Thursday Open Thread

What's on your mind?

Comments

[santamonica811]

Sigh. Another "big" announcement on Wed, of yet another woman claiming that Trump had sexually assaulted her. Yawn. I guess this is supposed to be the big October surprise. It was given immense coverage on CNN and MSNBC (big surprise) and essentially covered up and ignored by FOX (also, big surprise).

Does anyone think this will make even the slightest difference? That even a single Trump voter will be swayed by this? "Oh, gosh. I was fine with the 23 women alleging rape and assault and molestation. No problem there. But now, with *24* victims...now I can't morally vote for the man!"

Of course not. If you are still supporting Trump, you're a person who doesn't give a shit about women being molested or assaulted or raped. One more (alleged) victim is meaningless. Hell, another 15 victims would be meaningless.

Trump 2024: Because he's angry, and I'm angry, and that simpatico is more important than anything else.

[Commenter_XY]

Answers: No, and probably not.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Trump 2024.

Because the FEMINISTS supported Bill Clinton in
1994, 1996, & 1998...

[David Bremer]

This is the level of logic that I come to expect from Trump supporters.

I don't give a damn what "the feminists" did 30 years ago; I care about what is going to happen over the next 4.

[Reallynotbob]

Did I somehow miss the time Bill Clinton lost a civil case for sexual abuse and assault? Nope, I didn't. He got a BJ in the oval office. Gross, but not a crime and he didn't have to pay Monica Lewinsky tens of millions of dollars for then saying it didn't happen.

Nobody ever testified under oath that Clinton directed two minor girls to have sex with each other and then with him while on Epstein Island. Trump, on the other hand....

[not guilty]

"Did I somehow miss the time Bill Clinton lost a civil case for sexual abuse and assault? Nope, I didn’t."

Bill Clinton was not sued for sexual abuse and assault. Paula Jones asserted claims: (1) for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. alleging that then-Governor Clinton, acting under color of state law, deprived her of her constitutional rights to equal protection and due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by sexually harassing and assaulting her; (2) a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1985(3), alleging that Governor Clinton and Danny Ferguson conspired to deprive her of her rights to equal protection of the laws and of equal privileges and immunities under the laws; (3) a state law claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress against the President, based primarily on the alleged incident at the hotel but also encompassing subsequent alleged acts; and (4) a state law claim that Clinton defamed her by denying the allegations that underlay the lawsuit and by questioning her motives. Jones v. Clinton, 974 F. Supp. 712, 718 (E.D. Ark. 1997).

On August 22, 1997 the District Court dismissed the substantive and procedural due process claims and the defamation claim on a pretrial motion for judgment on the pleadings and to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. The Court allowed the case to case to go forward with respect to the § 1983 sexual harassment claim against Clinton in Count I, the § 1985(3) conspiracy claim against Clinton and Ferguson in Count II, and the state law claim for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress. Id., at 732.

On April 1, 1998 the District Court granted summary judgment in favor of Clinton on all remaining claims and dismissed the case with prejudice. Jones v. Clinton, 990 F. Supp. 657, 679 (E.D. Ark. 1998). This was a ruling on the merits in Bill Clinton's favor as to all claims.

Subsequent to that dismissal, the parties agreed to a monetary settlement. Paula Jones sold her right to appeal the District Court judgment for cash on the barrel head.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Could you imagine the outcome had they been using Trump Law?

Clinton would be on death row after paying $1B fines. There wouldn't even a trial, just the judge convinced by the overwhelming evidence.

[not guilty]

The wasn't a trial, doofus. Despite having the burden of persuasion, Paula Jones did not present evidence sufficient for the case to go before a jury, such that Bill Clinton was entitled to judgment in his favor as a matter of law. Jones v. Clinton, 990 F. Supp. 657, 679 (E.D. Ark. 1998).

[Frank Drackman]

And the Surpreme Court said it was Kosher to Electrocute Willie Francis twice(he was guilty as fuck but still…..)
Why doesn’t someone ask Cums-a-lot if the “Second Gentleman” still slaps women?
I know he probably still pays for his Poontangs Abortions, because he’s a “Gentleman”

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Do you think she had more or less evidence than E. Jean Carrol?

[Frank Drackman]

2 words, Laken Riley, murdered by an Ill-legal let in by Cums-a-lots Border Uncontrol, (and who Parkinsonian Joe couldn’t even remember her name, saying “Lincoln Riley”) her murderer arrested previously and released in NYC, the same city who’s Mr Potato Head DA is prosecuting Marine Corpse Veteran Daniel Penny for subduing (OK, with “Extreme Prejudice”) a dangerous psychotic threatening other subway passengers,
Oh, and Cums-a-lot is married to an Abuser (of former GF’s and Nannys, and those are just the 2 we know about) and her VP pick has all the signs of being a Pediophile.

Frank

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Trump let in the Iraqi that attempted to assassinate Bush…a Muslim assassin gets into the country during a pandemic with a Muslim ban—NOTHING TO SEE HERE!!

[Michael P]

Maybe if you yell "Orange man bad" a few more times you'll be right about something for once.

Does this woman at least remember the year that the assault allegedly occurred? Was she in a coma or on Mars such that she was unable to come forward before now?

[Brett Bellmore]

I assume you're talking about this.

You want the most ironic line in the entire story?

"Leavitt said—without evidence—that Williams’ story was made up by the Harris campaign"

Why not, "Williams accuses, without evidence"? Wouldn't that make more sense?

Tell you what: I'll care when the accusation is accompanied by evidence that it actually happened. Not before.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Remember when Trump’s first military order was for SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a little American girl?? And a SEAL was lost in the mission in which nothing of value was recovered!?! The Gold Star father was pissed especially when Trump lied to him.

[Sarcastr0]

Didn't you get mighty speculative when there was an unsourced accusation Walz was a pedophile a week ago?

[Brett Bellmore]

I think you've got me confused with somebody else.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Don't confuse him with facts.

[Riva]

Don’t know anything about this report but I can almost imagine Democrat handlers themselves manufacturing false stories to distract from the living dumpster fire that is Walz.

[David Nieporent]

Didn’t you get mighty speculative when there was an unsourced accusation Walz was a pedophile a week ago?

I don't think that was Brett. I think that was one of our more officially MAGA commenters. Maybe the bot, though my memory isn't certain enough to say so definitively.

[jb]

You know there's a lot of people in prison purely on the say so of the victim, right? It probably would be better if that wasn't true, but I rarely see Trump apologists looking out for people who suffered an actual loss of freedom based on similar evidence.

[Riva]

Uh huh. We have your completely baseless and irrelevant insults to supporters of President Trump on the one hand. And from Ol’Joe, we have: “We’ve gotta lock him up.” How could our democracy survive if we didn’t have internal coups removing presidential candidates and lawfare targeting political opponents? Thank you Democrats, for saving democracy, or something.

[jb]

Bad bot. None of that had anything to do with what I wrote.

[David Nieporent]

Can it really be called a bad bot if it's just doing what it was programmed to do?

[Riva]

Just so you know, “jb,” by baseless and irrelevant insult, I was referring to your comment that “I rarely see Trump apologists looking out for people who suffered an actual loss of freedom based on similar evidence.” And the remainder of my comment was expounding generally on the topic of legal abuses that are a hallmark of Democrat dirty politics. That would include lawfare by the way.

I don’t hold anything against you really. I’m sure you’re probably doing your retarded leftist best to be clever. It’s just not working. Like Harris.

[bernard11]

You won't care then, Brett.

Tell me, if you had a verified, time-stamped, video of the incident, would you still vote for Trump?

I'm betting you would.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, in that case I'd likely vote for the LP ticket.

But you're not going to have evidence, are you? Not a scrap of it. So you're safe predicting what I'd do if you did have it, it's unfalsifiable.

[bernard11]

When did I say I had evidence? It was a hypothetical question.

And I didn't predict anything. Betting on something is not making a prediction.

[Noscitur a sociis]

The accuser’s statement is evidence, because she
knows whether Trump did what she’s accusing him of.

Trump’s press secretary’s statement is not itself evidence, because she would not be expected to have personal knowledge of whether the Harris campaign made up the story. (Even if we can infer that she talked to Trump, who could know whether the story is false, he wouldn’t have any way to know how the Harris campaign was involved.) So, absent an explanation of why she thinks the Harris campaign was behind it, I think “without evidence” is an accurate framing.

[Brett Bellmore]

I am utterly sick and tired of this bullshit "The accusation IS the evidence!" line. No, the accusation is the accusation. It's perfectly possible to make an accusation that's false.

And when you make it decades after the alleged event, the only thing it should be treated as evidence of is defamation.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Is this supposed to be responsive to my comment? Saying that there’s evidence to support something isn’t the same as saying that it’s true. In this case, for instance, I’m extremely skeptical about the claim, in part for precisely the reasons you claim. But saying the claim was made without evidence would be incorrect: a person’s claim to have witnessed something, even something that happened to them, is evidence. It might be unpersuasive evidence, it might be false evidence, but it’s still evidence.

On the other hand, a person’s claim that couldn’t be based on their personal knowledge isn’t evidence. And if the claimant doesn’t describe the evidence that they’re relying on, then it’s fair to say that the claim was presented without evidence.

[David Nieporent]

While I agree with your response to Brett (I just echoed it before I scrolled down and saw that you had written it), I think it's fair to note that many/most people saying that an accusation was made, "without evidence" are including an implied "corroborating" in the statement. (It's certainly accurate to say that Williams did not provide any corroborating evidence.) But of course that's different than Trump's spokesperson's accusation, which was made without any evidence of any sort at all.

[not guilty]

“I am utterly sick and tired of this bullshit ‘The accusation IS the evidence!’ line. No, the accusation is the accusation. It’s perfectly possible to make an accusation that’s false.”

Of course it is possible to make a false accusation. But notwithstanding your being sick and tired, a person’s account of what happened based on personal knowledge of the event — that is, knowledge acquired through the person’s own sight, hearing, smell, taste or touch — is indeed evidence of the event’s having occurred. Whether that evidence is persuasive or not is a separate inquiry.

As Johnny Cash sang, “I was there when it happened and so I guess I ought to know.” (He also sang "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die," but the fact that a declaration may be false doesn't mean is is no evidence at all.)

[Brett Bellmore]

"a person’s account of what happened based on personal knowledge of the event"

A person's account what they alleged happened, which purports to be based on personal knowledge of the event. But which for all you know they just made up out of whole cloth.

The reason I won't agree that it's "evidence" is because nobody else has any way of telling whether it's true or not. An allegation of a crime decades ago looks exactly the same if it's true, or a lie.

So, it is only evidence that the accuser wants you to believe something, it's NOT evidence that something actually happened.

And when the allegation is made decades after the supposed event, that decades long delay is also evidence: Evidence that it's bullshit!

[not guilty]

Brett, perhaps you should change your handle to Humpty Dumpty:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

To analogize to criminal proceedings, an indictment is not evidence. The testimony of someone about the events alleged in the indictment, however, most assuredly is evidence. It may be true or it may be false; it may be persuasive or it may be unpersuasive, but it most assuredly is evidence.

[Stepped Reckoner]

An accusation is not testimony.

Even if there were a filed civil complaint containing the accusation, a complaint is not testimony and is generally not evidence (and certainly not admissible evidence) of the truth of the accusation.

Semantic word games about the hermaneutics of the word "evidence" were tiresome long before this woebegone comment thread.

[jimc5499]

I remember a certain NFL Running Back facing accusations of sexual assault. It was later found out that the woman and one of he college professors fabricated the whole thing to extort money from him. This was proven without a doubt and there were still people who said that he got off because of who he was.
I have little sympathy for people who come out years later, especially when it involves an election or confirmation for office. If she can show that she complained at the time it happened and her complaint was ignored, that's different.

[David Nieporent]

Was it OJ Simpson?

[David Nieporent]

“Leavitt said—without evidence—that Williams’ story was made up by the Harris campaign”

Why not, “Williams accuses, without evidence”? Wouldn’t that make more sense?

No. Williams has evidence: her own testimony. She could be lying, but she has firsthand knowledge of whether her claims are true. Leavitt of course has no knowledge of either whether Williams is telling the truth or that "the Harris campaign" is involved.

[AmosArch]

I don’t give a sh&t how traumatized you claim you are. If it wasn’t important enough to you to announce it until 30 years later on the eve of an election than its not important enough for me to care. I would be thinking this along with you if this was a Democrat as well.

[Michael P]

Apparently it wasn't important enough to announce eight years ago, either.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm with you on that. Didn't report it at the time? Unless you were locked up in a basement all that time, or in a vegetative state, what's your excuse?

In a just society, pulling this sort of stunt would just get you sued for defamation. But apparently accusing people of long ago crimes without evidence falls into some kind of exception to defamation law.

[not guilty]

If Donald Trump wants to sue for defamation, he knows where the courthouse is.

Remember when General William Westmoreland sued CBS for libel and then withdrew the suit mid-trial when the judge announced that he intended to ask the jury to render separate verdicts on truth, actual malice, and injury?

[Brett Bellmore]

There's no point in him suing for defamation, he's a "public figure". And it's already been established that you can accuse a public figure of long ago rape without providing any evidence, and not be liable for defamation, if you're just careful to be vague enough that they can't prove it was absolutely impossible.

[not guilty]

Truth and actual malice are separate components. General Westmoreland dismissed his lawsuit because, as his counsel told the judge at the time, "If he loses on truth, it will kill the old man." I suspect that Donald Trump is in the same boat.

[Brett Bellmore]

I remind you, this accuser has provided no evidence to back up the accusation. So, why suspect that?

This has just become a routine feature of our politics, last minute accusations of long ago rapes, without enough details to risk the accused establishing an alibi. It's becoming common enough, like calling somebody a "racist", that the accusations are losing their sting.

[David Nieporent]

There’s no point in him suing for defamation, he’s a “public figure”. And it’s already been established that you can accuse a public figure of long ago rape without providing any evidence, and not be liable for defamation, if you’re just careful to be vague enough that they can’t prove it was absolutely impossible.

No, Brett. Public figure/actual malice plays little to no role in a case like this. Actual malice means (in essence) that you knew the statements were false when you made them (or harbored serious doubts about their truth). She obviously would know whether Trump assaulted her, so if the jury disbelieves her allegations then Trump will almost certainly win on actual malice also.

There's no point in suing because Trump has so little credibility that a jury is a lot more likely to believe her than him.

[Lennyk78]

Only if it's a woman accusing a man of sexual assault. I suspect the left wouldn't be so tolerant if someone accused Harris, without evidence, of stealing a candy bar from a drug store in 1981.

[Sarcastr0]

So many experts on trauma response in the GOP these days.

[AmosArch]

If I had to choose between getting my computer stolen and getting my junk grabbed I would choose the latter any day of the week. Its so hilarious watching you guys pretend that the 30 year old suspiciously timed unverifiable version of this is the worse crime in the multiverse and pretending to be 2nd hand traumatized by this wandering around in an existential crisis ready to jump off a cliff because you’ve lost faith in humanity over this of all things while Biden fondles children on live nationwide tv.

[Riva]

Speaking of trauma response, I hope you’ve adequately prepared yourself mentally for your impending loss. Although, if it’s not too much trouble, would you mind posting an image of your powerless, agonizing scream to the heavens after President Trump takes the oath of office?

[Sarcastr0]

No matter how it goes, I’m going to be taking election week off, as people like you get weirder and more personal.

[Riva]

Weirder? I’m a little taken aback. That’s quite the insult coming from a supporter of the Harris Walz camp.

But you will still post that picture, won’t you?

[Mr. Bumble]

"... I’m going to be taking election week off,..."
How is that any different than what you do now?

[Sarcastr0]

Weird.

And personal.

Though you've been like this for quite some time, so I don't expect you can get worse.

[Don Nico]

Excellent move. I'll be out of the country that week

[Sarcastr0]

You're getting less personal, and just generally more chill. And I appreciate it!

[Don Nico]

Thanks. It also helps that I have more serious things to put thought to, such as the two courses that I'll be teaching in the spring.

[Reallynotbob]

Be nice. They're experiencing a lot of gaslighting and cycle of abuse behaviors right now. They'll be experts in no time.

[VinniUSMC (Banana Republic Day 5/30/24)]

More unfalsifiable claims. Cool story bro.

[Armchair]

"Does anyone think this will make even the slightest difference? "

No. It's simply not believable. A claim from 30 years ago that suddenly pops up, just weeks from the (third) election?

[David Nieporent]

Yes, it's "simply not believable" that a guy who has admittedly assaulted other women, and who has actually been found liable for having done so, might have assaulted another one.

But it's irrelevant; if one didn't care about all of his other victims, one isn't going to care about this. And if one did care about the others, one wasn't supporting him anyway.

[Armchair]

David....

The timing on this "revelation" is beyond suspicious. You must understand this.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

He ran on overturning abortion rights. Assault on women is something he is proud of.

[Lennyk78]

Abortion isn't a right, and a ban on abortions isn't an assault.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Stopping women from having control of their bodies, including when it will cause serious bodily harm, is a form of assault.

Reproductive liberty is a right. Dobbs as a matter of constitutional law restricted it unjustly.

[Lennyk78]

How are you defining bodily harm? Every state's abortion restrictions has exceptions for bona fide physical bodily harm to the mother.

Reproductive liberty is no more a right than it's a right to "marry" your husband.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

So you are saying abortion is sometimes a right?

The exceptions are repeatedly too narrow and in practice inadequate.

There is also a right to marry, including to your same-sex partner. That's still good constitutional law per the Supreme Court.

[Estragon]

I had a feeling we were going to be seeing a new handle from Mr Voltage after yesterday. Once you go Zyklon B, you get muted to such an extent that the level of engagement doesn’t satisfy. I wonder how long you will get enough engagement here, Lenny, to fulfill your needs before moving onto another one? Will this persona make it past the election? I can’t wait to not find out!

[John F. Carr]

Bill Maher had a bit on October surprises recently. Short version: Trump opponents should stop waiting for October surprises. They got one in 2016 and it didn't work. There is nothing left to throw at Trump that would shock people.

[SRG2]

There is nothing left to throw at Trump that would shock people.

This is true. His supporters are utterly uninterested. If Trump were proven to have secretly encouraged Putin to invade :Ukraine, if he'd raped a 14 year old girl on Epstein's island, etc, they'd still vote for him. Trump is not about character, nor about policy, nor about competence. Trump is about white supremacy, authoritarianism and hatred, couched in deniable terms.

[Commenter_XY]

SRG2, do you really think that 75MM-80MM voters in America are all about white supremacy, authoritarianism and hatred, couched in deniable terms? The answer is no.

Americans are voting their pocketbooks. That isn't unusual.

[SRG2]

I think that a significant minority of that 75 to 80 are indeed as described and a significant proportion of the rest don’t care.
https://time.com/4236640/donald-trump-racist-supporters/

If they were truly voting with their pocketbooks, they’d be more welcoming of immigration, more opposed to tariffs, more in favour of trade treaties. Observation: they’re not.

[Commenter_XY]

Can you define ‘significant minority’, please?
Is that 10K, 100K, 20MM, 50MM….what?

SRG2, there is no denying the cumulative impact of inflation. That is what is animating voters. I mean, they do ask people why they are voting. Pocketbook issues are at the top, closely followed by border control and illegal immigration.

Exit polling underway now is telling us what is motivating people to vote.

[SRG2]

The interesting thing about the inflation argument is that inflation was undoubtedly a worldwide phenomenon post-Covid but Americans generally have a hard time understanding this kind of thing.

You trust voters to tell pollsters the truth, right?

[Commenter_XY]

You want to tell me a number, SRG2? Define significant minority.

Do I trust pollsters? Only inasmuch as I pay them.

[bernard11]

The more interesting thing is that Trump's policies are wildly inflationary.

If someone is really deeply concerned about inflation maybe they should just use some common sense, or listen when people who know something explain things.

Here's a start:

High tariffs - inflationary.
Deporting millions of low-wage workers - inflationary.
Big tax cuts for the wealthy, increasing the deficit - inflationary.

[Commenter_XY]

Well, we heard all this before, back in 2017 when the Tax cut and Jobs Act was passed. Inflation remained low 2018-20. Tariffs assessed, inflation remained low 2018-20. Tax cuts for middle class (and wealthy)...and inflation remained low 2018-20.

That was reality. I understand what you are saying, and theoretically, the three things you listed should be true. That was not the case for 2018-20. We know the inflation rate for each year, it was lower than today.

[Bwaaah]

They focus on the Trump character, betting that it's so ugly that other issues, historically the most important issues to voters, will be set aside. They're effectively betting on: "It's NOT the economy, stupid!"

"Americans are voting their pocketbooks. That isn’t unusual."

True that. Amen. And thank god. Very few working class people have the time or inclination to nurse infatuations with political actors. There's work, family and personal chores, and hopefully some leisure time left after all those. What matters politically are realities on the ground around them that resonate week in and week out, like inflation (in their daily/weekly shopping costs), and especially in cities, visible signs of crime and uncontrolled immigration.

The Trump-obsessed haters are almost all in the political/professional/college class, as are all the journalists. It's its own kind of intellectual bubble. It's not like the surrounding [working] population that's trying to figure out how to gain some ground without the government eroding those gains (and worse).

I'm with you. For the TDS-distracted folks, I'm with stupid. But you and I and stupid people won't be distracted from the things that really matter day in and day out. Like our personal finances. ("Did you hear what he said today???!!!")

[SRG2]

Note the last sentence of my post just above.

[bernard11]

Bwaaah,

OK. You're going to vote your pocketbook. WTF makes you think Trump will be good for it? Don't like inflation? How do you think massive tariffs are going to affect it? How do you think deportation of millions of low-wage workers is going to affect prices?

[Bwaaah]

For all Democratic leaders, every opportunity, whether it be economic, military, scientific, social welfare or any other, is detoured through a social justice framework that is beside the point, expensive, and effectively undermines the purpose at hand. It has become an institutionalized handicap for all Democratic initiatives. (They are trying to look like good people, instead of trying to accomplish good things.)

Donald Trump doesn't have that handicap. Despite his endless pronouncements, he does very few of the things he threatens. If reelected, I believe the actions of his second presidency are likely to be similar to his first, which tended to be quite reasonable and supportive of widely held interests of working people in the U.S.

[Josh R]

It's unusual to vote your pocketbook when the person you are voting for shot someone on 5th Avenue.

[Commenter_XY]

LOL, that was hilarious. Touche'.

[bernard11]

Americans are voting their pocketbooks.

I wouldn't generalize quite so much, XY.

No doubt there are fools who are voting for Trump because they like his idiotic economic policies.

Still, there are an awful lot who like him for his bigotry, authoritarianism, dishonesty, general incompetence, and worsening dementia. "He's going to arrest Pelosi and Schiff. Hooray!!"

He's scum.

[Commenter_XY]

bernard11, it is what poll after poll after poll tell us. The top of mind issues for the American electorate are economic affordability, immigration. That isn't generalization, it is reality. And Kamala has a record there, with her boss.

Affordability is an issue in MA, also. Well, maybe not for the Martha's Vineyard crowd, but hell, immigration is a top of mind issue for them as well. Mostly on how to dump off illegal aliens to surrounding areas and communities. We would not want the hoi oligoi troubled by the hoi polloi (the rabble). 😉

[David Nieporent]

bernard11, it is what poll after poll after poll tell us. The top of mind issues for the American electorate are economic affordability, immigration. That isn’t generalization, it is reality. And Kamala has a record there, with her boss.

But immigration isn't an economic issue; it's a cultural one.

[Commenter_XY]

I would argue both, David: cultural, economic. You are not wrong about immigration also being a cultural issue. Regardless, it is a top of mind issue for the American electorate in 2024.

Chag Semeach.

[bernard11]

XY. I do believe that voters are concerned about economic issues.

My point is that voting for Trump if that's your main issue is a remarkably stupid thing to do.

[Commenter_XY]

bernard11, my point is pragmatic. Historically, people tend to vote their pocketbooks, regardless of party. And that makes sense. So there is a trend in place already.

The alignment of this voting tendency of the electorate to the top of mind issues for the electorate in 2024 (economic affordability = inflation, real growth...two parts to affordability; immigration) is what will ultimately decide this election.....unless something big happens like a military conflict.

[SimonP]

This is true. His supporters are utterly uninterested.

As the comments above you have demonstrated, MAGA is well-trained on the response.

These accusations aren't aimed at them, though. They're intended to remind voters who are still "undecided" or just tuning in now of what we got in 2016.

I remember what those years were like. Were prices lower? Sure. (I also paid less in taxes, before Trump hiked them up for me.) But I also remember waking up every day to some new chaos. Some cabinet official fired over Twitter, or ousted after a scandal. Some days Trump was "in love" with Kim Jong Un, other days they were trading threats over the size of their respective "red buttons." Sometimes you'd wake up to the threat of a direct military confrontation with Iran. Every fucking day, with that guy. Never mind the J6 stuff, the blackmailing Zelensky stuff, the private massage sessions with Putin.

Now he's running on a plan to deport millions, to put down protests with military force, and to throw our economy into shock with tariffs that he can unilaterally impose. MAGA knows this. They just think that the libz will get it worse than them, somehow. They're just as stupid about that predictiono as they are everything else.

[Brett Bellmore]

You can hardly expect us to be interested in accusations that lack any evidence. Or that rest on anonymous sources, after the last 8 years, and how (un)reliable anonymously sourced accounts have proven to be.

Yes, if you could prove that he raped somebody, I'd care, a lot. Likewise if you could prove that he'd encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine.

But you need to get over this idea that we're obligated to care about simple accusations, without accompanying evidence. We're not. Nor are you: If tomorrow some guy surfaced and claimed that Harris had sex with him 30 years ago when he was a minor, and he just now worked up the nerve to tell his story, you'd sneer at it, and rightfully so. EVERYBODY should dismiss allegations of long ago crimes, if not accompanied with evidence.

[SRG2]

When there is evidence you don't give a shit - or will defend him, like the confidential documents case in Florida.

[SimonP]

You can hardly expect us to be interested in accusations that lack any evidence.

True, given that you aren’t even interested in accusations that are supported by ample publicly-available evidence.

Trump did threaten to withhold military aid for Ukraine in order to generate helpful assistance in the 2020 presidential campaign. You wave it off: it eventually came anyway, so no harm, no foul. Trump did engage in a wide-ranging conspiracy to send false electoral slates to Congress, in order to throw the election in his favor. You wave it off: some of those electoral slates were conditional, and Trump was within his rights to invoke the constitutional process for getting himself elected as President notwithstanding the certified election results. Trump did take reams of classified documents to his golf resort and obstructed multiple attempts to get the material back, even at one point hiding materials so that it wouldn’t be found by investigators. You wave it off: no one’s ever been prosecuted for this before, and Democrats really should worry about the precedent they’re setting by trying to prosecute Trump for this (hint hint).

Even what is known about Trump, given what is publicly known about his recent actions – to say nothing of his mysterious and ongoing, strangely private relationship with Putin – is enough to disqualify him. But you don’t even blink at any of that. You dismiss all of it as “political prosecution” and ignore the underlying behavior.

So why would you care what some woman says about what he did 30 years ago? You don’t care about what he did yesterday, and you barely care what he’s going to do if he gets re-elected. You just want the people you don’t like to suffer.

[Brett Bellmore]

Try to comprehend the difference between evidence an event happened, and evidence that your take on it is true.

[SimonP]

Nothing about what I've said is just "my take" on it. As is clear from your decision not to rebut any of the factual assertions I've made.

[Sarcastr0]

Try to comprehend the difference between evidence an event happened, and evidence that your take on it is true.

Holy shit, this is incredible coming from Brett.

[Estragon]

Birther Brett has ideas about metaphysical certainty!

[bernard11]

Brett,

Simon has listed an ample number of things for which there is more than ample evidence.

Oh. And I suppose he never paid $25M for defrauding students at Trump University, always paid his bills, etc.

You're in so deep you can't see daylight.

[bernard11]

Yes, if you could prove that he raped somebody, I’d care, a lot.

I don't believe you. You've consistently defended Trump against everything, even when your defense was ludicrous, and you had that pointed out to you repeatedly.

Have you ever criticized Trump for anything - Trump University, his history of being a deadbeat, his racism, his endless lies, his bankruptcies, etc.. No. You've defended them.

But Harris didn't put a McDonald's job on her resume, and you're shocked.

You have a long history of comments here, and it doesn't remotely suggest what you claim.

You're in deep, Brett

[Riva]

Projection is reflexive for Democrats.

[SRG2]

I'm not a Democrat. I am anti-Trump, and have been since I moved to NY in 1997.

[Riva]

Well in spirit you’re a Democrat. At least you’ve got the projection thing down.

[Roger S]

Trump's enemies call him Hitler on a daily basis. Other accusations are minor in comparison.

[santamonica811]

And by "enemies," you mean people like: JD Vance...the guy Trump himself picked to be his own running mate. His. Own. Freakin'. Running. Mate.

[Lennyk78]

Or, we don't believe the allegations

[TwelveInchPianist]

Somebody else was sexually assaulted twenty years ago, and suddenly remembered two weeks before an election? Really not an October “surprise” and more.

[Bob from Ohio]

"twenty years"

30 years

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

If you are still supporting Trump, you’re a person who doesn’t give a shit about women being molested or assaulted or raped.

Being willfully stupid enough to blindly believe every completely unsupported allegation against a political figure that the left has been swearing to "get" for the past 8 years...because he's the worst person since Adolph Hitler...doesn't mean that you give a shit about women. It just means that you're a partisan hack with the IQ of a cucumber.

[not guilty]

Reason magazine reports a study that predicts about 102 million people of faith—including "32 million self-identified Christians who regularly attend church"—are likely to abstain from voting in November. https://reason.com/2024/10/22/the-religious-vote-is-waning-and-that-could-spell-trouble-for-trump/?utm_medium=reason_email&utm_source=new_at_reason&utm_campaign=reason_brand&utm_content=The%20Religious%20Vote%20Is%20Waning%E2%80%94And%20That%20Could%20Spell%20Trouble%20for%20Trump&utm_term=&time=October%2022nd,%202024&mpid=89811&mpweb=2534-4778-89811 The article attributes this in part to Donald Trump being insufficiently critical of abortion rights.

I remain amazed that self-proclaimed Christians have embraced Trump, who as another commenter here has cogently written, seems to regard the seven deadly sins as a to do list. It is difficult to imagine a less Christ-like figure. Jesus harshly rebuked the political leadership of his day.

