Danny Bateman

20 hours ago, teachercd said:

Sadly, they probably can't "win" as in ussia taps out but I don't think that is really the endgame here.  Every day ussia fights with them, ussia gets weaker in a lot of ways.  

Is this like the family photo thing in Back to the Future?

like the weaker they get, the more letters disappear from their name?

5 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

Looks like she could cure a lot of electoral dysfunction. 

1 hour ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

You're a weird guy. 

6 hours ago, Dr. Strangelove said:

Just so I'm keeping score, the main witnesses to this entire charade was a Chinese spy and a Russian spy?

 

I had no idea the Democrat-cabal reached such depths. Joe "The Big Guy" Biden's corruption is so deep, it ties to both the Chinese and Russian espionage efforts.

I’ve not yet met a proud Republican who can’t tell you in depth everything that was wrong about the great Russian collusion hoax of 2016, and yet here we are in 2024 and there is *one* degree of separation between the GOP and the literal Russian government.

It appears the former either didn’t know better or just didn’t care.

So that message would be received a lot more credibly if they weren’t still acting as Russia’s useful idiot.

8 hours ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

Sorry to try to affect your sanity but this third party candidate isn’t minor. He’s polling at 14% right now. That’s closer to Perot than it is to Nader or Stein. 

Yeah I know. It’s a shame that many people could fall for a kook huckster like Kennedy. But again I think that polling number primarily reflects a couple broader things about our system. A) People are mad the system doesn’t produce candidates they like and B) most voters who aren’t already decided are still generally politically disconnected and may just pick Kennedy right now based on name recognition.

 I suspect ultimately a couple dark money groups will move to hatchet Kennedy by highlighting some of the actually odious positions he holds and what a weirdo he actually is if his polling remains high. 

But the electorate is much different than it was in ‘92 or ‘96. People loathed the choices in 2016 too. The Libertarians had a very high profile ticket boosted by the other options. Between them and the Greens the finished with 4.35% of the vote. There is no viable Green this year so I suspect Kennedy ultimately settles closer to that number than his current polling.

The wonder of our system is even if I’m right, we all get to nailbite over where that smaller percentage is concentrated before we know how upset we should be.

22 hours ago, Dr. Strangelove said:

Even with improving attitudes towards the economy, swinging national polls by 7% is going to be a difficult task. 

Meh, maybe, maybe not. It’s a binary outcome. One of the two sides wins. So I don’t get too caught up in gaming out different variables or minor factors like third party. I’m sure as s#!t not losing any sleep over a Kennedy failson or some No Labels circlejerk that might impact things on the margins.

Since I’m 100% locked in with my vote with no reservations, there are a couple points I hang my hat on that keep me sane these days.

One is just that it’s not even March. The primary is still ongoing for both parties, nominally. There’s still so much that will happen yet that will affect public opinion and ultimately voting intention. The average American voter has the attention span of a goldfish. Thus I no more trust a poll for the November election in February than I do a primary poll in May of 2023.

The other piece is that Trump hemorrhages support among his soft supporters if he’s convicted of ANYTHING. This one is a bit more conditional, as it requires the very slow burn of our justice system to continue cranking along and ultimately bend toward actual accountability. But if it does his non MAGA supporters are going to head for the exits. Poof, he loses. He simply cannot win with the hardcores alone. Thus I also don’t give a single rip what the hardcore MAGA crowd thinks or does. Once most voters stop daydreaming that this rematch isn’t inevitable, as much as we all don’t want it to be, many of the will realize Trump is the same corrupt, self-serving obnoxious prick he’s always been and they still really dislike him. Coupled with an actual criminal record I think it’s enough to sink him.

I actually agree with most of your analysis and generally really enjoy your input anyway, this is merely playing devil’s advocate to find silver linings for anyone who’s too stressed out by all of this.

5 hours ago, Archy1221 said:

 

“Here’s how the guy who was just fined $350M for fraudulent business practices is the real victim here.”

The Trump apologism tour chugs along unabated. From the party of personal responsibility.

8 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

Got dang it I'm pretty desensitized to the pure unadulterated derp engine that is Fox News but using Navalny's death to try to fluff Trump is pretty sick even for them.

39 minutes ago, Decked said:

Both parties are a scam, yes. It’s all about who f#&%ed up last and trying to rub it in. Both sides are equally f#&%ed. 

We can all agree the two party system blows goats.

It’s a matter of opinion, of course, but I’m a hard disagree on the bold. And it’s not particularly close.

Republicanism here is veering into some scary, dangerous territory. 
 

