who have had to deal with direct targeted voter suppression by the Republican party for the last 50 years.
"I think the "Republican efforts to disenfranchise voters" is simply political rhetoric."
"There are indeed 10s of millions of people who cannot obtain one, but it is because they are in the country illegally."
I could go into the closing of DMV offices in majority Black counties in some southern states (ie. Georgia, Alabama, etc.) causing people to have to travel farther distances to get to available offices - which by the way, may only open for a limited time on certain days of the week (and no, not weekends) thus having to take time off of work, which may not be a option economically. Then, needing ID documentation that may be difficult to obtain or even available; it's not unusual for older Black people in the south to have difficulty in obtaining an original birth certificate.
Then there is the tactic of closing polling places in minority areas such that people in have to travel longer distances to their polling places (and not "walking to the polls", but, outside of town, as in Dodge City, KS in the 2018 midterms), meaning they may have to stand in longer lines. And since you were(n't) asking, yes, Black people on average have statistically longer average wait times to vote than people in majority white areas.
Oh, and let's not forget the fact that after the Voting Rights act was defanged by the Supreme Court, with several states then precisely targeting minority populations with gerrymandering and other tactics.
I respectfully suggest that you might want to do a little research before disseminating your incompletely informed opinions, or, even better, ask a politically active Black person who lives in a Republican controlled battleground state before making comments about Republican voter suppression tactics.
Oh, and 2 personal notes: I don't drink and have far better uses for $16 than a buying f*****g "case of beer", and two, don't be so arrogant to assume that the only reason someone is not able to get an ID is because they are "in the country illegally".
Relax.
Consider that Jaybus is from one of the three states that have a "BMV", and then consider the voting records of those states. I think we can extrapolate that it is a product of it's environment and merely parroting what it has heard. Far easier to squawk than to actually think for yourself. This applies to ANY side of ANY issue ... which is easy to observe first-hand, if you attend your nearest friendly neighborhood rioting peaceful protests.
Humans. Willing to expend tons of energy screaming at/about "others", but completely unwilling to sit down and have a simple quiet conversation with each other. Go figure.
Always struck me as odd, the number of rigged[0] elections where the winning candidate feels he has to show a 90% (or greater) result in his favour...
[0] Sorry; I meant of course free elections in which the population are given their chance to demonstrate their overwhelming love for the glorious leader.
I thought that most USians would want potable water, affordable healthcare, infrastructure that's not on the verge of crumbling, affordable education and less war.
Guess how many of these issues Biden will tackle for the regular citizen.
It's a shame that Bernie thinks that playing nice with the corporate Dems is more important than serving citizens.
Oh yeah, because Trump was good on all those subjects....
I believe I actually indicated my preference for neither, with Bernie being better than either.
This is the problem with lots of people in the US, people are so partisan, they stop reading as soon as they read something that goes against their tribe.
Trump was horrible, but voting in Biden is the equivalent of having chosen for the shit covered bagle instead of the turd sandwich.
No amount of ketchup is going to mask that taste...
I thought that most USians would want potable water, affordable healthcare, infrastructure that's not on the verge of crumbling, affordable education and less war.
You're not very familiar with people, I take it.
We're not rational economic actors. We don't act in our own interest. Political activity in particular is heavily influenced by two non-rational factors: ingrained ideology (which for most people seems to become largely fixed early in adulthood) and psychological traps such as the "backfire effect" and the first-person constraint on doxastic explanation.
The dominant ideologies in the US all incorporate themes, typically coded as "freedom", "opportunity", and "industriousness", which discourage acting in group interest where it would conflict with an idealized aggressive individualism. These themes were advantageous to the landed plutocrats and upper-middle-class entrepreneurs who shaped most of the political discourse and structures of the early US, at the expense of most of the rest of the population. They endure because the elite have a powerful vested interest in keeping them in place.
(It's worth noting, as an aside, that those ideological themes are rarely deployed for anything resembling the categories they supposedly name. It's tough to get most of the US population to defend civil rights, for example, in any meaningful way, even though those rights are critical to freedom, necessary for equitable opportunity, and an important constraint on government for industry.)
"I would comment on this article, but do not trust that the voting system will give me all the thumbs up I want"
In his congratulatory message to President-elect Biden, former President George W Bush recognised that the elections were free and fair. Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump are all completely wasting their time with their pointless and baseless allegations about electoral fraud and stolen votes.
What really did it for them this time was record levels of support for the Libertarian Party (candidate Jo Jorgensen) that siphoned off so many centre-right votes so splitting the centre-right vote in crucial swing states thereby handing victory to Biden. The figures speak for themselves and back in 2000, the Democrats' chances were similarly wrecked by large third party support for Ralph Nader's Green Party.
I'm not so sure you can say that a vote for Jorgensen was a vote lost by Trump. The core Libertartian voters would never vote for the two main parties, and they seem to have picked up a lot of disaffected former Democrat voters as well. Policies like disengagement from foreign policy quagmires like Israel / Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently Syria play well with a lot of otherwise Democrat leading voters.
+1 I've never been so happy about the result of an election... even one in another country
"Ding-dong, the jerk is gone. But read this before you sing the Hallelujah Chorus"
Thomas Frank
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/07/trump-defeat-election
@Fruit and Nutcase
I did read it, and Biden is not Sanders but hopefully a step in that direction, and I won my bet and I am happy about that too.
And now for the next question, will he leave as a gentleman or will he be escorted out by men in uniforms or white.
Congrats to the majority of the US population, and please take the Senate too.
PS. I am seriously pleased he won.
"who actually takes office"
Pres. Biden, for sure. Remember that the armed forces swear to protect the Constitution first of all.
Who do I feel sorry for? The poor fools in the Secret Service who get assigned to protect ex-President Trump. That will really be a punishment assignment.
Definitely a <see icon> day.
Everyone has to nip to the loo every once in a while, even close protection units - and if someone has forgetfully left a window open on the ground floor - and someone climbs in - and heavens forbid, does the decent thing and releases that poor animal from atop of Trump's head from the years of servitude it has endured, with a crude and badly aimed swipe of a tomahawk - then who's to blame?
Although I imagine Putin has already made the necessary phone call, and Trump will be found riddled with polonium*, smothered in guacamole, a baguette up his bum, maple syrup in his eyes, and 300 other internationally recognised national dishes splattered about him. Security services will be greatly hampered in their investigations due to the unusually high number of suspects, all with justifiable motives.
* Polonium has come to be recognised as Russia's national dish. Best served with very long spoons.
Pres. Biden, for sure. Remember that the armed forces swear to protect the Constitution first of all.
Not necessarily, if Biden keels over from a hear attack, or his own brain strangles him (or some other convenient "accident" befalls him courtesy of his VP). Then we'd be getting Commie-la Harris instead.
And now for the next question, will he leave as a gentleman or will he be escorted out by men in uniforms or white.
The exit of autocrats that he so admires is seldom with grace. The very stable kind of guy could have a very stable kind of breakdown.
Get the popcorn in and let's wait and see.
Surely you can't pardon someone unless they've been convicted?
Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon shows it can be done. Nixon was never actually convicted of anything, and Ford's pardon for Nixon was "a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes that he might have committed against the United States as president". So no conviction necessary.
As he hasn't yet been charged with anything arising from the Mueller investigation due to the Justice Department guideline that prohibits the federal indictment of a sitting president, in theory, there is nothing for him to pardon. He may be able to pardon himself of the impeachment that passed the house and failed at the Senate.
I am just a bit pessimistic about how far they are willing to throw the book at him at Federal level with the messages of "healing" from the President-elect. Depends on how far Barr has managed to knobble the Justice Department as to how it will function after. At least the State level actions and the bankers finally having enough something to hope for.
Ford pardoned Nixon for unspecified crimes against the USA during his period in office.
Cost him a big chunk of support.
But even if something similar happened for Trump, that wouldn't be protection against crimes committed before he took office. Or crimes not against the USA during office.
I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974."
https://watergate.info/1974/09/08/text-of-ford-pardon-proclamation.html
As he hasn't yet been charged with anything arising from the Mueller investigation due to the Justice Department guideline that prohibits the federal indictment of a sitting president, in theory, there is nothing for him to pardon. He may be able to pardon himself of the impeachment that passed the house and failed at the Senate.
The impeachment didn't get anywhere, so nothing to pardon. The Mueller investigation also didn't find anything that could result in federal charges, although it did uncover some shady goings on at the FBI and elsewhere. Main risk now seems to be whatever comes out of the IRS audit into Trump's business affairs.
But popcorn sales will continue to thrive seeing as there's still that potential issue of the Biden laptop.. Which may or may not turn out to be a nothingburger like Russiagate.
Actually, Trump released further parts of the Mueller report - primarially the bits that vindicate Asange.... I wonder if he will be pardoning him?
I doubt it. AFAIK the charges mostly related to the material 'leaked' by Manning. Then again, it might be amusing to dangle the prospect of a pardon in exchange for explaining how he got the DNC stuff.. Which I guess was an event that ensures he wouldn't get a Biden pardon.
"[...] and I won my bet and I am happy about that too."
Nigel Farage apparently lost a 10k bet on the result. Whether he will pay up is a moot point. He needs to raise funds from the suck patriots who will subscribe to his UKIP er, Brexit Party er, Reform Party.