I am reminded of the quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

[Frank Drackman]

I guess that's why the Christians shot him (Gandhi, not Christ)

[hobie]

I don't know what's up with the Christians these days. The two AM christian stations I monitor have switched to political discussions (usually guns and immigrants), and only reserve Saturdays and Sundays for soul saving

Owning the libs is so powerful that it makes unionists back their antagonists, and turn christians from their mandate

[Frank Drackman]

try listening to National Pubic Radio, 5 minutes of "News" that could literally be the Al Jizz-eera feed, read with a nasal yankee accent, then 55 minutes of Trannies, Homos, Trannie-Homos, Homo-Trannies, you're lucky if you get a hour or 2 on Sunday of some good Chopin, Bach, Beethoven,

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Remember when Trump surrendered to the Taliban?? Is that what you thought he meant when he promised to end the Afghanistan War?? lol.

[Reallynotbob]

Sounds like you're tuned into NPR a lot.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

I could see him hate whacking to All Things Considered…ooooooh Juana Summers you dirty whore!! Oooooooooooh!!!!!!!

[Commenter_XY]

NG, I question the underlying assumption that 102MM 'People of faith' are going to sit out 'the most important election of our lifetime' (Aren't they all?! Can we please vote in an unimportant election, just once?). That act (sitting it out) by 102MM people of faith would defy reason, logic and the common sense sensibilities of human beings. The underlying assumption is erroneous.

I don't think the Christian vote is monolithic*, either. The Christian vote is about as monolithic as the male vote or the female vote. I can tell you right now that the Jewish vote is not monolithic, not by a long shot. People of faith have the same political issues as the 'Nones'.

monolithic = 85%+ of vote going one way

[Kazinski]

I'm hoping this election the Black vote will not be monolithic, if Trump does win 20-25% of the Black vote it will be decisive, and good for the country too.

[Commenter_XY]

Pres Trump won about 13% of the black vote in 2020. I do not see Pres Trump busting 25% of the black vote in 2024. To me, best case is 20% (which is more than enough of a swing to make a difference, esp in PA, WI). Kaz, I don't have conviction that Pres Trump hits 20% (he might, but doubtful to me).

Why do I say this? You can judge (measure?) Pres Trump's success making inroads into the black community by simply asking (polling) black females who they support, and see those changes over time. As a group, black females are highly predictive (for voting); their support for Team D (up and down ballot) is rock solid and unwavering.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Black males are hurting -- it's their jobs the illegals are taking -- and if they turn out, they'll vote for Trump.

[Estragon]

“Their jobs”

Which jobs would those be?

[David Nieporent]

Black males are hurting — it’s their jobs the illegals are taking

Why do you say such obviously stupid and wrong things?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU03000031

[Lennyk78]

Of course they are. Black females are lauded by Democrats, given stuff and privileges they don't deserve, and told that nothing is their fault. Who wouldn't support that?

[hobie]

He ain’t gonna get that much black vote. You hear a few squawk that they like him because he’s gangster. And a few I’ve talked to admitted that they want him around because he’s largely responsible for what they see as an internecine war that’s tearing white culture apart. But in the end, they ALL know he and Vance are racist to the core

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I thought that black people who support Trump do so on account of sexism. Or perhaps Obama was misinformed?

[Kazinski]

They all think you are racist too Hobie, so there is that.

[Bwaaah]

He's the kind they want to see on the casualty list of that "internecine war" he mentioned.

[Joe_dallas]

I do expect Trump to get a much larger percentage of the hispanic vote that past elections.

[Kazinski]

Politico had an article yesterday that seems to indicate monoliths are dying:

The GenForward survey, which ran from Sept. 26 to Oct. 6 by the University of Chicago and included 2,359 eligible voters 18 to 40 years old, included some fascinating findings:

A quarter of young Black men are supporting Trump. (Black men overall backed President Joe Biden nearly nine to one in 2020.)
44 percent of young Latino men said they'd back Trump, an improvement over the roughly 38 percent who backed him in 2020.
For her part, Harris is at 58 percent with Black men, 37 percent with Latinos and 57 percent with Asian American and Pacific Islander men.
Kamala Harris is doing incredibly well among women of color. A majority of Black (63 percent), Asian American and Pacific Islander (60 percent) and Latina (55 percent) women say they will vote for Harris.
White women are nearly evenly split between Harris (44 percent) and Trump (40 percent). "

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/10/23/2024-elections-live-coverage-updates-analysis/genforward-poll-black-latino-voters-00185161

That's painted as good news, but if Harris does only get 63% of Black women 18-40 then she is toast, even if most of the rest are undecided.

[not guilty]

The study which the Reason article reports on is described here: https://www.arizonachristian.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/CRC-Release-Pre-Election-1-Oct-12-2024-Final.pdf (The figure cited there is as many as 104 million; I don't know where the Reason writer's 102 million comes from.)

[Commenter_XY]

The cite was helpful. It solidified my thinking. How so?

It would not make logical sense to me that the issues most important to People of Faith (listed in descending order in the study) are economic affordability issues and immigration (top 3)....and they are sitting it out this time? No chance, NG.

Hell NG, you live in the Bible Banger Belt...there a Baptist Church practically on every corner in TN (east of Nashville). I assure you, People of faith will turn out to vote. I am not even going to touch the topic of electioneering from the pulpit (ugh - btw, that happens in synagogues occasionally too).

They (People of faith) are just like you and me in the sense that we are all experiencing the same things (albeit, with a different perspective).

[Lennyk78]

It happens in synagogues, especially reform ones, more than "occasionally." They believe that supporting Democrats is a mitzvah.

[David Nieporent]

Voltage guy here spends lots of times in synagogues.

[Lennyk78]

What does voltage mean in this context? I'm pretty well versed on slang, and have never heard this.

[Life of Brian]

Holy smokes. If I'm reading this "study" correctly, the "people of faith" segment of the survey population actually had a slightly higher voting propensity (51%) than the voting-age population as a whole (50%).

The 104 million number is the 49% that said they don't intend to vote. So what? Again, that's a slightly lower percentage than the voting population as a whole, so if anything their faith is driving them to vote more, not less.

The silliness is compounded by using such a loose definition of "people of faith" as to encompass 79% of the US population, which makes it less than surprising that the difference in voting behavior between "people of faith" and overall eligible voters is very small.

So in all, this seems like a less-than-nothingburger. What am I missing?

[Commenter_XY]

Exactly, this study does not contain particularly disquieting news at all.

[Ridgeway]

It is even stupider than that. There are only 161-ish mm registered voters in the US. Less than 80mm voted for Trump in 2020.

So where the heck does this 104mm number even come from?

If they had said 10.4 mm, that would still have seemed way high.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

“I am reminded of the quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.””

Many Christians gave their lives to contribute to an Allied victory which prevented India from becoming a Japanese colony (instead, the Japanese were overthrown and India became its own country). Gandhi, of course, opposed the Allied war effort.

[Roger S]

Gandhi was a terrible person in many ways.

[Armchair]

"I remain amazed that self-proclaimed Christians have embraced Trump,"

Why? Do you actually understand Christians?

[Armchair]

Harris doesn't actually seem to want Christians. Trump does.

Harris' remarks when confronted with recognizing Christianity went viral last week over an incident in which she told Christians who shouted “Jesus is Lord!” that they were at the “wrong rally.” “I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street," she added. The people who shouted were forced to leave the venue. The Trump campaign subsequently turned the clip into a campaign ad, featuring Trump stating “[w]e love Christians, we welcome believers, and we embrace followers of Jesus.”

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/thutrump-moves-lock-christian-vote-amid-harris-gaffes

[Roger S]

Harris was raised as a Hindu, and does not appear to be a Christian. Trump is much more Christian than Harris.

[David Bremer]

I'm more interested in why.

Harris doesn't "doesn't . . . want" Christians; she doesn't want them using politics and policy as a vehicle for pushing religious ideas. So when some people tried to meld the two, she resisted.

Trump wants Christians because he's an egomaniac who only cares about getting elected. He'd want Satanic worshipers if it got him closer to being president again to avenge some type of personal grievance. That's literally all he cares about.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"she doesn’t want them using politics and policy as a vehicle for pushing religious ideas"

Has she disavowed the group Evangelicals for Harris?

"A loving God, the Good Samaritan, serving others, and a deep respect for all faith traditions — these experiences, teachings, beliefs, and values Vice President Kamala Harris grew up with have shaped her into the leader she is today....

“'I can trace my belief in the importance of public service back to learning the parable of the good Samaritan and other biblical teachings about looking out for our neighbors" [&c]

https://www.evangelicalsforharris.com/kamala-harris-faith-story

[Roger S]

That quotes Harris as saying "I have private conversations with God". Maybe so, but her mother was a Hindu, her father, a Marxist, and her husband a Jew. Her top political issue is promoting more abortions. She is not a Christian.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

All one has to do to be Christian is accept Christ as their lord and savior. Osama Bin Laden could have been a Christian so long as he accepted Christ before the SEALs double tapped him…so you might see OBL up in heaven! Hopefully you won’t have too many nightmares about that for the rest of your life! 😉

[Roger S]

Some Protestants say that. Harris does not appear to have accepted Christ.

[not guilty]

How do those Protestants claim to know what is in Kamala Harris's heart?

[Krychek_2]

I was raised Christian and spent a year in seminary, so I think I do understand Christians. And Trump and the GOP are just about the total antithesis of the teachings of Jesus: Welcome the stranger. Feed the poor. Treat others as you wish to be treated. And here are a few choice Biblical quotations about the rich:

“It shall be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:24

“Weep and howl, ye rich, for the misery that shall come upon you.”
James 5:1

“As the wild ass is the lion’s prey in the wilderness: so the rich eat up the poor.” Ecclesiasticus 13:19

So, if you’re voting for Trump, call yourself a Christian if you like. Most of the rest of us aren’t fooled.

In fact, Christians for Trump reminds me of the story of two boys up on the Florida panhandle who were walking through a cemetery. They saw a headstone that said, "He is not dead, but sleeping." One of the boys turned to the other and said, "He ain't foolin noboby but hisself."

[Armchair]

Here's the truth Krychek,

Christians are like other people. They're not magically better or worse than other people. They're like other people.

And like other people , Christians enjoy their interests being promoted. Christians like being liked. They don't like being disparaged and they don't like being targeted by the government and being told to go away.

Harris literally tells the Christians at her rallies to bugger off. Trump embraces them. This isn't hard.

[Krychek_2]

So, Christians should vote for the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus because the Democrats hurt their feelings?

I agree with others here that Christians are not a monolithic voting block; if I were still a Christian I would still be voting Democrat. But what is being disparaged is not Christianity itself -- a lot of Democrats are themselves Christians; Jimmy Carter is the most famous example -- but rather the attempt at mixing church and state and forcing one's moral views others. We hear Christian leaders outright saying that they will make this a Christian country. And that's what's being told to bugger off.

[Commenter_XY]

So, Christians should vote for the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus because the Democrats hurt their feelings?

No. But I would say that the lockdowns, the deliberate targeting and shutting down of religious places (like my synagogue) during the pandemic, the hostility to religious exemptions, the unequal enforcement of the law by the FBI and DOJ, are all motivating factors for regular religious service attending people of faith overcome their reticence about The Donald.

What happened during the pandemic to people of faith was unforgiveable. We could not gather to pray. We could not gather to mourn and bury our dead. We were told our religious life was non-essential, and so were we. We were compelled against the dictates of our faith to take the covid vaccine (which did not work).

Personally, I will never, ever forgive Phailing Phil Murphy and the NJ People's Duma (and the people like them) for their actions. In a just world, they will all suffer very greatly, as we did.

[Krychek_2]

The tension is between *when* religious exemptions are appropriate and when they are not. If your church teaches pedophilia, you're not getting a religious exemption, nor should you. If, on the other hand, your church forbids drinking chocolate milk, you should probably be excused from a legal mandate to drink chocolate milk. In between those two extreme examples is a lot of ground.

Based on what was known at the time, I don't think the lockdowns were unreasonable, even though better information later undermined them. At the time, it was thought they were necessary to stop a deadly disease. Suppose things had gone the other way. Suppose there had been no lockdowns and a million people had died as a result. Would you feel better then?

It's really a question of how high are the stakes. If the stakes are low, as in my chocolate milk example, I (and I think most Democrats) would favor letting people observe their religion. On the other hand, with a lot of deaths as a real possibility based on what was then known, religion occasionally will just have to yield. It's the cost of living in civil society. I'm sorry that in this case you were dissatisfied with the outcome.

[Lennyk78]

Maybe in March and April, yes. But by May 2020, it was clear that COVID was a scam, and the lockdowns were no longer justified.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Suppose there had been no lockdowns and a million people had died as a result. "

A million people DID die of Covid in the US. Well considering that over 3M die every year of all causes, that's not actually all that shocking.

And there's no evidence that the lockdowns did anything to reduce the deaths. Actually, there's significant evidence that they increased the death toll; They crashed the economy, after all, and poverty kills.

I think the initial reaction to Covid was based on the fear that it was an escaped biowarfare agent, a not unreasonable assumption under the circumstances. Naturally, they wouldn't come out and SAY something like that, for fear of causing a panic.

The problem is that we DID get a panic, anyway: A moral panic. And it became impossible to scale back the response once they realized it was just an ordinary disease.

But, still, the lockdowns were unreasonable. They hinged on matters that had no medical significance, they were originally justified to "flatten the curve", but continued long after that wasn't needed. They violated any remotely rational cost/benefit analysis. Moral panic was the only way to understand them, they made no medical sense. In large part they ran CONTRARY to medical sense, like shutting down parks so people would be stuck indoors where transmission was more efficient!

And the damage done to the reputation of public health authorities will take many years to get over, deservedly so.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

We have data by county and state—I will make it easy for you, Hawaii implemented the most mitigation measures in 2020/21 and Arizona implemented the fewest. Hawaii has the lowest Covid death rate while Arizona has the highest Covid death rate. And everyone in Hawaii ended up getting Covid and so the mitigation measures delayed spread so people could get vaccinated and then the vaccines were safe and effective. It’s very simple, but technically masking didn’t stop spread it merely delayed spread and so the vaccines are the key.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Krychek_2 -- Gambling casinos were allowed to open but not churches? Gambling is necessary to life?

[Krychek_2]

I didn't say I agreed with every specific application of it.

[Don Nico]

" it was thought they were necessary to stop a deadly disease. "
K_2, that was an assumption out of ignorance. The CDC made several such assumptions even though the data concerning mortality ws literally all over the map worldwide. Lock downs persisted far longer than there was any justification and as C_XY points out the exceptions were based much more on political expediency than on any sound medical basis.
So what we had was fear being used as an excuse to abridge people rights.
Your saying "sorry" is just so smug.

[Drewski]

"What happened during the pandemic to people of faith was unforgiveable."

"In a just world, they will all suffer very greatly, as we did."

A good Jew speaking for good Christians, ladies and gentlemen: No forgiveness and hope for suffering.

[Commenter_XY]

I speak only for myself, and no other. Also, turning the other cheek is a Christian thing, Drewski. I never much believed in that.

[David Nieporent]

What happened during the pandemic to people of faith was unforgiveable. We could not gather to pray. We could not gather to mourn and bury our dead. We were told our religious life was non-essential, and so were we. We were compelled against the dictates of our faith to take the covid vaccine (which did not work).

1) Nothing "happened to" people of faith.
2) You were not compelled to take the vaccine.
3) It is not against the tenets of yours, or pretty much any other faith. Maybe Christian Scientists.
4) I'm pretty sure that I've seen you recommend various pork recipes of one sort or another in some of the open threads — if I'm misremembering I apologize — so maybe talking about the dictates of your faith comes across a bit… pretextual?

[Don Nico]

David,
Why didn't you answer the most cogent part of the complaint:
" We could not gather to pray. We could not gather to mourn and bury our dead. We were told our religious life was non-essential, and so were we."
That was hardly "nothing" contrary to your assertion.

[Roger S]

Trump is the most pro-Christian candidate on the ballot. As I write this, NPR Radio is spending a whole hour complaining that Trump is so Christian that he should be feared as a Christian Nationalist.

[Armchair]

"So, Christians should vote for the antithesis of the teachings of Jesus because the Democrats hurt their feelings?"

"Should"...is a different story. "Will"...absolutely. Because Christians are people.

And, I don't know how else to tell you this....people don't like it when you hurt their feelings. When you disparage them. When you hold them in contempt. And if you're trying to get those people to vote for you...doing all those things is a really bad idea.

Telling people they're "deplorables" or "dirty ugly monkeys" or whatever but that they should then vote for you because you're giving them an extra $100 in Medicaid or tax cuts and the other guy won't. Not a winning strategy. Especially when the other guy says he respects them.

You get that...right?

[Commenter_XY]

Christians also have to eat, pay rent, etc....economic affordability issues were top issues motivating people of faith (and Christians more specifically) in that study NG cited. They experience inflation and high energy cost like the rest of us.

[Sarcastr0]

Pro Life is not the only kind of Christian there is.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

How could we exclude the Pro Death Christians?!?!

[Commenter_XY]

Have fun debating the rake stepper-oner, LOL.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm not voting for pastor. Are you?

This is parody, but has quite a bit of truth to it, as does the best parody:

Christian Just Voting For Whichever Political Party Less Likely To Make His Faith Illegal One Day

[SimonP]

I’m not voting for pastor. Are you?

You're not voting on any principled basis. I don't know what relevance "president, not pastor" could possibly have as to your decision.

You're no more motivated by Christian values than you are by libertarian ones. You're voting for grievance and retribution. And in that respect, you absolutely care about what kind of person Trump is.

[Roger S]

Yes, there is a difference between a President and a pastor. If you do not know, look it up. Different job, different requirements.

[Brett Bellmore]

Look, your assuming I'm a hypocrite doesn't make me one, it just confirms that you have trouble imagining people fundamentally disagreeing with you and not being bad in every possible way.

I'm not voting for Trump because I think he's a moral icon. If Rand Paul had gotten the nomination, maybe I'd have had that motive, but politicians I actually admire are few and far between, politicians I admire who have a chance of getting elected are basically unicorns.

I'm, as the parody above suggests, just voting for the guy with a chance of winning who's least likely to try to harm my rights. And if Democrats had nominated Tulsi Gabbard, that might have been her. But they didn't, they nominated Kamala Harris, so it's Trump.

[SimonP]

I’m, as the parody above suggests, just voting for the guy with a chance of winning who’s least likely to try to harm my rights.

What rights, exactly?

Trump believes in gun control. He believes in restricting free speech. He believes in commanding businesses to locate their factories here and is preparing to impose massive tariffs to make that happen. He claims to believe that rights to personal autonomy should be "left to the states," but his Cabinet will be filled with people prepared to use their powers to impose their beliefs on states that disagree with the MAGA base.

Trump does not believe in freedom or liberty. You support him because you expect that his clampdown on freedom will fall mostly on people other than yourself. But that is never what happens, in kleptocratic countries, once the citizens are duped to handing power over to the kleptocrats. You'll get railed, too. You're just too stupid too see it coming.

[Brett Bellmore]

I didn't say that he was a civil rights icon, either. I said that he's least likely to try to harm my rights, not that he had no inclinations in that direction at all.

That I would consider voting for Trump is a commentary on how utterly awful Democrats have become on everything I care about. To the point where Trump can be fairly bad, and still be the lesser evil.

I fully expect to die without ever having cast a vote for a winning candidate I actually LIKED. But that doesn't mean I'm going to cast one for the greater evil.

[SimonP]

You are factually mistaken about what Kamala will (or could) do, when it comes to the rights you claim to care about.

Pay attention to their promises. Kamala's require legislation and would be subject to lawsuits and judicial review. Trump's are unilateral exercises of executive power that would require no further legislative authorization and would receive only limited judicial review.

[Commenter_XY]

What has VP Harris actually promised aside from price controls, taxes on unrealized capital gains, and abortion legislation?

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, she's also promised to violate the 2nd amendment, subsidize house purchases on the backs of taxpayers, and implement racial 'reparations'.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett thinks but for is age, Biden would be turning the military on American citizens on American soil.

He thinks if Harris is elected, there will be camps to round up conservatives.

He doesn't really cite it much, but his worldview is extremely dark and fringe, which lets him rationalize almost anything.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, what I think is somewhat more complicated than that.

I think that Biden wants to disarm Americans. He's been a gun control activist for decades now, and if anything has only gotten worse.

So, if he had gotten Congressional backing for his gun control ambitions, and if the Supreme court could have been neutered, he'd have certainly have gone for mass gun confiscation.

And then he'd turn the military on Americans who resisted. He didn't want to turn the military on Americans. He'd only have done it if we failed to fall in line.

And Harris' ambitions in this area are no different.

Well, no, that's not really true: Biden would have waited on legislation. Harris has said:

"Upon being elected, I will give the United States Congress 100 days to get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws. And if they fail to do it, then I will take executive action."

[Sarcastr0]

I'm not sure revealing that you're writing a freaking political thriller novel, except you believe it, is helpful to your case.

You have decided that Dems have secret plans to do all sorts of awful things.

With a tilted worldview like that, it's no wonder you work so very very hard to defend Trump's actions, no matter how awful. Because it's righteous to rationalize away all bad things a human does when the other side are these demons you've conjured.

[SimonP]

No, what I think is somewhat more complicated than that.

No, it actually isn't. After a series of highly improbable events that Biden has never suggested taking anyway, only then would I expect Biden to unleash the military on Americans who resisted his efforts to forcibly disarm them. That's not "complicated." That's "nuts."

Only one candidate has promised to unleash the U.S. military on Americans who don't fall into line. And it's your guy.

[David Nieporent]

That I would consider voting for Trump is a commentary on how utterly awful Democrats have become on everything I care about.

Yes, and the "comment" is "Brett will do what he does every election."

[CountmontyC]

So how does the Democratic party appeal to Christians?
Is it by unrestricted abortion?
Is it by shutting down church services during COVID while allowing marijuana shops to remain open?
Do you think drag queen story hours appeal to Christians?
Maybe suing the Little Sisters of the Poor to require them to pay for abortion coverage in their insurance?
The Republican party may not be perfect but when it comes to what Christians believe it is far better than the Democratic party.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

They think it's the Big Massive Nanny State ruining everyone's lives in practice but with their good golden hearts as their stated intentions!

I mean for real, who wouldn't want an incompetent, corrupt, inefficient, wasteful bureaucracy helping the poor! These bureaucrats may be stupid, but their hearts are pure gold!

If Democrats really cared about helping people they would shrink the size of the Federal government by 90%. But they obviously don't.

[Sarcastr0]

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

The Jesus who took in and defended Mary Magdalene is not the Jesus of the Evangelical's sex-policing social conservativism.

[Brett Bellmore]

Notice it wasn't, "For I was hungry, and you forced your neighbor to feed me, I was thirsty, and you compelled your neighbor to give me something to drink, I was a stranger, and you ordered your neighbor to pay for a hotel room for me."

As I said to Simon P, stop trying to make everything Cesar's. The government has it's place in society, and this isn't it.

[Sarcastr0]

Actually, I think Jesus understood how a community works.

You don’t, but you’ve never evinced support for anything that didn’t help you personally. At least not around here.

Voting for our society’s values to align with one’s own, whether Christian or otherwise, is not mixing up Caesar and God.

You put your values on as much a pedestal as any Christian zealot.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Eh, I mean there’s this:

Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,

And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus,

Having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles' feet.

But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession,

And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles' feet.

But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?

Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.

And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.

And the young men arose, wound him up, and carried him out, and buried him.

And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in.

And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much.

Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out.

Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.

And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things.

[not guilty]

"Notice it wasn’t, 'For I was hungry, and you forced your neighbor to feed me, I was thirsty, and you compelled your neighbor to give me something to drink, I was a stranger, and you ordered your neighbor to pay for a hotel room for me.'”

Following the Day of Pentecost, when about 3,000 were baptized, "And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need." (Acts 2:44-45 RSV) That presumably was done at the direction of Jesus' apostles, acting as His agents.

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, and not by the government levying taxes.

Are you really suggesting the government is directly anointed by God to carry out his directives, on pain of dying on the spot if you refuse?

Again, I say: You're very unclear about what is properly Cesar's.

[Sarcastr0]

Policy is evidence plus values.

One source for values is religion.

That's how it's been since America's founding.

There are limits, often involving the establishment clause, but if you're offended by someone voting their values, I'd point you to a mirror.
Your values are offensive to many. But no one is offended by the idea of you voting.

[not guilty]

“Are you really suggesting the government is directly anointed by God to carry out his directives, on pain of dying on the spot if you refuse?”

No, Brett, of course I am not saying that.

I am saying that there is a world of difference between Christian values and Trumpian values. And while I did not mention Ananias and Sapphira, (Noscitur a sociis did,) it appears that their values of greed and lying aligned too much with those of Trump and not enough with those of Jesus.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Exactly, there’s no connection between children falling short of their potential because their fathers aren't there for them, and economic issues. Sex is off in a separate box totally cordoned off from economics.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

If they wanted to care for the people, they wouldn't want the State doing it. They'd be fighting tooth and nail against the Feds.

Since, empirically, the State fails and caring for it's people.

[CountmontyC]

Past studies have shown conservatives donate more to charity than liberals do.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34429211/#:~:text=Our%20meta%2Danalysis%20results%20suggest,giving%20varies%20under%20different%20scenarios.

[Sarcastr0]

And how is that relevant to the Christian analysis of ‘I like my instruments of society to be stingy and cruel to strangers?’

A la carte virtue isn't virtue at all.

[not guilty]

Armchair, I was reared among fundamentalist Christians. I was once one myself. (I am still a Christian believer, but I maintain a healthy skepticism.) I understand the "born again" mindset well.

I was a regular churchgoer when I decided to have no part of a political whose national conventions five times nominated Richard Nixon. What with having thrice nominated Donald Trump, today's Republicans are even more vile.

[Riva]

You really have no understanding of the faith you seem to have abandoned, do you? It’s not about moral perfection. Not really possible for us mere mortals. Hate break it to you but Democrats are not without sin too, not even Obama, notwithstanding the airbrushed halos.

[SimonP]

You know, there’s a “tell” here.

Christians could take one of two approaches, when they vote. They can choose to vote for the candidates who promise to put Christian values into practice, designing a society that actually serves the poor, provides care to the sick, forgives the sinner, houses the homeless, and welcomes all comers, whether they are flawed or saintly.

Or they can choose to construct elaborate explanations for why they don’t do that, explaining that they never expected their representatives to be good Christians, and that the business of government isn’t to achieve any of the goods they value in their religious lives, but rather to see to secular concerns, leaving it to churches and communities to tend to the welfare of their flocks.

The evident cognitive dissonance in the justification betrays the underlying doctrinal incoherence. You have to wave your hands about why it makes sense to repeal tax credits that could lift children out of poverty because it doesn’t make sense. A good Christian who votes for the people who care about alleviating poverty – not just for Christian kids whose parents attend church regularly, but all kids, and not for just those poor people who happen to live within reach of a soup kitchen or food pantry run by a well-funded church but all poor people – has no particular doctrinal tension to explain away, because their votes line up perfectly with their values.

The truth of the matter is that any Christian voting for Republicans is, at best, a hypocrite. They hive off, in their minds, their religious beliefs from how they think the government should operate. They have only the flimsiest of excuses for why they do this (which they then abandon anyway, when they talk about restricting abortion, porn, LGBT speech, DEI, and on and on).

[Brett Bellmore]

"They can choose to vote for the candidates who promise to put Christian values into practice"

You seem to have a conceptual problem here; Society, in the form of individuals and voluntary groups, is supposed to serve the poor, provide care to the sick, forgive the sinner, house the homeless, and so forth.

Government has a very different and very much more limited remit.

It's not charity to put a gun to somebody's head, and tell them to hand over the loot, even if you plan to spend some of the money on charitable purposes. It's just robbery.

Stop trying to make everything Caesar's. We're not electing a pastor, we're electing a President.

[SimonP]

As I predicted – just hand-waving obfuscation.

I don’t have any conceptual problem; I do not need to draw an arbitrary and question-begging distinction (premised on an undercooked political philosophy) establishing that “government” is not part of “society.” I recognize that “society” provides for itself through methods of organization that more or less mimic what we do through “government”; “government” is just the overarching structure within which all of the rest of that happens.

You’re over there punching blocks with “monopoly of force” and an out-of-context quotation from an eschatological cult.

[Brett Bellmore]

Government IS party of society. It's not THAT part of society!

You really, genuinely, think that it's charity to force somebody else to give to the poor?

[Sarcastr0]

All governments have fulfilled at least in some fashion this role you call 'charity.'

Supporting the elderly, or sick, or infirm, or otherwise weaker parts of society is something societies organize to do.

Victorian England tried to leave a lot of that to the church, and you can ask Dickens how that went. Of course they also had poorhouses even then. In fact, you're basically scrooging it up here, eh?

Liberalism as an idea is pretty recent, and libertarianism even more recent than that. Don't pretend these are Immortal Virtues Everyone Must Know.

There are some great arguments for markets, and negative rights, and at least reasonable arguments for small government. But you need to do the work.

[SimonP]

You really, genuinely, think that it’s charity to force somebody else to give to the poor?

No one's doing that, Brett. This is a strawman, built (as noted previously) from question-begging assumptions and a half-baked political philosophy.

The question we face, as voters, is this: we pay taxes; those taxes pay for policies and programs. We collectively decide how much our taxes should be, and what kinds of programs we think would be beneficial, through the democratic process and the selection of representatives. The question is why Christian values shouldn't shape those decisions.

It seems to me that the only Christian argument for lower taxes and fewer public programs to support the poor, inter alios, would be: more people could be helped through non-governmental programs and voluntary donations. That would be at least plausible and true to Christian principles, though it succeeds or fails based on empirical grounds.

Your approach to the question is just to say: Government isn't charity! Taxes are "forced" upon you at the "point of a gun!" You sidestep the democratic nature of the way we voluntarily organize for the collective good by rehearsing stuff you might have read back in the 70s but haven't really thought carefully about since. It's like you removed the critical thinking part of your brain and just shoved a copy of Atlas Shrugged in there.

What you are arguing, Brett, is that Christians believe that they live in a universe that a benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient being has created for them, who cares so much for humankind that it sent its "son" to die as a sacrifice to absolve humankind for its sins, and has organized the universe around a moral law that humans should be guided by. But when it comes to how those Christians vote, well, "render unto Caesar," they can be as selfish and self-motivated as they like.

Put another way - the "Caesar" of your repeated aphorism is a far-away, unaccountable tyrant who makes demands of Jesus's disciples. What do you think Jesus says, of an opportunity to influence Caesar? "Jesus, Caesar has asked for our views on whether he should use some of our taxes to provide food and shelter to our poorest members. Should we be in favor of that?"

You think Jesus just says, "Nah, it's all good. We're going to Heaven, like, next week"?

[Roger S]

Harris was raised as a Hindu and has many anti-Christian views.

[David Nieporent]

Harris was not raised as a Hindu, and you have many anti-Christian views.

[not guilty]

I have not abandoned faith, Riva. But as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. I Corinthians 13:11 (RSV).

