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Post by nighttimer on May 17, 2019 13:19:55 GMT -5
So we've been concentrating on the D's and who is running there. Any speculation on challengers for Trump on the R side? I feel Nikki Haley is positioning herself to run, but she might wait to the next election. Marco could make another try. I don't know if either would win the primary. Any thoughts or guesses?
Long story short: Nobody is going to waste their time trying to mount a serious challenge to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. Not John Kasich. Not Larry Hogan. And certainly not Bill Weld. A moderate Massachusetts governor running against Trump in this fire and brimstone version of the Republican Party?
Ha. Ha. You got jokes.
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Post by nighttimer on May 17, 2019 11:30:17 GMT -5
I've donated to Joe Biden. I think he stands the best chance at taking out Trump. Picking Kamala Harris as VP would probably be a savvy move. I like Mayor Pete a lot, but I'm both concerned about his lack of experience, and more importantly, his ability to take out Trump, which is my number one priority. I think Warren gets far more hate than she deserves and not enough credit, but the fact remains that I don't think she can take out Trump, now or ever. My gut is people will like Kamala more as they see more of her (I do for sure), but that she won't be strong enough in 2020 to take out Trump. (After 4 years as VP or secretary of state, though...) Also, I think Biden is the only one who can take out Bernie in the primary without a truly ugly battle. The polls speak pretty loudly on this point. I'd like to see Mayor Pete and Kamala Harris run for president in future -- 2024. Harris as VP would set her up nicely. Mayor Pete should meanwhile either run for something else on a larger level or else angle for a cabinet position--lord knows he's smart enough. Warren should either stay a senator or angle for the cabinet. Bernie should go away. Everyone else -- run for or stay in the freaking Senate! We need good Senators! It is not just about the presidency! Too true, because any Democrat who is elected as president and has to deal with a Senate run by Republican like Mitch McConnell will find their agenda is D.O.A and that includes Joe Biden. After three years of Trump most of the Democrats I know want someone who can break the Trump/McConnell stranglehold and boot them both out of power. A guy who's known as a consummate insider who schmoozes and cuts deals with Republicans may sound like he has the pedigree to change how Congress and the White House works, but that may not what most Democrats are looking for in 2020.
Biden believes he if he can evict Trump from the premises of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the GOP will snap out of stupor and return to being "the loyal opposition" it once was. That is a wet dream. McConnell has zero interest in negotiating and compromising with the other side as he's far too busy ramming Trump's judges through and sneering contemptuously at every piece of legislation coming from Nancy Pelosi.
Without a Democratic Senate it doesn't matter what a President Biden aspires to do. The Republicans see compromise as a weakness and bipartisanship means giving them everything and getting what they decide you can have. This is the direction the GOP has been going since Newt Gingrich's Contract With America. Grab the Dems by the short and curlies and twist until they scream for mercy.
That won't change for Biden and he won't be able to change it either. Biden's poll prominence is based upon his familiarity and nostalgia for the Obama Presidency, but he's old news. Sentimental journeys are fun when you want to visit the past, but you shouldn't want to live there.
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Post by nighttimer on May 15, 2019 23:04:21 GMT -5
In light of the current fuck-up in the Oval Office and his embarrassing Amateur Night approach to governance, the value of experience has become a major selling point for me in my choice of presidential candidate.
That leaves out mayors and that includes Pete Buttigieg, Wayne Messam and especially Bill de Blasio. It leaves out Andrew Yang and Marianne Williamson. It leaves out Eric Swalwell, Tim Ryan, Seth Moulton, and Tulsi Gabbard. It leaves out Beto O'Rourke, John Hickenlooper, Steve Bullock and anybody else running for president who should be running for the Senate instead.
It leaves out senior citizens like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden.
I want someone younger, fresher and with the fire in the belly to rally the Democrats, take the fight to Trump, and kick his ass. I haven't decided who is best suited for that job. Not yet anyway, though I do have some preferences among the candidates. It's just too soon to commit.