Not sure how Biden will pan out but it will be such a relief not to hear all the lies and crap and hate that Trump comes out with on a daily basis.
I doubt Biden will remain President for long, but it'll be interesting to see if any pre-election promises come to fruition, ie transitioning away from petrochemicals.
But an interesting election. And possibly a little premature to be celebrating when it's not officially been called.. Which isn't good news, especially if any of the legal challenges change the result(s). It's also a little unclear how many of those have merit, but some oddities on the IT front. So allegations of 'glitches' in vote tabulation software, and an update apparently being pushed to voting systems the day before the election. That seems a bit risky, ie if the update borked the machines and couldn't be rolled back, what would happen?
I think it's also a shame there wasn't a clearer majority for the Dems that would have made it harder to challenge the result(s). But I also think there have been some real issues wrt allegations of ballot stuffing, absentee ballots etc.
And then of course Covid. So I've seen some claims that people voted in Nevada when they'd moved out of state, and thus should have been ineligable to vote there. If so, presumably that happened in other states, and highlights the challenges of keeping accurate electoral rolls in these interesting times. And then there may have been some issues regarding late votes, and challenges as to whether those should have been counted.. Which gets potentially more serious if allegations that postmarks were applied incorrectly.
So I guess it'll be a few weeks before that mess gets sorted out, and there's the danger that by calling it early, people may refuse to accept any changes due to challenges.. And if that means Biden hasn't won, then I guess that's going to lead to more riots.
You expect Biden to drop dead? US presidential terms are 4 years and that's pretty much the only way he "won't remain President for long". It's not like being Prime Minister where snap elections can be called.
Hopefully not, but he's one of the oldest Presidents ever, and has had health issues. I'm thinking more along the lines of Pelosi's incapacity committee, and some of Biden's gaffs. But then there's a clear line of succession should the President be ruled incapacitated or incapable of performing their duties.
Churchill was pretty fucked by that point though. At one point, in the 50s, Churchill went missing for a couple of months to recover from a stroke. At the same point Eden, his deputy, was in hospital recovering from a heart attack. Not that anybody admitted it publicly at the time.
On t'other hand Churchill did have a heart attack in the White House in 1940/41. Hid it, and did a walkabout and glad-handed the public, then gave a speech to both Houses and back to the White house for dinner.
Churchill should have also had a lot of guilt to deal with as well, assuming he had a conscience. Everything I learned about the man during my history degree suggests he was little more than a blowhard like our current Prime Minister, but was lucky to be a wartime leader against some of the most evil bastards the world has seen. Based on his previous track record, his historical memory would be very damning - something that his contemporary Brits hadn't forgotten when the voted him out in favour of a Labour government after WWII.
Just yesterday I read a medical assessment of the two candidates. Biden has issues. But Trump seemed to be slightly worse. Calcium affecting heart and prescribed maximum dose of Rosuvastatin due to cholesterol. Plus rosacea and prostate issue.
Incidently, Trump uses a cream Ivermectin product. And Ivermectin is being investigated as a potential Covid-19 treatment. Could an existing Ivermectin level have helped him if he really did have Covid-19?
Sure. I believe you.
So the polls, the "most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics", the expected control of House and Senate, all of these meant that she had to raise this legislation _before_ the election even though she fully expected Biden to win?
Something here doesn't add up.
Actually that was about a long-needed clarification of the law on succession. We've needed it for over a hundred years, but every time someone brings it up, someone else always feels that it'll take power away from them and so they object. Doesn't alter the fact that it's needed, though.
Even if it had passed this time around, it would not have been used on Trump, for the simple reason that nobody, not even most Republicans, wants to see that fucking nut job Pence in the Oval Office. He makes Cheney look like an educated, tolerant pussycat.
And anybody who thinks it had anything at all to do with Biden probably also thinks that X-files was a documentary.
"[...] not even most Republicans, wants to see that fucking nut job Pence in the Oval Office."
It always seemed that Pence was put in as VP specifically so he could get the alt-right/Evangelical policies through if Trump's unpredictability became too ineffective. There are still three months to go in which Pence could become acting President if the GOP dictates using the 25th Amendment.
Wrong way of thinking about it. Remember, the Presidential candidate chooses his own running-mate, the Party as a whole doesn't get a say in the matter. Trump chose Pence because Trump knew that he could do almost anything with impunity without getting kicked out, as long as he had somebody even more batshit crazy than him as a cushion. See the impeachment, for example. By late 2019, even the Republicans were sick and tired of Trump's antics. If the Vice President was even close to being sane, Trump would have been removed from power last February.
"So do we put Biden's choice of Harris down to senility or psychosis?"
Neither. It's simply political expediency.
In the current climate, he had to select a black female or he wouldn't have become elected. She is, quite simply, mostly harmless, and thus perfect for the VP position at the moment. Yes, I said it. She is a token black woman. She can thank the BLM movement for the return to tokenism, and will forever wonder if she would have been offered the position on her own merit.
I type the above as a Californian living in the Bay Area who has watched her political career since the year dot. She NEVER brought up her heritage in any meaningful way until she set her sights on Washington, everybody just treated her as YetAnotherCalifornian (as they should) ... However, one wonders why her handlers never point out that her mum was from India, and her dad was a British Jamaican.
As i understand it (I am British) most of these legal issues tend to have an affect in to 10's of votes so I think it unlikly to have any effect.
I think that if the republicans attemp to desenfranchise 10's of thousands of voters there is liable to be civil unrest (I guess)
As i understand it (I am British) most of these legal issues tend to have an affect in to 10's of votes so I think it unlikly to have any effect.
Also British, but there can be effects. Like the 2000 election where Gore became President Elect, but then after hanging chads in Florida, didn't become President. In some of the marginal states, there seems to be potential for 1,000's of votes & the 'glitch' with the Dominion system seems to have incorrectly logged Republican votes as Democrat.. So that's an IT angle that needs exploring, ie how could it 'glitch' like that? Seems like where that's suspected, they're doing manual recounts. Seems like there's plenty of conspiracy theories brewing around the software though, and it'll probably take a few weeks to bottom those out.
I think that if the republicans attemp to desenfranchise 10's of thousands of voters there is liable to be civil unrest (I guess)
Yup, but it's a timing thing. An election has to have a cutoff, and that's enshrined in US election law AFAIK. And also something the USPS has experience with. I had an interesting conversation with a friend who worked for them, and explained the fun she had on tax filing day to make sure tax returns were officially received by the tax deadline. If the US elections are going more towards mailed ballots, then it's going to need to make sure it's got robust processes to collect, stamp and deliver ballots. And then try to prevent the frauds we've seen with postal voting here in the UK.
"And then try to prevent the frauds we've seen with postal voting here in the UK."
Election fraud is hard to do and rarely happens in anything other than very minor instances.
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdf_file/Fraud-allegations-data-report-2017.pdf
"As shown in chart A2 the most frequently reported types of voting case related to the offence of personation (voting as someone else) either at a polling station (28 cases), using a postal vote (22 cases) or using a proxy vote (13 cases). A further 14 cases related to the offence of undue influence. The remaining voting cases related to attempts to tamper with ballot papers (three cases), breaches of secrecy requirements (eight cases), alleged bribery (eight cases) and treating – providing food or drink to influence a voter to vote in a particular way (eight cases). "
You are correct that, generally speaking, electoral fraud is rare. And there is no actual evidence that it mattered in 2020. (Though one should note that, AFAIK, even places that have scanned paper ballots don't do routine auditing of the results. A simple "we'll pick five boxes after the election at random, the Dems get to pick five, the Republicans get to pick five, let's see if the hand count matches what the machines said" would satisfy my paranoia... hell, I don't trust my own code without running checks on the results.)
Some time back, I was in a conversation where I said fraud would never matter in a Presidential election. Then I thought of 1876 ("Rutherfraud" B. Hayes earned his nickname), 1960 (a cliffhanger won by JFK after the "Riverside Cemetery" vote came in in Cook County, Illinois); 2000 (close enough so that pretty much anything, from hanging chads to minor fraud, could have turned it); and 2004 (some rather odd patterns in how some districts turned Republican depending on what voting equipment they used).
_None_ of these is a proven case (though I gather 1876 comes close). But the bonkers electoral college system makes things a little easier to game than they otherwise would be. (One more reason to drop it... saw a "headline" this week along the lines of "Nation waits on tenterhooks to see if candidate with 4M vote lead will win election".)
"But the bonkers electoral college system makes things a little easier to game than they otherwise would be."
Apparently the Founding Fathers expected the representatives to the Electoral College to exercise their judgement - specifically to neutralise the choice of an unsuitable populist "winner". In theory they could even pick someone other than the winner/loser.
Over the years most states have constrained their representatives to be mere delegates - some facing legal sanctions if they make their own different decision. Some states only send delegates for their voters' majority choice - a few states proportion them according to the vote ratios.
Back in the 1970 election, some of the top year at my boarding school were 18 and eligible to vote. One of the masters gave them a lift to the polling station. The master said something about stopping off and buying them a pint of beer on the way back. (Am pretty sure that was a joke. The school policy was very much against alcohol, even if legal.)