Too many Christians conflate the verse next following, “now we see through a glass, darkly,” (KJV), with Lewis Carroll’s Looking Glass, specifically the White Queen’s rejoinder to Alice: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

[Riva]

What? I Corinthians 13:11 plus Lewis Carroll equals “today’s Republicans are even more vile”? Don’t know what you believe, but it certainly seems confused. In fact, sounds like you desperately need some Catechesis.

[not guilty]

Catechesis? Why in the world would I pay attention to instruction on doctrine, ethics or morality from the corrupt Roman Catholic Man/Boy Lust Association Church?

[Riva]

I would think the answer is obvious. Because you're phenonmally ignorant on matters of faith and morals.

[not guilty]

An organization that has paid out billions of dollars because it has been unable/unwilling to keep its employees out of its parishioners' children is in no position to instruct anyone on matters of morality, ethics or virtue.

Likewise, anyone who is willing to take instruction from such a vile collection of kiddie diddlers is a moral idiot.

That having been said, I can sort of see how anyone stupid and gullible enough to believe in transubstantiation can be duped by Donald Trump's malarkey.

[Riva]

You're confusing the fallibility of some with the Church's infallible teaching on faith and morals. You may want to ponder a bit that Peter himself committed one of the greatest sins. But you probably won't. I suspect you're deeply committed to your phenomenal ignorance. It ain't called phenomenal for nothing.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Why would I be expected to believe that the Church's teachings on faith and morals are infallible, particularly when so many important officials in it have demonstrably failed so spectacularly for nearly 2000 years?

[not guilty]

I said you are a moral idiot, Riva. Here you go now, helping to prove my point.

For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.
* * *
Any one who goes ahead and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son. If any one comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into the house or give him any greeting; for he who greets him shares his wicked work.

II John 1:7, 9-11 (RSV)

Set aside your pernicious dogma and use some common sense here. Those who rape children, as well as the institution that enables and fosters such child rape around the world, most assuredly do not abide in the doctrine of Christ and do not have God. Even greeting such evildoers shares their wicked work (the King James Version says "he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.").

[Riva]

I thought I was pretty clear but phenomenal ignorance can be stubbornly, well, ignorant. You may want to reread my comment.
"You’re confusing the fallibility of some with the Church’s infallible teaching on faith and morals..." I concede people are flawed. That was the Peter example you don't want to acknowledge. Stubborn ignorance or perhaps, more likely, just plain old fashioned Catholic bigotry? Although they're pretty much the same thing.

[not guilty]

Begging the question much, Riva? The Catholic Church’s teaching on faith and morals is infallible because the Church is infallible? As a Wilson County preacher from my youth was fond of saying, that doesn’t even make good nonsense.

As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.

Matthew 7:15-20 (RSV)

The rotten fruits of the Roman Catholic Church are corruption, avarice, hypocrisy, lust, pederasty. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.

[Riva]

Not even close. Infallibility is a gift from God to the Church, like faith. And, while I don't profess to be a theologian, I'm willing to bet Christ was not referring to Peter and the Apostles when he was referring to false prophets. Peter would be the flawed guy noted above to whom Christ entrusted His Church. And, fun fact, the Catholic Church originally compiled the Bible.

[not guilty]

Au contraire, Riva. In Paul’s first epistle to Timothy, he forecasted the apostasy of what would later come to be called the Roman Catholic Church:

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

I Timothy 4:1-3 (RSV)

I note that you do not dispute my characterization of the vile fruits of the Catholic Church. Jesus said that “A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” It follows logically that only an unsound organization could bear the evil fruits of corruption, avarice, hypocrisy, lust, and pederasty. To conclude otherwise makes Jesus a liar.

[Riva]

I’ve been disputing your nonsense anti-Catholic rants throughout this entire chain. I still don’t know what you actually believe. You’ll have to examine your own conscience. But maybe you should consider the possibility that you’re the one who has departed from the faith?

[Riva]

[Commenter_XY]

NG, I am glad you have retained your faith. It is a comfort in times of great trial and tribulation, and a comfort as we age.

[Armchair]

" I understand the “born again” mindset well."
Yet you're simultaneously "Amazed" that they would vote for Trump.

Seems the two can't quite be true simultaneously. If you actually understood it well, you wouldn't be amazed.

[not guilty]

Are you suggesting that another person's gullibility and willingness to tolerate evil cannot be amazing, Armchair?

As the Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg said, “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”

[JoeFromtheBronx]

“Jesus harshly rebuked the political leadership of his day.”

He also talked about being a divisive force that will break families apart. He proclaimed that the end was near, that the kingdom of god was upon us. He wasn’t a “Christian” as such.

Christianity is an established faith and later became an established religion. Accepting political leadership became a thing. The signs were there when Paul said:

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.”

Many Christians see Trump as a King Cyrus-type figure — a flawed savior. Unfortunate. There are dissenters as discussed by John Fea, an evangelical history teacher who wrote a book on evangelicals and Trump.

[Longtobefree]

More like we see the democrats as the Babylonians.

[Krychek_2]

That's actually a fair statement but you didn't carry it through. Christians think they are living in Judah under King Ahab -- the king may be evil but it's still a godly country, and with better leadership it would be fine. The rest of us understand that this is Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar -- you guys haven't been living in a Christian country for decades now; you just don't get it, and we resent the hell out of you trying to turn Babylon into Judah.

We're more than happy for you to continue to practice your laws, observe your Sabbaths, and celebrate your Passovers. Just don't tell the rest of us that we can't have abortions, gay marriage, etc. because it's against your religion.

[Bob from Ohio]

"We’re more than happy for you to continue to practice your laws, observe your Sabbaths, and celebrate your Passovers."

That's nice of you. Fortunately, in the US we have free exercise of religion not mere freedom to worship. So you will have to live with people asserting their religion fueled moral values in public policy.

[Krychek_2]

You can assert whatever you want. You may not, however, actually incorporate your religion into civil law. And if you try, don't be surprised if there's pushback, and don't accuse people of being anti-religious bigots who are merely protecting their own way of life.

As I said below, Daniel said that he couldn’t eat the king’s meat, not that nobody else could either.

If it’s against your religion to have an abortion or marry another dude, then don’t do it.

[Bob from Ohio]

If it’s against your religion to have a slave, then don’t have one.

[Krychek_2]

You're the king of terrible analogies, but this one is bad even for you.

The rights of people who have already been born are not in dispute the way the rights of fetuses are. Find me someone -- anyone -- who argues that a slave isn't a person (at least within the last hundred years). So with slaves, the question begins and ends with the liberty rights of persons.

[Krychek_2]

Don't forget that when Daniel and his friends could not eat the king's meat, they said, "*We* cannot eat the king's meat." They didn't say that nobody else could either. Perhaps today's Christian theocrats could take notice.

[not guilty]

Jesus had a keen understanding of the distinction between temporal and spiritual matters. Matthew 22:15-22.

I wish that more self-proclaimed "Christians" would realize that their deity is not such a weenie that He needs help from Caesar.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Spiritual matters should not be given to Caesar.

I do think the government has a role in safeguarding our overall well-being. That's part of what God (assuming the premise) is concerned about. So, I do think governments are in some fashion something God "uses." The famous passage about caring for the sick, those in prison, etc. involves some governmental assistance these days.

[Riva]

Uh huh. We can listen to TDS deranged drivel. Or to Harris herself, who noted in one of her “rallies” that Christians were not really wanted there. Odd, for some reason the candidate who never met an innocent unborn life she didn’t want to abort doesn’t seem to like the idea of Christians attending her events. Way to court the Christian vote. Soon, since she likes to plagiarize, she’ll accuse them of clinging to their guns and religion.

[SRG2]

I remain amazed that self-proclaimed Christians have embraced Trump,

Why? They're hypocrites well-versed in how to defend that hypocrisy.

[Commenter_XY]

They (your self proclaimed Christians) are no more hypocritical than Reform Jews who embrace VP Harris. And equally well-versed.

[Lennyk78]

Reform Jews are hypocritical in almost everything they do. They don't generally follow any of the 613 Mitzvah, other than the generally applicable ones like the prohibition on murder.

Many of them don't even believe in God. They believe Judaism is about "being a good person," and they define "being a good person" as "being a liberal."

They don't actually believe in Judaism at all. It's more that they use Judaism as a way of putting a religious veneer on their pre-packaged liberalism.

[OtisAH]

Those “self-proclaimed Christians are not “Christians.” They’re “evangelicals.” Although they nod to Christ, most of their relevant scripture is from the Old Testament. They only look to the New Testament for the crucifixion and Revelations. In fact many, perhaps most, evangelicals wholeheartedly reject Christ’s message.

They may rightly be considered a sect of Christianity, but they’re not Christians.

[Drewski]

I agree, but calling the Revelation "Revelations" is one of those shibboleths that suggest unfamiliarity with the subject matter.

[OtisAH]

I’ve never bothered much with the apocalyptic hallucinations tacked onto the end of the New Testament. Particularly since they don’t have much to do with Christ’s teachings. So guilty as charged.

[Bob from Ohio]

"sect of Christianity, but they’re not Christians."

Someone does not know what "sect" means.

[bernard11]

102 million?

That's not plausible. Even 32M isn't.

[Jerry B.]

102 million voters out of a total of 163 million registered voters?

Someone is wrong.

[TwelveInchPianist]

From the NYT:
"U.S. Study on Puberty Blockers Goes Unpublished Because of Politics, Doctor Says"

The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care.

If you're doing evidence-based policy, then who controls the evidence, controls the policy.

[Commenter_XY]

Sort of like, it is only the vote counters who matter....

[Bwaaah]

In scientific research, as in criminal justice, journalism and other professional areas, it does appear that the vote counters are having their day.

It's not a good time for more serious, professional practitioners. They have to raise their hands and ask, "May I?" to the vote counters. This is another example of what I call "the inversion"...the people who can and do being subordinated to the representative committees of people who can't and don't.

[M L]

Taxpayer funded study too.

[Reallynotbob]

"But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began."

Sooo... enlightened American society has done better at accepting these teenagers from the outset, leading to a small delta in mental health, but we're going to complain about the "cover-up"?

The most one can infer from the article is that maybe the US teenagers didn't need the puberty blockers to avoid depression like the Dutch kids did. Beyond that, it doesn't really establish much (although I didn't click through to the study data itself).

[TwelveInchPianist]

Keep reading...
"That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment."

So she will say whatever she has to to push her preferred policy.

[not guilty]

ABC News has reported that a proposed personnel roster circulating within Donald Trump's campaign and transition operation lists Aileen Cannon as a possible candidate for attorney general in the event that Trump is elected to another term as president. https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-tossed-trumps-classified-docs-case-list-proposed/story?id=114997807

The article says that Cannon's name was added to the list well after the classified documents case was thrown out over the summer. Was there a quid pro quo?

This serves as another reminder of the importance of defeating Trump in next month's election, as well as that of Democrats retaining control of the Senate to serve as a check upon Trump's potentially outré nominations.

[Frank Drackman]

Aileen Wuornos would be a better AG than that hack Merrick Garfield, and with you losing WVA, MT, and OH(Double loss, because JD will break any ties) you really want to scare yourself, wait until you get Chief Justice Rafael "Pablo" Cruz

[not guilty]

I doubt that Senator Cruz could be confirmed no matter which party controls the Senate.

[Frank Drackman]

He wouldn't be my pick, I'd pick someone innocuous, in the vein of Gore-sucks or "I Like Beer" Kavanaugh, or you really want to get Machiavellian, Amy Coney Island Barrett

[Dr. Ed 2]

A lot of Senators would like to be rid of him.

[Brett Bellmore]

He certainly wouldn't be MY pick for any position in a Trump administration. I met him at a candidate forum back in 2016, and my impression of him was that it would be unfair to used car salesmen to compare him to one.

[Commenter_XY]

NG, it (the ABC story) is also another reminder to be cautious about anonymously sourced stories. Where is the roster? ABC's answer: We reviewed the roster, we can't show you the actual document, but just trust us, we would never misrepresent anything. We pinkie swear it!

We are approaching peak political silly season. 🙂

[David Nieporent]

You guys really don't understand the difference between the MSM and the right wing media. The former can be biased or mistaken, but they don't just make things up. Institutional norms are a real thing that actually govern how people behave.

[Commenter_XY]

David, you and I agree that "institutional norms are a real thing that actually govern how people behave".

Where we part ways is that the MSM doesn't just make things up. They have and they do.

[hobie]

Trump needs an AG that will ignore the law and the Constitution and do exactly what he says. So I truly believe he's going to nominate Giuliani

[Dr. Ed 2]

I don't think Giuliani is long for this world.
Something is wrong with him.

[Lennyk78]

Sounds like Merrick Garfinkel

[Riva]

If he wanted that, he’d keep Garland on the job, and promote Smith.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Cannon would be a good pick -- she is scholarly, she is stable, and she isn't intimidated by the left. AND she's an outsider.

Trump is going to need an AG willing to go after the left -- to criminally prosecute the street thugs that will inevitably be disrupting things, and to have a good-government streak (like Robert Kennedy) to prosecute the crooks in government.

[not guilty]

Aileen Cannon has done for jurisprudence what Christian Szell did for dentistry.

[Kazinski]

Well, is the pick safe?

[Riva]

Maybe, although I’m thinking Supreme Court.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Cannon went to Duke and Michigan, clerked for a court of appeals judge, worked at a white shoe law firm in DC, and then worked for DOJ before becoming a judge. In what possible sense is she an outsider?

[Reallynotbob]

The same one in which she's scholarly.

[John F. Carr]

The most natural explanation is a unilateral reward.

Cannon would get all the MAGA votes in the Senate and maybe no more. Will that add up to 50?

[Stephen Lathrop]

1. Right wingers insist that criminal penalties afterward are inadequate preventives against criminal voter fraud. It must be prevented in advance, by whatever means necessary, even if those means inflict otherwise unjust harm on the voting privileges of innocents.

2. Right wingers insist that gun controls to prevent gun crimes before they happen are unreasonable, because they would inflict penalties on innocent gun owners. Thus, gun crimes must be prevented only by deterrence, using criminal penalties afterward.

3. Criminal voting fraud occurs only during elections. It is so infrequently proved that on a cumulative basis it seems unlikely to alter any election outcome almost ever.

4. Gun crimes accumulate daily, and by killing and disabling would-be voters add up in numbers that are far more likely than voter fraud to affect election outcomes. Each killing or disabling gun injury affects the outcome of all subsequent elections the killed or disabled voter might have participated in. That cumulative effect does not apply to voter fraud. Each election vulnerable to fraud must be targeted separately, with a renewed crime to affect each one.

5. There is no way to predict whether either gun crimes or voter fraud are more likely to hamper one side or another in any particular election. In either case, for statistical reasons, smaller elections seem more likely to experience a change in outcome than large elections.

6. If measures to prevent voter fraud before it happens are justified by a tiny likelihood that an election outcome will be affected, then measures to prevent gun crimes before they happen are likewise justified. And because gun crimes are many times more common than voter fraud, and cumulative every day, not just during elections, preventing gun crimes before they happen is a better-justified policy to improve election integrity than preventing voter fraud before it happens.

7. To protect the integrity of elections, right-wingers must back gun controls designed to prevent gun crimes before they happen. They must cease to insist that the only measures justified to prevent gun crimes are criminal penalties inflicted after the crimes have been committed, and whatever election disruptions those crimes inflict have already happened.

[Frank Drackman]

Beating up that Straw man early I see

[Commenter_XY]

No, this is Steven Jong Un devising laws for his fictional lathropistan on the fly. Think of it like him taking his Hammurabic legal code out for a test drive.

[Stephen Lathrop]

XY — I never expect obligate hypocrites to be troubled if a comment targets hypocrisy. Extreme capacity to host hypocrisy is encoded into your metabolism. It's part of a syndrome. It includes also unchecked opportunism, and cynicism levels which would prove crippling for anyone with normal scrupulosity indications.

[Commenter_XY]

No wall of text response (logorrheic) on how 1A needs to be restricted? I am disappointed. 🙂

[Dr. Ed 2]

Don't let Democrats own guns.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"If measures to prevent voter fraud before it happens are justified by a tiny likelihood that an election outcome will be affected, then measures to prevent gun crimes before they happen are likewise justified."

Yes, this makes complete logical sense. All we need to do is figure out the exact policies which would deter gun crimes in advance, which I'm sure is an easy task.

[Riva]

You’re a little confused. Those interested in fair and secure elections regard virtually non-existent post election “remedies” as poor substitutes for conducting a fair and secure election in the first place.

[Noscitur a sociis]

1. Right wingers insist that criminal penalties afterward are inadequate preventives against criminal voter fraud. It must be prevented in advance, by whatever means necessary, even if those means inflict otherwise unjust harm on the voting privileges of innocents.

2. Right wingers insist that gun controls to prevent gun crimes before they happen are unreasonable, because they would inflict penalties on innocent gun owners. Thus, gun crimes must be prevented only by deterrence, using criminal penalties afterward.

Neither of these propositions describes the views of anyone I’ve ever met. With respect to the first, no one* believes that election security is important to achieve by “whatever means necessary, even if those means inflict otherwise unjust harm on the voting privileges of innocents”. Rather, people think that the policies they support don’t meaningfully restrict or hamper innocents’ ability to vote.

Likewise, gun rights proponents don’t think that any policy that inflicts any inconvenience on any innocent gun owner is unreasonable: they think that most gun control proposals are unreasonable because they burden innocent people without providing a meaningful benefit.

Since neither of your premises is correct, I’ll leave noting the holes in your remaining proposition as an exercise for the reader.

*I’m sure it’s not literally no one—there are a lot of people in this country and some of them believe some pretty dumb things. But it’s certainly not the prevailing sentiment among anyone who could be considered representative of “right wingers”.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Noscitur — If you were correct about the gun advocates why would they be unified and vociferous against federal research to detail the epidemiology of gun crime. It is because they worry that effective policies might be discovered that they do all they can to prevent research to discover them.

Of course I understand that Bellmore and his ilk insist that no gun control policies would ever improve public gun safety. They say that while living in a nation where the least-gun-victimized states are ones with stronger gun controls and lower gun prevalence, so I do not take those assertions as forthright.

[Brett Bellmore]

"If you were correct about the gun advocates why would they be unified and vociferous against federal research to detail the epidemiology of gun crime."

For the same reason I don't advocate that the Department of Justice do research into renal failure.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Noscitur — If you were correct about the gun advocates why would they be unified and vociferous against federal research to detail the epidemiology of gun crime. It is because they worry that effective policies might be discovered that they do all they can to prevent research to discover them.

Because the “research” at issue was of very low quality, and transparently manufactured to support specific political outcomes. If we could be confident that the research would be undertaken rigorously and in good faith, you’d see very different perspectives.

(Gun registration laws are similar: if we could be confident that they’d be used strictly for legitimate law enforcement purposes, versus harassing, maximally inconveniencing, and ultimately disarming law abiding gun owners, you’d see a lot less resistance to them.)

[Stephen Lathrop]

When an argument is forthright, founded on broadly known evidence, which leads to obvious conclusions, I suppose you could call it transparent. And if for some reason you opposed those conclusions, you would have little choice except to disparage the argument as, “low quality.”

One problem gun advocates such as yourself have is that there is no doubt at all that extreme gun control measures—if enacted and enforced—would prove highly effective. No pistols at all, no semi-automatic rifles, gun crime unaffected? You know as well as I do that to expect that would be absurd.

So we have to agree that a proper extent for gun control regulation—taken as a political question—is the legitimate focus for debate. But as a gun advocate, you refuse to debate. You see debate as a slippery slope, and want to shut it down. Like so many others, you want to do that by denying to government capacity to collect and collate the evidence needed to conduct the debate.

I doubt that will remain good politics indefinitely.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Noscitur, see above, why no reply?

[SimonP]

Neither of these propositions describes the views of anyone I’ve ever met. With respect to the first, no one* believes that election security is important to achieve by “whatever means necessary, even if those means inflict otherwise unjust harm on the voting privileges of innocents”. Rather, people think that the policies they support don’t meaningfully restrict or hamper innocents’ ability to vote.

It is probably true that no one who supports tighter restrictions on the franchise believes that election security is so important that it must be achieved by “whatever means necessary.”

But when it comes to the restrictions and hampering that those measures impose upon legal, registered voters, I think that proponents of the restrictions are deliberately indifferent to the effect. I don’t think they really believe that the measures don’t meaningfully restrict or hamper “innocents'” ability to vote. Or, rather, they wave off any such restrictions as immaterial – if you need a driver’s license to fly, then you should need one to vote; if you can’t get to the polls on election day, then maybe your vote shouldn’t count; how hard is it to get an ID anyway; and so on.

That is, I think that they are at best ambivalent about whether additional restrictions will block legal voters from voting. At worst, they are properly charged with deliberately designing restrictions (and voter-roll purges, among other things) in a manner that will disfranchise a non-negligible number of voters. They just justify that by explaining that they don’t think those voters should be voting, anyway.

This is hard for me to understand, personally. Today’s NYTimes has a piece on Republicans embracing early voting. It’s written in a predictably alarmist way, noting Republican hypocrisy on the issue and fretting about the way a measure Democrats looked to for solace in 2020 is swinging this time around. But after I put my own anxiety aside, I appreciate that this is just what a fair election looks like: legal voters, voting. If “my” candidates do not win in a fair election, that’s just democracy. I cannot in good conscience oppose measures designed to make it easier for people who have the right to vote, to vote, even if it means that I “lose.” So I don’t understand the “election security” zealots who seem so indifferent to the way their measures could and are intended to block legal voters from voting.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I don’t think they really believe that the measures don’t meaningfully restrict or hamper “innocents’” ability to vote. Or, rather, they wave off any such restrictions as immaterial – if you need a driver’s license to fly, then you should need one to vote; if you can’t get to the polls on election day, then maybe your vote shouldn’t count; how hard is it to get an ID anyway; and so on.

I disagree: I think most people think genuinely believe that the requirements they want to see aren’t actually very difficult for eligible voters to comply with. I’d even take it further: if there are actually significant numbers of people who can’t get government-issued identification, we should be trying to fix that problem. And indeed, we’ve generally seen exactly that result in states that have implemented voter ID rules.

[EscherEnigma]

Well, no.

Roughly every four years we go over this. States (almost always in the South) where the "right" neighborhoods have quick and easy voting experiences, but poorer, more minority-populated ones have 4+ hour long lines, where the number and location of polling locations are ducked with, with the state making new rules to make it harder for people to get to the polls or stay in line...

We see this every four years. And conservatives are exactly as SimonP said: indifferent.

And the whole voter ID thing? Again, every four years after a (again, almost always Southern) state makes a new law, there will be articles about people that are having trouble complying, about the state slow-walking the process, all the roadblocks, and conservatives are as SimonP said: indifferent.

Having an a priori assumption that it won't be onerous is one thing. But after the evidence comes out and you see just how many people are struggling with your favored policies, and you just ignore it? That's indifference.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Having an a priori assumption that it won’t be onerous is one thing. But after the evidence comes out and you see just how many people are struggling with your favored policies, and you just ignore it?

Can you point me to some of the evidence that you find compelling? This issue isn’t all that important to me so I haven’t spent a lot of time looking, but the stories I do recall seem to point the opposite way. For instance, I believe Texas’s voter ID law led to the them reducing or eliminating a lot of unnecessary fees, while in another state (one of the Dakotas?) a suit was dismissed for lack of standing because they couldn’t actually find a plaintiff who had trouble getting one.

[EscherEnigma]

... what part of "I don't care, I'm lazy, and I haven't looked into this, won't you do my homework for me?" was supposed to make you not look indifferent?

[SimonP]

But that's what I'm saying. I'm saying: people don't care about what empirical data might show about voter ID (and other measures) and its tendency to disenfranchise voters, because they just say, "Well it's not hard to comply with the requirements."

I hate when people do this to me, so I won't just dump a link showing that large numbers of people don't have required voter IDs, have voter ID that no longer complies with voter ID requirements (e.g., the address on your driver's license must match your registration address), learn of voter ID requirements only too late to get one, or are confused about voter ID requirements and stay home because they assume they're ineligible. And wouldn't you know it, a lot of these people belong to Democratic-skewing demographics.

You say: Well, let's fix that! But fixing the "problem" is a red herring. The point is that Republicans' laws are what require your fix in the first place.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I hate when people do this to me, so I won’t just dump a link showing that large numbers of people don’t have required voter IDs, have voter ID that no longer complies with voter ID requirements (e.g., the address on your driver’s license must match your registration address), learn of voter ID requirements only too late to get one, or are confused about voter ID requirements and stay home because they assume they’re ineligible.

Drop 'em if you've got 'em. If I'm wrong about the facts, I'd certainly like to learn more!

You say: Well, let’s fix that! But fixing the “problem” is a red herring. The point is that Republicans’ laws are what require your fix in the first place.

That's true, in the sense that, as I said, the desire to enact voter ID laws have sometimes been the impetus for getting rid of unnecessary barriers to getting IDs. If you're saying that the only reason anyone would need to get an ID in the first place is a voter ID law, I'd have to disagree. There a lots of things of basic things that you should be able to do, but can't do if you don't have an ID, including going to a courthouse to challenge a voter ID requirement. People who don't have IDs are being shut out of a lot of important aspects of modern life, and that should change.

[David Nieporent]

And wouldn’t you know it, a lot of these people belong to Democratic-skewing demographics.

No. Democratic skewing demographics are not more incompetent and stupid than Republican ones. The former are just as capable as the latter of reading the very very very basic rules and figuring out what they need. If they are "confused" about something as simple as that, they shouldn't be voting at all (and almost certainly weren't going to, so it's a purely imaginary concern).

[David Nieporent]

Democrats' opposition to voter ID laws is one of the stupidest fucking self-owns I've ever seen in politics. Voter ID laws probably don't help much, because voter fraud isn't a meaningful issue, but the requirements are overwhelmingly popular with all segments of the electorate, including minorities. And these requirements do no practical harm, because virtually all adults already have ID and everyone else can easily get it. It would take a major GOP talking point off the table. And even if Democrats think the laws unnecessary, they could trade support for those laws for something Democrats actually want.

But instead Democrats insist on infantilizing the population and coming up with incredibly stupid arguments — it's a poll tax (!) to force someone to get a free ID¹ because theoretically they might not have any form of ID or birth certificate and a state might charge them $25 to get a copy of their birth certificate; and maybe they have to take a day off from work once in four years to go get the ID; and also having any requirements at all is just the same thing as Jim Crow.
​
​
¹Last I checked, virtually all states that require voter ID give out said IDs for free, and if there's a state I overlooked that doesn't, the Dems could insist on that in exchange for supporting the requirement.

[Sarcastr0]

The free ID programs I've seen have all been in Democratic states.

I haven't done a deep dive on it, but red states that talk about ID requirements do not generally push for a free ID program.

Federal free ID's got killed I think before I started paying attention to politics because of Mark of the Beast concerns, or so I was told once on the Internet, which never lies.

[ducksalad]

JFTR, here is the list of ways a voter can identify themselves in Texas. Any *one* of them can be used:

Texas Driver License issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS)
Texas Election Identification Certificate issued by DPS (free)
Texas Personal Identification Card issued by DPS
Texas Handgun License issued by DPS
United States Military Identification Card containing the person’s photograph
United States Citizenship Certificate containing the person’s photograph
United States Passport (book or card)
copy or original of a government document that shows the voter’s name and an address, including the voter’s voter registration certificate;
copy of or original current utility bill;
copy of or original bank statement;
copy of or original government check;
copy of or original paycheck; or
copy of or original of (a) a certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes the voter’s identity (which may include a foreign birth document).

———–
The ones that aren’t really an ID card at all (the ones starting with “copy”) do require signing a declaration, at the polling place, that you could not obtain reasonably identification. AFAIK the election judge does not have discretion to reject the declaration, but of course it does open you to a later charge of voting fraud if you were lying.

[David Nieporent]

The free ID programs I’ve seen have all been in Democratic states.

The very first one I checked: https://www.sos.alabama.gov/alabama-votes/photo-voter-id/obtain-free-photo-voter-id

(Not cherrypicked; Alabama was just the most red state that came to mind.)

Next one I checked was Kentucky:

https://transportation.ky.gov/Organizational-Resources/Forms/TC%2094-193.pdf

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Litigation showed cases of people unable to obtain birth certificates and having other problems with the identification laws.

A $1.50 poll tax was once stuck down & we are supposed to handwave losing a day's pay now?

I grant a carefully applied identification system, a free ID system, would be ideal. NYC has a very helpful free ID with many perks. ID is useful as a general matter.

I don't know how much Democrats in Republican strongholds can "force" Republicans to agree to them. Plus, Republicans have agency in general. Their voting shenanigans has led to a "take no quarter" mentality for some voting rights advocates.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Right wingers insist that criminal penalties afterward are inadequate preventives against criminal voter fraud. It must be prevented in advance, by whatever means necessary, even if those means inflict otherwise unjust harm on the voting privileges of innocents.

It's always helpful when you begin one of your long-winded screeds with complete an utter bullshit, saving me the time of bothering with the rest of it. Thanks.

[hobie]

WELL? WHICH IS IT?

Trump – “America is failing”…”in economic decline”…”third world country”

*** OR ***

Greg Abbott (R), governor (TX) – ““Our economy has grown so large since I have been governor. The size of our economy has exceeded the size of the economy in Brazil, Italy, Canada, and even Russia. The Texas economy is larger than Russia and that makes me more powerful than Putin”

Mike Parson (R), governor (MO) – “We know there is a lot of noise and nonsense from candidates running for political office wanting Missourians to ignore our wins an [sic] focus on their fears, but the reality is Missouri’s economy is strong.”

Ron Desantis (R), governor (FL) – “Under Governor DeSantis’ leadership with velocity and purpose, Florida’s economy starts off the year [2024] with strong economic growth trends,”

Eric J. Holcomb (R), governor (IN) – “Under Holcomb’s leadership, Indiana’s economy is strong, the state’s finances are honestly balanced, and the state is streamlining government services “

[Frank Drackman]

Up early Hobie-Stank? Your African neighbors keeping you up late playing that jungle music? Like your side always says, "2 things can be right at the same time" and I'm going to preemptively (since we might be the same person) umm, pre-empt your "Amurcia's neediest Veteran" slur, and if you do say it, you're a child diddlying Homo. But since I, I mean "we" might be the same person, you'll make some dick headed remark anyway.

[SRG2]

Schroedinger's Economy

[hobie]

HaHa! The economy is fine until you open up Trump's mouth and check

[Jerry B.]

The check is in the mail, or it isn’t.

[Riva]

You do understand that you're making the case to vote Republican, don't you little hobie?

[EscherEnigma]

There's probably a fancy term for this kind of bias, but it's not new.

It's the same thing where public approval of congress as a whole tends to be very low, but approval of a constituent's representatives tend to be high.

In this case, people's opinion is that America's economy as a whole sucks, but the economy of their own state is good.

