2020 US Presidential Election (aka: The Trump Coronation)

astrofool

Larbre34 wrote: »

I put a hundred on him at 50s.

Ah, so now you're into convincing others, and hoping it becomes a "thing"

amdublin

Even fox tv are criticising Trump and what he has been saying and how he has been acting at his last few press conferences.

He really has not done his election campaign any favours.

And the death toll continues
When the states/economies open up I think we can expect to see another wave

There simply is not enough testing. And no imminent sign of a vaccine.

No matter what the Trumpet says

feargale

Apropos the speculation about the well-being of the lad in North Korea, Trump has called it fake news. Does he not know the difference between news and speculation? Has he been drinking that old Jeyes Fluid again?

Annasopra

Trump just calls everything he doesnt like fake news nowadays.

The Nal

This is apparently Tara Reades mother. Very interesting clip.

duploelabs

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

Trump (and his supporters) just calls everything he doesnt like fake news nowadays.

FTFY

Billy Mays

The Times going in dry on Donnie

THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT

Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”

It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV. If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.


Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3 that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order. In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities.”

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

It draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.

The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.

But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it. There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St. Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.

Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder. And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.

That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.

And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.


Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.

Quin_Dub

The Nal wrote: »

This is apparently Tara Reades mother. Very interesting clip.

Is it though? Does it tell anyone anything? Does it add any new information?

If it's her mother (which as I understand it , there's no confirmation about that) - Then it's an odd conversation from the mother of a woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted.

Her daughter says she was sexually assaulted but didn't want to go to the authorities out of respect for the alleged attacker?

Fear of retaliation ,Fear of not being believed etc. - Those I totally understand as reasons why a woman might not feeling confident or comfortable coming forward especially against someone in a position of authority.

But - Not coming forward because you have too much respect for the alleged attacker??

If she'd said My daughter has a story to tell , but she's afraid of getting fired , getting black-balled or whatever , then I'd think it was a significant development as that would definitely sound like there was a serious story to tell.

But that Audio isn't a compelling argument that there was a story of sexual assault to share.

The Nal

Quin_Dub wrote: »

Is it though? Does it tell anyone anything? Does it add any new information?

Ff it's her mother (which as I understand it , there's no confirmation about that) - Then it's an odd conversation from the mother of a woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted.

Her daughter says she was sexually assaulted but didn't want to go to the authorities out of respect for the alleged attacker?

Fear of retaliation ,Fear of not being believed etc. - Those I totally understand as reasons why a woman might not feeling confident or comfortable coming forward especially against someone in a position of authority.

But - Not coming forward because you have too much respect for the alleged attacker??

If she'd said My daughter has a story to tell , but she's afraid of getting fired , getting black-balled or whatever , then I'd think it was a significant development as that would definitely sound like there was a serious story to tell.

But that Audio isn't a compelling argument that there was a story of sexual assault to share.

Strange words alright from her but it does corroborate her daughters story that she told her mum and puts the story in the right timeframe. Thats about as much evidence as you'll get in these cases unless Linda Tripp is about. Which she is not.

Quin_Dub

The Nal wrote: »

Strange words alright from her but it does corroborate her daughters story that she told her mum and puts the story in the right timeframe. Thats about as much evidence as you'll get in these cases unless Linda Tripp is about. Which she is not.

Indeed - The timeline looks to line up , but that really doesn't sound like the mother of a sexual assault victim anonymously calling in to a chat show.

Outlaw Pete

Personally I don't believe allegations of this nature should be discussed by the media until there's been a conviction. It just facilitates the weaponizng of sexual assault allegations.

Interesting to note though that certain folk who are either ignoring this allegation or trying to down play it, by questioning it's legitimacy in some manner, where all over allegations against Trump and Kavanaugh.

Seems some only believe in due process when it suits them.

Quin_Dub

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

Personally I don't believe allegations of this nature should be discussed by the media until there's been a conviction. It just results in sexual assault allegations being weaponized.

Interesting to note though that certain folk who are either ignoring this allegation, or trying to down play it, or question it's legitimacy in some manner, where all over allegations against Trump and Kavanaugh.

Seems some only believe in due process when it suits them.

On that, we are very much in agreement.

2u2me

Quin_Dub wrote: »

but that really doesn't sound like the mother of a sexual assault victim anonymously calling in to a chat show.