Somehow, and I have never worked out how, a complaint was put in that he had attempted to bribe them. The police came and asked some questions - they decided no further investigation was needed.
Have no idea whether that allegation ended up being counted.
"The police came and asked some questions - [...]"
I was a minor party teller in the 1980s - standing outside the polling station collecting voter roll numbers to feed back for supporter turnout chasing.
We were given strict instructions on legal conduct - and IIRC there was a policeman outside every polling station too. Rule Number One: "do not attempt to speak to a voter until they are leaving". Otherwise it could be construed as attempted interference.
For many years now it has annoyed me that the major party tellers blatantly solicit your roll number as you are entering. Not a policeman in sight.
For many years now it has annoyed me that the major party tellers blatantly solicit your roll number as you are entering. Not a policeman in sight.
AFAIK it's legal to ask for the roll number on entry. But not stand outside the polling station with a fat wad of tenners & asking if voters had decided yet. I've done it a few times, and learned it's better if elections are held when the weather's nice. Plus it was pretty amiable, ie tellers from the different parties comparing lists to help check turnout. There were a couple of fun moments, ie helping elderly voters into the polling station & then trying to get staff inside to help them the rest of the way because we were forbidden.
I also was an scrutineer during a count, which was an interesting experience. Partly due to being a smoker, and discovering we were locked into a non-smoking building until the count was completed. That's where Covid & potential shenanigans seem to have come into play, ie claims that observers were kept so far away from counts that they couldn't observe anything.
‘I think that if the republicans attemp to desenfranchise 10's of thousands of voters there is liable to be civil unrest (I guess)‘
Nobody needs to disenfranchise (or to have seriously attempted to disenfranchise”) anybody for that to happen. All it needs is for someone to reinforce and enable sufficient people In their preexisting beliefs that the system is corrupt, connect them with each other, and encourage them to act on those beliefs. But it’s not as though anybody in a position of influence would ever do anything as irresponsible as that is it. Oh, wait...
Hold on people, it could prove to be a bumpy ride over the next few years yet...
There is always the Faithless electors but it is unlikely to impact the election
Personally I think it would be best if Trump focuses on trying to overturn the results etc. Much better than giving up earlier and having longer to focus his vindictive nature
Not sure why three people (as of now) downvoted you. I worry about what damage Trump might inflict on our country and world in his remaining 2.5 months, particularly in his current even-more-than-usual deranged state. If he just wastes his time spluttering as a sore loser and filing frivolous lawsuits ("I lost an election, please fix it" is not grounds for a lawsuit), I'd call that a win.
If he just wastes his time spluttering as a sore loser and filing frivolous lawsuits ("I lost an election, please fix it" is not grounds for a lawsuit), I'd call that a win.
I'd call that depressingly normal for US elections this century. So Bush stole the election from Gore, and there were legal challenges. Russians stole the election from Clinton and there were 4yrs of attempts to find a Russian connection, impeach the President etc etc. So turnabout seems fair play?
But I also think this kind of thing is important to remember-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/us2020/results
Biden's victory was projected by the BBC after he overtook incumbent Donald Trump in the state of Pennsylvania
Biden: 3,350,534 49.6%
Trump: 3,313,236 49.1%
98% of expected votes counted
So it is/was close in PA, which flipped from red to blue a couple of times, 2% of the 'expected' votes are yet to be counted, X% of the votes I think are still being re-counted.. And then there are any challenges. But the BBC always made it clear which candidate it preferred, and has declared victory for Biden. As has CNN and the MSM companies who also preferred Biden. And apparently Twitter's blocking anyone who suggests shenanigans.
Of course this time, it's the Chinese voting machines that swung it for Biden. Which is one of the perhaps more bizarre conspiracy theories out there at the moment. The machines contain Chinese components (who knew?) therefore they may be shaping up to replace Russia this election.
But such is politics. Like I said before, it would have been simpler if the 'Blue Wave' had materialised and the results clearer. Instead it's paved the way for 4 more years of squabbling. Plus I think some of the results & flips have been as expected, ie Democrat voters using mail-in ballots, Republican voting in person, so where the mail-in ballots are counted later, there's been an expected jump in Biden votes.
But I also think this is where there's an IT angle. So I saw a comment that Republicans gave out electoral data when Red had the lead. Then a memory stick turned up with a bunch of votes and it swung to Blue.
Conspiracy*!
Or probably not given PA contains a lot of counties doing their own counts, and those counts need to get aggregated at the state level. A memory stick might make sense, ie if the Internet is down, or just provide dramatic video of police cars carrying The Votes! to the state capital. But is it possible for Russian/Chinese/Ukrainian hackers to hack the network? Or disgruntled officers facing calls to defund the police to just change a couple of digits in an .xls on a memory stick?
But hopefully the IT is.. better than that. Hopefully. Like data are encrypted and signed, with thorough audit trails to detect & prevent shenanigans. Hopefully. But it's an IT thing, and this is The Register..
*And on the IT conspiracy angle, I saw a comment that the Pelosis are investors in the company that produces the voting machines. No idea if that's true because AFAIK the company is privately held. But Pelosi did apparently buy into Crowdstrike recently, the well known IT security company that 'proved' Russian interference in the last election.. Oh to be able to embed the X-Files theme..
"Oh to be able to embed the X-Files theme.."
Like that? (ok, not autoplay embedded as such, but the best we can do here)
You really think the BBC called it for Biden because they preferred him to win?Wrong on so many levels!
Soo.. explain-
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2020-54882647
Since media projected on Saturday that Mr Biden had won the critical state of Pennsylvania, accumulating enough votes to claim the White House, the president-elect has forged ahead with his plans to take the reins of power...
...CBS News, the BBC's US partner, says the Biden team is considering its legal options if the Trump administration continues to stall the handover.
IANAL, but I suspect Biden's ones will point out that the election isn't really over until all the votes are counted, results certified, the Electoral College has done their thing and possibly Congress has approved it. There's a process for deciding the US election, and it's not run by the media.
So until all the boring constitutional procedures have been followed, legal challenges completed or Trump concedes the election, Biden hasn't officially won, only probably won.
But such is politics. I think the election also showed how out of touch the media are, ie some exit polls showed around 17% of voters thought Covid was the main issue, compared to closer to 50% for the economy.. Which currently are related, ie anti-Covid measures effect on the economy. But then for nearly a year the media's been running daily totals of 'cases' rather than hospitalisations. And again the MSM seems to have been rather wrong about the 'Blue Wave', and a closer election than perhaps anticipated, if that had swept across the US, Trump would have had little choice but to concede.
Oh, and the BBC may have some extra fun having been snubbed by Biden saying 'I'm Irish' when asked for a comment. For some reason, the BBC doesn't have that clip, but hey, it's the Internet-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsoHAwuQ73g
The official results aren't known until the Electoral Collage votes are tallied on 6 January 2021. Obviously media don't want to wait until then. Instead they look at the popular vote in each state. If one candidate has more than 50% of the votes cast, they can call the result for that state without waiting for all the votes in that state to be counted. Multiple that by the EC votes the state has, and they can sometimes call the whole election even before each state has been called. Being media they each want to publish the result before any other media, so some of them use projections to get an edge, such as relying on the distribution of uncounted votes being similar to ones counted. I think most are actually more conservative, and use objective criteria, but we did have some differences between the early media proclamations.
The same happens in the UK. We use constituencies rather than states and an electoral collage, but the effect is similar. Get more than half the constituencies and you've won, and any remaining count will only effect how big your majority is.
It's unlikely that a respectable media like the BBC would be influenced by which candidate they preferred in this. Nor is it clear what they would gain by calling an early but wrong result. I expect a win for either candidate would get the same number of clicks.
"The official results aren't known until the Electoral Collage votes are tallied on 6 January 2021.".
Yes we know that and we also know enough about the numbers to tell us that no recount or phoney lawsuits will change the numbers enough to save Trump.
All it is, is about a sore loser and a twat who wants to claim for the rest of his life that the election was rigged agains him.
Appart from that it gives him the opportunity to beg for money from gullible Republicans for as long as they provide.
There is always the Faithless electors but it is unlikely to impact the election
That was weird, but then the Electoral College system has always struck me as a bit odd. But..
On July 6, 2020, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that states may require an elector to vote for the candidate to whom they had pledged
So presumably there's still scope for electors to not pledge until the last minute. But the fines for breaking the pledge were only $1,000 in an election where hundreds of millions are spent to win. But given the Electoral College system is deeply embedded in the US Constitution, I doubt it'll change to popular vote or proportional representation any time soon..
"That was weird, but then the Electoral College system has always struck me as a bit odd."
Apparently the founding Fathers were quite clear. It was to be a representative assembly - not a delegate one. The representatives were expected to use their judgement specifically to neutralise an inappropriate populist winner - and they could then choose anyone they deemed suitable.
Federal Law still regards them as free-thinking representatives - but at least 31 states now limit them as bound delegates who face legal sanctions if they do not accede to their state's majority popular vote.
But the serious flaw in the Electoral system is that all the electors for a state are picked by popular vote of the ENTIRE state, thereby disaffecting anyone who isn't living in the major population centers. It would be more appropriate if electors were individually chosen *by congressional district*.