This disconnect probably comes from where people's views come from: for your own local economy/reprsentative, it'll be based on what's actually going on, experienced and so-on. But for how you think the country/congress as a whole is going, it'll be based on a lot of news reports, second hand accounts, and so-on.

[Michael P]

Unsurprisingly, the Fulton County (GA) government is full of corrupt hacks who are hiding election facts.

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/fulton-county/judge-rules-fulton-co-das-office-employee-did-not-act-good-faith-delayed-open-records-requests/Z4BUPFJCLVB33JNK4GOSTKEEF4/

[Noscitur a sociis]

election facts

As presented by the article, that doesn’t seem like a particularly accurate characterization of the documents at issue.

[David Nieporent]

Are you saying that Michael P is being dishonest? *gasp* It must be a day ending in 'y'.

[Commenter_XY]

A PA ballot question, and given the importance of PA, probably relevant right now. The PA Supreme Court recently (within last 30 days) made a series of decisions relative to PA election ballots. I predict we will see a mess. Here is a background article.

https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2024/10/pennsylvania-election-mail-ballot-provisional-supreme-court/

My question is different. Consider the ballot itself. What is 'too onerous' for the voter vis a vis ballot requirements? PA has detailed requirements; secrecy envelope, two signatures and dates.* Other states have their particular flavor of detailed requirements; and attendant strictness of enforcement.

What are specific examples where you think the physical requirements with ballots, or ballot design, are too onerous for a typical voter? What state? Where does the 'too' come in on 'too onerous' for the voter?

*Personally, I think PA legislature needs to address it...if they believe there is a problem (just because I think it is too onerous doesn't mean they agree). The double signature + separate secrecy envelope sounds 'too onerous' to me.

[hobie]

I had to get my mail-in ballot from Texas to Portugal during a goddamn pandemic. And it was like applying for a mortgage.

Once gotten, the multiple privacy/signature/proof documents and hoops and whatnot were so many and confusing that I nearly gave up. And the instructions made it menacingly plain: if one 'i' wasn't dotted or one 't' crossed the whole thing would fail.

It was nerve wracking in part because I've always been unsure that my vote was actually accepted

[Commenter_XY]

Do you recall what docs you needed?

I am surprised that TX doesn't have online tracking of your mail-in ballot. We do in the People's Republic of NJ.

[hobie]

I do not remember precisely. Apart from my passport, I recall I had to provide a document showing proof of residency in Texas even though I hadn't lived there in 12 years. Luckily, my TXDL had been self-renewing all that time. I also had to show proof of residency in Portugal which required a trip to the local council office which, in turn, required I drag along two neighbors with Portuguese citizenship to vouch for me.

But it was all the paperwork that was the real problem. There were so many hoops and procedures and the huge instruction list was very, very confusing

[Mr. Bumble]

Maybe we should institute proxy voting.
Good enough for Congress, good enough for The People.

[VinniUSMC (Banana Republic Day 5/30/24)]

You didn't live in Texas for 12 years, but were able to vote by mail in Texas? If you've lived in Portugal for 12 years, why do you get to vote in the US at all?

[hobie]

Because I'm a U.S. citizen and Texas was the last state I lived in. A lot of us have extended overseas assignments. And I have to cast a ballot in a state, there is no federal catch-all

[Frank Drackman]

I know Hobie-Stank, because we might be one and the same, but be thankful, we, I mean “He” now lives in Ohio, a safe “Red” state (what happened to those “Demographic Changes”??) Voted in Florida my whole time in the military, even though I spent way more time in Saudi Arabia than Pensacola, lots of benefits, weather (Florida, not Saudi Arabia), low taxes (well Income anyway, as they don’t have one) it’s really great when You’re a Florida resident but don’t have to live there. Pretty substantial number of Military retirees (and non-retiree Vets) live in the Philippines, Japan, Germany, Italy, Spain, and still have their US drivers licenses, "Addresses" allowing them to vote

Frank

[David Nieporent]

If you’ve lived in Portugal for 12 years, why do you get to vote in the US at all?

Because he's a U.S. citizen.

[Sarcastr0]

Is Vinni an American?

This is pretty basic civics.

Maybe USMC is like Uzbek Special Men in Coats?

[Michael P]

What is the threshold for "too onerous"? I would expect at least one signature, the date that the ballot was filled out, and a privacy envelope to be required. What is the second signature for, and is that the thing that makes the whole process "too onerous" (compared to standing in line for an indefinite amount of time)?

[Commenter_XY]

That is exactly what I am asking: threshold. What is the dividing line?

[Michael P]

You said you thought PA's process is "too onerous", and my question was whether you thought a second signature crossed that threshold.

https://www.media.pa.gov/Pages/State-details.aspx?newsid=584 makes it look like the second signature is that of a witness, and it's only required if the voter has a disability that prevents them from signing their own ballot. So it looks like only one signature is actually required.

Based on the instructions at the bottom of that page, do you still think PA's mail ballot is "too onerous"? (Is the state-wide ruling from 2020 that election workers cannot reject ballots for mismatching signatures still in force?)

The core of this lawsuit, though, was whether voters who mailed a ballot that got rejected should be able to cast a provisional ballot in person, and it seems to me that the state supreme court was correct to answer yes.

[Commenter_XY]

MP, I believe two signatures and dates are required; one set on the ballot itself, and a second set on the outer secrecy envelope. To me, when there are 8,000+ errors on the ballot (just one county), it is indicative of a problem with the ballot itself, or the requirements - or both. That is what made me think about what is 'too onerous'. I thought the double signature and date thing was too onerous, personally; you might disagree.

Agree that having the provisional ballot remedy is the right solution; we want people to vote and be heard. This will probably ensure PA will take weeks to 'call' (we may see tens of thousands of provisional ballots that must be reconciled individually).

Where is the too onerous line for you?

[Michael P]

I am pretty sure nobody wants a signature on the ballot itself -- a signed ballot destroys voter privacy -- and I would be surprised if there's a date on it. I don't see any reason to date both the ballot and the return envelope, and I've never seen a ballot that should be dated on the ballot itself.

I didn't have a clear line for "too onerous"; it works be very fact-specific. It looks to me like the post-2023 PA mail ballot is not too onerous, and the instructions are written clearly. But no matter how much one tries to make a thing foolproof, the world keeps deciding better fools.

[Michael P]

Google's terrible autocorrect is going to drive me to Apple some year. Even when I type in a real word letter by letter, it will sometimes replace it with a different word.

s/works/would/
s/deciding/devising/

[Mr. Bumble]

Why not disable it?

[Michael P]

Thanks, I hadn't poked around in the settings recently enough for that to have been an option.

[Kazinski]

Its an option, but i've found it usually turns out worse.

Probably the most irritating is when it corrects last names. I'd love a setting where if you capitalize the first letter it figures you know what you want.

Baier is always corrected to Baker, which is very irritating, even though I'd be fine if it corrected baier.

[Michael P]

It's hard (IMO) to be worse than having a legitimate English word on screen, only to change it when the user hits the space key.

Although names are hard. My phone would always miscorrect Ilya the Lesser's last name to "Simon".

[Drewski]

My pet peeve is when it capitalizes ordinary words that could theoretically be proper nouns. No, I didn't shoot a Target, autocorrect, I shot a target, and that's significantly different.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'd assume the signature and date on the ballot, (A tear off part of it, of course.) are to establish when the vote was cast, and by who.

The signature and date on the envelope are to determine when the vote was posted, and by who.

Of course, both dates have to be before the election is over, so both dates matter. And knowing who posted it is important chain of custody information.

[Michael P]

Again, if the voter's name is on the ballot, there's no secrecy of their ballot, and the secrecy envelope would have almost no purpose.

Is there a sample ballot that shows the second signature or date field that you and C_XY suggest are there?

In most cases, PA doesn't allow third parties to handle the return package, so there should be no further chain of custody to record: https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_harvesting_(ballot_collection)_laws_by_state#Pennsylvania

[Brett Bellmore]

Look, compromising the guarantee of ballot secrecy is just one of the problems with widespread use of absentee ballots. You want ballot secrecy, you need in person voting. Period.

[Drewski]

Oh, he said "period." Guess we have to change the law now. Thank God he didn't break out the "full stop" right before an election or we'd all be scrambling to fix it in time.

[David Nieporent]

MP, I believe two signatures and dates are required; one set on the ballot itself, and a second set on the outer secrecy envelope.

No; that's clearly wrong. Not only is a signature not required on the ballot itself, but that might well invalidate the ballot. We have secret ballots.

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, my personal dividing line, is when voting becomes more difficult than buying a gun. They're both civil liberties that only adults are entitled to exercise, after all.

I don't want to hear complaints about how hard voting is from people who support restrictions on exercising my 2nd amendment rights. You've already told me how difficult you think the government is entitled to make exercising a civil liberty, so unless voting is harder than buying a gun?

You have nothing to say to me that I'm interested in.

That said, I'd prefer that both be on the easy side, and that both rights be restored to felons as soon as their sentences are done. Voting should be no harder than is necessary to confirm that you actually ARE the person whose vote you claim to be casting, and that you actually ARE the person who filled out the ballot.

I actually think we should limit absentee voting to people with a demonstrated need, and instead provide mobile polling vans with proper security to go around visiting shut-ins. Mail in voting is inherently insecure.

[Commenter_XY]

Brett, that is an interesting standard, the equivalence between 2A exercise and voting exercise. Had not thought of it in quite those terms before.

[Brett Bellmore]

In principle, buying a gun ought to be easier than voting.

It's fundamental to voting that you only get to cast your own vote, once per election, and only if you're actually a resident in the relevant district. So voting automatically comes with a need to establish who is voting, and that they're qualified to cast that vote.

So it's perfectly reasonable to burden exercise of voting rights with some proof of identity and residence.

By contrast, your right to keep and bear arms isn't contingent on where you live in the country, or who specifically you are. That need to establish your identity isn't fundamental to the right, it has its origin in statutes, and constitutionally dubious statutes at that, because they're statutes adopted specifically to restrict exercise of the right. If the government weren't intent on restricting gun ownership, you could sell guns like anything else, cash on the barrel head, no ID. For most of our history, that IS how it was done!

[Stephen Lathrop]

XY — See what I mean? It's too onerous if the likelihood of adverse voting effects is higher than the likelihood of preventing a fraudulent election outcome. If you were not crippled by HOCS (Hypocritical Opportunistic Cynicism Syndrome), that would be obvious to you.

[Commenter_XY]

Shush....the adults are speaking now, lathrop.

[Michael P]

A British-backed 501(c)(3)'s default priorities are to "Kill Musk's Twitter" and convince governments to pass laws and establish a new US regulatory agency in spite of knowing a (c)(3) group can't lobby for that. The Harris-Biden IRS is apparently okay with this.

https://open.substack.com/pub/taibbi/p/election-exclusive-british-advisors

[Kazinski]

You left out at least one important detail, it wasn't just a random organization, it was run by Kier Starmers chief of staff:

"Leaked documents thought to be drawn up by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate – founded by Sir Keir Starmer’s now-chief of staff Morgan McSweeney"

Another of its top priorities is to ‘trigger EU and UK regulatory action’, while the documents also purportedly show that the group has sought to strengthen ties with senior Democrats, like Senator Amy Klobuchar, in a bid to further its ‘US policy engagement’."
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/labour-linked-censorship-group-plans-to-kill-musks-twitter/

Add into that the blatent foreign election interference by Kier Starmers Labour party sending 100 apparatchiks to the US to meddle in our election, I think we need to start sanctioning the Labour government.

[Commenter_XY]

The UK might want to consider a scenario where Candidate Trump actually wins the election, and then contemplate how a POTUS Trump might view such actions, and respond.

[Kazinski]

We ought to find out just how important censorship is to the UK and EU. Make French wines, German and UK cars feel the pain as much as X, Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon and other US tech companies have.

The Biden Administration hasn't made them pay any price because they want censorship as much as the Eurocrats do.

And design any trade sanctions do countries like Italy, Czechia, etc, go unscathed.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Maybe foreign election interference in the US is blowback for US interference in other countries' elections?

[John F. Carr]

And a Labour party official was said to be organizing volunteers to fly to America to help Harris. From what I read they didn't cross the line drawn by U.S. law. So it's a matter of international relations. It will be up to Trump, if he wins, to decide what revenge to take on the Labour government.

[Commenter_XY]

Hence my comment above. Whitehall should think about how a POTUS Trump is likely to respond to being 'dissed' by a close ally.

[Michael P]

Kamala Harris, child of privilege, got into law school on a program for poor people. The ultimate diversity hire, indeed.

https://redstate.com/jimthompson/2024/10/22/kamala-got-into-law-school-based-on-program-she-didnt-quality-for-n2180892

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Bush got into Yale because of his father…remember when you supported Bush/Cheney?? Do you still think Liz Cheney deserved her job at State?? ????

[Jerry B.]

Ah, the old “Two wrongs make a right” gambit.

[Zarniwoop]

Kind of ironic to call Ms. Harris the “child of privilege” in the current presidential race. Only one of the candidates got bailed out by their dad after bankrupting a casino.

But that’s the current state of the GOP game: every accusation a confession.

[Michael P]

She's the one who claims to have grown up in a middle class family, yet entered law school on a program for the working class or poor.

[Frank Drackman]

Her mother, while an actual "Doctor" unlike Jill Biden, was a PhD, and they don't make that much.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Above or below median income?

[Frank Drackman]

depends on what the PhD is in, Dr. Gopalan's was in "Nutrition & Endocrinology" and she worked entire career in Academic settings, average UC-Berkley PhD makes about $200K, or less than your average Nurse Anesthetist.

[Dr. Ed 2]

For a family of two (she and her mother), a $200K salary is 978% of the Federal Poverty Level.

Just sayin...

[Zarniwoop]

Look, when you append “child of privilege” to Harris and not Trump, it’s pretty clear that you’re applying wildly different standards based on specious concerns about “honesty”.

Do you want a recitation of all the times Trump has claimed to be a self-made gazillionaire, while lying about the hyuuuge amounts of money and bailouts he got from daddy dearest?

It’s transparent and pathetic. Those knee pads are looking pretty well-worn.

[Life of Brian]

I think you're missing the point. Politicians as a whole and Presidential candidates in particular tend to be relatively well-heeled, for better or for worse. The only reason Harris's upper-crusty upbringing matters at all is her dogged attempt to airbrush it away in her all-things-to-all-people, phony-baloney "I'm RELATABLE" shtick.

[Zarniwoop]

Which applies equally to child of privilege Trump; he claims to be rich due to his innate ability, dishonestly minimizing the hyuge! amount of money he got from daddy dearest.

Standard "child of privilege Trump" GOP these days: every accusation is a confession.

[Life of Brian]

I mean, I guess you could stretch it into a simplistic sort of whataboutery, but beyond that I don't see how they're remotely comparable.

I suspect you're not one of the fringe denialists that claim Trump has little to no net worth at all -- you're just picking around the edges about how he achieved it. So the bottom line is the man has money, and makes no bones about it: he's not pretending he's part of a socioeconomic group he clearly isn't to transparently pander to a voting segment that's polling poorly.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Look, when you append “child of privilege” to Harris and not Trump

Is anyone doing that?

[Brett Bellmore]

That seems oddly specific, like saying "Only one of the candidates has the initials "DJT"!"

[Sarcastr0]

Are you saying Trump wasn't a child of privilege? Because that was the thesis. You're quibbling about the offered evidence.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I'm not. I'm pointing out that there are plenty of ways of being a child of privilege besides having your dad bail out a bankrupt casino.

Sure, obviously Trump was more "privileged" than Harris. But NEITHER of them were from "disadvantaged economic and educational backgrounds", which was the criteria for qualifying for the special admissions program Harris took advantage of. Only one claimed to be anyway, and it wasn't Trump.

[Sarcastr0]

First, no, that wasn’t your argument.

Next, we went over this on Monday.

Per Magister: “ her parents were still graduate students. Harris’s parents were divorced before her father became tenured at Stanford; his previous work as an associate professor probably did not pay above a middle class level. Her mother does not appear to have achieved above a middle class level of success before Kamala Harris was an adult. Her divorced parents’ incomes in the 1990s, when Harris was an adult, is completely irrelevant.”

Plus it was an essay she had to write. There doesn’t seem to have been any quantifiable criteria, it was an opinion.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Didn't she attend a very exclusive high school in Montreal?

[Magister]

No, it was not a very exclusive high school in Montreal.

From the Wikipedia entry for Westmount High School:

Despite being located in one of the wealthiest suburbs of Montreal, the school attracted a diverse mix of students from all neighbourhoods and racial backgrounds. A long-time teacher at the school noted that most wealthy families would send their children to private schools, so the school received mostly students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, that actually was my argument in the comment you replied to.

[Life of Brian]

Per Magister: [buncha unsourced hopeful hedged assertions]

Your choice of sources to uncritically swallow and regurgitate as supposed established fact continues to amuse.

[Magister]

You could choose one of the assertions and refute it. Or you can decline to do any work to support your own unsourced hopeful hedged assertions. Either way, pretty rich coming from a commenter who was misrepresenting Harris's 1987 job application.

[Life of Brian]

You could choose one of the assertions and refute it.

Nope. No need for me to refute something you just typed freestyle and haven't even tried to support -- as we all know after years around here is your wont.

Or you can decline to do any work to support your own unsourced hopeful hedged assertions.

I didn't assert anything. Copy and paste is not your friend here.

misrepresenting Harris’s 1987 job application

Back in the real world, I posted the actual application and quoted actual language from it.

I understand that showing your work may be a foreign concept to you, but calling it "misrepresenting" just makes you look silly.

[Magister]

Life of Brian made assertions about my original comment. You can find all of that information in the Wikipedia pages for Harris and her parents, and Wikipedia has links to back it up. And my wont is to provide links; Life of Brian, being a worthless quibbler for years, does not justify that effort.

The actual application says 10 years of employment history, but she provided nothing from 1977 to 1980 when she was under 18 or in school, with no explanation of this employment gap, and yet they hired her, so apparently she understood the directions better than Life of Brian (or she was told in person what information to provide from previous personal contact, as her cover letter suggests).

[Life of Brian]

You can find all of that information in the Wikipedia pages

a) Sorry, we're not playing Go Fish.
b) Sorry, at this point it's a foregone conclusion that Wikipedia is a political instrument, not a source of truth.

The actual application says 10 years of employment history, but she provided nothing from 1977 to 1980 when she was under 18 or in school, with no explanation of this employment gap, and yet they hired her

The entries she included make reference to moving/returning to school/etc., so it's at least plausible she thought that would satisfy the instruction re gaps. What's not plausible is that she thought she had free reign to pick and choose which of her past jobs to disclose.

As I said the other day, prospective and actual lawyers operate under an extremely high expectation of complete, transparent candor about themselves and their background throughout the process -- law school applications, bar applications, job applications, and probably other areas that are slipping my mind.

Viewed through that lens, the most likely explanation for why she didn't put her supposed 4-year-old stint at McDonald's on the DA office's application instructing her to report back all employment for the past 10 years is that it didn't happen.

I expect the Application for Determination of Moral Character she submitted in 1989-90 as part of her California bar application (which almost certainly would have had a similarly stringent requirement to disclose her full employment history and which she would have signed under penalty of perjury that she provided full/complete/accurate answers to all questions) would be a useful cross-check.

[Magister]

Wikipedia has references for its information (usually) which you can evaluate. My point was that I couldn't post all those links for that composite information, not that I expected Life of Brian to be anything but a lazy contrarian quibbler seeking advancement in the Trump cult.

The most likely reason not to put McDonald's on a resume for a professional position is because it's highly irrelevant and the brief period of employment is accounted for by the reported dates of school attendance.

[bernard11]

While you quote RedState? Talk about uncritical swallowing.

[Life of Brian]

You seem to have lost track of the threading. It happens.

[Magister]

Be fair; Life of Brian linked to FreeBeacon, not RedState, on Monday.

[Life of Brian]

In the interest of… brace yourself… accuracy, in the course of discussing the contents of Harris’s DA office application I provided a link to an image of a page of the application that happened to be hosted by the Washington Free Beacon.

Here’s the same page hosted by bitter-snark-over-facts Above the Law, which hopefully you can now view without undue fear of righty-cooties.

[Magister]

Brace myself for another revelation of Life of Brian lazily parroting conservative talking points? Oh, no, how will I avoid the vapors!

They’re hosting that image at Above The Law (more respectable than Free Beacon) because they were mocking the Free Beacon clowns.

Of course there are other ways to ensure that your essential rectal nature is apparent to the world.

Life of Brian has demonstrated mastery of such other ways.

[Michael P]

My criticism isn't that she's a child of privilege, anyway. It's that she has been chronically dishonest about it.

[apedad]

And yet you gulp down every single lie Trump tells.

[Michael P]

And you insist that honesty is important.

Harris still hasn't explained when she first knew that Slow Joe had become Senile Joe, or why she insisted otherwise until June.

[Frank Drackman]

When I first knew he was Senile Joe? 1987

[Sarcastr0]

Yea, you don’t actually care or even look carefully at Harris and her privilege. Your passion and concern are all partisan first.

You think this might be a good avenue for attack, that’s all.

It wasn’t on Monday and yet here you are. You are more persistent than smart.

[Michael P]

Yawn. You continue to project your inner self onto others rather than make valid points or engage with the actual topic. So boring!

[Sarcastr0]

LOL I'd missed the 'you insist that honesty is important' comment above.

You really are full will to power for the GOP, eh?

[Michael P]

Spend less time white-knighting for a ban evading liar about their series of pseudonyms and more time looking in the mirror, chief.

[Sarcastr0]

You sure are good at getting mad about shit that doesn’t matter!

If QA did get banned, Reason or Volokh are quite free to re-ban them. They haven't.

Quit backseat driving how to run this website.

[Malika the Maiz]

“a ban evading liar”

Lol, Javert-level honesty policing *from a full-throated Trump supporter!* It doesn’t get more funny than that!

[Malika the Maiz]

This has really gotten under Mike’s skin. I suspect he’ll have to do a faked photo op at McDonald’s to help get over it!

[Michael P]

Can you just pick one of your sock puppet accounts and stick with it? Switching between them makes you seem (more) deranged.

[Sarcastr0]

They use the same name, and are open about it. I don't think it counts as sock puppetry.

Unlike, say, Joe_dallas. Who hid his second account's connection until he was just bad enough at it he revealed himself.

[Michael P]

Queenie claimed he needed to create "Malika" because he lost the password for "Malika the Maiz", after "Queen Almathea" was banned or something and "Queen Amalthea" silently vanished. Now it seems like a day-to-day decision about which to use. What's the excuse now?

[Sarcastr0]

Why do you care?

Sock puppetry is deceitful, that's why it matters. This isn't, so why do you care?

[Commenter_XY]

You sound a little McTriggered. 😛

[Michael P]

Also, I was only borrowing the phrase from Harris's mother:

Her mother was taken aback when a Head Start teacher was “shocked” that Harris wasn’t from the poor side of Oakland. Harris’s mother told him that Kamala was the daughter of privilege.

[Sarcastr0]

Is your source for this quote redstate.com?

[Michael P]

The ultimate source seems to be a 2004 story from the Los Angeles Times:
https://archive.ph/Qlvuw#selection-2253.124-2253.579

I accept your apology.

[Zarniwoop]

The full quote:

Kamala Davi Harris has always lived in a complicated world, navigating a path where perceptions and reality often conflict. Her mother remembers the patronizing tone of a well-meaning Head Start official in Berkeley who excitedly informed her that Kamala had been tested as highly intelligent: “You don’t understand — Kamala could go to college!” What Shyamala G. Harris understood was that this man assumed her daughter must be an impoverished girl from the rough side of town, not a privileged child of foreign graduate students whose academic pursuits led them to UC Berkeley.

It’s saying Shyamala Harris believed Kamala was smart, not that she’s necessarily rolling-in-lucre wealthy – which is the image you’re trying to paint. Grad students are not typically what I think of as wealthy-privileged.

One can be intellectually privileged – again, her parents were smart grad students who were at Berkeley – without being a classic silver-spoon child of wealth privilege like Donald “poster child for intellectually insecure” Trump.

Today’s Trump GOP: every accusation is a confession.

[Sarcastr0]

So you did get it from redstate. One can tell because your ultimate source makes the quote basically a lie. Never said, certainly not in a socioeconomic context.

So don't know why you think I'd apologize when you did get it from an uncritical reading of redstate.

[David Nieporent]

I wonder if Michael P has ever considered relying on legitimate news sources.

[Michael P]

Lufthansa gets off easy for mass discrimination against Jews because (as the saying goes) "they all look the same".

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/dot-penalizes-lufthansa-4-million-violating-passengers-civil-rights

[jb]

It's literally the largest fine for discrimination ever. How do you figure Lufthansa got off easy?

Now if your argument is that essentially all DOT fines are too small to really influence airline behavior, maybe you're onto something, but this is about as serious as the DOT can get about airline misbehavior.

[Kazinski]

Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics has posted an interesting observation of the polling averages of Trump and Harris that seems to indicate that undecided voters are breaking towards Trump:
“17 days ago Harris had a 2.1% lead. She was at 48.9.
Trump was at 46.8

Today Harris is at….48.8.
Trump is now at 48.6.”

Seen graphically you can see how stable her polling average is and Trumps steady rise:

https://x.com/TomBevanRCP/status/1849273107430724009?t=vXd1cvhH_EPraokWvQ3BAw&s=19

While that does show Harris still ahead by 0.2, Nate Silver estimates there is about a 2.0% bias in the Electoral College compared to the popular vote (which is caused by Democrats usually winning their largest states by 20-30%, while Republicans win their largest states by 5-7%.)

[Frank Drackman]

Nate Silver saying his "Gut Feeling" is that "45" will win does scare me.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kazinski — What does RCP say they have done to discount purpose-built crap polls Trump has been paying for and salting in to move the averages? I do not know if news reports saying that are accurate or not, but what does RCP say about it?

By the way, do you think RCP leans right? I remember concluding last election cycle that RCP leaned right, and sort of stopped paying attention to them. I can't remember why I thought so. Maybe I was wrong.

[Kazinski]

Well perhaps RCP does have a right wing bias. But if you look at the 538 average, although they do show Harris up by 1.8% now (48.1-46.3), they also show even more of a narrowing trend, since she was up by 3.2% (48.5-45.3) on September 18.

So pick your poison, either way, 538 or RCP, Harris is flatlining while Trump is picking up the undecideds in the last month.

If it comforts you that Harris still is leading by 1.8 on 538, its also got to be concerning they also show Trump has narrowed the gap by 1.4% (3.2-1.8) over the same timeline RCP narrowed the gap by 1.9% (2.1-0.2).

As for purpose built polls, here are the polls that RCP has added this week:

Wall St Journal Trump +3
Forbes Trump+2
M. Consult/Bloomberg Harris +4
Rasmussen Trump+3
Ipsos Harris +3

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm perfectly content being entirely agnostic about who's ahead. Possibly as a result of having been a third party voter for most of my adult life; I'm simply not used to going into elections expecting to win.

[Frank Drackman]

"45" is just a 3rd Party candidate who knew he needed to run as an R or D to win, not too long ago when there were still a few "Conservative DemoKKKrats" (Joe Man-chin should have his own exhibit in the Smithsonian, like the Carrier Pigeon) he could have run as a DemoKKKrat and I'd still vote for him

Frank

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, I thought too at the time that he might have run as a Democrat, if the fix hadn't been in for Hillary.

But maybe not, he had a lot of exposure to Democratic politicians as a NYC real estate developer, maybe that had really soured him on the Democratic party.

[Magister]

Well perhaps RCP does have a right wing bias.

Yes, it does have an increasingly right wing bias since 2017.

But if you look at the 538 average, although they do show Harris up by 1.8% now (48.1-46.3), they also show even more of a narrowing trend, since she was up by 3.2% (48.5-45.3) on September 18.

Kazinski does not let something as subjective as math get in the way of his advocacy.

Kazinski earlier commented that RCP said Harris's lead narrowed from 2.1% to 0.2%, a decrease of 1.9% to reach less than 1/10th of the previous lead, over a period of 17 days.

Now Kazinski comments that 538 says Harris's lead narrowed from 3.2% to 1.8%, a decrease of 1.4% to reach more than half of the previous lead, and over a longer period (from September 17th).

[Kazinski]

Yeah, I didn't correct my first impression of the numbers after I did the math.

But the conclusion is the same looking at both the RCP and the 538 aggregates: Kamala has stalled out, and Trump.has seen a small increase as the last undecided holdouts break towards him. Both datasets agree on that.

Its hard to come up with any other interpretation of the numbers, although I suppose random noise is a possibility. Although if you think the data is that noisy then you'd also conclude they are statistically tied.

[Magister]

Or Republican pollsters are generating biased poll results that distort averages, as happened in 2022.

[Kazinski]

Well a professional poll analyst like CNN's Harry Enten should be able to pick through the high quality polls to figure out what's going on:

"HARRY ENTEN: Last time around, Joe Biden won these voters by 11 points. In September of 2024, a month ago, Kamala Harris was up five points among independents. Now, though, she's only up by two points among a key block in the center of the electorate, down nine points from where Biden was at the end of the 2020 campaign. Of course, this is a national picture.

What is going on in those key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the Great Lakes, that "blue wall" right? Joe Biden won them by five points over Donald Trump last time around. But look at where we are today. This is the type of movement Donald Trump likes to see in the center of the electorate -- up by a point. Of course, that's well within any margin of error, but again, it's the movement, it is the trends we're looking at.

When you flip a group from being plus five Biden to now plus one Trump, that's the type of movement Donald Trump loves to see, and it's the type of movement that gives Democrats some agitation. You saw it nationally, and you see it in the blue wall states."

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/10/23/cnns_enten_rising_support_among_independent_voters_good_sign_for_trump.html

[Magister]

Media outlets want this to be a close horse race because it improves their ratings; CNN in particular is constantly trying to appeal to conservatives by hiring reprehensible conservatives as pundits, so playing up things that look good for Trump is par for the course.

[Armchair]

I suppose you better unskew the polls...

[Kazinski]

A good illustration of the differences between state votes between Dem and Rep states is shown by the closest states by percentage in the 2020 presidential election:

State – Biden vote – %
Ohio 2,679,165 45.24%
Texas 5,259,126 46.48%
Florida 5,297,045 47.86%
North Carolina 2,684,292 48.59%
Arizona 1,672,143 49.36%
Wisconsin 1,630,866 49.45%
Georgia 2,473,633 49.47%
Pennsylvania 3,458,229 49.85%
Nevada 703,486 50.06%
Michigan 2,804,040 50.62%
Minnesota 1,717,077 52.40%

Trumps 2 largest states are in the 10 closest, where Biden won Illinois, CA, NY, MA by 17-33%

And interstingly Trump got the most votes from California, with TX, Florida, PA, and NY rounding out his top 5 states by number of votes.