However, I'd vote for any of the Democrats over the asshole we got now.
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Post by nighttimer on May 15, 2019 22:50:04 GMT -5
Can't say that this is at all surprising, given the rash of other farther left media outlets hemorrhaging money and laying off thousands recently (e.g., Mic, Vice, Gizmodo/Wired, Buzzfeed, Vox, etc.). But, given what a "woke" garbage dump hate rag that Salon has been over the past several years, I can't help feeling more than a little a bit of amused schadenfreude over their demise. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. Maybe their employees can learn to code. Your glee at the likely demise of Salon and the looming unemployment of it's staff and contributors is tacky, tasteless, boorish and just plain mean. Or to put it another way, it's typical Optimus. As usual you spit your typical venom about something being "woke" without any context or examples of content that show what about Salon made it "woke." What is it about the site that made it a such a "garbage dump hate rag?" Who knows? We sure won't if we depend on you to provide any details because you don't DO details. You're too busy taking a big, stinky shit all over a website that hasn't been relevant to anyone for years. But I will admit: you aren't entirely wrong. Salon is a truly terrible site and it has been that way for years. Back in it's glory days it was one of my first stops on the internet. Now? It's not even an afterthought. Because... reasons. The first time I was exposed to the world of blogging was in Salon. Between enjoying or being annoyed by the writings of Joan Walsh, Charles Taylor, David Horowitz, Jake Tapper, Camille Paglia, Debra Dickerson, and others on the Right, Left and Center, Salon was what the Village Voice used to be: a unabashedly and unapologetically left-wing news, arts, and politics publication where smart, sassy and thought-provoking writing and writers intersected. As print journalism transitioned to online journalism, Salon represented how rich and ripe the potential of this new format really was. And for a while Salon delivered the goods. It just wasn't built for the long run. The Voice passed through the hands of several different owners before finally dying off a few years ago. Salon has staggered on, but it's been superficial, shrill, strident and stupid for so long, it's hard to recall when it was any good. I die a little inside when yet another print or online news publication kicks the bucket. In these times when truth and accuracy and straightforward journalism is under siege, it's important to cover the stories what's left of the mainstream press doesn't. Salon used to be a valuable resource for that sort of thing, but that was a long time ago in a internet far, far away. I'll remember fondly what it once was, but when it's gone for good, I'll forget all about what it became.
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Post by nighttimer on May 10, 2019 8:50:34 GMT -5
Big fucking deal.
The New Mexico congressional seat is pretty much a lock for whomever the Democratic candidate is and Plame isn't alone in vying for it, so she's far from a lock to win it. Maybe Plame will never be the congressional representative whose CIA identity was outed by Evil Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff. Then again, maybe Plame will become the congressional representative whose CIA identity was outed by Evil Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff who was later pardoned by the Thug-In-Chief.
Friends come and friends go, but liars got each other backs.
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Post by nighttimer on May 6, 2019 20:12:08 GMT -5
Loony Laura is certainly insignificant. And I'm hoping that now that she's deplatformed, she disappears altogether and ends up doing $25 appearances at strip clubs like Roger Stone. ETA: When I watch her video above (indeed, when I watch her doing anything), all I can do is wonder how the fuck so many people seem to like her and take her seriously. She's a fucking jackass. How is that not obvious, even to Trumpalos? Mmmm...no big mystery to me, Cassandra. America loves performance art almost as much as it loves it being conned. Trump has shown how far you can go by acting as if you're a wealthy, successful businessman. It's only natural for others to rush to You Tube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and every other social media platform to do likewise. Look at Diamond and Silk. Two lifelong Democrats who had an epiphany and flipped to becoming Trumpublicans. As hustles go, it's not a bad one. The net worth of the two sisters is somewhere north of $3 million.
Would they be making that kind of bank had they been with Hillary? Doubtful. That's why I fucked up by being a liberal. There's so much more $$$ if you're a Black conservative telling White conservatives nothing is their fault and everything is the fault of the Negroes still plugged into the Democratic Matrix.