Mr. Greenwald has just pointed out that Brazil, two-thirds of the population of the USA manages to do all the voting in a single day and have the results before the end of the day.
Brazil is not a small country. It is the fifth most-populous nation on the planet. Although its population is somewhat smaller than the U.S.’s (330 million to 210 million), its mandatory voting law, automatic registration, and 16-year-old voting age means the number of ballots to be counted is quite similar (105 million votes in Brazil’s 2018 presidential election compared to 130 million votes in the 2016 U.S. presidential election). And on the same date of its national elections, it, too, holds gubernatorial and Congressional elections in its twenty-seven states.
And yet Brazil — a much poorer and less technologically advanced country than the U.S., with a much shorter history of democracy — holds seamless, quick vote counts about which very few people harbor doubts. The elections are held on a Sunday, to ensure as many people as possible do not have work obligations to prevent voting, and polls close at 6:00 p.m.
For the 2018 presidential run-off election that led to Jair Bolsonaro’s victory, 90% of all votes were counted and the results released by 6:00 p.m. on the day of the election: the time the last state closed its polls. The full vote tally was available within a couple of hours after that
Note he is not a fan of the Brazilian administration...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55823.htm
.
Americans are just sloppy.
"Americans are just sloppy."
I think the main problem here is that each state seems to have different rules for how to process votes in a national election. Are posted votes counted as received or at the end? Are votes accepted until the close of voting, or if postmarked before the close of polling? Etc etc.
Perhaps for next time America needs to sort out a single, clearly defined, set of national voting rules so there's no running to the courts endlessly all over the place (which further delays counting).
"Perhaps for next time America needs to sort out a single, clearly defined, set of national voting rules so there's no running to the courts endlessly all over the place (which further delays counting)."
Why would they? Whoever the incumbents are, they know they may need that confusion and legal dispute for themselves next time around. Most politicians seem to be lawyers. The previous two statements may well be linked in some way.
Remember also that this isn't a simple ballot where the voters choose between "A" and "B", there may also be congressional and senate votes and maybe a dozen statewide propositions on the paper. Counting ballots isn't a matter of just putting them into one of two piles.
Americans are just sloppy.
Have you seen the average US ballot sheet? They just do every votable position in one go, down to the community dogcatcher. Why this is would likely boil down to "hysterical raisins".
The next steps after having counted and tallied the votes for the president are similarly outdated: the states are going to appoint the electors, which has to be done by 14 December (and disputes over that resolved by the 8th). Those are going to note down their votes for the president and the veep. Separately, even though they're on one ticket for both of the parties. In nearly all cases that's going to go according to the popular vote in that state, so already known a week from now I expect. These votes get sealed and sent to Washington in six separate consignments, where they should be received by the 23rd of December. On the 6th of January they then get counted by Congress, declaring the winner.
So all of this is still from the time of the stage coach, and never adapted to more modern methods of transport and communication.
If the winner is being called on the very hour the voting window is closing, then it is obvious the ballot is being counted from the moment the polls open.
Clearly this leads to quicker reporting of the results, but it also has the potential to influence votes cast later in the day.
Early voters might even feel cheated, as they would have voted differently knowing how the poll was progressing.
No. It might take longer, but starting the count AFTER the polls have closed is far fairer.
Clearly this leads to quicker reporting of the results, but it also has the potential to influence votes cast later in the day.
As long as the actual results are kept secret[0] until the voting has closed, I see no influencing of later voters by counting while voting is still in progress. Some countries even have rules to severely limit or even prohibit exit polling because of that potentially influencing later voters.
[0] Of course that means ALL officials involved in the counting, including observers, have to stay incommunicado for the day, working in rooms into which full ballot boxes can be delivered, but no messages getting out. I doubt that's feasible though. Technically it would be easier with electronic counting, but that introduces other problems unless REALLY well thought out, vetted and implemented.
"But I also think there have been some real issues wrt allegations of ballot stuffing, absentee ballots etc."
Whilst I agree there was most certainly some irregularities, that's pretty much unavoidable in an election on such a scale, I sincerely doubt there was any organisation behind them and likewise that there could be enough, ie in at least the thousands per voting state/region/area/whatever, to actually swing it. Most notably, there doesn't seem to be any accusations of ballot rigging in places where Republicans won. It seems ballot rigging only ever happens in places where an incumbent loses, more so if those areas they lose in are "vital" to not losing overall.
IF someone had both the inclination, and the ability, to fix the elections[0] in any way here in the United States, do you REALLY think they would have forgotten to also fix the House and Senate? Because here in the US, without those two, the President is pretty much nothing more than a figurehead, as Trump found out (thankfully).
[0] Yes, I said "elections". Plural. We didn't have just one, we had one for each State, and for a few territories, and the odd hanger-on.
Most notably, there doesn't seem to be any accusations of ballot rigging in places where Republicans won. It seems ballot rigging only ever happens in places where an incumbent loses, more so if those areas they lose in are "vital" to not losing overall.
Give it time. The accusations are naturally going to come from the losing party, and in a democratic system need at least a cursory investigation. But ballot rigging's obviously going to be more useful in a marginal state than say, a shock Republican landslide in California. There's been some interesting videos from Project Veritas wrt ballot stuffing that should be investigated. One showed a woman who claimed to be able to deliver ballots for a fee. She may have just been trying to con money out of the reporter, or she may have been serious. Either way, she should probably be jailed for offences against democracy.
It's just America. They sue over everything.
My daddy left home when I was three
And he didn't leave much to ma and me
Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
But the meanest thing that he ever did
Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue".
I think it's also a shame there wasn't a clearer majority for the Dems that would have made it harder to challenge the result(s). But I also think there have been some real issues wrt allegations of ballot stuffing, absentee ballots etc.
Actually, the interesting thing to see would be if around February 2021, irrefutable evidence to surface that not only did the Dems rig the election, but that Biden/Harris were fully aware of it.
Probably the most important volte face will be rejoining the Paris Agreement on climate.
I'll miss the unintentional comedy, such as when he said we wouldn't hear of Covid on Nov. 4th, only for his chief of staff to contract it. And I guess I have one less excuse to drink to excess. Maybe one last celebratory beer.
I wonder if he'll try to pre-emptively pardon himself.
"before indicted, let alone convicted" is *definitely* not a problem - Ford pardoned Nixon before he had been indicted, and nobody suggested that made the pardon invalid.
Pardoning yourself would probably *not* pass muster though. Not to mention that the President only has the authority to pardon Federal crimes, not State crimes, and the New York Attorney General is very interested in some of Trump's actions.
While it "probably" wouldn't pass muster, I wouldn't put it past Trump to try it. It'll work its way through to the Supreme court which he'll hope will (a) take its time, leaving him free from his crimes and (b) his nominees will pay him back for him nominating them.
I think President-elect Biden has also committed to re-joining the World Health Organisation, or at least probably will, as soon as he can in order to help co-ordinate the response to Covid-19.
I suspect that journalists the world over are looking forward to not having to be awake at 3:00 in the morning Washington DC time to check on the latest presidential tweet come 21st January too. Pour Donald, he may have to cope with his 'popularity' on Twitter dropping somewhat.
"Pour Donald, he may have to cope with his 'popularity' on Twitter dropping somewhat."
When he's a private citizen, he will no longer of the special dispensation afforded world leaders or other people of importance. The ban hammer might fall if he assumes he can get away with the blatant lies and rabble rousing he currently only gets warnings for now.
He'll still be the Lord High Twitterbator Extraordinaire. Due reward for his four years of public service would be to insist he become the senior lecturer and professor emeritus at Trump University on the Noble Art of Twitterbation, Theoretical and Applied. Pence, Bannon, and others would of course be his students ... and they would use Vogon Poetry Appreciation Chairs in the lectures. (I am such a kind-hearted ghoul! :) )
I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!
Official sources may not have called the race when this was Tweeted.
Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about how to participate in an election or another civic process.
I've actually got a few quid down on him quitting on or around New Year's Eve, citing family[*] or health reasons, and letting someone else carry the can for the forthcoming shitstorm. As you say, as far as Spaffer is concerned, responsibility is something that other people do.
Anyway, I don't know why Don Cheeto is so upset - after all, he's got all the time in the world now to play golf, shag strippers and declare bankruptcy without having to bother with all this 'president' stuff. Despite being a narcissistic orange man-child, it clearly hasn't occurred to him that he can make far more money as 'former President of the United States' than he can as 'incumbent President of the United States' (Bozo came to broadly similar conclusions regarding his own position, fairly recently I reckon)
[*] - determining which family is left as an exercise for the reader.
...that's the Bullingdon Club for you
The Bullingdon Club is a private all-male dining club for Oxford University students. It is known for its wealthy members, grand banquets, and occasionally bad behaviour, including vandalism of restaurants and students' rooms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club
Perhaps the vandalism of restaurants and student rooms was what set in motion the wreaking of the United Kingdom
"Vandalism? That's what poor people do."
Nah. These days destroying a city center is merely exercising your freedom of speech.
All I can say is that I'm glad the local nutcases are still up in their Summer homes in Portland & Seattle and haven't moved back to Berkeley/Oakland/San Francisco for the winter yet. Hopefully the good weather will hold ...
Donald's upset for three reasons.