[Nelson]

"And interstingly Trump got the most votes from California, with TX, Florida, PA, and NY rounding out his top 5 states by number of votes."

Trump got the most raw number of votes from the 5 largest states and you find that interesting ... why? It's pretty basic math.

[Magister]

As a fervent MAGAmite, Kazinski feels entitled to his own math.

[Kazinski]

I think it is interesting that California was Trumps largest state for votes even though he lost it by more than 20 points.

[Magister]

Outside of California, Texas and Florida were Biden's biggest states despite losing them (by smaller margins).

[Nelson]

California is the most populous state in America. It has more people than the bottom 21 states, combined. It has 8 million more people than the #2 state, Texas.

So no, it's neither surprising nor interesting that he got more votes there than anywhere else. Nor that his top 5 states were the top 5 states by population.

[Commenter_XY]

Kaz, a few points.

One, at this stage, it isn't just the individual result anymore, it is the general direction of the underlying movement, also. We are at the inflection point; in Libspeak, the sea level is changing. The direction across the vast majority of polling is moving toward one direction (Team R), and away from another (Team D). Team R apparently locked down the Senate, additional once 'safe' races (OH, PA, WI, MI) for Team D are now very close. The House prospects for Team R are equally good. Net net: it will be a Team R Congress the next POTUS deals with. That is actually a useful piece of information (knowing there will be a Team R Congress).

In the event of a 269-269 tie in the EC (it is possible, and plausible), I believe it is the newly elected House that chooses the POTUS by state delegation vote. Therefore, for Team R, locking down the House actually matters this time.

Two, the presidential race is a statistical tie, according to public polling. That extends to the battle ground states. But there is no question there has been directional movement one way within the MoE since the September 10th debate. Now the question is....just how reliable are those polls you see today? Are they really better quality in 2024 than 2016? 🙂

Three, other metrics to now consider are requests, return rates of mail-in ballots by party affiliation (and understand the demos of who returned ballots); and early voting. There is some interesting data out there compiled by non-profits.

For the good of the country, I am hopeful of a decisive result in this election. My concern is the collective freakout (and violence) that will occur when if Candidate Trump is elected POTUS Trump. A decisive win might attenuate that freakout, somewhat (probably wishful thinking).

I don't think you could write a political thriller better than the political reality we are experiencing today.

[Brett Bellmore]

Isn't the whole point of early voting to make those last minute shifts in favor of the Republican not matter, because the Democrat already has their win banked?

[Commenter_XY]

I think the early return data is telling a very different story than what we saw in the past. VC Conspirator Nelson could probably confirm, but the collar counties of Philly have seen significant shifts in mail-in ballot requests/returns by party. The demos behind early voting shifted too. It is a whole new ballgame now with early voting.

https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/

[Nelson]

Yup, the early reports are that Rs are matching, or in some counties exceeding, Ds for early voting. Those are more heavily R counties like Lancaster and Chester, but it's a notable change from 2020.

[Commenter_XY]

N, if you're in the tri-state area today, it is a truly glorious day outside, Get outside, walk around, and enjoy the weather.

Thx for the confirmation.

[Nelson]

Yeah it is! Although my tri-state area is a quad-state area of DE-NJ-MD-PA, it’s glorious here as well. I took the dogs on a walk in the state park near my house and it was fantastic.

[David Nieporent]

Isn’t the whole point of early voting to make those last minute shifts in favor of the Republican not matter, because the Democrat already has their win banked?

No. And in the spirit of Dr. Ed, this has been yet another episode of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions. The "whole point of early voting" is to make it easier for everyone to vote.

[Kazinski]

It could be rocky:

Mark Halperin predicts 'greatest mental health crisis' in US history if Trump defeats Harris

http://www.christianpost.com/news/journalist-predicts-greatest-mental-health-crisis-in-us-history.html

[Brett Bellmore]

I do kind of hope for a repeat of 2016; While I didn't get to vote that year, I did spend that evening in a hotel bar with my brother, watching election returns, and it was simply hilarious seeing the expressions change on the hosts as the evening went on.

[Commenter_XY]

You know that X clip with the ugly lady with glasses screaming incessantly at the sky? You might want to have that handy on 11/6. Just sayin'.

[Brett Bellmore]

It was the slow build up over the evening that made it so delicious. "Here's where we expect to see the first signs of Hillary winning." gradually giving way to "She might pull it out here", to the final despair. It was just so painfully obvious that they'd all been her supporters, barely any pretense they'd been objective or impartial.

I don't expect this one to go down that way, even if Trump wins. You can only be broken once.

[Commenter_XY]

When Podesta told them to 'go home' the looks were priceless.

[Sarcastr0]

Mark Halperin?

Yeah, he's...not getting a lot of opportunities anymore. After he was outed as a sex pest.

But Kaz will take whatever sources he can find.

[Kazinski]

Actually when I listen to his podcast he seems to make sense without a lot of spin.

[Josh R]

The Harris drop has stopped (see for example, the TIPP daily tracker). I’m fairly certain we are at the steady-state: a 50/50 election that will not move one way or the other from here (and unfortunately, many pollsters will now herd to the average – a very bad practice). It will come down to which way the polls are getting it wrong.

One piece of very good news from Trump is GOP voters are outpacing Dems in early voting in NV where the GOP was lagging in the past. It could be GOP voters have finally bought into early voting, but it would not surprise me if NV went to Trump by 2-3%-points. On the other hand, PA early voters are matching the partisan percentages from 2020.

My concern is the collective freakout (and violence) that will occur when if Candidate Trump is elected POTUS Trump

I guess there is no reason to be concerned about Trump freaking out if he loses?

[Commenter_XY]

I think everyone has 2020 in the backs of their minds, The Donald included, and doesn't want a repeat if he loses.

[Josh R]

You are effin kidding, right? The Donald will accept the result if he loses because he doesn't want a repeat of the 2020 mess? I guarantee that if Trump loses he will freakout and claim it was rigged.

[bernard11]

I think everyone has 2020 in the backs of their minds, The Donald included, and doesn’t want a repeat if he loses.

Are you insane? Trump will certainly freak out if he loses, and his fans will be right there with him. Trump provoked the freakout in 2020 and will do worse in 2024.

[Josh R]

The movement in the polls could be late deciders. Or, it could be regression to the mean of what a Trump v. Generic Democrat election would look like. That is, Harris got a bump from the debate that has now evaporated.

Silver has Harris up 1.6%-points nationally.

[Frank Drackman]

During Jury selection in the Daniel Penny trial, every potential Juror indicated they knew about the case, and a substantial number admitted they had already formed an opinion on his guilt/innocence, how the (redacted) does this case not get a change in Venue? DA Potato Head should be hung, drawn, and quartered (In Effigy of course) for even considering charges, much less making them. Penny should have been given the key to the city (or the keypad code) a few million $$ for his bravery, most I'd charge him with is littering, for not disposing of the miscreant's corpse, but I don't think that would even stick, as EMS took care of it.

Frank

[not guilty]

Qualified jurors need not be totally ignorant of the facts and issues involved in the case. As SCOTUS has opined:

"To hold that the mere existence of any preconceived notion as to the guilt or innocence of an accused, without more, is sufficient to rebut the presumption of a prospective juror's impartiality would be to establish an impossible standard. It is sufficient if the juror can lay aside his impression or opinion and render a verdict based on the evidence presented in court."

Murphy v. Florida, 421 U.S. 794, 800 (1975), quoting Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 723 (1961). At the same time, the juror's assurances that he is equal to this task cannot be dispositive of the accused's rights, and it remains open to the defendant to demonstrate "the actual existence of such an opinion in the mind of the juror as will raise the presumption of partiality." Ibid.

A high profile case calls for skilled lawyering and careful attention by the trial judge regarding voir dire.

[Brett Bellmore]

The POINT of the jurors being of "the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed," was exactly that they were expected to NOT be totally ignorant of the facts. They were actually expected to show up already knowing something of the circumstances!

The modern jury system is practically a total inversion of the jury system as it was understood at the time the Constitution was ratified.

[Lennyk78]

Was that the point or was the point to have less travel to the courthouses?

[Brett Bellmore]

That, too, but the general expectation was that the jurors would bring into the courtroom local knowledge and attitudes, not enter as tabula rasa for the lawyers to write upon. That's a product of the effort to minimize the role of juries in our justice system.

[Estragon]

Concerns about jury selection are interesting coming from you after your contribution to yesterday’s thread

[Michael P]

Registered voters trust Trump more than Harris (43% to 40%) when it comes to protecting us against threats to democracy. They also think he would be better on Gaza, Ukraine, inflation and the economy more broadly.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/21/harris-trump-post-schar-school-poll/

[Krayt]

What does "better on Ukraine" even mean? Affirming his oath, then saying, "Putin, take 'er away!" is not something I would consider "better".

[Michael P]

The image suggests they left the definition of "better" up to the respondent, and just asked something like which candidate "would do a better job" on the topic. (It's the image between the two paragraphs that mention "threats to democracy".)

[Dr. Ed 2]

"Democrats Lucas Kunce & Adam Kinzinger apparently accidentally shot a reporter at an event today," Hawley Communications Director Abigail Jackson posted on X. "Are these guys trying to make Tim Walz look competent with a gun?"

What more can I say?!?

[Frank Drackman]

Well when your safety range officer is Alec Baldwin........

[Dr. Ed 2]

Their RSO was "NRA certified" -- says a lot for the NRA...

[Brett Bellmore]

Hopefully after this video surfaced, he'll lose that certification. The number of safety violations evident in it are absurd.

Firing on steel targets at short range. (The guy was actually hit by a ricochet.)

Jars of Tanerite on the table where they were shooting. (If the ricochet had hit that, it would have exploded.)

Lack of eye protection. (No, safety glasses don't work if they're on the top of your head.)

Not a safety violation, but who needs a scope for targets 15 feet away?

If this video was supposed to promote the guy to gun owners, it was a major failure.

Well, at least the reporter got a flesh wound in his arm, didn't lose an eye or bleed out from a nicked artery.

[Kazinski]

Very unlikely a ricochet can trigger Tanerite, it takes the shock of a bullet traveling at 2000fps or higher to set it off, an AR-15 goes about 3000fps, but I doubt a chunk of metal from a steel target hit by a lead bullet would be going even 1000fps.

[Brett Bellmore]

Maybe, but it's still a range safety violation. You don't maintain safety by relying on "unlikely", you maintain safety by arranging "impossible".

[M L]

The whole thing is just absolutely incredible.

These morons were shooting at steel from like 10 feet away . . . with scopes!!

And they did all of this as a political ad . . . . . to try to make people think they are really in touch with using guns.

And then they proceeded to post the video publicly! Saying “great day at the range.”

The mind reels.

[Absaroka]

Yep...I doubt those scopes would even focus that close.

[M L]

"At one point, someone goes downrange and takes a picture while 6-8 weapons are pointed at his crotch:"

I don't know whether to LOL or facepalm.

[Michael P]

I hope they had a good backstop or berm downrange. It looks a little like the land drops in the woods behind the targets: https://nypost.com/2024/10/22/us-news/missouri-tv-reporter-hit-by-stray-bullet-fragment-while-covering-campaign-event-at-shooting-range/

[Dr. Ed 2]

That is an unsafe range!

[SRG2]

You could note that Adam Kinzinger is a Republican

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

And to top it off, he thought it was a good idea to post on X about having a "great day at the range".

https://twitter.com/LucasKunceMO/status/1848886246749184008

[Jerry B.]

“What more can I say?!?”

Gun control for all Democrats?

[Dr. Ed 2]

If Trump wins, will the left accept it?

[Frank Drackman]

No, but they have to get though the Denial, Anger, Bargaining and Depression stages first

[Krayt]

I'd expect a repeat of term 1, where they largely fought him to a draw over everything.

[Moderation4ever]

One could as well ask if Harris wins will his supporters accept the results? We saw in 2020 that Trump supporters accepted accusation of fraud without evidence of such. Will that be the case in 2024? Can you accept a Harris win as legit?

[Frank Drackman]

Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence

[Moderation4ever]

No, but absence of evidence moves your beliefs from the rule of law to an act of faith.

[Frank Drackman]

enough about your Faith-based Religions of Evil-lution and Global Warming!

[hobie]

I will. If that's what the people want, sobeit. I also think it will give Roberts and Alito the opportunity to retire. But Harlan Thomas won't ever retire. It would be the end of his gravy train

[apedad]

Of course we will.

And at the same time will continue to use all legal means available to fight all the fucked up shit he'll try.

[Lennyk78]

Meaning you'll run to Obama and Biden judges, along with some geriatric Clinton judges, to find some bullshit reason why every action he takes is illegal. The judges will issue a nationwide injunction, and even if overturned on appeal, you've gotten what you want, which is a delay.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

– “Of course we will.”

“We”? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html
https://www.texastribune.org/2017/11/08/us-rep-al-green-promises-house-vote-president-donald-trump-impeachment/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/20/the-campaign-to-impeach-president-trump-has-begun/

Hell, I still see occasional whining about how Bush II was illegitimate after the 2000 election.

[Sarcastr0]

It's incredible that Republicans that bring this weak sauce in the face of what Trump did and continues to do regarding 2020.

[Sarcastr0]

I mean you lot think criticism is censorship, so probably not how you define it.

[John F. Carr]

I hate this insistence that people prematurely say there will be no outcome-determining problems with the elections. If Trump or Harris wins by the rules or following minor mischief, I will accept it. If Trump or Harris wins because of rulebreaking I may not. Given the state of the polls we can't say that either candidate can only win by cheating.

Challenges are already in progress. Like Christmas keeps getting earlier, the lawsuits that once upon a time started in November have moved before Halloween.

[Commenter_XY]

This was hilarious, you are so right = Challenges are already in progress. Like Christmas keeps getting earlier, the lawsuits that once upon a time started in November have moved before Halloween.

It contends with DMN's 7 Deadly Sins quote. 😉

[LawTalkingGuy]

If you know anything about “the left” you know they’ll accept it because:

1. The farthest left hate Democrats, call Biden “Genocide Joe” and think Trump winning is acceptable/good because it punishes Democrats/liberals and is vaguely revolutionary accelerationist position.

2. The social dems and ardent liberals are mostly huge doomers who already think Harris will lose and Trump winning will be confirmation that the country’s electorate is as stupid, venal, bigoted, and sexist as they always thought.

3. The “resist libs” would be the most likely to go into election denialism for one reason or the other…but they are also the most ardent institutionalists in the coalition. So long as there is some institution they believe will counter Trump: Congress, states, courts, independent agencies, the media, the Red Cross, Boy Scouts etc., they’ll admit he won but just focus on a new hero like they did with Mueller.

[Commenter_XY]

Is this the way you categorize 'The Left'? Interesting.
Do you have approximate proportions for each group in mind?

[Moderation4ever]

Reports are that large numbers of people are early voting either directly or by mail-in ballot. After the 2020 election, I predicted that early voting would become more popular. Polls suggest that a large majority of people have made their decision and are ready to exercise their right to vote. I also believe that people like the idea of voting on their time and not some narrow time window, set by the government. The COVID pandemic effect on voting was that it led to more early voting which people liked and which I believe will continue to grow in popularity. I am retired and will likely vote on election day; my children work for a living and have already voted.

[Brett Bellmore]

I generally vote in person, but after my experience in 2016, when a close relative died just before the election, and I spent election day in a funeral home several states away, I'm open to early voting, since it's available. I've been told by friends who've done it this year to expect a substantial line.

I think having a long period of early voting is a bad idea, because you have people voting on the basis of different information. But a few days isn't terrible, and it sure beats the horrible insecurity of voting by mail.

[Commenter_XY]

NJ allows early vote 10/26 to 11/3; seems about right. There are multiple polling locations within each county. I'll probably go vote next Monday and get it over with.

[Lennyk78]

My instinct is that it should be 1-2 weeks. Any more is too long.

[Moderation4ever]

Brett from your comments I think you have made your decision. So, I ask is there any information between now and November 5th that would change your vote? Why should a person wait if they have already decided and they have already decided that nothing will change their opinion?

[Brett Bellmore]

Is there any information I expect? No, not really.

Is there potentially such information? Sure. I'm not expecting it, and my standards for what would qualify are rather more stringent than I gather you'd prefer, but it's not theoretically impossible that something could come out that would result in me casting a 3rd party protest vote.

[Zarniwoop]

Record turnout on the first day of early in person voting in Madison WI. Local reporting indicated that the server that prints the labels with voter info got bogged down, and addition IT resources had to be throw at it.

Anecdotally, I took my newly minted 18yo spawn to vote early with me (I always do, since I work at the polls from 6am-close) and the line was HYUGE! We’ll try again soon.

[Commenter_XY]

Glad you are going to vote with your child. I remember doing that with my children the first time they voted. It is a neat moment in parenthood.

Wait until they marry...LMAO.

[Moderation4ever]

Thanks for the report. This is a great reason for having longer periods to vote. Image these same problems but now they have to be resolved in a 12-hour period on one day.

[Mr. Bumble]

Name the last Republican presidential candidate who was not compared to Hitler by the Dems.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"Calvin Coolidge reminds me of that Austrian fellow who just got a prison sentence for attempting a putsch in a beer hall. I forget the name."

[Malika the Maiz]

Who was the last GOP candidate to talk like this?

“Hey, he is the head of a country and I mean he is the strong head," Mr. Trump told Fox News' Steve Doocy on the White House lawn Friday. "Don't let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."

[Moderation4ever]

Name the last Republican presidential candidate who was not compared to Hitler by the Republicans? Remember the Hitler comparison is not just from the Democrats.

[Mr. Bumble]

Of course you meant Rinos. How about some examples?

[Magister]

JD Vance, commenting about Trump?

[Mr. Bumble]

J,D, Vance compared Trump to Hitler? Cite.

[Sarcastr0]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/jd-vance-once-compared-trump-hitler-now-they-are-running-mates-2024-07-15/

"He was harshly critical of Trump, both publicly and privately, in 2016 and during the opening stages of his 2017-2021 term.

"I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler," he wrote privately to an associate on Facebook in 2016.

When his Hitler comment was first reported, in 2022, a spokesperson did not dispute it, but said it no longer represented Vance's views."

[Mr. Bumble]

A "private" comment on Facebook to an "associate" (who is this "associate" and who is the source for the "private" comment?) hardly compares to the President, Vice-President et al comparing Trump to Hitler.

[Magister]

What is the standard for a RINO? At this point, the comparisons are inevitable but any Republican who opposes Trump without invoking any Hitler comparisons is already going to be labelled a RINO.

But here's Chris Sununu supporting Trump but not really denying the Hitler comparison.

[not guilty]

It looks like John Kelly is trying to help Donald Trump nail down the Nazi vote. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-wanted-generals-like-hitler-s-and-said-nazi-leader-did-some-good-things-john-kelly-claims/ar-AA1sMQyA?ocid=BingNewsSerp

In his interview with the Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing “German generals,” Kelly would ask if he meant “Bismarck’s generals,” referring to Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor who oversaw the unification of Germany. “Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,” Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president responded, “Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.”

Given that Hitler's generals plotted to kill him and came close to succeeding, perhaps Trump should recall the maxim from Aesop's Fables: "Be careful what you wish for, lest it comes true!"

[Joe_dallas]

The Irony of the most anti-semite party comparing the other party's candidate to Hitler!

[LawTalkingGuy]

Yeah, I don't think the party whose leader has consistently stated he will blame Jews for his defeat is in a position to call the party that has a wide variety of Jewish individuals in prominent positions the "antisemitic" party.

[Joe_dallas]

Another person who ignores the deep roots of anti-semites which permeate throughout their party.

Look at the behind the scene advisors to the campaign.

Look at Harris's actions : Kamala Harris warns Israel against invasion of Rafah "I have studied the maps, there's nowhere for those folks to go," US Vice President Kamala Harris told ABC News.

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-793487

[LawTalkingGuy]

If you think Harris warning the government of Israel not to ethnically cleanse Gaza is “antisemitic” that says WAY more about your views of Jews than it does hers.

[Joe_dallas]

No one is talking about ethnic cleansing - Though if you want to throw a false claim into the discussion to hide the deep anti semetism that dominates the party , then go ahead.

[LawTalkingGuy]

What would happen to the Gazans if Israel destroys critical infrastructure and occupies it. Where would they go? What would they do?

[Commenter_XY]

The lives of gazans would instantly improve = if Israel resettles and annexes gaza.

Gays would not be thrown off rooftops for fun, and the endemic corruption of arab leaders would be nullified. The infrastructure would improve too.

Where would they go? Either stay, or take a voluntary emigration payment to leave
What would they do? Hopefully not vote for judeocidal terrorists to represent them. hamas has done an awful job at civil administration. Just look at the potholes in the roads!

[LawTalkingGuy]

So you support ethnically cleansing Gaza of Gazans. Got it.

[Commenter_XY]

No LTG, I support hunting down and killing every member of hamas and hezbollah we can possibly lay our hands upon, if they do not surrender, and release our hostages.

If Israel wishes to resettle gaza, more power to them. The entire arab world will see that hamas was crushed and defeated. Their vaunted heros rot under the rubble, unlamented.

Life will improve instantly for gazans with the imposition of Israeli sovereignty. As for the dead-enders who don't want to live under Israeli sovereignty, they can voluntarily take a payment and emigrate, or they can die fighting it out with Israel.

I don't mind sending judeocidal terrorists on the one-way paradise train.

[Joe_dallas]

LawTalkingGuy 52 mins ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
So you support ethnically cleansing Gaza of Gazans. Got it.

LTG - Why intentionally distort what commenter wrote?

[LawTalkingGuy]

You know you can't say "no" and then just describe ethnic cleansing. Just admit that's what you want. You're already a proud anti-Arab bigot with a violent streak. No one could possibly think less of you if you admitted that you want to ethnically cleanse Gaza of all Gazans because you're 99.9% of the way there.

[LawTalkingGuy]

He literally advocated annexation and resettlement.

[Commenter_XY]

Annexation and/or a voluntary emigration program are not the same as ethnic cleansing.

hamas and hezbollah losers don't get to dictate the terms of peace.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Voluntary is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Your version of voluntary is likely not something that is actually voluntary. And when they don't leave their homes and want a share in governance, then what?

[Commenter_XY]

Au contraire....voluntary means exactly that. Voluntary, without coercion.

[LawTalkingGuy]

What is voluntary about annexing a territory with military force, exercising sovereignty over the people who lived there, and saying they should leave?

[Noscitur a sociis]

What is voluntary about annexing a territory with military force, exercising sovereignty over the people who lived there, and saying they should leave?

What part of that accurately captures Commenter_XY's proposal?

[LawTalkingGuy]

The part where he has been saying that Israel should annex Gaza, exercise sovereignty over it, and resettle it? HTF is anything after that “voluntary.”

I know you’re willfully obtuse and often ask questions in a haughty “I’m just a detached intellectual” way but even for you this is absurd levels of pretending not to be able to read and understand the things people write.

[Noscitur a sociis]

The part where he has been saying that Israel should annex Gaza, exercise sovereignty over it, and resettle it? HTF is anything after that “voluntary.”

Commenter_XY very clearly expressed emphasized that the current residents of Gaza should be allowed to remain. That might not be realistic, but neither is the underlying premise of Israel annexing Gaza in the first place.

[TwelveInchPianist]

Ethnic cleansing, is:

the attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the deportation or forcible displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups.

Sounds like the proposal would make Gaza less homogeneous, not more.

[LawTalkingGuy]

If we had to present to a jury the question: “does commenter XY want to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Gazans?” I’m pretty sure I’d win that case even if I had to do it BARD.

[LawTalkingGuy]

“Sounds like the proposal would make Gaza less homogeneous, not more.”

There’s delusion. There’s willful blindness. There’s bad faith arguments. There’s Lying.

Then there is whatever the fuck this is. A level of shithead response to a serious issue the likes of which humankind has never seen before.

[TwelveInchPianist]

So no argument, eh?

[LawTalkingGuy]

The argument that invading and resettling a formerly sovereign territory isn’t ethnic cleansing because at some point it will be slightly homogenous as the settlers push people out is so demented that it doesn’t really deserve much of a response.

Say the same thing about the Germans invading Poland with a straight face to someone in public and you’ll get how stupid you sound.

[TwelveInchPianist]

You're accusing someone of supporting a specific thing with a specific definition. You should explain how the thing he's supporting fits that definition, but you can't.

[Commenter_XY]

See, this is the part that bothers you, LTG. The extension of Israeli sovereignty to gaza actually would quickly improve the lives of the residents in very material ways. There would be a formal legal system, with laws passed by the Knesset guaranteeing civil rights. And courts administered by judges. There would be far less petty corruption. LGBT residents would not be tortured and thrown off rooftops, and hung from cranes. Muslims would be free to worship in mosques, Jews in synagogues, and Christians in churches; this happens in Israel, every day. Merkaza could even open grocery stores and eliminate food deserts. Sounds terrible, huh.

There will be a segment of gaza residents who cannot and will not live under Israeli sovereignty. Their choices are: fight it out and die (war), or, take a voluntary payment to emigrate elsewhere and make a rewarding life for yourself and your family. It is entirely their choice.

That isn't ethnic cleansing under any definition of law, LTG. It is a humane alternative to the killing and death we see right now.
Instead of emoting, why don't you make a legal case. You can't.

[LawTalkingGuy]

"That isn’t ethnic cleansing under any definition of law, LTG. It is a humane alternative to the killing and death we see right now.
Instead of emoting, why don’t you make a legal case. You can’t."

Also you:

"I unequivocally choose Israel to be the winner here, and pray daily that Israel’s enemies (military and civilian) will fall before them."

This is about as inhumane and emotional a response as any. You
re literally praying for civilians to fall before you. That's sicko shit from a depraved mind. History will judge you and your ilk very harshly.

[Commenter_XY]

Clearly LTG, there is not enough emoting here. Can you emote some more?

[LawTalkingGuy]

Also again, I don't think the party of: Chuck Schumer, Antony Blinken, Janet Yellen, Elena Kagan, Doug Emhoff, Josh Shapiro, Jerry Nadler, JB Pritzker, Jon Ossoff, Bernie Sanders, Jared Polis, Ron Wyden, Richard Blumenthal, etc. etc. etc. etc. is "dominated" by antisemites.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

It seems the people you mention are working overtime to rebut one of the most insidious of anti-Semitic stereotypes: that Jews are smart.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Also I like how you're like "nobody is talking about ethnic cleansing" and then XY bursts in like the Kool-Aid man saying "Israel should annex and resettle Gaza."

[Commenter_XY]

LTG, maybe not start a war, next time.

For hamas, however, there won't be a next time.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Yes yes. Most governments who commit atrocities have a justification for it. By your logic, the Arabs were perfectly justified in trying to push out the Jewish settlers by using violence back in the 1940s.

[Commenter_XY]

Kool-Aid Man...Ok, now that was pretty funny. 😛

To answer you...let me know when the government of Israel is committing atrocities. So we are clear, I don't count blowing the hands and balls off judeocidal terrorists as an atrocity...I call that a stunningly successful military attack.

[LawTalkingGuy]

1. You obviously have some sort of personality disorder given how casually and gleefully you talk about violence against humans.

2. Given your open anti-Arab bigotry I assume that you will not accept that there are any killed who were not terrorists to justify your position no matter how much compelling evidence otherwise exists.

3. Israel has bombed a refugee camp that they instructed Gazan civilians to evacuate to. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_al-Sultan_attack

An attack on an aid convoy resulted in 118 deaths.

There is a soldier who raped a detainee who has the support of senior government ministers and is proud of the rape.

But you don't think any of this matters because again, you are an open anti-Arab bigot who doesn't think Gazan lives matter at all and you would be happier if they were all dead.

[Commenter_XY]

LTG, I have zero sympathy or compassion for judeocidal terrorists. You evidently do. Does that make you a vile and loathesome human being? Tell you what, Bob from Ohio can answer that for you. Bob, what do you think...Is LTG a vile and loathesome shitty human being?

The more and faster judeocidal terrorists die, the better. The world will be a better place without them. I am certainly not going to apologize for wishing them dead, and express immense satisfaction when they're hunted down like the human animals they are, and sent packing on the one-way paradise train to a warm and toasty destination.

You do remember hamas killed Americans. Do you even care? Do you not want to obliterate every hamas MFer that laid hands on your fellow Americans, torturing and killing them.

As for the palestinians who are not judeocidal terrorists. What to do with a people whose entire society and culture and educational system and religious belief are all steeped in a toxic brew of Jew hatred and Judeocide? What is the humane solution here?

I advocate a humane solution that harms no one; nobody dies in a voluntary transaction, LTG. Remember that, as this war drags on. Just remember that I am the guy who wanted to give palestinians money to build rewarding lives for themselves.

You want war, and more death. The difference between us could not be more stark than that.

[LawTalkingGuy]

You consistently conflate any and all concern for civilian deaths with supporting Hamas. Never did I say I support Hamas. I said I don't support ethnically cleansing Gaza. You took that to mean I support Hamas. Because you are an anti-Arab bigot who doesn't see Arabs as humans and wants them to go away by any means necessary. One of those means is labelling them all terrorists. And you give away the game here:

"As for the palestinians who are not judeocidal terrorists. What to do with a people whose entire society and culture and educational system and religious belief are all steeped in a toxic brew of Jew hatred and Judeocide? What is the humane solution here?

I advocate a humane solution that harms no one; nobody dies in a voluntary transaction, LTG. Remember that, as this war drags on. Just remember that I am the guy who wanted to give palestinians money to build rewarding lives for themselves."

Notice how when you are forced to acknowledge some people are civilians tou find a way to justify their treatment anyway? THen you pat yourself on the back for your solution of "paying them" to leave.

Its not voluntary when you use military force to remove them from their homes. Paying them doesn't make it voluntary. If I forced you out of your house at gunpoint, it wouldn't matter if I cut you a check later. It would still be wrong.

Finally, a pro-tip: Bob from Ohio is an apologist for Pinochet, a man whose regime used animals to rape women to suppress dissent. Him agreeing with you that I'm the loathsome one doesn't help your case that you're not just a nasty and violent bigot.

[Bob from Ohio]

"man whose regime used animals to rape women"

Just like the Huns cut off the breasts of Belgian women!

Obvious propaganda dude, the Palis have used it against Israel too.

[Commenter_XY]

Bob, I leave it to you to tell me whether LTG is a nasty, disgusting loathesome human being.

LTG, you're just full of shit with the ethnic cleansing meme.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I linked you to the truth an reconciliation report where victims gave testimony about it. Are you calling them all liars? Would you be willing to seek them out, tell that to their face, and film it for all to see? Alternatively if its all just propaganda would you be willing to say its simply Israeli propaganda that Hamas committed rape?