What does the mother of a sexual assault victim anonymously calling in to a chat show sound like? :pac::P

The Nal

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

Personally I don't believe allegations of this nature should be discussed by the media until there's been a conviction. It just facilitates the weaponizng of sexual assault allegations.

Yeah but how can there be a conviction in this case? One persons word against another. One young girls word against the might of a huge political party. She claims she was getting death threats and has been called a Russian agent etc.

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

Interesting to note though that certain folk who are either ignoring this allegation or trying to down play it, by questioning it's legitimacy in some manner, where all over allegations against Trump and Kavanaugh.

Seems some only believe in due process when it suits them.

Absolutely. Surely with this Larry King call its worthy of further discussion? To my knowledge shes not on the GOPs payroll or in with Trump or anything? Another thing worth investigating.

notobtuse

Quin_Dub wrote: »

On that, we are very much in agreement.

Curious... Did you feel the same way during Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation process for SCOTUS?

Quin_Dub

2u2me wrote: »

What does the mother of a sexual assault victim anonymously calling in to a chat show sound like? :pac::P

She doesn't say "My daughter has too much respect for the person to report them for something"

She says " She's afraid of retaliation" "She's afraid that no one will believe her" that kind of thing.

Still respecting your rapist isn't a typical reason for not reporting them I'd have thought.

The tone and language are just very odd given what it's alleged she is alluding to.

notobtuse

Quin_Dub wrote: »

Is it though? Does it tell anyone anything? Does it add any new information?

If it's her mother (which as I understand it , there's no confirmation about that) - Then it's an odd conversation from the mother of a woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted.

Her daughter says she was sexually assaulted but didn't want to go to the authorities out of respect for the alleged attacker?

Fear of retaliation ,Fear of not being believed etc. - Those I totally understand as reasons why a woman might not feeling confident or comfortable coming forward especially against someone in a position of authority.

But - Not coming forward because you have too much respect for the alleged attacker??

If she'd said My daughter has a story to tell , but she's afraid of getting fired , getting black-balled or whatever , then I'd think it was a significant development as that would definitely sound like there was a serious story to tell.

But that Audio isn't a compelling argument that there was a story of sexual assault to share.

Has any of the Left leaning media even bothered to report on the Tara Reade story? And of those that have begrudgingly bothered to mention it in passing... where was it buried in their reporting?

notobtuse

Apparently according to documents seized from bin Laden's Pakistan compound when he was killed in May 2011, he wanted to assassinate Barack Obama so that Joe Biden would become president and plunge the United States into a crisis. Hmmm... best way to destroy America was by getting Joe Biden to become president? That bin Laden was truly evil.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/osama-bin-laden-wanted-to-kill-obama-so-biden-would-be-president-declassified-docs-show

The Nal

notobtuse wrote: »

Has any of the Left leaning media even bothered to report on the Tara Reade story?

Not really. People just don't want to hear about it, oddly.

Couple of opinion pieces in the Guardian I read.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/24/joe-biden-sexual-assault-claim-tara-reade-deserves-to-be-heard-katie-halper?CMP=share_btn_tw

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/24/joe-biden-sexual-assault-claim-tara-reade-deserves-to-be-heard-katie-halper

Quin_Dub

notobtuse wrote: »

Curious... Did you feel the same way during Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation process for SCOTUS?

I did - My issues with Kavanaugh at the time were about his contortions and lies in trying to portray himself as the studious book-worm that never drank to excess etc. as part of his defence. He also lied about his interactions with Trump and may have perjured himself before the Senate.

He showed himself willing to lie to get his way , which is not a trait you typically want in a Supreme court justice.

Allegations like this one and the Kavanaugh one or indeed any allegations of sexual assault should be handled by the police and all parties should remain anonymous until absolutely necessary.

If and when convicted then the guilty party should rightly be castigated and shunned by all.

2u2me

Guardian 1 year ago for Christine Ford:

Dear Christine Blasey Ford: you are a welcome earthquake

It was made at great personal cost, but your brave testimony has had incalculable benefits for the country at large

Source


Guardian now for Tara Reade:

Tara Reade says Joe Biden sexually assaulted her. She deserves to be heard
I published the former aide’s accusation against the Democratic presidential candidate on my podcast after other media outlets ignored her

Source

At least they are consistent... kind of.