Dems at worst are a bunch of feckless cowards scared of their own shadows.

On 2/7/2024 at 1:55 PM, BigRedBuster said:

I was going to put this under Golf, but it's political, so I'll put it here.

 

When you make a deal with the devil.

 

I was gonna go with “when you can’t just outright say you’re gonna butcher them like you did Jamal Khashoggi.”

3 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

For 8 years now I've heard about Trump losing every attempt to keep his tax returns private, but I'm missing the part where we get to see his tax returns.

As a matter of fact I think they just charged the guy who leaked the tax returns we DID get to see. 
 

I mean leaking personal docs without consent is bad. But for years he’s just lazily stated he’ll release them “AfTEr BeInG AuDiTeD” and the country just kind of shrugged and accepted we’d never see them. 
 

It’s wild he’s obviously guilty of tax fraud since every financial transaction he’s ever completed smells to high heaven but it takes New York State to foist any kind of accountability on him for it. And the one effort toward transparency is now being cracked down on.

4 minutes ago, ZRod said:

He got the same treatment as Pence and the same Donld would have got if he cooperated instead of hiding documents.

In addition to actual horserace polls, I've in particular given up on opinion polling like this in our current era.

The typical American voter is either too disconnected from day to day politics stuff or just generally too damn stupid to accurately decipher what is really going on.

12 minutes ago, Scarlet said:

This hypocrisy will come back home to roost someday 

 

 

I mean we should all just be inured to it at this point.

The leader of the Republican party, a rich draft dodger who's never paid a bill in his life, stood on a stage and mocked his token opponent's husband for being deployed overseas and threatened to betray our allies to his idol Putin if they didn't - checks notes - pay their bills.

His loving crowd cheered and laughed.

I'm listening to a Republican Congresswoman on Sirius right now supporting not voting on the foreign aid bill the Senate just passed with $60B for her homeland because it has no border security provisions. After they complained that a foreign aid bill needed border security provisions previously and successfully got them included into a bipartisan bill doing both things. Then personally tanked said bill after their aforementioned leader decided it would be bad for him personally in an election year and the leader of her caucus called it dead on arrival before even seeing it. She was asked why her party tanked the bill that had border security provisions they wanted? She questioned if it was such a strong bill, why didn't it pass the Senate?

This is not a serious party and these are not serious people. They've completely lost the ability to care about being hypocrites or the capacity for shame. It's all about power, baby.

At this point they thrive on people being too stupid to realize how malignant they are. And if we as a people are too stupid to force them to reckon with their failings, nothing will change. Within the confines of the s#!tty two-party system we have, we'll continue to get the representation we deserve, and it will not be good.

10 minutes ago, teachercd said:

Hang on to your a$$...today is going to be brutal for stocks.

Why?

4 hours ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

The polls aren’t showing this. When he is in the poll, Trump does better with the margin. 

Yeah I could see that being the case. My thoughts were just my personal hunch.

I know a lot of folks need their doom fuel, but honestly I don’t sweat polls at all right now because polls in February are worthless.

51 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

 

As long as we're in conspiracy theory world, it's really no secret that this PAC is funded by wealthy Trump supporters who hope the Kennedy mystique will pull Democrat votes away from Biden. 

I’d place a bet RFK Jr. pulls more anti-Trump Republicans and independents than he does Biden voters.

Wasn’t he angling to get on the Libertarian ticket? That strikes me as the exact kind of voter he’d appeal to. Anyone left of center halfway tapped into politics probably abhors him for his anti-vax nonesense and his Russia apologism.

6 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

Republicans ranting about Biden's memory loss while nominating a guy who can't remember who he ran against in the last election, or mixes up the woman he raped with his wife is priceless.

This assumes Republicans care about being hypocrites.

They decidedly don’t and haven’t for quite some time.

The Trump plan for immigration. What could ever go wrong here?

46 minutes ago, Scarlet said:

 

He’s gotta be a hard sell on social media with the youngs (esp now that Twitter is Elon’s playground) but that’s pretty funny.

I guess the MAGAs are not taking it well.

48 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

On a related note... have we finally run out of people like Clinton and Biden to throw out there? I am tired of hanging onto these people. The Democrats got lucky with Obama I think. Except I recall reading that he wasn't great when it came to fundraising for the DNC.

 

 

 

Ya, Trump has always been who he is. I would take 80 year old Biden over Trump at any age.