1) He lost. He's a loser. That alone may shatter him, his ego cannot stand it.
2) His recent actions imply that he thinks that he's going to prison. Presumably for tax fraud, although it remains to be seen what else.
3) His loans are going to be called in. That will further shatter his ego as his "business acumen" will be exposed for the incompetent shell game it is.
His entire existence is on the line, which is why he's going to file every lawsuit he can.
I just hope his lawyers don't get their payments up-front, as they deserve to go down too.
Rudi seems to be the Kool Aid King. Considering the respect etc he garnered over 9/11, he seems to have lost it now. Watching his press conference outside Four Seasons (the gardening company, not the hotel, my how times have quickly changed!), he seemed to be rocking from attempts at comedy acting to frothing at the mouth.
Four Seasons (the gardening company,
Which has adopted the slogan "Make America Green Again".
And there's probably some bargain merchandise to be had there, although you'd want to limit that to white caps, T-shirts and such which you can then run though a tub of green textile paint.
Fours Seasons Garden centre, next to an 'Adult' bookstore, which sells dildos:
"Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate bid to hang on to the White House crossed into abject farce on Saturday, after his campaign staged a purportedly major press conference at a Philadelphia landscaping business situated between a crematorium and sex shop."
From: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/08/the-other-four-seasons-trump-team-holds-press-conference-at-suburban-garden-centre
Of course, they couldn't go to the Four Seasons high class hotel, because it is not a Trump hotel. It just looks as ridiculous as they did when Sarah Palin showed her true intellect as vice presidential candidate which now seems an age ago.
"Donald Trump’s increasingly desperate bid to hang on to the White House crossed into abject farce on Saturday, after his campaign staged a purportedly major press conference at a Philadelphia landscaping business situated between a crematorium and sex shop."
I loved one of the comments on one of the Graun's pieces on this (not mine, sadly) that, due to the location, Giuliani didn't know whether he was coming or going.
-----------> For the Graun commentard who came up with that one :o)
His entire existence is on the line, which is why he's going to file every lawsuit he can.
It's looking a lot like Mantrid in Lexx. But fear not - a good many of those law suits alleging voter fraud will prove to be rich picking for lawyers wanting to see how quickly they can do someone for perjury.
Nobody had really heard of Tony Blair or David Cameron before they became leader of the opposition. So you can see how being Prime Minister would boost their earnings afterwards.
In the case of Boris Johnson, he was pretty well known as a "journalist", and from his appearances on Have I Got News for You etc, so I don't really think that adding Prime Minister to his CV will boost his earnings that much, if at all.
In the case of Trump, there are a lot of people who would previously have stayed at a Trump Hotel who will now actively avoid them, so I think being President might actually reduce his earnings potential.
Lots of chatter that he'll quit after Brexit is officially done next April.
I think that's firmly in the "wishful thinking" category. I doubt if he wanted to be the one who saw Brexit through, that's very much a poisoned chalice. No matter who was in charge, half the country will complain they went too far one way, and half that they went too far the other. I'm sure Boris would rather have had someone else get the blame for the actual agreement, and he could then have stepped up to fix the problem, with his predecessor taking the blame for the unfixed bits.
That plan was scuppered by May's stupidity at calling and losing an election, followed by her complete incompetence at getting any agreement.
I can't see him stepping down without a clear preferred successor, right now we could end up with that slimy backstabber Gove, or possibly Sunak and he's doing a useful job guiding the treasury through COVID.
He may want to go in a few years, when Brexit agreements are done & COVID isn't on the front page every day, perhaps depending on the party's mood coming up to the net election.
I think we'll have to watch his tragic attempts to be Joe's new best friend fail first.
The newsaper that paid Johnson a fortune to ruin the coiuntry with their nationalist fantasies are however bigging up the great possibilities for him to do this. They are
(1) Britain is hosting some climate change summit next year, commiting to reduce carbon emissions, and Biden will obviously want to be part of it.
(2) Britain will join the Trans Pacific Partnership with the USA and be part of this big trade bloc
Now, I've just had a look at my globe and we're quite a long way from the Pacific, and I presume it requires the burning of quite a lot of oil to ttransport stuff to and from there, compared to across the channel, so I'm a little unsure as to whether these twin objectives are completely compatible.
Icon : because the prez is currently refusing to accept that he will shortly need to get his.
(2) Britain will join the Trans Pacific Partnership with the USA and be part of this big trade bloc
That's REALLY cutting the UK loose from the Continent, but as it's a long way either around Africa or Tierra del Fuego you'd have to take good care it doesn't come apart during the journey.
(Also, would they really be taking NI with them? Wouldn't that mess with the Good Friday Agreement?)
Of course the result of the American election would have been well known in advance to Cummings with all the AI and Superforecasting that he does. On the other hand, we may see him doing a day trip up to Barnard Castle again to check his eyesight if he has incorrectly read the forecasts
I suspect that getting Trump in to the Whitehouse previously was a nice bonus for Putin, but I don't think he was aiming for that. Everything I've read says he is working to cause as much disruption in Western Political systems as possible. Probably to keep the West busy so we don't notice what he is doing elsewhere.
Trump getting his fans to distrust the mainstream media, and also the very organisations that would normally be trying to stop Putin (the UN, the US government etc) is just a bonus..
But, he wanted the disruption. Hence people working for his friends (just distant enough for Putin to be able to deny responsibility) have been trying to sow dissent in the various Western countries (attacking the Democrats in the US, attacking Labour and ensuring Brexit here, ensuring the right do better in various European counties).
Putin has won whatever the result of the election.
I look forward to New York's case next. As it involves a charity, the judge is not likely to be lenient, and no President in his right mind is going to give someone who would take from a charity a pardon; it would be political suicide.
Looks like Justice is finally going to come home to roost for the man who was responsible for more upset and destruction of the geopolitical stability and economics of the entire planet than any prior human being in history, including a certain WWII dictator. :(
THISA IAS FALE KNEWS AGIN/ WE ALL KMOW THAT TRIMP WUN THIS ERECTIONN AND THAM BODEN STOLL VOTWS [[AND PUPPIES FRIM CHILDUN]]]] FROM THE OTHER PRTY. YOU JUST WEIGHT. BUNDEN WIL; INCREANSE TAXSES AND TAKE EVERY GREENBAXK OFF YIUR WALLWT ND USE IT TO PAY FOR HEATER. NIDENS COCK HABNBIT. I. MEAN COKE WHY. ANT YIOUNDEKETE LETTERS AND WORDS ON THE INTERNETT. // ?? I FEEL SORRYNFOR THE FRAGRUNT MELANOma WITH HER BEAUTIFUL FAECES BECAUW SHE DIDN NOT ASK FORM THIS.
NORE DID metric..AMERIX..meridian AMERICAN GOD DUM IT.
With a republican senate nothing is going to get passed for the next two years.
The democrats are going to tear themselves apart over why they didn't win more - we need to be more progressive VS we need to support the police. The republicans will jump on this at the midterms.
Meanwhile Biden will be doing the "I'm not Trump" world tour of former allies
Last time I checked (about ten seconds ago), the Senate hadn't been decided yet. Yes, I know, chances are it'll have a Republican majority ... but with the mail-in ballots favoring the Democrats (because Trump told all the Republicans they were "bad", despite the fact that Trump uses mail-in ballots ... there's a word for that, isn't there?), there is still a small chance they will gain the seats needed. I'm not holding my breath.
There are two Senate run-offs in January, so we won't know until then.
Donald's and McConnell's actions during the next month and a half are likely to have a significant effect on that. If they continue with the toy/pram evacuation, then the Republicans will lose both of those seats.
The thing to do, is put forward loads of bills that the American public practically unanimously favour, and see the crowd turn nasty when a Republican senate votes them down.
Come the next election, the Democrats will have a very long list showing how the Republican party hates the average American.
Unfortunately at this point the electorate is so divided it won't matter.
If the dems introduced a bill for free icecream Fox simply wouldn't cover it and the 'normal' GOP vote will get 24x7 news stories about Biden's record national debt. While the 'fringe' will get told that Biden is an anagram of Stalin.
Think 1970s Belfast: No protestant voter is going to be watching the new and think "Well I disagree with their views on transubstatiation - but Sinn Fein have some very attractive policies on inward investment"
Ding dong the witch is dead, but now Biden gets to deal with a raging pandemic (+anti-maskers and eventually anti-vaxxers), 10 million unemployed, higher debt to GDP than at any time since WWII, probably a divided government, and "friends" on his own side as batshit crazy as his more extreme enemies on his other side.
It's an improvement, but damn - what a row to hoe.
I think I would start drinking like Yeltsin, immediately.
"As a 50% percent Finn"-
And me as a 100% percent Finn, a few additional points.
The Finns are a bit sad at the fact that they are less known than their neighbours, there are the Russians, well never mind, and there are the Swedes with their Nobel prize constantly in the news, even the fack effort for a Peace prize for the loser ended up in the news, at least on Fox.
During the times of Dana's book the Finns according to him, had the ability to sail against the wind, sadly that reputation has got lost.
All we poor Finns have been left to brag about is Sibelius, some war efforts and the sauna, and the sauna we share with all our neighbours.