Brian?

notobtuse wrote: »

Apparently according to documents seized from bin Laden's Pakistan compound when he was killed in May 2011, he wanted to assassinate Barack Obama so that Joe Biden would become president and plunge the United States into a crisis. Hmmm... best way to destroy America was by getting Joe Biden to become president? That bin Laden was truly evil.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/osama-bin-laden-wanted-to-kill-obama-so-biden-would-be-president-declassified-docs-show

How do you 're a about being ideologically aligned with Osama bin Laden?

The Nal

Quin_Dub wrote: »

I did - My issues with Kavanaugh at the time were about his contortions and lies in trying to portray himself as the studious book-worm that never drank to excess etc. as part of his defence. He also lied about his interactions with Trump and may have perjured himself before the Senate.

He showed himself willing to lie to get his way , which is not a trait you typically want in a Supreme court justice.

Allegations like this one and the Kavanaugh one or indeed any allegations of sexual assault should be handled by the police and all parties should remain anonymous until absolutely necessary.

If and when convicted then the guilty party should rightly be castigated and shunned by all.

Its different when politics is involved. Look at JFK, Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick, Bill Clinton etc. The Democratic machine is just as capable of covering this stuff up as anyone.

Brian?

notobtuse wrote: »

Has any of the Left leaning media even bothered to report on the Tara Reade story? And of those that have begrudgingly bothered to mention it in passing... where was it buried in their reporting?

Who do you define as the "Left Leaning media"?

notobtuse

Quin_Dub wrote: »

I did - My issues with Kavanaugh at the time were about his contortions and lies in trying to portray himself as the studious book-worm that never drank to excess etc. as part of his defence. He also lied about his interactions with Trump and may have perjured himself before the Senate.

He showed himself willing to lie to get his way , which is not a trait you typically want in a Supreme court justice.

Allegations like this one and the Kavanaugh one or indeed any allegations of sexual assault should be handled by the police and all parties should remain anonymous until absolutely necessary.

If and when convicted then the guilty party should rightly be castigated and shunned by all.

Ahh… well knowing Biden doesn’t drink we can assume he won’t be able to use an excuse that he was so drunk he could genuinely not be 100% assured that the Tara Reade incident did not happen. Right?

2u2me

notobtuse wrote: »

Has any of the Left leaning media even bothered to report on the Tara Reade story? And of those that have begrudgingly bothered to mention it in passing... where was it buried in their reporting?

This story is certainly not being treated the same as the Ford one.

Whether you believe Reade or not, it’s hard to justify the media’s refusal to give her a hearing. When Grim broke Blasey Ford’s story, virtually every major US legacy news outlet considered it newsworthy enough to cover within four days. But it took the New York Times 19 days to cover Reade’s story. The article originally reported that it “found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable”. After the publication, the second part of the sentence was deleted at the behest of the Biden campaign, as the paper’s executive editor actually admitted: “The campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct.” The Washington Post, which took 20 days to report on the story, managed to misquote a police report Reade filed as saying she “disclosed that she believes she was the victim of sexual assault”. But the words “she believes”, didn’t appear in the actual police report.

Two interns the Times interviewed corroborated Reade’s allegation that she was removed of her duties supervising them (in retaliation, she claimed, for reporting earlier sexual harassment). The Times did not include a response from the campaign on her demotion. And while Biden’s campaign has denied the sexual assault allegation, he has not. In the dozen media events (including a town hall) since the story broke, not a single reporter has asked him about it.

Source

notobtuse

Brian? wrote: »

Who do you define as the "Left Leaning media"?

Probably best to just show some of the better know examples of our media... The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, Mother Jones, Vox, BuzzFeed, Politico, Time and NPR.

notobtuse

2u2me wrote: »

This story is certainly not being treated the same as the Ford one.


Source

Yes, when it comes to accusations against political men our lovely media employs double standards.

Republican accused... Believe all women, and guilty until proven innocent.
Democrat accused... Men deserve due process, and innocent until proven guilty.

notobtuse

Brian? wrote: »

How do you 're a about being ideologically aligned with Osama bin Laden?

Oh come on... you’re better than that. bin Laden was an evil human being but he wasn’t stupid.

jibber5000

notobtuse wrote: »

Yes, when it comes to accusations against political men our lovely media employs double standards.

Republican accused... Believe all women, and guilty until proven innocent.
Democrat accused... Men deserve due process, and innocent until proven guilty.

CNN published nearly 700 articles about Kavanaughs allaeged assault within 3 weeks of the allegations being made against him.

In the case of Biden's allegation, they published 1.