Samuel Johnson once asked, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

Similarly, the loudest yelps for "justice" come from thugs like you.

You disdain due process and view defendants as less than human, but as soon as you are confronted with the crimes and violent acts of people on your team, whether they be Trump, January 6th, Pinochet, police, you start whining and coming up with excuses or straight up lying.

The testimony of the victims in Chili is the same testimony that could convict a person in America. You would cheer the latter (so long as it isn't someone on your team).

You're a bad person Bob and an animal rape apologist. Deal with it.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Are you calling them all liars?"

Can't put anything past you!

A dog chewing the privates of a woman would do incredible damage and produce a ton of blood, almost certain to kill the woman without immediate significant medical intervention.

You don't think they used their doggy penises do you?

[LawTalkingGuy]

"You don’t think they used their doggy penises do you?"

You are such an irredeemable piece of shit. One day we may cross paths in professional settings and I'll know it's you simply because you will be the biggest asshole I've come across in the legal community. It won't even be close.

[Commenter_XY]

LTG, Bob from Ohio was far more charitable with you, than you and your pals with him. Telling.

I would remind you that hamas enjoys broad support among residents of Judea and Samaria, and to a somewhat lesser degree, gaza residents. The residents were dancing in the streets, celebrating the glorious 'victory' of hamas on 10/7. Afterwards, they (palestinians) have no problem telling the world how much they hate the Jews and want 10/7 to be repeated. Just ask them in polls; they do, you know. Today, palestinian support remains strong for hamas, which is precisely why they must be utterly defeated. And will be.

Today, our American hostages are being held, and their location is known by many 'innocent' gazans who choose to say nothing because they support hamas and judeocide more generally (which they have acquired through their education, religion, culture). That is what we are dealing with.

There is a war. Sadly, civilians die in wars. I would note that Israel makes extraordinary efforts to preserve life, even in the midst of fighting a war: phone calls, text messages in advance of attack, a website to view evacuation routes with waze navigation point to point, providing humanitarian aid (some of it stolen by hamas, with the tacit support of gazan civilians). No other military force in the world takes these steps to preserve life to the degree the IDF does. America surely does not, and we know that.

The behavior of gazan residents is eerily similar to the behavior of German civilians who lived in the vicinity of death camps. "We knew nothing", they said. Yes they knew, and they said nothing. And we know that, after the fact, from the historical record. Same dynamic here.

The war ends when hamas releases the hostages, surrenders, and submits to Israeli justice. The residents of gaza know that also. The gaza residents can choose to end the war themselves. They have not.

Personally, I want gazan residents to choose life. There has been more than enough death. It is their choice to make; they have agency. That said, every war has a winner and a loser, and LTG, I unequivocally choose Israel to be the winner here, and pray daily that Israel's enemies (military and civilian) will fall before them. I am not alone in my prayers.

[LawTalkingGuy]

You want me to be charitable to a man who scoffs at rape victims?

Fuck off with your depravity.

[Commenter_XY]

LTG, you have no argument, you just emote. Cry harder.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Its not a meme, its what you're describing!! Just admit it.

Again: if you want the guy who makes excuses for using animals to rape political prisoners to give you moral guidance, you are lost.

[Bob from Ohio]

"You are such an irredeemable piece of shit."

Immediate name calling. You did think they used their penises!

[Sarcastr0]

‘Oh, were you triggered by my endorsement of Pinochet and graphic descriptions of his murders? I guess I win, then?’

No, Bob, getting someone furious because you’re a piece of shit is not a victory.

That you think it does explains a lot about your behavior.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I'm calling you a piece of shit because you are scoffing at the idea that animals could be used to sexually violate women. Do you literally think that all forms of forced sexual contact by a dog involve chewing or penile-vaginal penetrative sex? Are you that much of a stupid child?

You know who else likes to deny that sexual violence or other atrocities occurred under right-wing regimes? I'll give you one guess. Do you really want to be like those people?

Never mind. We both know the answer to that: you do. Scoffing at rape victims and shooting victims while pretending to be the defender of justice and order doesn't make you anything other than an irredeemable piece of shit.

And I bet the people around you know that too and interact with you accordingly. You aren't escaping the truth of who you are as much as you might think.

[TwelveInchPianist]

I see Sarcastro's calling people pieces of shit again. Must be a day that ends in Y.

[Commenter_XY]

They can't help themselves, TiP.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Yeah you're right. I can't help myself to call someone a piece of shit when they engage in rape apology and denialism about brutal dictatorships. People who do that are in fact huge pieces of shit.

[Commenter_XY]

LTG, can you squeal some more? It is amusing.

[LawTalkingGuy]

For comparison: it’s like claiming that warning the PRC not to put Uyghurs in concentration camps is anti-Chinese bigotry.

[Joe_dallas]

that comparison is completely absurd, though typical of your arguments

[LawTalkingGuy]

Why?

[Joe_dallas]

Why you ask
Better question is why you would think its a valid comparison

[LawTalkingGuy]

Both the Israeli government and the government of the PRC are taking actions that are or would be harmful to another ethnic group. Warning those governments not to take such action is not antisemitic or anti-Chinese.

[Joe_dallas]

your attempt rationalize an absurd comparison remains inane.

Simply because you are attempting to compare the destruction of terrorist group with the destruction of an ethnic group. They are in no way comparable.

in fact the Israeli government is going out of its way to avoid what you are claiming.

[LawTalkingGuy]

The Chinese government calls the Uyghurs terrorists too, you know.

But again, If Israel occupies Gaza and destroys all the critical infrastructure, where are the Gazans going to go? It doesn't matter what the justification is. Its still ethnic cleansing and the US is right to warn the Israeli government not to do it.

[Joe_dallas]

As I stated, your response remains inane and completely detached from any acknowledgement of the war started by hamas

[LawTalkingGuy]

Hamas committed a terrorist attack, Israel responded and now continues to beat down a beaten population. They’ve destroyed critical infrastructure. Killed tens of thousands of civilians. Stopped food and medical aid including vaccines for things like Polio. There are dead children. A solider who raped a detainee is now a hero. They’re killing them deliberately to remove the population. Israel won the war awhile ago, now they’re just engaging in wanton violence.

But again, criticizing the Israeli government is not the same as antisemitism. If you think it is that means you think all Jews support the current Israeli government's policies which simply isn't true at all.

[Joe_dallas]

LTG -
The latest figures from the Gaza ministry of truth
Do you actually think the data is even remotely accurate?

Killed: at least 42,792 people, including nearly 16,765 children
Injured: more than 100,412 people
Missing: more than 10,000
The latest figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the occupied West Bank are as follows:

[LawTalkingGuy]

I don't know how accurate the Gazan health ministry figures are. I do know that you can't bomb Gaza that much for over a year, including its refugee camps, without incurring tens of thousands of casualties.

Like what number do you think it would be when Israel has already acknowledged strikes that have killed hundreds? See for example: https://www.timesofisrael.com/improper-munition-said-cause-of-high-death-toll-in-strike-on-gazas-maghazi/

Coming to the conclusion that tens of thousands haven't died after a year of sustained military strikes is simply denialism. I mean look at how many Civilians died in Iraq when the U.S. was actually trying to limit casualties!

[LawTalkingGuy]

Name the last democratic candidate who wasn't called that by Republicans.

[Magister]

Barring a ludicrously broad definition of "the Dems", that would be Mitt Romney. And John McCain, and Bob Dole. Among successful Republican presidential candidates, it would probably be George H. W. Bush. Trump's rhetoric certainly invites the comparison. Comparisons of George W. Bush to Hitler were relatively few, and not from prominent Democrats; two ads out of 1500 in a contest by MoveOn.org got a lot of criticism and never went anywhere.

[bernard11]

McCain?

And I don't recall Bush being so compared except for a few asinine people throwing out "Bushitler" as some sort of stupid insult.

And so what? However ridiculous previous comparisons are, Trump's ideas are distinctly fascist.

Using the military against "the enemy within."

Rounding up millions of people and putting them in camps.

Fomenting hatred of immigrants, and shamelessly lying about them.

Accusing immigrants of "poisoning our blood."

Calling people "vermin."

etc.

[ThePublius]

Re: Bush

"President George W. Bush inherited this banality of Hitlers. To left-wing Truthers, open and covert, 9/11 was the Reichstag fire, the Patriot Act was the beginning of a national dictatorship and Bush was a dictator. As Kurt Vonnegut quipped, “The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.”"

https://www.frontpagemag.com/every-republican-is-hitler/

[Noscitur a sociis]

And I don’t recall Bush being so compared except for a few asinine people throwing out “Bushitler” as some sort of stupid insult.

I think you might need to have your memory examined.

[Malika the Maiz]

“I’m the father of IVF” is exponentially weirder and dumber than Gore saying he invented the internet, yet with Trump it’s just one of his daily goofy/stupid comments.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Ivanka and Very Freaky Guys (and Tiffany).

I think he benefits from focusing on him being “goofy.” If only that’s all that is involved.

“Stupid” is more negative. Still, there is a lot worse.

[Moderation4ever]

The Gore comparison was the first thing that popped up in my mind when the Trump quote came out. Difference is that Gore new what the internet is, and I doubt Trump knows what IVF is?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Gore never said he invented the internet. He said he took the lead in creating it, which was true.

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

Gore never said he invented the internet. He said he took the lead in creating it, which was true.

No, it wasn't true. Nobody "created the internet", let alone took the lead in doing so (the exact words were "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the internet.") In fact it's nigh impossible to define with an real accuracy or agreement among experts what "the internet" actually is. It's not some well-defined concrete thing that was brought into existence one day, or over any readily definable time period. It is in fact a very, very abstract notion that has evolved over decades from things like ARPANET.

[Sarcastr0]

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how R&D works. Yes, there is not always threshold where a technology is now realized and wasn't before. But development that is but-for cause for a technology absolutely occurs.

And the Internet is a technology, not an abstract notion.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"Recently, a Libertarian Party supporter in Illinois noticed that his mail ballot for Cook County office was flawed. The Libertarian Party is ballot-qualified in Cook County for the countywide executive offices, and it has a candidate for Clerk of the Circuit Court. Although his name was on the faulty ballot, there was no bubble for a voter to be able to vote for him. [link]...

"The county officials say only about 300 ballots were flawed, and that it is sending a corrected ballot to the voters who got the bad ballot."

https://ballot-access.org/2024/10/21/illinois-libertarian-voter-discovers-serious-ballot-printing-error-in-cook-county/

(Caution: The comment section is toxic and would shock your sensibilities)

[apedad]

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice posted information on Hurricane-Related Voter Assistance.

https://www.justice.gov/voting/hurricane-related-voter-assistance

A lot of folks lost everything (homes, jobs, family members, etc.,), and I'm not sure voting is one of their priorities - and yet I hope they find the strength to submit their votes.

[Mr. Bumble]

...and in case you missed it:
Tarzan (Ron Ely) has passed away at age 86.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

RIP

[Frank Drackman]

thats why I love cartoons, George of the Jungle will never die!

[Brett Bellmore]

You don't know that: Disney has the rights to the franchise, they might transgender him and then kill him off just out of spite.

[Zarniwoop]

The first 11 Tarzan books are in the public domain. It’s a good deal more complicated than “Disney owns Tarzan”.

[Brett Bellmore]

We're talking about George of the Jungle, not Tarzan. Just because George is a Tarzan parody, doesn't mean that it isn't independently copyrighted. It is, and I believe the copyright for the original TV series expires in 2060.

[Frank Drackman]

Watch out for that Tree!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Zarniwoop]

Ah, Frankie’s [ schtick | shit ] isn’t worth reading, so I missed the transition to George of the Jungle. Apologies.

Yep, GotJ is a later created work, and the creative elements in it are independently copyrightable. Similarly, any new creative elements of Disney’s 1999 Tarzan are copyrighted even if the general Burroughs character is in the public domain.

[Frank Drackman]

Go Schlep away on your Elephant Shep, while Bella and Fella will keep in step!

[Krayt]

When I was a kid, we bought a Colecovision. They also sent a monthly newsletter, shameless child manipulation advertising. One such “article” about a game had comic book-like explosions with “You’ve got to have this!” and “You have to have this!”

Anyway, there was one for Donkey Kong, which was odd because that’s the game that came with it. But the “article” had some thick tape over a section with a sentence on it. Curious, I pulled up the tape. Donkey Kong “tells the King Kong story in a different”, something like that.

Somehow referencing a copyrighted thing-but-not-by-you got by their lawyers on first printing. My kid self found that interesting, as I had to deduce the implied legal issues ex nihilo.

[Kazinski]

Johnny Weissmuller died in 1984.

[Malika the Maiz]

“Deceptive fundraising tactics, including those that trick elderly donors, were exposed in the wake of the 2020 election. While studies show that older Americans tend to lean more Republican, both parties have continued to rake in donations from elderly voters. And mainstream Republican candidates have only doubled down on this strategy, using more aggressive and predatory tactics than those used by Democrats, according to donor complaints, interviews with experts and a review of solicitations. The Republican fundraising machine has been subject to more than 800 complaints to the Federal Trade Commission since 2022 — nearly seven times more than the number of complaints lodged against the other side”

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/10/politics/political-fundraising-elderly-election-invs-dg/

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I read Richard Brookhiser's biography of John Marshall. It is a brisk read that focuses on his public career. If you want a longer work, Jean Edward Smith's book from some time back is also good.

Brookhiser is a National Review editor but his historical work is approachable to a wide audience. You can check his book talks on the C-SPAN website. He is a very good public speaker.

Marshall was known for his laid-back style (he liked hanging out with the guys and playing quoits, which involved a lot of drinking) while writing with a voice of authority.

His opinions were all "well as everyone knows." Everyone didn't know but we now often think they did! The Republicans kept on nominating justices who joined him akin to the Borg.

The Marshall unity started to break up in the 1820s. His nationalism largely arose from his Revolutionary War service.

Brookiser's book "Give Me Liberty," which has thirteen snapshots of moments of liberty is also recommended. First time I read about the Flushing Remonstrance (Quakers).

[Frank Drackman]

National Review has been shit since they grabbed the ankles and fired John Derbyshire

[Brett Bellmore]

I did enjoy NR during the Buckley years. Remember Firing Line?

They did an episode at MTU while I was there. You'll recall how Buckley used to lean back in his chair? He actually leaned back too far, and it toppled over, causing a lot of hilarity among the college audience.

I think they edited that out when they aired it, sadly.

[Commenter_XY]

LOVED The Firing Line with WFB. LOVED it!

[Brett Bellmore]

Back when you actually had intelligent conversation on TV, not idiots yelling at each other.

[Dan Schiavetta]

It was at first distracting and then morbidly fascinating, seeing how far he could lean back. Not a surprise that he finally did fall over.

[Armchair]

While the polls are just modestly shifting towards Trump, the betting odds are shifting rather more dramatically in Trump's direction.

Trump is currently up to a 59% chance to win the election, compared to Harris's 40%. For reference, the last time Trump's betting odds were this high was just before Biden dropped out.

https://www.realclearpolling.com/betting-odds/2024/president

[Magister]

The betting odds of former President Donald Trump winning next month’s election rose to their highest level since President Joe Biden ceded way to Vice President Kamala Harris in July, though the increasingly popular election betting platform Polymarket reportedly is investigating the source of the massive wagers driving the odds shift amid scrutiny into the eight-figure bets on Trump.

A bookend to Republicans distorting polling averages with biased polls.

[Krayt]

Betting markets proved eerily accurate, but only insofar as there are not attempts to distort it. Then it turns into just another public poll, driven to lead people by falsely portraying Big Mo to their desired candidate.

The only accurate polls are their internal ones, and we won't know them until we see what states they campaign in in the last 2 to 3 days.

[Kazinski]

They had a report that a French trader bet 28 million on Polymarket on Trump winning.

American citizens can’t bet on Polymarket, at least thats what Mark Cuban said on Bill Maher’s show, for whatever thats worth. So I doubt its a Republican plot.

But it did get me wondering if there was an angle for hedging a corrupt business deal or campaign contribution using the betting markets. Say someone put 30 million in Kamala’s campaign, with the understanding they’d get a lucrative Green New Deal contract. Then to hedge their contribution place a bet on Trump in the betting markets.

To be clear, I am just speculating on the mechanics of a hedge like that, not making an accusation.

Seems like its compounding your risk, worst case is Kamala wins and reneges on the deal.

[Kazinski]

Here’s some more information on the Polymarket bet:
“The statement said the trader’s accounts were funded from a “well-known centralized crypto exchange,” which other outlets have identified as the U.S.-based exchange Kraken.”

The company insisted that it has found no evidence that the trader is trying to juice Trump’s odds on the political betting market.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/24/polymarket-trump-french-election-bet.html

You could probably come up with a hedge scenario where you short a crypto currency if you expect a Kamala win, and bet on Trump in Polymarket to hedge your short.

[Michael P]

Why would a campaign invite someone to their rally, kick him out under threat of arrest, and then claim he is welcome to attend other campaign events?

https://www.metrotimes.com/news/detroit-muslim-leader-ejected-from-kamala-harris-rally-deepening-rift-between-democrats-and-arab-americans-37670193

[Dr. Ed 2]

Why can't he sue her for libel?

[Michael P]

He *could* sue for that, I suppose, but the article doesn't suggest the campaign or the staffer said anything negative about him except maybe to the police. That seems like an unsound basis for such a suit.

[Joe_dallas]

MP - the invite and subsequent ejection from the event comes across as a pre planned staged event. She needs the show her false support for Israel.

[Kazinski]

A campaign in dissaray with dualing power centers?

Trump according to some polls has a narrow lead with the Arab vote. The thinking might be that no Administration is going to give up supporting Isreal so they might as well vote on social issues where they are more aligned with Republicans.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Team Whore is now criminally threatening people with Trump signs in their yards. This is exactly how you get a shooting civil war.

In calling Trump a Nazi, Team Whore is desensitizing the country as to who the Nazis actually were -- and enabling an *actual* Nazi to sneak into power in the future.

[Mr. Hook]

Name one civil war begun over signs in their yard.

[Lennyk78]

I'd love for some moonbat leftist to come threatening me at my front door for my signs. I have a new VP9 I haven't fired yet and would like to try it out.

[Jerry B.]

No. always fire at least a few hundred rounds through a self-defense weapon before using it in anger. This assures that there are no problems with the gun, and gets you used to the weapon’s trigger and controls.

[Lennyk78]

I generally do, but with modern guns, I really don't have many problems anymore.

[Noscitur a sociis]

As a pretty strident gun nut, I must implore you to stop helping.

[Moderation4ever]

So, much misogyny you can't even speak a woman's name? Are people opposing Trump, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents really desensitizing the people or just informing them. Germany was a republic, and that Nazi did initially win election to office. Would you agree on this?

[Jerry B.]

Ever see what Democrats are calling Trump?

[Moderation4ever]

Yes, and if you cannot tell the difference between the two your likely a misogynist also.

[Zarniwoop]

now criminally threatening people with Trump signs in their yards. This is exactly how you get a shooting civil war.

Citation required.

Because “criminal threats for a yard sign” sure sounds like Grampa Ed is shaking his fist at the clouds again.

[Michael P]

https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/fbi-investigating-after-threatening-letters-sent-president-trump-supporters/PRBPWMTYNZBXBOYUTE3U6DXSMU/

[Zarniwoop]

Ah, a threat of violence which is plausibly criminal by some random whacko (or a false flag operation) that the FBI is investigating (as they should!), as opposed to the Harris campaign threatening criminal sanctions.

Meanwhile Dementia Don is actively & regularly threatening criminal prosecution of his political enemies.

I know which one is a threat to our country. Grampa's maniacal focus on "this will be the next Civil War, fer shure really this time" ain't it.

[bernard11]

And you think this supports grandpa's claim?

[Michael P]

Old and busted: banning interstate travel because people might have a cough.

New hotness: exposing hundreds of detained illegal immigrants to one with "rare, aggressive and drug-resistant" tuberculosis and then releasing them without knowing whether they have this strain with a "high mortality rate [between 34%-39%]".

https://nypost.com/2024/10/23/us-news/louisiana-ag-sues-biden-admin-after-chinese-migrant-with-rare-aggressive-and-drug-resistant-tuberculosis-entered-us/

The Harris-Biden administration continues to plumb the depths of nightmare implementations of awful policies.

[Joe_dallas]

MP - Worthy of note is all the democrat party candidates who are now pro border control.

[Jerry B.]

Until the day after the election.

[Joe_dallas]

Yes until the day after the election.
pro fracking
Pro 2A
Pro 1A
pro border control
Pro Israel

Then back to regular programing

[Sarcastr0]

Man who calls Covid, which killed millions worldwide, ‘people might have a cough’ is very worried about the facts asserted in a stunty Louisiana AG ’emergency lawsuit’ about a single case. And his source is, natch, the NY Post.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

It killed so many worldwide several Democrat governors sent sick COVID patients, intentionally, to senior nursing homes!

[Michael P]

The proposed limits on interstate travel were not restricted to people with COVID, or even those with COVID symptoms. About 700,000 people die of flu each year, and we don't lock down travel as a result of that.

But sure, ignore the>1/3 fatality rate for this!

[Sarcastr0]

People without Covid symptoms can carry Covid.

I'm glad to elucidate you on this elementary fact about infectious disease at this late date.

And invoking the flu as a comparison to Covid's initial couple of years is utterly in the face of the facts.

Don't you also think it was a Chinese bioweapon that leaked? Seems like that's in tension with it being so wimpy.

Not that I've seen much sign of consistency in you, other than you'll consistently support the right no matter what.

[Kazinski]

We don't actually know why the Chinese wanted to make it, or why the CDC wanted to fund it.

I think it was released through incompetence, not malice, but there is very little doubt it orignated from the lab in Wuhan, there is just too much evidence to dispute that.

[Joe_dallas]

Kaz - fwiw it was the national institute of health, not the cdc, though the cdc did share of mischief with covid information.

NIH principal deputy director Lawrence Tabak finally admitted to Congress that US taxpayers funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology

[Sarcastr0]

Good lord.

NIH funded EcoHealth, who subcontracted out. Subcontractor reporting should have included whether gain of function research was carried out, and EcoHealth did a negligent job of clarifying that. So EcoHealth is now disbarred from getting US grants.

This is not an NIH conspiracy to fund a Chinese-created virus.

And the lab leak theory continues to have no actual supporting evidence other than vibes.
But the right has turned into yet another litmus test for whether you're crazy enough to join the tribe.

China sucks enough as it is, no need to make shit up.

[Don Nico]

"And invoking the flu as a comparison to Covid’s initial couple of years is utterly in the face of the facts."
Agreed. On a global basis, the original Wuhan variant and the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 had a level of mortality at least 3 to 4 times that of H1N1 influenza.
During the first year the variation was even worse, but that was almost certainly due to poor triage, lack of hospital facilities that had been converted for trauma care over the previous 20 years, and plain stupidity by placing infectious COVID-2 patients together with immuno-compromised care home patients.

[Frank Drackman]

to whoever leaked the Israel Defense plans, don’t take any calls from 972 Country Code, although I’m pretty sure the Moe-Saad is smarter than to call from Israel.

Frank

[Commenter_XY]

I expect kinetic action Sunday night into Monday.

[John F. Carr]

A company named Havana Docks Corporation exists only to own rights to what is now known as the Havana Cruise Port Terminal. The Castro government seized the facility in 1960 and the property is officially recognized under U.S. law as illegally expropriated. Havana Docks sued under the Helms-Burton Act and won over $400 million from cruise lines that stopped in Havana. Stopping at a port is trafficking in confiscated property. This week the 11th Circuit took most of that money away. The company didn't own the docks in question. It had a 99 year lease ("usufructory concession") from the old US-backed government. That lease expired in 2004. Remanded to calculate damages for the period 1996 to 2004 (passage of Helms-Burton Act to expiration of lease).

The trial judge vacillated and the Appeals Court split 2-1. The contrary position is "once expropriated, always expropriated."

https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202310151.pdf

[Zarniwoop]

We fought a war with Vietnam, and established reasonable diplomatic and economic relations with the country less the 20 years after the fall of Saigon.

It always boggles me that we pander to Cuban immigrants 60+ years later instead of letting tourists visit.

[ThePublius]

Americans can visit Cuba, with certain restrictions and purpose of visits.

[Zarniwoop]

… which is pandering to the right-wing Cuban oligarchs and Batista supporters who fled the country.

The US supported a right-wing dictatorship 60+years ago. That sucked, we should have been better, sad that we weren’t, but it’s ancient history and time to move on.

It’s decades past time to move on, not continue to support the descendants of the right-wing Cuban oligarchs and Batista supporters who fled the country, by letting them drive US policy and generate ridonkulous legal outcomes to extort money from cruise lines based on putative leases from ~1905.

[Krayt]

[Moderation4ever]

I have to agree with you. To me allowing American tourists to visit Cuba is more likely to destabilize the communist than sanctions.

[John F. Carr]

The trial court docket for one of the cases below is here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/16116890/havana-docks-corporation-v-royal-caribbean-cruises-ltd/

It reminds me that the defendants had to post appeal bonds for the hundreds of millions of dollars they owed. Ask Donald Trump how expensive that is.

On damages, it appears to me that multiple recovery is allowed. The value of the facilities had been determined in the 1960s to be $9,179,700.88, plus 6% interest from the date of loss. Each defendant who uses the facilities in question may be liable to plaintiff for the entire amount. Making a port call is the same as buying the entire port. The plaintiff had cross appealed requesting six decades of compound interest instead of simple interest. The Appeals Court did not reach the question of damages.

[bernard11]

There are a number of such cases. One is the Cuban Electric Company, which was also seized by the Castro government around that time.

Staples owns 90+% of the stock, and the company has a certified claim against Cuba that is now "worth" over a billion dollars with interest.

[John F. Carr]

Has Staples sued? The certified claims have been around since the 1960s. What's new is the ability to sue any U.S. person who does business with seized property. The right to sue only became available in 2019, retroactive to 1996.

[Zarniwoop]

I’m curious (and haven’t had time to dive into the Q) if the same logic the Havana Docks corp used to retroactively sue the cruise lines would let Staples sue any American who visited Cuba after 1996 and … used electricity while they were there.

[Jerry B.]

So, even attorneys need to RTFM.

[OtisAH]

Convicted Felon Donald Trump served French fries to a few supporters who showed up to pretend they were customers of a closed KcDonald’s (he also stiffed the bill after ordering food for the folks in attendance). This stunt impressed the heck out of his supporters, from the local mouthbreathers to such luminaries as Piers Morgan. Twenty four hours later McDonald’s announced an E. Coli outbreak.

There’s a chance these two things are unconnected. But the Convicted Felon’s administration took an axe to food safety regulations, so it’s fair to say that Convicted Felon Trump caused an E. Coli outbreak. And not just the one, either.

[Frank Drackman]

Umm, Otis, my man!
“45” hasn’t been “45” for almost 4 years, so Sleepy Joe’s had plenty of time to add on new Food Safety Regulations (E. Coli contamination comes from shit, i.e., people not washing their hands after taking one, all your food safety regulations in the world won’t make slobs wipe their ass (I’m at Howard Stern/Hughes Levels on OC with my Anus, I’ll use a whole roll of TP sometimes, you know, you get those “Kling ons” I’ve gotta get 20 clean wipes before I’m satisfied)
That stunt really sticks in your Rectum, doesn’t it, especially when he joked he’d worked 15 more minutes at McDonalds than Cums-a-lot. But hey, when I check my Social Security account it’s got my income back to 1976, now it doesn’t say where the Income came from (LA Times paper route) but couldn’t Cums-a-lot’s cam-pain release some evidence to back up her claim, because you know she never worked at no friggin fast food place, oh I just answered my own question.

Frank

[OtisAH]

Did you have something to share, piece of shit? I only read English. Maybe one of the orderlies can help you craft a readable response?

[Frank Drackman]

1: You only read Engrish? I read (and speak) Engrish and German and a little Hebrew(Only the dirty words)
2: "Orderlies"?? your Senior Citizenship is showing as I haven't heard that term since The Fat Boy's move "Disorderlies" came out in 1987, and it was anachronistic then. They're called "Medical Assistants" now
3: You blamed "45"s Genius Micky D's photo op for the E. Coli breakout, when he wasn't even handling the Beef, and the tainted burgers didn't come from anywhere near Filthy-Delphia, and it comes from people not washing their hands after they take a shit, or wiping with their hands like most A-rabs (and Haitians, surprisingly) do, even when they have access to Toilet Paper (Don't ask me how I know)

Frank

[OtisAH]

Huh, I guess they’re all busy.

[ThePublius]

You are either making a feeble attempt at humor, or you are truly deranged. Holy cow.

It was the CDC who announced the e. coli outbreak, and it was in the West, nowhere near PA, and apparently due to a load of tainted onions. Could happen to any restaurant. The fact that McD’s serves 7.5% of the U.S. population daily and there was only one death from this is quite remarkable. And, McD’s acted quickly and efficiently in response.

Where do you get this “stiffed the bill” stuff?

Of course they closed the store; don’t you recall the two attempts on his life recently?

It’s jerks like you who are now attacking McD’s and that particular store, with tons of fake negative Yelp reviews, and even threats against the store and its employees, so much so that the store has retained private security. The party of joy! Indeed.

From Instapundit:
"McDonald’s allowed Trump to look good and for that, they must pay."
(THE GOOGLE NEWS BUSINESS SECTION TOP STORY, SECOND DAY IN A ROW.)

[OtisAH]

Wow, first piece of shit tries to join the conversation (I think?). And now comes garbage!

Is it my birthday?

[ThePublius]

That is a simply brilliant rebuttal to my comment! Wow.

[OtisAH]

You made a comment?

[Frank Drackman]

And it was about you, i.e. Shit

[Lennyk78]

Liberal logic:

Whether a woman carries a pregnancy to term is a medical decision between her and her doctor. No one else should have a say. But if a baby is born, regardless of desire or consent, then it's the role of the state to force an unwilling father to pay to support that child.

[Moderation4ever]

I might comfort you to know that close to 25% of father in a divorce fail to meet their childcare obligations.

[ThePublius]

That's a rather meaningless comment, and does not follow the OP's point.

[Sarcastr0]

The OP's argument was liberals support one thing he doesn't like and also support another thing he doesn't like.

It's not a very good point, unless you beg the question.

[Lennyk78]

No, that's not my argument. My argument is that their arguments are logically inconsistent.

[Sarcastr0]

They aren’t.

Unless you ignore
1) women’s role in reproduction is different than men’s
2) beg the question on fetal personhood.

Which the first one is wrong and the second fallacious, so most people interested in arguing don't do either of those.

Trying to address that by being extra hateful is not a great strategy. Voltage can only get you so far, after all.

[Lennyk78]

Yes, their role is different. they get a choice. Men don't.

[Sarcastr0]

Well, they own the means of production.

[Jerry B.]