Then when uneducated foreigners associates sauna with sex we get a bit miffed because it doesn't really work, unless alone perhaps.
So the simple truth is that it's better to be known for something than nothing.
So when you hint at alcohol, the face of a Finn will shine up, a rare sight on these latitudes.
We have had some slight help here, take Kimi for instance, and of course the real boost came from the adventures prohibition times.
A relative of mine and a great friend of my father become famous as the "Gentleman smuggler", he wrote two books about it, the latter about smuggling out Jews from Germany after the prohibition ended.
The sad reality is that the Finnish consumption is just mediocre European
and not much to boast about.
What has happened over time is that instead of drinking just once a week people have adopted the educated continental habit of having some each day.
"Torvalds is Swedish"
No he is not and never was Swedish.
His native tongue is Swedish like mine. This, through my sad experience, is at times a bit hard to grasp.
But let me give you an example, suppose you meet a guy in Canada who speaks French as his native tongue, would you then automatically assume he is French, and to make it even more simple, suppose you meet a guy in the USA speaking English would you then perhaps grasp that he might not infact be British.
Finland was the eastern part of Sweden for some 650 years until it was lost to the Russian Empire in 1809 to become Finland, a Grand Duchy of the Russian empire, retaining Swedish law and type of society.
When the Empire fell in the revolution, Finland said good by, and declared independence.
In short Finland is a country still with two official languages Finnish and Swedish, all Finns.
I and Linus and Sibelius and Monty Widenius are members of families who speak Swedish as our first native language.
I hope this helped and I can understand it may be difficult to grasp.
One other thing Finland gave us: Linux.
Also Nammo, purveyors of fine pyrotechnics & projectiles. Not sure if that's related to alcohol consumption, or excessive use of saunas, but something has to explain sticking a ramjet into a 155mm artillery shell. Those crazy Finns!
(See also rally drivers. When going fast on gravel & dirt roads just isn't good enough, add ice..)
Finnish alcohol consumption has dropped dramatically since Finland joined the EU. That surprised a lot of people, as one of the things that had to change on joining was the state monopoly on alcohol consumption and sales of stronger drinks being limited to the state owned shops (only the weaker strength beers could be bought in supermarkets).
Strangely, the lower prices and easier availability of alcohol seemed to reduced its popularity. Which is quite a good thing - I don't think there are even vans going around picking up drunks from the gutters and park benches anymore.
Didn't I just read somewhere that Putin is considering stepping aside due to health issues? But searching on the topic I see only the NY Post, The Sun, The Examiner and their ilk are carrying the story.
I look forward to civil interactions between Gov't leaders. We can hope for intelligent discourse in the future interactions.
The Onion is an American satirical rag that normally gives the US Vice-President a hard time. When Joe was Obama's VP he was portrayed as a small time crook who somehow had made it to the White House. But he seemed to take it in good spirit, and after Obama's term came to an end The Onion published what looked like a conciliatory article.
But for some reason the Onion has said hardly a word against Trump's bible-banging VP. I want to know why.
Trump gave the world Covfefe. He didn’t start a war (not yet anyway).
I’m struggling to think of anything else positive as El Presidente. American politics and polarisation have filtered down to other countries. The idea that political choices are binary is puerile and roughly 70M people have shown that education is equally infantile. I don’t expect radical change but it is at least a start. Education is the only way forward.
@Binraider
Yes indeed, lack of education but also the two party system.
In more educated countries, or perhaps just more happy countries, where coalition governments are the norm parties understand there is a limit to how much shit they can speak about other parties if they want to be part of any government.
In a two party system that other party becoms satan and the deadly enemy you have to destroy to any cost.
Just look at me, I hope the Democrates will take the Senate too, apparently even a one party system is better than a two party system.
I don't think either country can change in this respect.
Remains education, but in the USA affordable education for everybody is seen as socialism and will turn the country into a Venezuela, and in Britain there is a tendency to think all is well due to two fine Universities.
Apparently even Socrates was pondering about the relationship between education and democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLJBzhcSWTk
Why Socrates Hated Democracy
Yep. I'm with you, on that education ultimately defines democracies.
For a long time I have put forward the idea that a vote should not be counted unless the voter can demonstrate a basic understanding of the issues.
A nation where a significant proportion vote exactly as they're told to do by Rupert Murdoch, is not in any way shape or form a functioning democracy.
> I have put forward the idea that a vote should not be counted unless the voter can demonstrate a basic understanding of the issues.
That didn't work too well when it was the white southern sheriff who got to decide if the black voter was educated enough to vote.
Although perhaps having to pass the equivalent of GCSE civics might be a reasonable requirement for presidential candidates.
Although perhaps having to pass the equivalent of GCSE civics might be a reasonable requirement for presidential candidates.
and southern sheriffs
I was of the belief there is some kind of requirement that people in public office should be of "good character", although this has historically been abused to protect the privileged classes.
As a practical application, anybody who has been through multiple bankruptcies is either totally incompetent, or deliberately gaming the system - and in either case, unfit to be in charge of public monies.
Reply Icon
"Yep. I'm with you, on that education ultimately defines democracies."
There was an idea in an SF novel, by Robert Heinlein IFIRC, where the voters in a democracy could have multiple votes. Everyone would have one basic irrevocable vote but could earn extra ones by achieving a recognised education standard, a period serving in your country's armed forces etc. Misdemeanors or crimes would lose you votes so in theory the most responsible citizens would prevail in elections.
Could never happen of course.
Starship Stormtroopers had roughly as much to do with the book as Gomer Pyle USMC has to do with Unc Sugar’s Misguided Children. Verhoeven had a property named ‘Bug Hunt’, heard that the rights to Starship Troopers were available, did a small fix-up of the script, and charged. Hint: Johnny Rico, in the book, was a Filipino, not an Argentine. His mother was visiting Argentina and got nuked by the Bugs. Johnny Rico did not play Yankee Feetball in high school. Dizzy Dean was a guy, not a girl; there were zero girls in the MI, but lots of them in the Navy, girls made better pilots than guys. Carmen got to be an instant officer, Johnny was a grunt. The book had powered armour as a major plot point; the movie, well... In the book, the MI dropped in using their powered armour and individual drop capsules, there being a reason why the MI were capped ‘cap troopers’. In the movie... you gotta be kidding. In the book there were boss bugs, who ruled, soldier bugs, who fought, and worker bugs, who built stuff... and that’s it. No other types of bugs. And the soldier bugs fought with guns and missiles and spacecraft, most definitely not with, to quote one review of the movie, hyper velocity anti-spacecraft bug shit. I can go into considerably greater detail, but I’ll just say that Verhoeven didn’t even read the book until after making the movie.
Neville Shute, actually. _In the Wet_. RAH was more of a testing kind of guy. He once proposed, not entirely in jest, to remove the age limit for voting and instead require passing a test, on the spot, of some kind, specifically mentioning solving a quadratic. Smart pre-teens could vote, math-limited adults, well...
As the saying goes absolute power, corrupts absolutely.
The two party systems generated by First Past the Post are certainly not representative democracies, they are binary choices. Mixed member proportional representation is by far my preferred variant; for you still have a named local representative for your party but seats in parliament are allocated on the basis of popular vote. Better than straight PR and better than FPTP.
Unfortunately a party that benefits from FPTP is unlikely to put it on the agenda for reform.
@Binraider
FPTP has the great advantage that you can vote AGAINST someone if you feel that person is unfit for public office. Voting against a wrong person is sometimes more important than any other consideration.
I am glad there will be no more elections for the European Parliament in Britain. They used a scheme in which you had to vote for a party list; so if one candidate in that party was bad you could not vote specifically against that one, but had to decide whether to abandon the whole party.
I for one am rather sick of having to choose my vote tactically on the basis that "I don't want X". The party I actually want to support, if I were to vote for it under FPTP; my vote has absolutely ZERO bearing on the end result in parliament. For those of that are utterly abhorrent of Brexit, the two main parties in the UK have both caved. I want neither the increasingly right-wing Conservatives or the Momentum dominated Labour party. People "wonder" why voters are disenfranchised and lead to low turnout at elections. The answer is right bloody there. FPTP denies choice.
Under MMPR; it is unlikely that my local MP would be selected on the basis of voting for said preferred party. However, as a share of national vote, my preferred choice would have won a lot more space in parliament on the whole. I'm fully aware that this process gives more representation to parties I oppose. This is not a bad thing. From the perspective of democracy, bringing different ideas together and working together to develop solutions to common problems is surely the objective.
If you're a Tory voter living in Sunderland your vote is meaningless. Yet if you live in a marginal constituency (say, Warwick & Leamington) the difference of +- 500 votes is is enough to change the MP.
FPTP has got to go. I hate to indulge in advertising here but the Make Votes Matter campaign is well worth reading up on.
Only way I'm aware of for this is ranked-choice voting, which currently exists (within the US) only in Maine. I cast my first RCV vote for president last week; I had a choice of five candidates, and could therefore put the Orange Lord last.
It was not especially important this year, because none of the third-party candidates had much of a following. But in 2000, if the Nader voters in Florida had been able to put Gore as their second choice, that election there would not have been particularly close, and George W. Bush would have had no chance of becoming president.