Yeah with his charisma and broad appeal he was a generational candidate but under Obama the DNC became all about him and screwed the state party infrastructure for downballot Democrats pretty much everywhere. Republicans seized the opportunity and it's why they've got a stranglehold on a lot of state governments.

I don't think there's anyone left after Biden. The old guard is pretty much done. And Bernie is too old to represent the leftists in 2028. So the next crop will probably be Newsome, Buttigieg, Pritzker, Whitmer, etc. A lot of governors.

8 minutes ago, Archy1221 said:

Just because you can’t understand that Joe has mental/memory issues that make him a bad candidate, doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t speak to it.  And I might take you a little seriously on this issue when I see you make these same comments to the folks posting about Trumps mental state.   Otherwise we know it’s just you defending your guy.  Which I get it. 

 

It’s Merrick’s guy!  
 

BTW….if Biden were mentally sound, he wouldn’t have been let off for once he is no longer President.   That’s part of the report.  

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you don't know he has severe cognitive issues bound to rapidly get worse anymore than I know that about Trump. It's why you won't see me propagate that type of narrative about him even though that type of stuff is definitely out there. Being a buffoonish, comically corrupt fascist who cares only about himself offers a target-rich environment. 

Garland is a timid institutionalist who appointed a Trump appointee to head off Republican complaints about bias. He behaved exactly like you'd expect a young Republican Trump appointee to act and wrote a report with a nice Trumpy narrative for his party to work with.

Frankly, if the phrase "I don't recall" in the context of a deposition equates to someone who is not mentally sound, then we need to start building a lot more damn memory care units.

2 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

Ya, he may not have dementia but he is at a minimum having normal memory issues as an aging person. I don't want him as president but I want Trump a lot less. Assuming we still have a legit election in 2028, I hope we have some candidates between the ages of 35 and 60 who aren't crazy or stupid. I do think Biden's issues have been built up as more than they actually are, but I'm tired of people (mostly boomers, I assume) thinking age = wisdom and ignoring other factors.

Yep. Typical cognitive changes with aging. I wish we didn't have a system that spat out people this old, but here we are.

If we assume both aren't as sharp as they once were, I'll take the non-fascist with good policy that actually benefits me and people I care about 10/10 times.

15 minutes ago, Archy1221 said:

Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not a Dr.  However, I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express before.

 

My mom is in Memory Care.  Her mom was diagnosed and two of her 4 sisters are in assisted living/memory care.  It runs in the family.  Forgive me if I don’t care what pisses you off.  
 

The Big Guys has memory issues.  The entire world can see it, and if you truly work with memory patients everyday you understand it ain’t getting any better and most likely one day with quickly progress.   Not something we need as a President.  

Apologies about your family. Hope they're doing as well as they can. Stuff sucks.

You want a fair take? Yeah he's got the same type of memory issues as most people of his age. Same as his opponent. If I wanted to I too could go tit for tat with clips of his opponent misspeaking and forgetting things. Our political system is poised to spit out a couple olds again this cycle as our choices. I think that sucks but it's the system we've got and I don't foresee changes coming because the system is so resistant to change.

That said your "diagnosis" is just shooting from the hip unless you're privy to his medical records. Some cognitive decline is normal as we age. Your assumption that it's a "severe brain function issue" that is bound to progress is just 100% your opinion unless you're Dr. Archy, MD, and you're the president's personal physician.

I get that it's easy to arrive at that conclusion, especially for Republicans, but it's just not medically sound.

And, in spite of my own beliefs here, that Special Counsel opinion was some typical politicized GOP bullcrap. No case to charge him, so might as well get a few punches in that give the party something to run on. But then I wouldn't expect a Trump appointee to call balls and strikes fairly. I would expect them to do something politically beneficial for their party, which is what they did.

3 hours ago, Archy1221 said:

The problem Democrats have though is that Kamala is the VP.  If the country had a competent VP, it would be easier to tell The BiG GuY you have to go if the VP could step right up.   The Dem machine knows Kamala ain’t it, yet they can’t be seen passing over a black women in favor of another white guy like Newsome.  So they are stuck with a nominee with sever brain function issue who people just don’t like unless the Dems can throw him under the bus further and shame him into withdrawing.  
 

Hopefully in the next two months both Trump and Joe have to withdraw and the country can have a better debate about moving forward. 

OK doctor Archy.

When you actually work with people who have dementia every single day, this type of armchair doctoring actually pisses me off.

But by all means, nobody seems to let reality ruin a good narrative so please, continue.

A Republican encouraging Russia to attack NATO members?
 

My god man. Reagan would’ve tried to kick Trump’s a$$.