So, should the father have the right to demand an abortion from the presumptive mother of his child?

[Sarcastr0]

No.

[Lennyk78]

Why not? Why is it fair that a man has to labor for 18 years and it's no big deal, but a woman can't be asked to sacrifice a measly 9 months of mild inconvenience?

[ThePublius]

I see your point, and agree. I've felt this way a long time. Since there's a legal obligation on the part of the father to support the child, he should have a say in whether the child is carried to term or not. If he says, "no, abort it" and the mother decides to give birth, he should be off the hook. If he says keep it, and supports it, he should have joint custody rights.

[Krychek_2]

The problem is that these two things are not equal. Having your entire body taken over for nine months, enduring the medical risk that comes with pregnancy and childbirth, and then undergoing the pain of childbirth itself, with the accompanying after-effects, is simply not the same as having to write a check every month. Those two things are not remotely alike.

The bottom line is that the father and the mother both have a cutoff point at which it is too late for them to decide if they wish to be parents. For the father, it's the moment of conception. If you don't want to be a dad, use birth control, period, full stop. For the woman, she gets a longer period of time to decide because of the impact pregnancy and childbirth have on her body. That's not entirely fair, no, but life is not always fair, and so long as everyone understands those are the rules, I'm fine with it.

[ThePublius]

"is simply not the same as having to write a check every month."

Yes, it's not the same. Writing a check every month for 26 years (in Massachusetts anyway), and not an insignificant amount of money, is taking control of the man's body for a much longer period of time.

[Krychek_2]

Get back to me when writing checks gives you morning sickness, cramps, and swollen feet for weeks on end. Or when it places your actual life at risk from childbirth complications. Or when it takes your body weeks afterward to get back to normal.

I get that writing checks is a massive hardship for lots of guys. But it's not the same as harm to their physical bodies. It just isn't.

[Lennyk78]

Bullshit. Often those checks cause severe financial hardship to men, and they have to work extra jobs, and get major stress from it. It's exactly the same, if not worse.

[ThePublius]

More men are injured and killed at work than women.

[Absaroka]

In fairness, it's easier for someone with a nice office job to say that than the guy who takes a second job at the meat packing plant to write those checks.

I remember days of wrestling with a 160 pound jackhammer in my early 20's. Doing that at say 45 would certainly have taken a while to get over. And sitting at a desk is less likely to result in sore feet than any of a number of jobs that have you on your feet all day.

[Krychek_2]

Hovering over all of this, though, is the fact that if the father doesn't support the child, the taxpayers will. The child is not going to be allowed to starve to death because he has irresponsible parents (frequently irresponsible plural).

The taxpayers have no control over whether the father uses birth control; the father does. So it's not entirely unreasonable to say that the guy who couldn't be bothered to wear a rubber should bear responsibility for the results. And, to the extent that it serves as a deterrent to irresponsible procreating, maybe that's not a bad thing, though humans seem to have an incredible capacity to not learn from other people's mistakes.

[Lennyk78]

So if the whole point is just to avoid the taxpayers having to pay, why not pick a man at random and make him pay? What you're doing is balancing interests. You're saying that the interest of the man who had a part in producing the child in not being forced to support the child against his will must yield to the state's interest in making sure someone other than the state is supporting the child.

You're assigning moral culpability blame to the father, and acting accordingly. That's exactly what you say is inappropriate to do when pro-life people say that the child's right to be born must yield to the mother's right to not have a baby in her body.

That's fine as a matter of principle, but if all you're doing is weighing interests, don't be surprised or shocked when other people weigh those interests and come to different conclusions than you do.

Last, to your statement about deterring irresponsible procreating, wouldn't telling a mother that she will have to pay for and care for this child on her own be more inclined to lead to abortion, which is doing that exact same thing?

[Krychek_2]

Because the man chosen at random had nothing to do with conceiving the child.

It’s not a matter of moral culpability. I don’t personally care how many women any given male screws. It’s a matter of you made the mess, you pay to clean it up. Birth control is cheap and easy and usually effective. Next time use it. My former college roommate screwed so many women his dick should be in a museum, and none of them got pregnant because he's not an idiot.

And no, it’s not the same thing as leaning on a woman to have an abortion. If she chooses not to have an abortion, there will be a child, and if she is not able to support it, the taxpayers will. It’s fine to threaten her with no child support, but nobody has the actual stomach to watch her child starve.

Again, I get that it is a severe hardship on a lot of fathers to pay child support. But you continuing to try to compare things that are not like each other doesn’t help.

[Roger S]

Abortions are cheap and easy. The state will pay, in many cases. It is entirely the woman's decision, according to Harris. If the woman decides to have the child, she should be responsible for supporting him/her.

[Krychek_2]

Which is totally non-responsive to my point that that is not what will happen in practice. We're civilized (at least in theory). We don't allow children to starve.

[Lennyk78]

And the woman of course had 90% to do with conceiving the child 100% to do with giving birth to the child. Why not put the burden on her and her alone if she chooses to give birth, when abortions are cheap and plentiful?

[Krychek_2]

Which is also totally non-responsive to my point that that's not the way it would actually work.

[Lennyk78]

Sure it would. People, including single women, respond to incentives.

[David Nieporent]

And the woman of course had 90% to do with conceiving the child

So… biology is no more your strong suit than decency is.

[Jerry B.]

Depends on what you have to do to cover those checks. I expect 26 years (or however long) working in a coal mine would be pretty rough.

[Lennyk78]

But life is not fair in this scenario because the state is taking affirmative steps to make it that way. It's not just an accident of biology.

[Sarcastr0]

The state reflects our society's general feeling about parental responsibilities.

Your take, that either
1. Women should be forced to have abortion by men
OR
2. Men shouldn't need to support the children the father

is not going to be a popular one.

Society in gives women more of a role when it comes to giving birth or having abortions.

I think you can figure out why.

[Lennyk78]

I think it would be very popular among men. Not so much among women, who want to have their cake and eat it too.

[Sarcastr0]

Are you just voltage guy under a new name?

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Can you explain why without sounding like a bigoted transphobe?

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The basic problem is that BOTH parents after birth have a legal obligation to the child. If the mother had the financial ability to provide, she too would have to supply funds.

There was no "but." The two situations aren't the same.

[Lennyk78]

Yes, but the mother can easily get out of it, by killing the baby before it's born. The man can't.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Abortions, especially in many cases, are not that easy to get. Granted they were easier to get -- again less so in certain places & situations -- before Dobbs.

I'm not granting the labels being used here but just to toss that in.

[Roger S]

Harris talks about abortion a lot, but only to say that the woman should have all the rights. She never says anything to recognize that the father has an interest in the matter. Maybe that is one reason the big majority of men are against her.

[Lennyk78]

Correct. Modern Western sociey is very unfair to men and to whites. They just haven't realized it enough to fight back until the last decade or so.

Had white men put the stops on this back in the 60s and 70s, it never would have gotten this out of hand.

[Krychek_2]

Conservative logic:

Abortion should be illegal so that more unwilling fathers will be forced to pay child support.

[ThePublius]

That doesn't follow logically from what Lennyk78 said. What's your point?

[Krychek_2]

That if Lennyk78 can caricature someone else’s position, so can I. It was sarcasm not intended to be taken literally.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Liberal Logic:

Men and women are perfectly equal. A man can be a woman, a woman can be a man. All family structures are perfectly equal, including single parent ones. No one even knows what a man even is, not even SCOTUS judges, except family court judges and they punish the man with the brunt of the burden of providing for the family.

Smart.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, divorced dads love Trump.
We all know this, but nice of you to provide such a salient example.

[Lennyk78]

Most people who don't like what society has become for white men love Trump. Given that Western society is run for the benefit of women and non-whites, it's not a huge surprise

[EscherEnigma]

Is this more MRA bullshit, or do you have a reasonable metric for "what society has become for white men" where "society is run for the benefit of women and non-whites"?

'cause by most metrics I can think of off the type of my head --wealth, earnings, CEO spots, legislative seats, etc.-- white men are still being benefited disproportionate to their share of the population.

The few metrics I can think of where this isn't true --women and Asians have an edge in educational attainment-- once you get to the "real world" the "advantage" disappears and white men are back on top.

[Lennyk78]

White men do well in those metrics despite their structural disadvantages. They'd do even better if the playing field was truly level.

[EscherEnigma]

... please be specific.

Looking back at American history, I hope it isn't controversial that historically, at least, white men did have structural advantages.

So what year or decade do you think it tipped over? What overwhelming amount of power and wealth concentrated in the hands of white men is the right level when there is no "structural disadvantage"?

[Brett Bellmore]

See, this is the mental block, or unstated premise, that's the problem.

You're talking about "white men" as though we were some undifferentiated mass. Like Trump or Gates being wealthy somehow means that Joe Blow doesn't get passed up for a promotion on the factory floor to meet some affirmative action quota.

It can simultaneously be the case that there are a tiny minority of very rich and privileged white men, AND at the same time that the great majority of white men are actually disadvantaged by formal and informal racial quotas and preferences.

You wouldn't say that Obama getting elected means that some black guy in an inner city ghetto wasn't discriminated against. Why does Trump mean some white guy trying to get into college isn't?

You want your tipping point? How about 1980?

Take a look at this: The black HS dropout rate is actually now slightly *lower* than the national average, and the black college graduation rate is converging on that average. (Naturally trailing, because people graduate from college years after HS.)

Wealthy OLDER men, like Trump, reflect conditions 50-75 years ago, not today's conditions. Based on those college statistics, they're not going to be replaced a generation from now.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

According to the polls, there are only three demographics that don't love Trump.

White women.
Homosexuals.
Illegals.

[Lennyk78]

And only single white women.

[Commenter_XY]

Or childless cat ladies.

[Roger S]

Also govt workers, billionaires, college professors, Hollywood celebrities, news reporters, and a few other groups.

[Frank Drackman]

My wife and daughters love “45”, do Jewish Amurican Princesses count as “White”?

Frank

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

It depends. When they’re talking about how evil White people are and they are wearing it like a costume as some sort of moral confession. Then yes.

When they are talking about their dreams and plans for White Genocide, subjugation of the goyim, and the destruction of God’s Church and the Amalek, then no.

HTH

[bernard11]

Your buddy, Frank.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Over the years people online have wondered which fictional characters would or did vote for Trump. The one that always stuck out to me was Kirk Van Houten from the Simpsons. Trump definitely has a lock on guys who sleep in racing car beds and not in big beds with their wife.

[Sarcastr0]

Such an incredible cutting quote.

[Frank Drackman]

you're being Ironic?? 1: even someone who watches the occasional "Simpsons" episode doesn't know who the fuck "Kirk Van Houten" is, 2: I'm not even sure what a "Racing Car Bed" is, although as an 11 year old I put together an amazingly accurate F4 Phantom Simulator (OK, it didn't move, had an actual Egg Crate as a seat, and cut off broom stick for a control column, some of my neighbors, who were actual F4 Pilots, said it was almost like the real thing)

Frank

[Mr. Hook]

100%. Not coincidentally, they also see themselves as pretty big wheels down at the cracker factory.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Whether a woman carries a pregnancy to term is a medical decision between her and her doctor. No one else should have a say.

Medicine is state-regulated. Someone else “has a say.” There should be a broad right to choose overall. But, under Roe v. Wade, there was no unlimited right to have an abortion.

But if a baby is born [editor: it’s not an embryo / part of the woman etc.], regardless of desire or consent, then it’s the role of the state to force an unwilling father to pay to support that child.

There is no big “but” here since it’s not the same thing.

The baby is born. The government has an interest in safeguarding their welfare. The father consented unless somehow their sperm was stolen from them or something. The mother also can be obligated by the state once the child is born to provide money.

Also, under the same basic rules of bodily autonomy, the state can’t force the father to labor to pay the money.

[ThePublius]

"Also, under the same basic rules of bodily autonomy, the state can’t force the father to labor to pay the money."

Excuse me? They do, indeed force fathers to pay, under threat of many penalties, including loss of drivers license, wage garnishment, and even prison.

We must have different definitions of "force."

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The father cannot be physically required to labor. That is barred by the principles of the Thirteenth Amendment. Force to labor.

If they labor, yes, the government can by wage garnishment provide a means to ensure the money is obtained.

A loss of a privilege like a driver's license is also not the same as forcing a person to labor. To the degree it is a constitutional right, such as free speech, it could very well be problematic.

I am not aware of any state that imprisons someone because they do not labor to provide child support. Not providing the money you already have, for example, would not be the same thing.

If the prison term is simply a result of someone refusing to work at all, it might be problematic.

[ThePublius]

Can you be jailed for failure to pay child support?

"The short answer is yes. In Massachusetts, a person who fails to pay child support could face jail time—in certain circumstances. According to the official website of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a parent who is owed child support can file a Complaint for Contempt against the parent who is supposed to pay.Sep 29, 2023"

https://www.apmillerlawgroup.com/blog/2023/september/unpaid-child-support-in-massachusetts-will-you-g/#:~:text=The%20short%20answer%20is%20yes,who%20is%20supposed%20to%20pay.

[Commenter_XY]

You can be incarcerated in NJ as well for non-payment of child support.

You don't even have to be the biological father to get hit up for child support either, in the Peoples Republic.

[Sarcastr0]

Hmmmmmmm.

[Commenter_XY]

NJSC decided that a few years back.

Mother lives with Father. Has a little on the side, gets pregnant, says nothing. Some years later, child is tested, lo and behold, the father isn't the biological father. He files for divorce, and sues to be released form child support obligation.

The Court said the child should not be penalized for that, and the non-biological Father is on the hook for support.

[John F. Carr]

It's the same in Massachusetts.

[Brett Bellmore]

I've heard of cases where the guy actually used a condom, and the woman fished it out of the trash to inseminate herself, and they STILL forced the guy to pay child support. As far as family court is concerned, guys are just handy piggy banks.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

To repeat:

"If the prison term is simply a result of someone refusing to work at all, it might be problematic."

Not simply nonpayment of child support.

[Roger S]

Fathers are imprisoned for failing to pay child support all the time. The support obligations are not based on how much money the father has. They are based on what a judge thinks that a father should be making. So fathers are ordered to pay money that they do not have all the time.

[Ed Grinberg]

JoeFromtheBronx needs to get out more.

[TwelveInchPianist]

"They are based on what a judge thinks that a father should be making. So fathers are ordered to pay money that they do not have all the time."

And they don't necessarily pay to support the child. They have to send a check to the parent that has custody. The custodial parent doesn't have a corresponding obligation to support the child, she just has to provide the kid with adequate food, housing, and medical care.

[Bob from Ohio]

"I am not aware of any state that imprisons someone because they do not labor to provide child support."

Ohio does.

[Lennyk78]

And the government has an interest in safeguarding the life of an unborn baby.

You just think that the woman's right to not have a baby should take priority.

Not everyone will or does agree.

[EscherEnigma]

Have you ever had a talk with a bona fide liberal where you didn't try to use your assertion of their beliefs on the second point to attack your assertion of their beliefs on the first?

Which is to say, I'm skeptical that you've ever had a genuine good faith discussion on this topic.

[Lennyk78]

Have you ever had a talk with a bona fide conservative who doesn't think your sodomy based relationships with other deviant men are as good as normal relationships between men and women?

[EscherEnigma]

... so, do you not consider this a talk, or do you not consider yourself a bona fide conservative?

Or did you forget to talk on the "about X topic" bit?

Because I didn't doubt you've ever talked to a liberal, I was pretty specific in the to a liberal in good faith about this topic.

[Commenter_XY]

This evening, at sundown, Simchat Torah begins. And many will solemnly commemorate the pogrom that happened In Israel just over one year ago (on Simchat Torah), and contemplate what has happened in the last year.

May God protect our American hostages. And bring them home safely.

And may the enemies of Israel (hamas, hezbollah, other judeocidal terrorists, and Iran) continue to fall before them.

[SRG2]

Amen ve'amen. And chag sameach!

[Commenter_XY]

Chag Semeach, SRG2.

This will sound bad....but I am kind of glad the HH are over. This new year just doesn't feel the same in my spirit.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Was there anything lamer, in political history, then Kamala's big October Surprises yesterday?

Other than her and her entire campaign, that is.

[Roger S]

Her refusal to answer the simplest questions is the lamest.

[Frank Drackman]

are you a Nazi!?!?!?!? Because Hitler!!!!!!!!!!!!(although she's the one who will have a Ministry of Dis-Information)

[Jerry B.]

If Kamala was running against just about anyone but Trump, she would probably lose so bad her defeat would generate a long running meme.

Any suggestions?

[Brett Bellmore]

I've often said that Trump would have lost in 2016 against anybody but Hillary; While she was brilliant about the mechanics of rooting the DNC so as to turn the party into an extension of her campaign before the primaries, her negative charisma and arrogance rendered her a terrible candidate.

If Biden had gotten the 2016 nomination, we'd never have heard of Trump again, he'd have been beaten so badly.

It really took some weird dynamics for Trump to win the 2016 primary. Mainly that GOP voters were absolutely sick of establishment candidates, and Trump had too much money as an insurgent for the usual establishment tactics against insurgents to work, so all that anti-establishment sentiment found him as an outlet. The establishment might have beaten him anyway, if they'd settled on one candidate right away, but that didn't happen, they didn't know they needed to.

Of course, once he'd been President, and from a Republican perspective a pretty good one, it was all over as far as the GOP was concerned. But that didn't make him into a great campaigner, as was seen in 2020.

If he pulls out a win this year, it will be another case of the Democratic nominee being the only person he COULD have beat.

[Zarniwoop]

If he pulls out a win this year, it will be another case of the Democratic nominee being the only person he COULD have beat.

Strong disagree. Dementia Don would have trounced Biden; Harris is by all measures giving him a far better race for the prize.

I don't think Harris is the best of all possible candidates (The Rock for President! Only 1/2 joking ...), but she's by no means the worst. The Democratic party recognized that Biden was one of the worst possible candidates to run against Dementia Don, and did a fairly remarkable and historic mid-course correction to the best of their ability. Not perfect or ideal from a (D) strategic perspective, but reasonable under the circs.

Agree that in 2016, practically any other (D) candidate would have trounced non-Demented-at-the-time Don. And I posit the corollary, that practically any (R) other than non-Demented-at-the-time Don would have trounced Clinton instead of barely eking out a win.

[ThePublius]

Questions:
1. Are there more instances of Trump yard signs being stolen or destroyed than Kamala signs?
2. Is there more antisemitism coming from the left than the right?
3. Is there more societal violence coming from the left than the right?
4. Is there more vandalism coming from the left than the right?

[Commenter_XY]

no, no, depends on how you define societal violence, yes.

[ThePublius]

Interesting. I think you are completely wrong on 1 and 2. I'd like to hear your reasoning.

1 - it's anecdotal, of course, but it's a "thing" on youtube, X, and other places, to see videos of people stealing Trump signs, and the measures people take to prevent or otherwise thwart it.

2 - just look at the campuses - virtually all left, liberal Dems, openly asserting antisemitism and even attacking and otherwise harassing jews. The faculty and staff are just as bad.

[Commenter_XY]

Some of the YT videos of the instant karma delivered to political sign vandals are hilarious. There are no objective crime stats I am aware of relative to sign vandalism, as you say, the evidence is anecdotal. No, in this case, I think there are plenty of dumb assholes on each side defacing signs. It is stupid AF.

I simply refer you to StormFront, and related websites. And some geographical areas of ID. There are plenty of 'right leaning' sick fucks out there who buy into that sick ideology.Right or left, the ideology is toxic, and dangerous.

[ThePublius]

Sure there are antisemites on the right, but the question was is there more antisemitism coming from the left. I certainly think so. There are probably more antisemites in the student body of Columbia U. than in all of ID.

[Commenter_XY]

I get what you are saying. Suppose the percentage is 58% comes from the Left, and 'only' 42% from the right. My answer is so fucking what, they're both antisemitic POS that need to be confronted, and addressed.

[Nelson]

“Some of the YT videos of the instant karma delivered to political sign vandals are hilarious.”

If even 1% of those aren’t staged, I would be astonished.

“I simply refer you to StormFront, and related websites.”

I agree. The “Ds are antisemitic” thing is pure counterprogramming that doesn’t have any credibility outside the far right and paleocons. As you pointed out, Nazis and fascists are all over the place, and increasingly comfortable publicly speaking their hate (see: Unite the Right rally).

It is disgusting and unacceptable, but there will always be those on the fringes of society who embrace radical and appalling beliefs. Our job as decent human beings is to tell those who say Jews ate greedy or manipulative or a secret cabal or running the world (in an evil way, of course) to fuck off.

Same with those who say that black people are less intelligent or immigrants are violent criminals or Muslims are terrorists or any one of a thousand different bigotries and stereotypes that the ignorant and hateful like to spew.

The reason that the quote, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist …” resonates with people is because we all recognize it’s so easy to only defend your own group or those you agree with. But the hateful will never stop if you let them get started.

Antisemitism is a bipartisan disease. The commonality they have, whether from the far right or the far left, is rage and hate. We need to banish them from decent society, not play footsie with them (“fine people on both sides”). Accommodating evil for political gain is abhorrent and should be called out as such.

XY, I’m so sorry that your high holidays have been troubling and distressing. If it’s any consolation, I believe I am a better person for knowing you, even if just through this site. You make a positive impact on the world.

[bernard11]

Yes.

[Kazinski]

This incident happened a last week in Las Vegas:

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A couple’s reported harassment over a pro-Donald Trump yard sign led to a shooting and a man having his foot run over, according to documents the 8 News Now Investigators obtained.

Jennifer Lund, 38; and Timothy Parks, 45, face charges of assault, battery and stalking, documents said.

“Parks parked his Tesla in front of the residence with Lund in the passenger seat… [playing] the song ‘[Expletive] Donald Trump,’” documents said. Seconds later, three men approached the vehicle — with one man later punching Parks.

On Oct. 13, Lund and Parks were driving and listening to a song about the former president titled “[Expletive] Donald Trump” when they decided to park in front of a home with a pro-Trump sign, police said. The exact location of the incident was redacted in court documents, but a ZIP code indicates it happened in the far northwest valley.

Detectives obtained surveillance video, which they said showed three men outside the car at the time, documents said. One of the men then took out a gun and pointed it at the car. The car then drives off, running over one man’s foot, the video shows according to police.

At least seven bullets impacted the car, police said."

https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/pro-trump-sign-leads-to-shooting-in-las-vegas-neighborhood/

[Commenter_XY]

Utter insanity, Kaz.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Why not "Donald" signs, if we are being so colloquial?

[Michael P]

Why, indeed? This is indeed a mystery to Russian bots and Iranian trolls.

https://officialharriswalz.com/products/kamala-2024-yard-sign
https://trumpstoreamerica.com/collections/trump-yard-signs

[Ed Grinberg]

"Is there more antisemitism coming from the left than the right?"
Hey, remember this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_States_Congress_hearing_on_antisemitism
As if they all got the same memo, our most prestigious universities came out in defense of pro-Hamas students & faculty. (We can't punish them! We would never think of censoring anyone!)
Now, is it the right or the left that runs these universities? Hmmm...

[Nelson]

1) No
2) No
3) I doubt anyone asks a violent criminal about his political ideology
4) No

[Jerry B.]

3) But you can sometimes determine it with pretty good accuracy by where they live. Washington D.C. comes to mind. Almost all democrats, so criminals are likely of that party.

[Magister]

Unless they are criminals in part because they can't fit in with their community.

[EscherEnigma]

1, 2 and 4 are difficult to measure accurately because most instances will go unreported.

3, on the other hand... well, it's been known, for decades now, that right-wing domestic terrorism is far more prevalent then left-wing domestic terrorism.

[ThePublius]

"3, on the other hand… well, it’s been known, for decades now, that right-wing domestic terrorism is far more prevalent then left-wing domestic terrorism."

Well, that's the popular narrative, but how does that square with the riots, death, and destruction as a result of the George Floyd riots all across the U.S.?

[EscherEnigma]

Even if you accept the right-wing narrative that every protest was a riot, that one summer does not counteract decades of terrorism.

[ThePublius]

What terrorism are you talking about? I mean, can you name just three right wing terrorism instances in the last couple of decades?

By the way, I'm not talking about protests, I'm talking about the violent riots where people, including police, were attacked, buildings were torched, including police stations, the autonomous zones, and so on.

[EscherEnigma]

yes.

[ThePublius]

Thanks for the link. Interesting page. Is it all "right wing," though? I'm not so sure.

[EscherEnigma]

My statement was never that all domestic terrorism is right-wing extremists.

[ThePublius]

Gotcha.

[Swede425]

Guys, I think Anderson Cooper might be voting for Trump.
She took the day off to prepare for that?
She should have taken the week.
Still wouldn't have helped.

[chilicook]

Since this is open thread, I have a complaint/observation about news organizations. For most of my life, news organizations referred to former presidents as "President X"; be it President Bush, Carter, Obama, or whoever. Didn't matter if they were alive or dead; but if they were out of office they were given the courtesy title of "President X". An awful lot of news organizations make a point of referring to Trump as "Former President Trump". I was watching one recent NBC report and they mentiioned both Clinton, referred to as "President Clinton" and Trump; once again, "Former president Trump". Now, I understand using the term "president" for someone who is no longer holding the office is a courtesy; and in fact, it is arguably wrong; the style guides I have seen indicate that if the position is one that more than one person holds at a time, using their formal title is proper; General, Judge, Senator; but that if the position is one that only one person can hold at a time, i.e, President, King, or such, it is improper; nonetheless, news organizations regularly refer to ex presidents as "President" without qualifying that they are in fact "former president". But it is nearly always "former president Trump". This just irks me.

[Swede425]

They'll be calling him Hitler now because Mamala Uber Alles.

[Bwaaah]

Commenter_XY got all kinds of flack for referring to former president trump as "President Trump." That was indeed the convention until, well, Trump. The anti-Trump people could barely acknowledge that there was ever a convention, much less allow it to prevail.

There must be no respect when speaking of Donald Trump. Good people don't do that. And now that words like "gentlemanliness" are relegated to the Dictionary of Misogynists (even though it was applicable to everybody in public life), nobody is proposing a similarly decorous alternative term, much less calling for (or exhibiting) respectful manners.

This coarsening of language dovetails with the coarsening of behavior. And it's rampant these days.

[Roger S]

The press also open calls Trump a liar for saying things that are a matter of opinion, or which might be true but unproven.

[bernard11]

Such as?

I find the press unreasonably reluctant to use the words "liar" and "lie."

[ThePublius]

Well, you obviously don't read the Washington Post. 🙂

They soften the language, too - 'claims without evidence,' 'false,' 'unsubstantiated,' and so on.

[bernard11]

They soften the language, too – ‘claims without evidence,’ ‘false,’ ‘unsubstantiated,’ and so on.

That's part of my complaint.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Since I brought it up numerous times, I can only presume you're speaking about my comments.

Which means you're a liar, because I specifically called out his phrase "POTUS Trump" when Trump was no longer POTUS, but rather FPOTUS.

[Bwaaah]

When I wrote my comment, I had no thought of you or your issue. But now that you mention it, I recall you and that.

Your clarification reminds me of the darkness. Had you just remained silent about that, you would have cast a more positive light.

Oh well. At least we’re clearer now, eh?

NO POTUS TRUMP.

[Commenter_XY]

Bwaaah...Funny you mention that. It was based on VC Conspirator feedback I changed it. I used to refer to all presidents as POTUS X, or POTUS Y. They won the office, after all.

It was pointed out to me that only one person serves at a time and is POTUS. That made total sense to me. So it is POTUS Biden, President Trump, President Obama, President Bush, Slick Willie President Clinton, and President Carter.

To me, it is an example of uber-lib Wrongthink = calling him President Trump.

[Jerry B.]

And they often just call him, “Trump”.

[EscherEnigma]

I mean, that's far more common then using President or Former President combined, both before and after 2021. So that's nothing new or disrespectful.

[John F. Carr]

I recall being told that the title Ambassador lasts for life, so it would be proper to refer to Ambassador John Bolton. There may be an official protocol guide full of such rules. Titles and precedence can be very important in the high ranks of society.

[EscherEnigma]

(1) I'm not sure it's as consistent before 2021 as you recall. I did a news search time-limited to 2009-2020 on Bush, and looking at headlines and the little preview blurb, it was mixed. I think I'd need to see some serious analysis here to be convinced either way.
(2) What former president, aside from Trump, has spent years insisting that they're the "real" president and the guy in the White House is an usurper, turning calling him "President" into a political statement?

Which is to say... I think pre-2021 they were used interchangeably and while there may have been a trend one way or the other, it wasn't considered a political statement to use "former" or not, and it was based on context rather then politics.

Post-2021, it was made into a political statement, and now people are likely to use former or not based on politics rather then context.

[Dan Schiavetta]

As you point out, Trump’s behavior since 2021 has made the clarification necessary.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I was watching one recent NBC report and they mentiioned both Clinton, referred to as “President Clinton” and Trump; once again, “Former president Trump”.

Do you have a link? I didn’t see any examples (from NBC or elsewhere) of a quick search, although there were many calling them both (and, e.g., Barack Obama) “former president”.

The AP stylebook is “former President X” on the first mention, no title thereafter; I believe the New York Times is “Mr. X” (perhaps soon to be Ms.) on subsequent uses, and just a last name in the headlines. I haven’t noticed any particular change in the Trump and post-Trump eras, other than MAGA snowflakes (pretending to be?) getting offended by it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

chilicook — The distinction is necessary now because unlike the others mentioned, Trump's presidential days are not clearly behind him. The "Former President," coinage avoids imputation that Trump has been given credit prematurely for winning an election still very much in question. Amusingly, that could mean that win or lose on election day, Trump can thereafter look forward to once again being called, President Trump for the rest of his days. But maybe with a decent little delay to accommodate a transfer of power.

[John F. Carr]

The tech world, or a little corner of the tech world, is abuzz with the news that some people with Russian names or .ru email addresses have been removed from the /MAINTAINERS file of the Linux kernel distribution. This act seems to be related to sanctions against Russia, described vaguely as "compliance" in the official notice. Linus Torvalds refused to explain to the public what lawyers told him. It is unclear what the practical consequence of this action is. The file lists contacts for various parts of the Linux kernel. If you have a problem with the space modulator driver, talk to Marvin about it. Now Marvin's name is not on the list.

Some people have pointed out that anybody displeased with the way an open source project is being run has the ability to fork it (make a copy and work on that copy). It's not only a theoretical possibility. I was once part of a group that forked a major open source program. Linux would be a lot harder. There are some good developers in Russia. People who feel a strong need to work with them could create Линукс and bring them on board.

I gather Linux has a formal policy that would prohibit discrimination against Russians or people from Russia. A nondiscrimination policy has to yield to the domestic law of countries with jurisdiction.