Allowing states to assign their EC votes winner-take-all is multiple orders of magnitude worse than first-past-the-post.
It fell apart within a decade, immediately enforcing a two-party system.
Most first-past-the-post usually takes a century to degrade that far, but the USA EC made it happen before the ink was dry on the 12th Amendment.
Perhaps he could watch Sacha Baron Cohen's talk before weighing in, even that social media giants are responsible for this mess.
As someone who remembers the Reagan years very well (and Nixon years) let me say just one thing, none of you have a f*cking clue what you are talking about. Just a large collection of bubble people cliches strung together. Pretty much the same goes for every other comment here. As utterly predicable as every single story in the Daily Kos now or The Nation back in the 1980's. Bien pensant sh*te.
Remember 2000 Florida debacle? The NY Times and others was so convinced that election was "stolen" they paid for a compete recount of all ballots in the state. And guess what? Bush got the most votes. They quickly buried that story.
Dont know about you but a 88% turnout looks mighty suspicious in state that could barely get into the low 70's even with the most popular Dem candidate in generations. I did like how the Hennepin county machine in Minnesota made those extra 100K plus votes appear from nowhere. Slickly done. Really professional. It seems Biden is far more popular with the blacks in metro Minneapolis than Obama ever was. If you believe that then you are twice as stupid as you sound.
Then there is San Francisco where this time around the number of registered voters dropped about 30K so the number was no longer greater than the number of adult citizens in the City. So now only a 98% voter registration rate. At least Marin and San Mateo counties have voter registration numbers that are half way plausible. The other number that has not changed much is that about 240K / 260K of the votes cast in SF actually have a ballot item voting distribution pattern than looks like it was decided by a real live human being. There were much fewer big budget propositions and ballot measure or serious outside money candidates compared with 2016 so the skewed pattern of the Brown Block votes was less pronounced. But still there. Put Willie Browns legal firm on (very big dollar) retainer and your favorite ballot item will get an extra 40K / 60K plus votes. Just by magic. Nothing new there, just upholding a City political tradition that goes back to 1850. Except during the Mayor Rolph years and the decade after Second Vigilance Committee clear out of City Hall.
Thats how politics actually works. Not all the utter b*llocks in the story and comments above.
This will be a rerun of 2000 but with all the virulence of 1876. You remember the Presidential Election of 1876 dont you? The one that President Tilden won.
So it break out the pop-corn and lay in a few cases of bourbon. Because you are going to need both over the next 70 plus days before the actual winner of the election is decided. You know, according to the Constitution. Not the one that has been crowned by the media. Because that is all that happened yesterday.
Based on 1876 and other prior election balls ups, and there have been quite a few, all hail the second term of President Trump. Probably. And if not then it will be President Harris. The only president in history who got their start in politics on their knees. Literally. Those of you who actually know their SF politics over the last fifty years will know the full story and back story. If you think Hunter Biden is as sleazy as it gets then boy do we have some surprises for you coming down the line. Not that you will ever read about them in the Guardian of the NYT.
If Biden prevails and is still alive or not 25'th Amendment'ed out in two year time then thats going to be a really funny Impeachment Trial. Way beyond the puerile sleaze of the Clinton Impeachment. Way beyond.
But its going to be fun. Lots of fun. Whoever loses. Because no matter who is in the Oval Office its going to get a lot worse next year. A lot lot worse. Thats guaranteed.
88% turnout looks mighty suspicious in state that could barely get into the low 70's even with the most popular Dem candidate in generations.
It does, but it wasn't an 88% turnout or a 101% turnout or any other fake-news bullshit you've swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
And there's me thinking Americans were forward thinking...1876 all over again, hahaha, Stop it I'm laughing so much I'm dribbling out of my nose.
I feel a song coming on..."In your head, in your head, they are fighting. Zombie!" Cranberries.
Your carer certainly earns their wages.
That's the real problem here, the news has turned into such propaganda machines that 'normal' people do believe this stuff.
Our local nice normal realtor was door knocking for Trump and she believed and was telling voters that McCain started the USS Forrestal fire. Imagine if half your country only read the Daily Mail (turned upto 11) and then you gave them a vote on eg, leaving the Eu, based only on a slogan that could fit on a hat.
It's difficult to even find a sane right wing news outlet for a balanced view. There is no Daily Telegraph or BBC. When even The Economist and Wall St Journal read like pure democrat party line you know the system is broken. If there is a Trump policy platform beyond: racism, ban abortion and guns it's very had to find.
I HATE to agree with you because despise the STUPID lies of the conservative side. But I do agree with you, even as a leftie, I can't not notice the bias of the left-leaning media (and please, don't tel me that bbc is not "progressive", etc., in good and bad ways). It needn't be as blunt and stupid as those right-wing claims and conspiracy theories that when confronted with facts, just keep fighting, claiming the facts are not facts). Bu the bias in left and democractic, etc, it is there. In general, I see it how they _select_ newsbites, particularly the guardian in the UK. There's hardly ever a good thing happening in the UK (and please, no muppet-show style quip "maybe because there's nothing good happening, eh, eh!?"). Basically, the guardian is like russia tv, whenever you switch to rt, you'll hear how the UK (or the US, or Germany, or France) is going downhill and falling apart, people suffer, economy getting worse, unemployment on the rise, so is race crime, so is street crime, so is racial inequality, educational standards slipping, pollution on the rise, mortality, on and on an on, year on year. The thing is, if all those things were true, we'd have been gone by now, and I look around and.... Ah, yes, this fine argument again, "you wait and see boy, wait til x, y, z, etc!" Feeding people selective news is bias.
Imagine if half your country only read the Daily Mail (turned upto 11) and then you gave them a vote on eg, leaving the Eu, based only on a slogan that could fit on a hat.
I think that's pretty much what happened, except it was a red bus rather than a red hat.
"There is no Daily Telegraph or BBC."
Probably because any balanced and independent news outlet would be universally reviled by left, right and everything in between. The BBC is regularly accused of being left wing by the right and right wing by the left. That just tells me they are probably, at least in the main, getting it about right.
Yes, Donald. And you had significantly increased turnout across the board too. Dealing a politician a shitty hand; and them dealing with it is the difference between a good politician and a leech.
Learn the difference before you write a 10 paragraph rant.
US election 2020: How a misleading post went from the fringes to Trump’s Twitter
I strongly believe that moderators on this site and many other "social" platforms should be empowered to commit certain individuals to mental institutions, or at least be able to recommend it to the courts.
If outburst as witnessed on social media were to be made in most other public settings, then the police would most likely have little choice but to hand them over to mental health experts.
Let's use the evidence from Twitter and Facebook to fill our asylums with those who are quite obviously unhinged and at risk of harming themselves and a much wider audience.
I strongly believe that moderators on this site and many other "social" platforms should be empowered to commit certain individuals to mental institutions, or at least be able to recommend it to the courts.
Err.. right. Not sure this was part of the Biden/Harris manifesto, but there is some historical precedent with the Weimar Republic's 'Enabling Act'. Locking up one's political or ideological opponents, even if it's for their own protection has seldom ended well..
(Yes, I know, but sometimes there are lessons to be learned from history..)
It would have been better that whoever finally wins does so with a large majority so that even with some iffy counting machines the result would definitely not get overturned. This goes for Biden or Trump. As things stand there is a (admittedly very slim) chance that the result might still go to Trump if issues are found with the counting machines (or postal vote issues, etc.) and that would lead to even more division and anger with people then rioting because things didn't go their way. The U.S. (and everyone else) could well do without that, especially now.
Apparently, if you contribute to the “Stop the Steal” fund that’s being drummed up, the small print says that half the money you give will actually go to paying off debts incurred by the election campaign, and not paying lawyers to challenge electoral processes and results in courts.
I can’t say I’m surprised. If anyone wants to learn why they should never have voted Trump in the first place, this is one of the final lessons.
I heard a major Trump supporter (Senator? Congressman? Governor? Something elected anyway) is offering Trump $500,000 towards his legal fighting fund. From his is own campaign funds. Is that legal? People game money in good faith for this guys campaign now he's giving it away to trumps lawyers. Surely even the USA has laws on how voluntary donations to political campaign funds can be spent.
Is he the Senator who thinks that because you have to swear allegiance on The Bible you can't have Muslim Senators?
Yeah, I'm sure he spoke to Rudy and got the ok. "Just put the money, in a plain brown evenlope, in the garbage can round the back of the Four Seasons. No, Four Seasons Total Landscaping, idiot!!"
The Constitution (Article VI, clause 3) sez:
"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
The handicap of Trump's golf partners does not matter - he cheats.
https://nypost.com/2019/03/30/trump-is-the-worlds-worst-cheat-at-golf-players-and-celebs-say/
“To say ‘Donald Trump cheats’ is like saying ‘Michael Phelps swims,'” writes Rick Reilly in the new book “Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump”
If he doesn't, that's a clear crime and I would want to see him nailed to the wall for it. Perpetual contract, people -- anyone seeking clearance at any level has to sign it.
(You could argue the contract is only as good as your natural life since a dead person can't effectively be prosecuted.)
Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper
Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper (Super duper!)
If you're blue and you don't know
where to go to why don't you go
where fashion sits
Puttin'Putin on the RitzTrump
Puttin'Putin on the RitzTrump
Puttin'Putin on the RitzTrump
Puttin'Putin on the RitzTrump
With apologies to Irving Berlin
I expect the H-1B quotas will be raised. And working from home will be streamlined. Even if home is in Bangalore.
Section 230 of the CDA will be left as is. Right now, it offers immunity for both publishing users posts as well as deleting them. Old school news organizations will scream, not having the ability to play "now we're a publisher, now we're not". Tough. You were killing too many trees anyway.
Network neutrality will be quietly forgotten. There are more Brownie points available for blocking sites on the Enemies List than there are for letting everyone speak. And by speak, I mean undercut movie studios' official sites with cheaper streaming sources.
...has been one of our senators for a few years. It never occured to me until recently that she was "Black", she's just a typical Californian. So while its great to see another glass ceiling fail its not really the major event that it might seem, its just it was long overdue and it finally happened and, around here at least, its not particularly remarkable.
Sleepy joe, can’t wait to see you roll back the trade war with China and start paying full price for everything
Let’s get the trade payments flowing back to China
Let’s get that wall down and let the South American walkers in
Start the disbanding of the militia police forces in the USA, that will satisfy your BLM supporters
The next 4 years will be as much fun as with DT
"MIlitia Police Forces" are not a real thing. The trade war with China is hurting the US as much as them. The southern wall was never built.
I see you don't raise your head and look around very often. Maybe get your ass/head out of your phone and away from Fox news?
"Sleepy joe, can’t wait to see you roll back the trade war with China and start paying full price for everything"
That's probably better than the current situation of paying full price plus whatever the current additional import tarifs are. Or did you think the Chinese dropped their prices so US consumers would still be paying the same?
If not just a troll, this is the kind of abject racism that Trump supporters feed on. You should be ashamed of yourself.
There is no wall. Trump never built one. Just another campaign lie, one of many. (Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!)
What the fuck is a "militia police force", and what does it have to do with the much hated Bureau of Land Management supporters?
. . . in a state of agonizing torture, aware every second of every minute of every waking hour that he is A LOSER. That he LOST.
Hence why he rages against the pain of that by denying it. 'Course, the instant he stops denying it the worse the pain will be -- and he knows that, too. LOSER Trump. LOSER LOSER LOSER. When he closes his eyes the word is still there, burning in his inner vision, a private hell for one whose faux evangelicalism still couldn't save him.
I hope he continues to writhe and struggle and protest all the way to January 20th, after which date he can be cuffed, thrown out the White House, and made to face the various criminal charges that have stacked up against him during his four years of playing God and playing golf. In some ways the prospect of those charges torture him as much as the outcome of the election; having gone through life insulated from the consequences of his incompetence and venality, now the time of reckoning approaches.
Whether America will become a better place now that the Trumpian White House is no more is a moot point. The world, however, certainly feels a lot better without the grotesque slimeball in presidential office.
I am pretty certain that Trump cannot pardon himself, but what he can do is throw a Trumper tantrum and resign, so Pence will take over for the remaining 2 months, and chances are Pence will pardon Trump. Not that any of that is going to prevent Deutsche Bank and many other creditors taking him to court over his debts once he is no longer POTUS.
I'm a fervent Trunp supporter, but it's clear that Biden has won. All these court cases will not change that fact.
Trump should've reformed the H1-B visa system more rigorously, he had four years to do so. Governing by decree will not make a lasting impression, it has to be done by making laws. Chances are that Biden will yet again open the floodgates and millions of Indians will come pouring in, undermining the wages of American IT workers.
I feel saddened by Trump's loss. His presentation wasn't particularly stellar, but I'm a great fan of his policies.
Which policies?
Restricting abortion rights?
Putting children in cages? Some of whose parents now cannot be found?
Reversing decades of environmental progress with regulations even industry found unnecessary?
Charging the US taxpayer excessive amounts for his frequent trips to his own properties?
Creating an immigration crisis at the Mexico border and then denying rightful asylum seekers a safe place to go?
Lying about the dangers of COVID resulting in over 230,000 COVID deaths and counting?
I don't care if he did one thing right, he was a horrible President.
Stopping the influx of Latinos is enormously important for Europe and the UK. Demographers have already calculated that if the influx of Latinos continues at its present rate they'll become the largest ethnic group in the U.S. by 2050.
This in turn could threaten the historic ties between the U.S. and Europe, which spells trouble over here.
Spanish may even become the official U.S. language before 2100. I don't dislike Hispanics but I don't want them to become the majority ethnic group in the United States.
This in turn could threaten the historic ties between the U.S. and Europe, which spells trouble over here.
Spanish may even become the official U.S. language before 2100.
So Europe, which incidentally includes Spain, will feel its historic ties with the US will be threatened by Spanish becoming an official language of the US?
I thought that in certain parts of the US, Spanish was already a de facto official language alongside English, and that the US has never yet declared any language its [sole] official language.
Boats rock. But if you try to stop the boat rocking, the fair chance is that you'll capsize it instead.
In the U.S. there has always been the unwritten rule that even though many cultures and languages are tolerated, the North-Western European culture and values should remain dominant.
As soon as this is threatened, you'll see instability starting to rear its head, as can be seen today with Trump's supporters.This will only get worse if more Latinos keep pouring in, and it could well lead to another (ugly) civil war.
I thought that in certain parts of the US, Spanish was already a de facto official language alongside English, and that the US has never yet declared any language its [sole] official language.
Spanish has been an official language of the US for many years-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_colonization_of_the_Americas#/media/File:Mapa_de_la_Am%C3%A9rica_espa%C3%B1ola_(1800).png
Well, perhaps not the 'US', but the Viceroyalty of New Spain. But such is history. It's interesting that a lot of Americans get a bit confused about which war of Independence actually freed the US from colonial opression.. Or how recently (ie Spanish-American War) it ended, ie 1898..
His presentation wasn't particularly stellar
You win an upvote just for the understatement of the year (and in 2020 that's saying something)
I despised Trump because he's an authoritarian wannabe who thinks only of himself, but I agree he did have a few nuggets of corn in the pile of shit he dumped on us. Unfortunately everything in that category has a "but" attached.
For instance: He's the first president in I don't know how long who didn't start any new war which I'm 100% in favor of. BUT, he still wanted to increase defense spending. The reason our military is larger than the next 10 in the world combined or whatever it is is because the Pentagon insists on an ability to fight multiple wars around the world at the same time. If he was truly anti war, he'd want to cut defense spending. If we didn't have such an oversized military, we wouldn't be able to go off on foreign adventures. If Biden gets us involved in another war, Trump is partly to blame for leaving behind the same overly bloated military we've had since the 1950s.
I agree with you about H1B visas, BUT this is all part of his hatred of nationalism and hatred of immigrants (except from white countries like Norway or the places he gets his wives from) so it isn't done for the right reasons. But I hope Biden follows through with the higher required wages, or simply makes it an auction with the highest bidders (in terms of salary) getting the H1Bs. There's no reason companies like Wipro should be able to import underpaid Indian "consultants" that do things plenty of Americans can do.
Glad to see him go, hope to see him in jail before the 2024 campaign gets underway!
I vote for a candidate for their policies, not their presentation. And whether or not he / she actually delivers on those promises. Say what you want about Trump, but he implemented almost everything he promised, or at least tried to do so.
Don't expect Biden to do anything. He'll simply roll back everything Trump has done and the Indians and Latinos will start pouring in once again by the millions.
The climate change problem cannot be solved if we keep ignoring the elephant in the room: overpopulation.
The population of this planet grows by 150 MILLION individuals EVERY YEAR. Just the amount of food and water to sustain them will completely undo our efforts in CO2 reduction in the West. And that's apart from the housing, clothes, electricity and plumbing and employment they would also lay claim to.
I refuse to change my lifestyle in any way if we don't reduce the population growth.
"the elephant in the room: overpopulation".
The elephant is well known but there is no time to wait for just that to happen.
What has helped a lot regarding "overpopulation" in western Europe is to increase the standard of living.
What your personal contribution to overpopulation could be is rather easy to work out.
The name of the party is The Democratic Party. When referring to the party's nominee, the correct phrase is Democratic contender. Calling the nominee the Democrat contender is a right wing trope to denigrate the Democratic party.
In reference to the party one is the Democratic contender or Democratic nominee.
An individual may be referred to as a Democrat.
But if you wish, the Republicans may be referred to as:
republicans,
Repugnants,
Repubs,
Repugs,
or a$$ hats.
At 54, after having been proud to be an American for the first 50 years of my life (minus the Bush/Cheney lying into the cameras and cringing at the tortured integrity of Colin Powell on display at the UN -- re: Weapons of Mass Destruction/Mobile Weapon Labs), it hurt deeply to be ashamed to be an American these past 4 years. Demand integrity from your elected officials. Democracy depends on it. Those who lack it have no business holding office. That applies to a broad swath of officials on both sides of the pond.
and yet, over 70 MILLION people in the US of A think otherwise :(
No accounting for the murkiness of minds, even 70 mil of them. They say that mass hysteria and mass behavior is also indicative of wisdom or lack of.
My vote goes to the cats of the other posyer here. I could not vote for either top choices on thenprwsidential ticket made me gag vehemently...