[Roger S]

Torvalds says that he is a Finn, and that is why he is anti-Russian. The Linux people need to think about this more carefully. Next will be a push to remove maintainers with Jewish names. Then various other groups.

[Bwaaah]

Commented Linus about the removal of the names:

"I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be *supporting* Russian aggression?"

Well...there's some jingoism for you. Meanwhile, aside from the person who removed the names having alluded to "compliance," nobody has described any non-compliance, or malfeasance, or "aggression," or anything.

This is a pretty weak showing for Linus. I would be interested in knowing why this was done. Or is it really, just, you know, "the Russians," again.

[John F. Carr]

A little more clarity today. People working for companies on the OFAC SDN list are limited in their interactions with the official Linux community because so much Linux development is subject to US jurisdiction. One contributor observed that technical feedback on a patch could be considered illegal collaboration with a sanctioned entity. Another stated that interactions in public fora were less likely to be problematic than private exchanges.

There are different levels of sanctions. Huawei is sanctioned but is not on the SDN list.

[Magister]

anybody displeased with the way an open source project is being run has the ability to fork it

Hey, not just open source! I can’t count how often I’ve heard “Fork (((Microsoft product)))!” but that was generally on Teams meetings with poor sound quality so I might have misheard that first word.

[not guilty]

The Washington Post reports:

Hundreds more babies died than expected in the year and a half after the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022, raising questions about the ripple effects of the ruling on maternal and child health.

In findings published this week in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers said the shift was detectable several months after the decision. In some months, infant mortality jumped by as much as 7 percent, or 247 excess deaths, from the baseline before the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/10/23/infant-mortality-rate-dobbs-decision-abortion-bans/ That was utterly predictable. Is anyone surprised?

The data showed the most significant increases in deaths were in infants with congenital anomalies or birth defects. “This suggests it could be due to fetuses incompatible with life … being carried to term,” Parvati Singh (the lead author of the study) said.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

So, babies died later than they otherwise would have? Instead of being aborted, they were born, *then* died?

[M L]

A million babies per year are intentionally killed in the US, and so far that number keeps going up after Dobbs.

But estimates are that 208,000 more babies would have been intentionally killed if not for Dobbs: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-survey-pills-roe-election-2024-7179dda48eae0a764be89c2e0aafd80a

That's a lot of babies saved.

[Roger S]

Let me guess -- the dead babies are disproportionately Black, and might have lived if only the obstetrician had been Black!

[OtisAH]

Maybe those states should be sued because their anti-abortion policies are depriving them of the populations they deserve?

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Wait until you see the excess death numbers from the COVID vaccines.

[Armchair]

I'm reminded of the glorious success that Iceland had in reducing infant mortality while simultaneously (almost) entirely eliminating Down Syndrome.

You've just got to abort any unborn child who has Down Syndrome It's got an infant mortality rate of 5%. Get rid of that, then the total infant mortality numbers get oh so much better. The other 95% who would have survived...well...c'est la vie. (Or in their case, not so much).

Tell me NG, should it be mandated that unborn individuals with Down Syndrome be eliminated? What other measures should be taken to improve infant mortality numbers?

[Zarniwoop]

should it be mandated that unborn individuals with Down Syndrome be eliminated? What other measures should be taken to improve infant mortality numbers?

Ridonkulous strawman. The actual Icelandic gov't indicates that they provide good pre-nantal care and informed free choice to all pregnant women, unlike the U.S. generally (availability of pre-natal care) and a lot of Red states in particular (free and informed choice). Some relevant quotes from the link below:

The Icelandic Ministry of Welfare has issued the following press release, correcting misleading information concerning the birth of children in Iceland with Down's syndrome:

The Icelandic Ministry of Welfare considers it urgent to present the following facts due to incorrect and misleading information which has repeatedly been spread abroad concerning the birth of children in Iceland with Down's syndrome. Among the misconceptions which have been promoted is the claim that the policy has been adopted by the Icelandic authorities of preventing mothers from giving birth to children with Down's syndrome. These statements are not based on facts, and furthermore makes serious accusations which cannot simply be ignored.

and

Screening for chromosomal disorders, such as Down's syndrome, is entirely the decision of the prospective mother, who has an unequivocal right to accept or decline screening. In clinical guidelines, emphasis is placed on having healthcare personnel provide the prospective mother/parents with objective information concerning the advantages and disadvantages of screening on which they can base their independent decision.

and

Some 15-20% of women do not want fetal screening

On average, 15-20% of women choose not to have screening of the fetus during pregnancy, while 80-85% undergo such screening. Screening only reveals whether there is an increased probability of the fetus having Down's syndrome, and further tests are needed to confirm this. Some 15-20% of women who are informed of the increased probability of Down's syndrome following screening elect to continue the pregnancy and decline further testing in this regard. On average, during the past ten years 2-3 children have been born each year with Down's syndrome in Iceland.

https://www.government.is/diplomatic-missions/embassy-article/2018/03/26/Facts-about-Downs-syndrome-and-pre-natal-screening-in-Iceland/

Sweet jeebus, asking gotcha questions based on a false premise is so very on brand for you these days.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Reference is made to the usage of “President Trump.”

One thing that comes to mind is that there is a common practice for supporters and Trump-friendly outlets to use “President Trump” or “the President” when talking about him.

[It was almost amusing when one surrogate at first used “former president” and seemed almost to catch himself & later used “president”.]

I personally and to my knowledge others also typically do not talk about previous occupants of the office in a similar way.

I talk about “Barack Obama” or “Bill Clinton” etc.

I also am not aware of the “President Trump” people regularly saying “President Obama” in a similar fashion.

The current president is called "President." Some argued Trump did not earn the privilege while he was in office to use it as an honorific but that was the proper time to regularly use that title.

[Magister]

The last time this came up, David Nieporent supplied a link with various references explaining that former Presidents are not called by the title President. Perhaps the most notable was from the State Department but Miss Manners may wield greater authority.

[John F. Carr]

That State Department link is good. Can we get MSNBC to say "The Honorable Donald Trump"?

[Magister]

Maybe when they write him a letter, in the address block.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Can often rely on him to supply the receipts.

[EscherEnigma]

Okay, but by the same token you will find most official government sources consistently referring to the holiday that fell on February 19th this year as "Washington's Birthday", while almost every other source (including your calendar, most likely) will call it "President's Day". Similarly, the way that Fox News decorates a lot of it's sets arguably violates the flag code.

Which is to say, there are government style sheets, but the rest of the populace isn't pressured to follow them, whether we're talking about how to address military rank, former executives, or treating flags.

So if your thesis is that the public has changed how it refers to a category of person, then I wouldn't take government sources as authoritative on t subject. It might be interesting, but it's not controlling.

Or, as I've run with David a lot... there's what "should" be, and there's what "is". While it's useful to know the former, it doesn't control the latter.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Magister — Cecil Andrus served as governor of Idaho, and afterwards as U.S. Secretary of the Interior, where he continued to be addressed as, "Governor Andrus." I had occasion to ask him about that. His reply at that time was to say the convention was that after service in office, a person was addressed by the title of the highest office to which he/she had been elected. He was merely following that convention.

I thought that over, and concluded it made sense. Compared to appointment by a politician, election to office, being a gift of the jointly sovereign People, is the greater honor.

[Magister]

The reason generally given is that the US Presidency is a unique position, while other positions that are not held uniquely at a given time continue to be addressed by their titles. Donald Trump has made the improper use of his former title a part of his cult, in service to his lies about the 2020 election.

[Brett Bellmore]

Some interesting stuff in Woodward's new book.

From a June 2023 fundraiser in Silicon Valley:

"Guests, however, said that Biden was "frighteningly awful." It was "like your 87-year old senile grandfather" wandering around the room, saying to women guests, "your eyes are so beautiful.""

At another June 23 fundraiser,

"“He never completed a sentence ” said Bill Reichblum , cofounder and president of Liberties Journal Foundation, who attended with his wife and father-in-law, a former U.S. ambassador to Romania. “He would start to talk about something, jump somewhere else. He told the same story three times in exactly the same way and it meandered so much. … It was striking."

Apparently at that point he was still having good days and bad days. But his bad days were pretty bad.

[Roger S]

Harris denies that Biden has any mental decline or lack of fitness.

[Mr. Hook]

That is, indeed, disturbing. Someone who can't complete a full sentence or maintain their train of thought shouldn't be president. Why would anyone vote for someone like that?

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

Kamala's doing so bad they're wondering if that senile old doofus would've been a better candidate after all.

That's how bad she is.

[Commenter_XY]

But nobody in the media noticed, no Cabinet member noticed, and Kamala didn't notice. They all told us he was 'sharp as a tack'.

[ThePublius]

Will the mainstream media, e.g., NYTimes, WaPo, et.al., ever cover Emhoff's former girlfriend's story that the Daily Mail published today?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13981101/doug-emhoff-ex-girlfriend-slap-flirt-allegations-kamala-harris.html

I doubt it.

If it was Trump it would be front-page, above the fold.

[OtisAH]

I don’t know which is funnier, that garbage thinks the MAGA nominee for the presidency and the husband of the democratic nominee for the presidency are somehow of equal concern, or the fact garbage is all het up about a story, that if it did involve Convicted Felon Donald Trump, he would dismiss it out of hand as nonsense? Maybe it’s neither of those? Maybe the funniest bit is the pouting.

[Commenter_XY]

Emhoff isn't running.

It is legitimate (and appropriate) to ask if there are any other Emhoff indiscretions we don't know about that might compromise a POTUS Kamala.

[bernard11]

Here's an idea.

Let's have a commission do a thorough investigation of indiscretions and wrongdoing, sexual, financial, etc. by Harris, Emhoff, and both Trumps over the past few decades. Throw in Walz and Vance if you like.

Then publish the whole thing before the election.

[EscherEnigma]

What do you think a commission would do that the oppo-research doesn't?

I mean, if we really wanted to air dirty laundry, then the better way would probably be do do something like nullify NDAs as they apply to comments about the actions and character of declared candidates, and public posting of all government records regarding the person. IRS tax filings, SSA earnings report, any and all police reports involving them, any official investigations, transcripts if they were at public schools/universities, just everything.

Go with full radical transparency. Everyone knows every inch of their public life will be scrutinized when they run for office, so lets go all-in, make as much as we can public early, and crowd source combing through it looking for improprieties and scandal.

You want us to trust you with the presidency? Then you have to trust us with knowing everything.

That said, never gonna happen. Not even the most mild bit, like tax filings. But honestly, the NDA thing probably isn't a bad idea.

[Brett Bellmore]

I'd say fine, so long as we also get rid of the public figure rule for those candidates, so that people who invent dirty laundry to air have some skin in the game.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I suspect that voters will see this as family problems which shouldn’t be held against Harris. So bottom line, hardly very important for the campaign.

The fact that Emhoff isn’t an asset can be inferred from the fact that I don’t see soft-focus articles about the happy couple. Although there may be other reasons for the legacy media not to pay much attention to him. Maybe they want to focus on Harris as a Brave Independent Woman Who is Doing It For Herself. Or maybe they think black guys won’t like the idea of Harris marrying a Person of Pallor.

Who knows?

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I assumed in a subthread that a person could not be forced to work to pay child support. I also said that I thought that would be problematic for 13A reasons. Since the law is more complicated than a literal reading of the 13A suggests, I should be careful there.

My claim was narrow — not working could result in penalties. Also, to be clear, the rules apply to both sexes. And, it is not about failure to pay when you have the money.

Push comes to shove, if someone able to work can be imprisoned for not working for failure to pay child support, my mistake.

[ThePublius]

Thanks, but it's admittedly not so clear, and it varies state to state.

It's important to define "force." You can't make anyone do anything, but you can force them with varying degrees of force - from imminent threat of death, to prison, to seizure of assets, suspension of privileges, and so on.

[Roger S]

I think most people would be shocked at how family court actually works, unless they have some experience with it. Look for more info, and you will find a lot of horror stories.

[OtisAH]

I knew anyone stupid enough to pull this shit would be easily caught…

https://www.abc15.com/news/region-phoenix-metro/central-phoenix/ballots-damaged-after-usps-mail-collection-box-fire-near-7th-avenue-and-indian-school-road

[JoeFromtheBronx]

[delete]

[Zarniwoop]

Kinda unexpected news here in Wisconsinland:

The mayor of Waukesha, Wis., a longtime Republican in a critical battleground state, endorsed Vice President Harris in November’s presidential race, warning that former President Trump “poses a unique danger” to democracy.

Shawn Reilly, who has been mayor of Waukesha since 2014, announced his endorsement in a statement circulated by the Harris campaign.

For the non-locals/Wisconsinites, Waukesha is a pretty white, pretty wealthy, pretty Republican suburb of Milwaukee. It went ~60% Trump in 2020.

[Jerry B.]

Kind’a wonder if the motivation for these changes of heart are pecuniary.

[Sarcastr0]

You should look for evidence before you start weaving stories to ignore stuff you don't wanna deal with.

You'll be a better man for it.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

"Milwaukee’s Fox News affiliate reported the mayor’s endorsement of Harris yesterday, quoting him as saying he left the Republican Party after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, but still often votes Republican."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/formerly-gop-mayor-reliably-red-wisconsin-county-endorses-harris-rcna177019

Another article:

"Reilly revealed to FOX6 he voted third party in 2016 and for President Joe Biden in 2020 but kept that to himself. For other offices, he said he votes Republican "more often than not."

https://www.fox6now.com/news/waukesha-mayor-endorses-kamala-harris

[EscherEnigma]

Meh.

There are a lot of Republican politicians that have come out against Trump, in 2016, 2020 and now. A lot of lifelong pols that left the party over Trump.

The only thing unique about this guy is he did it before retiring.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, a fair number of Republicans (For packing a phone booth purposes, anyway...) did it before retiring. It's not clear that they knew at the time that they were retiring, though.

[Sarcastr0]

Which is not really relevant to the point that plenty in his party seem to think he's a danger to our republic.
This isn't about ideology, it's about disinhibition from self-control and institutional control.

A leader with no institutional controls. That's a dictator.

[Brett Bellmore]

Again, plenty for phone booth packing purposes.

Look, Trump was an insurgent candidate, the party establishment hates him with a white hot passion, because they're losing their death grip on control of the party thanks to him.

You're right, it's not about ideology. It's about entrenched people pissed off that their faction is losing control.

[Sarcastr0]

If you don’t believe in the benefits of internal institutional controls on the President you don’t believe in liberalism.

[Brett Bellmore]

Your idea of "internal institutional controls on the President" includes an entrenched minority in a party fighting to keep the majority of the party's voters from wresting control of their party from them?

Or maybe unelected bureaucrats sabotaging the elected President's orders by ignoring orders or feeding the President false information?

[Magister]

If the majority is seeking to violate the Constitution blatantly, then yes, that is an internal institutional control. Most significantly it manifests in members of the administration or military refusing to follow illegal orders to the point of resigning over it. The number of administration members from Trump's first term who consider him incompetent or dangerous is telling; they were blocking or dissuading him from some more extreme and ill advised actions. Every indication that his second administration will be all sycophants who want the ill advised actions.

[ThePublius]

So, you're all in on this "Trump will be a dictator" stuff, he will put peopl ein camps, suspend congress, he's Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin all rolled into one?

What did Trump do in his first term that was dictatorial? I would say he had more respect for the law, for process, and for the courts than Biden has!

[Sarcastr0]

I’m saying he has no internal controls, and after his last term the new plan is to remove as many institutional controls as possible.

The his first term was fine argument ignores a lot about his first term, and a lot more about what is supporters propose this time. Including Brett.

I don’t know how this will manifest - your Stalin and camps are strawmen. (But see Brett regarding Democrats).

Risks are not certainties. And here are lots of ways to be an authoritarian. None of them good for our republic.

[Magister]

You would obviously say that, but you would be wrong.
Respect for the law and for process would mean not engaging in an insurrection on January 6th, 2021. And not committing the various acts for which he has had convictions and judgements against him.
Respect for the courts would mean not backing a huge number of spurious lawsuits, and not being sanctioned for attacks on judges and court staff, and not complying with various court orders.

[Moderation4ever]

Wow, that is big news. I know Wisconsin politics and Waukesha should be solid for Republicans. I think that Harris will win Wisconsin, and I think the difference will be Republicans that will not vote for Trump.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Trumptards say CBS should lose its license for editing the 60 Minutes Kamala interview.

Meanwhile...

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/24/media/fox-news-edit-trump-barbershop-interview/index.html

Trump was seen taking questions and making small talk with Black and Hispanic barbershop customers and workers, some of whom were wearing “Make Barbers Great Again” shirts. The visit was part of “Fox & Friends” co-host Lawrence Jones’ ongoing barbershop interview series.

But the version of the visit shown on television was, to borrow a hairstyle metaphor, a crop cut. Fox edited out many of Trump’s rambling comments and false claims. Participants had to repeatedly follow up when Trump meandered away from the original point of their questions.

[John F. Carr]

The owner and operator of the MV Dali have agreed to pay over $100 million to the United States to settle claims related to the destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. This is the amount the United States claimed to have spent on cleanup and prevention of an oil spill. It appears the demand for punitive damages has been dropped.

The press release did not state whether the amount would reduce potential recovery by other parties.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-reaches-settlement-over-100m-civil-lawsuit-against-owner-and-operator-vessel-destroyed

On crashing into the bridge support the Dali became an unpermitted obstruction. Under the Rivers and Harbors Act the United States was entitled to recover its costs related to removing the obstruction. The lesson to future ship owners is, get a permit from the Corps of Engineers before letting your vessel ground itself.

[JesusHadBlondeHairBlueEyes]

8 minutes of illegals in MN admitting they are registered to vote and confessing to the planned crime of feloniouisly voting in the upcoming election for Kamala.

https://x.com/OversightPR/status/1849197889773289974

[ducksalad]

Thought it was going to be a link to maybe some aliens pleading guilty in court.

Instead it’s a “muckraker” twitter account with a dubbed video of people claiming to be illegal aliens and claiming it would be for Kamala. The faces blanked out, of course.

Did you have a part in this? Actor? Director? Or just assigned to post the link all over the net?

If it wasn't one of those, then you're one the chumps they are targeting.

[Commenter_XY]

LMAO....another Kamala Town Hall in Philly, and of course, the American people are treated to a word salad feast. Back in July I said, "She cannot speak extemporaneously".

Keep talking Kamala.

[Magister]

Commenter_XY, who had to mangle a quotation to make it look like word salad, has worked hard to forget that Harris trounced Trump in a debate.

[Magister]

Oh, no, I didn't provide a link! Life of Brian will wear out the fainting couch.
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/09/26/thursday-open-thread-210/?comments=true#comment-10738368

Well yeah, it’s a lot easier to make a quote sound like nonsensical word salad when you start the quote in the middle of the sentence.

[ThePublius]

That fucking Advil pop-up ad is so annoying I will never buy that shit again. And I will never pay for a Reason subscription either.

[John F. Carr]

In 2020 election news, the 11th Circuit rejected an appeal by David Shafer and two other fake electors asking to have their Georgia criminal prosecutions moved to federal court. Defendants claimed that their service as "contingent Republican Presidential Electors" made them federal officers.

We need not decide whether nominated presidential electors are federal officers. Even if Shafer, Still, and Latham were federal officers in 2020 when they were nominated to the Republican slate of electors, they would not be current federal officers.

The per curiam decision relies on the precedent set by Mark Meadows last year. Even the appellants recognized that they needed to overturn circuit precedent.

[David Nieporent]

I'm not sure the basis of the decision — that the removal statute applies only to current federal officials — is correct. I also doubt that presidential electors are federal officials in any case. But what's certainly correct is that fake electors were never federal officials. I side with the concurring judge.

[Brett Bellmore]

Even if they weren't fake they'd be state officers, IMO.

[not guilty]

In the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case the Appellees' briefs are due today in the Eleventh Circuit. The government's reply brief, if any, is due within 21 days. There is no word yet on whether or when oral argument will be scheduled.

[not guilty]

One Appellee, Waltine Nauta, has filed an unopposed motion for a three day extension of time to file his brief. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca11.87822/gov.uscourts.ca11.87822.41.0.pdf

[JoeFromtheBronx]

Reference is made to the stupidity of Democrats not signing on to voting ID since it would be easy to apply, popular, and give them credibility. I find people often have reasons to do things.

Voting ID overall (as was noted) usually addresses a non-problem. That alone makes it questionable. If there is even a minimum of difficulty, and litigation has shown cases, the costs are an issue.

Voting ID laws also further a false narrative of voting fraud and encourage more limits. A well-run identification law might serve as a type of immunization against some fears. OTOH, the people liable to be afraid here will often be able to find their snipes.

There is much bad blood on both sides with a history of problems that lead opponents of voting ID laws to be dubious. A good system has positive aspects, especially if it includes a helpful, easy ability to obtain government identification. NYC has a free ID.

The system would reasonably have a grace period (maybe 1-2 years) at the beginning and alternatives later on for special cases. A provisional ballot can be provided generally after the grace period for those who do not have any type of ID.

(Texas has a system where people can obtain a free certificate if they do not already have certain identification. It is not a photo identification.)

Voting is basic to citizenship and it should not be hard, including having some financial cost, to vote. Governments can help unite with their citizens to have a sound approach. Happy voting.

[Mr. Bumble]

Why is ID required for almost any interaction with government (and in many commercial interactions) but is a "hardship" when it comes to voting?

[Stephen Lathrop]

Why is ID required for almost any interaction with government (and in many commercial interactions) but is a “hardship” when it comes to voting?

Bumble — Might surprise you to learn it, but there is an answer to that question. It is founded on principles of American constitutionalism.

American citizens have a doubly-defined role in their interactions with government. Acting as individuals, citizens are subjects of government. Government is properly empowered to constrain its subjects. Acting as members of the joint popular sovereignty, citizens share ultimate power over government, which they exercise at pleasure and without constraint.

Voting is unequivocally an example of the second instance. No member of government has legitimate power to hamper or constrain a citizen in the act of voting. Not in any way. Not in the slightest.

Getting qualified to vote is activity located on an ambiguous boundary. Government has a legitimate duty to administer elections on the sovereign’s behalf, and in the sovereign’s interests. The sovereign wants free and fair elections. It is government’s duty to conduct them. But in doing so, it is illegitimate for government to do anything with an eye to affect an election outcome. So government is duty-bound to do nothing to hamper systematically anyone who may be qualified to vote.

Motivation by government office holders to affect election outcomes must always be presumed. If circumstantial evidence accumulates that members of government are trying to do that, and especially if they try to do it by means of election rules, or by election misconduct, then the office holders or bureaucrats who do it are standing American constitutionalism on its head.

The test to weigh the circumstantial evidence by is whether there is reason to believe an effect on an election outcome was intended. Or perhaps even if it was unintended, did such an effect occur? Government’s duty to the sovereign extends to not making preventable mistakes which skew election outcomes.

Thus, voting has a special constitutional status. It is unlike those other activities you mention. Voting is not about receiving a service, or even about enjoying a right. It is about exercising the ultimate power in American constitutionalism, at pleasure, and without constraint. So your focus on, “hardship,” is misplaced. The issue is who gets the power, the voter or the government. If it’s the latter, then government is doing it wrong.

[Magister]

It may well be a hardship in those other cases, which present a strong motivation to cheat in a single interaction (write a bad check, steal government benefits). By contrast, the benefit for a single instance of voter fraud is tiny (one vote) in comparison to the penalties; the demand for voter ID has been motivated not by the negligible amount of voter fraud but by the desire to suppress votes from particular demographics. Given a substantial government effort to get voting ID to all eligible voters, and an acknowledgement that voter fraud is not a significant problem, there would be no problem with voter ID.

The next step will be proving citizenship as well; that's not as easy, is not a hardship required in most interactions, and is likely to involve racial profiling in its enforcement.

[David Nieporent]

Voting is basic to citizenship and it should not be hard

Agreed. But having ID isn't hard. It's something virtually everyone already has and those that don't have find very very very easy to get. Have you ever heard someone say, "I'd like to drive, but it's just too hard to get a driver's license?" [I'm not talking about the testing aspect of getting a DL, obviously. Just the paperwork aspect.]

[Mr. Bumble]

Agreed (which we seldom do). I'd be curious to know what the estimated number of people living in the USA is who don't have some form of identification.

[Brett Bellmore]

I recall opponents of voter ID have actually lost court cases on account of failing to identify anybody qualified to vote who wasn't capable of getting ID if they actually bothered to. When they do win, it isn't on account of the ID being impossible to get, just on the basis of claiming that it's somehow discriminatory because some minority might have a harder time meeting the legal requirements everybody was uniformly subject to.

[Magister]

Given Brett Bellmore's tendency to recall things he wants to be true without regard to reality, one should be suspicious of claims like his. It is true that the indirect cost of acquiring a "free" ID has not generally been found by courts to be a poll tax; voter ID laws now generally require that states provide free IDs because charging for a required ID was seen as a poll tax. Certainly if a lawsuit was brought without finding representative plaintiffs, it should be thrown out; I was not able to find such a lawsuit, though, or one that hinged on "impossibility" of acquiring an ID.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_identification_laws_in_the_United_States

[David Nieporent]

. I’d be curious to know what the estimated number of people living in the USA is who don’t have some form of identification.

Roughly 91% of the adult population has a driver's license.

[Magister]

That would seem to imply millions of people who lack a driver's license but would otherwise be qualified to vote; they are unlikely to be evenly distributed across political preferences. The percentage is much lower for 18 and 19 year olds, so good way for Republicans (the usual proponents of voter ID laws) to suppress votes in that age group that doesn't support them. (Whether a person's driver's license has their current address at which they would register to vote might be another issue.)

[Magister]

There are people who want to vote which they can do at a local polling site where they voted for decades, but who may have to spend more time and arrange to travel a significant distance to get their "free" voting ID; it's not just paperwork. It is trivially true that "getting an ID + voting" is harder than just "voting" no matter how very very very easy it is to get an ID.

The ones who struggle to find proper documentation are dwindling but still there. My mother moved to a different state to be closer to her children and grandchildren after my father died; she struggled to find proof of citizenship that was required to register to vote, after voting for over 50 years in her previous location.

[David Nieporent]

. It is trivially true that “getting an ID + voting” is harder than just “voting” no matter how very very very easy it is to get an ID.

It is also true that going to a polling place — or mailing in a ballot — is harder than voting by text message, but "harder" does not mean "hard."

[Magister]

Unnecessarily hard is the more relevant factor, though, especially when it's used for voter suppression. I would prefer a consistent voter ID law, just to get it out of the way; get-out-the-vote groups would probably assist almost all of the people who need help to get a sufficient ID. But probably Republicans would shoot it down to preserve the fearmongering they use to undermine the legitimacy of election results. They did that with the bipartisan border law, because Trump wanted it as a campaign issue. They've learned not even to appear to achieve anything from the Dobbs blowback.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Nieporent — Your comment seems premised on a presumption of a a well-organized life. And seems especially exclusive of those who struggle with solitary disorganized lives, uncertain residence histories, chronic poverty, addiction problems, criminal backgrounds, etc.

Whether a bar to the franchise is to be inflicted on the latter group, in case they don't have enough trouble coping already, is a question always implicit in this discussion. Your response seems to want to hurry past that question.

[M L]

Vance: Don't Cast Aside Friends And Family Members Over Politics, "Not Worth It"

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/10/25/vance_dont_cast_aside_friends_and_family_members_over_politics_not_worth_it.html

Good advice.

[Magister]

Taking advice on interpersonal relationships from someone as weird as JD Vance is probably not going to work out well.

[Stephen Lathrop]

The billionaire-owned Washington Post has now joined the billionaire-owned Los Angeles Times in announcing it will decline to make a presidential endorsement. Given the comparative merits of the candidates—a pair perhaps more obviously at opposite poles on the axis of good and evil than in any previous American election—those decisions have shocked the staffs at both newspapers, and ought to shock everyone.

What occurrences, concerns, or motivations could account for such a jolting surprise? Neither publisher has offered a forthright accounting. I will offer mine: these decisions show precautionary cowardice in the face of emergency. The publishers have felt and responded to the chill of threatened authoritarian government.

[M L]

It is indeed quite a surprise.

You may find some interesting reporting at the link below.

he Washington Post will not endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president, according to the paper’s editorial board on Friday.

It will be the first time in 36 years that the paper has not endorsed a presidential candidate, a blow to Harris who is already suffering from not being endorsed by the L.A. Times, her hometown paper.

The decision allegedly involved Jeff Bezos, who reportedly ordered the non-endorsement with the early vote trends appearing to favor former President Donald Trump. Bezos, the owner of the paper, has several large contracts with the U.S. government.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/10/25/washington-post-snubs-kamala-harris-non-endorsement/

[David Nieporent]

So which of our racist MAGA trolls around here is Jason Palmer?

https://apnews.com/article/black-trump-kamala-harris-tim-walz-aca31c66fe5bfef1e8827581e7919ece

[Brett Bellmore]

Fyi: A septoplasty is EXTREMELY painful. Having a chisel taken to your skull feels like somebody took a chisel to your skull, should have seen that coming.

My wife better appreciate my not snoring anymore.

[Commenter_XY]

Brett…hope you are feeling better.

Opiates work.

[Brett Bellmore]

Opiates do not work for me. I’m among the minority who end up with a ‘paradoxical’ response: Hallucinations and insomnia. Granted, you’re not exactly hurting during all of this, but it’s scarcely worth it.

Happily, the pain has now declined to levels the Tylenol can cope with. So, I am indeed feeling better now.

[ThePublius]

Be careful with Tylenol if you drink alcohol. It will wreck your liver. Better off with ibuprofen. You can get 800 mg ibuprofen pills from your doc.

I hope you feel better soon.

[Zarniwoop]

I’ve never understood why one would pay for a doc to prescribe 800mg pills, then pay for a pharmacist to dispense them, when 4x200mg off-the-shelf pills a so much cheaper.

[Brett Bellmore]

Who said it was prescription Tylenol?

[ThePublius]

Well, yes, but I've always gotten the 800mg ones free, as part of a visit for something, or via insurance. Just easier.

[Bwaaah]

In such circumstances, they tend to keep ’em off the pain relievers that increase the risk of bleeding, such as would be with ibuprofen. Tylenol tends to become the go-too OTC pain reliever.

Good luck with your cracked face, Brett. It doesn’t handicap you here. (lol)

[Commenter_XY]

Glad you are feeling better, Brett.

[Commenter_XY]

VC Conspirators, check out the JRE podcast by Pres Trump on Friday. There is something there for everyone.

I don't Kamala has the stones to go on JRE unscripted for 3 hours. NFW.

[Magister]

Donald Trump didn't have the courage to debate Kamala Harris a second time. Unfortunately, "something for everyone" doesn't include anything for people who want to see that Trump is honest, competent or intelligent.

[Magister]

But plenty of lies, of course.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/27/politics/fact-check-trump-rogan-podcast/index.html