I can't blame Laura Loomer for wanting to get in on the act. There's a lot of cash money honey to be made to be young, reasonably attractive and all-in for Trump (hello, Nick Sandmann and where's your You Tube channel?). Being a liberal may make you feel good about yourself, but being a conservative may pay off better.
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Post by nighttimer on May 6, 2019 13:40:25 GMT -5
I don't know much about Loomer, but I don't think Cassie's LEAVE LAURA ALONE was a defense as much as a dig on her, by way of the infamous Britney alone meltdown from a fan. I don't think Cassandra was defending Laura Loony Tunes either. My point is in the grand scheme of things Loony Laura is irrelevant and insignificant. The only reason anybody is paying any attention to her at all is because Trump is riding to her rescue and of that of the others who had the ban hammer dropped on them.
Strangely though, Trump isn't defending the free speech rights of Louis "I Killed Malcolm X" Farrakhan. Wonder why that is?
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Post by nighttimer on May 6, 2019 11:26:52 GMT -5
We are not amused. Laura Loomer is not a "free thinker." She's not a conservative. She's definitely not a journalist. What she is is an attention whore. It's a crowded field with literally thousands of others just like her looking for views, clicks, likes, retweets, faux-celebrity and all the perks that comes with being toxic, bigoted, ignorant and otherwise a pretty worthless human being. Laura Loomer is a bigot. Plain and simple and that's why Donald Trump is ranting and raving about her removal from Facebook and Instagram along with some other dirty rotten scoundrels. There is a Constitutional right to freedom of speech, but there is no such right to use social media platforms owned and operated by private companies to provide an outlet for kooks, sexists, racists, violent misogynists, Holocaust skeptics, slavery advocacy and anti-Semitics. These are part of Trump's base and therefore, he is extremely protective of it.
David Frum of The Atlantic knows this to be so and calls Trump out for his defense and advocacy of right-wing extremism. Trump is the master of distraction and right now he's trying to divert attention away from the Muller Report and back to his favorite topic: himself and how the sore loser libs just won't let go of their own conspiracy theories.
That is not a reason to normalize the dickish behavior of Laura the Loser Loomer. She's not a martyr for conservatives. She's a crisis actor whose crises are entirely fabricated.
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Post by nighttimer on May 2, 2019 10:34:32 GMT -5
Lord knows I always thought I was a political cynic -- I can now see that I wasn't nearly cynical enough for this administration. Truly -- the House needs to impeach. Even if it goes nowhere, as it likely will, even if it backfires politically on the Dems. (It may or may not -- most people were not in favor of impeaching Nixon until after the impeachment hearings, at which point the percentage went up dramatically. I think the same would happen here, just because I think this is actually much worse, but that most people aren't yet paying enough attention to see just how bad it really is.) It is the only way, IMO, at this point, to signal that this is all NOT okay, that this is NOT business as usual. I don't want impeachment. It's a dream. A delusion. A distraction. Anger and frustration with the ruthlessness and rapacious acts of the Trump Administration is at an all-time high and God knows if the Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for lying about a blow job, this asshole should go for collaboration with enemies of the United States for his own political gain.
But Mitch McConnell is never going to impeach Donald Trump. You know it, I know it, and Trump knows it. If Trump were to shoot a kitten and rape a puppy on live TV, he wouldn't be condemned by the GOP. Sarah Suckabee Sanders would go on Fux and Friends and explain the kitten was a deep cover ISIS operative and Kellyanne Crypt Keeper would calmly explain Trump was only playing roughly with the puppy and any rape was strictly play-acting by the puppy.
Holding out hope for the Republicans to come to their senses and stop drifting into America's preeminent White nationalist political party seems like a high-risk, low reward misadventure and personally, I'm not inclined to take away the knife the GOP has pressed against its own throat. As currently constituted the Republican Party needs to be destroyed and the Democratic Party is as equally contaminated and worthy of disinfection.
Impeachment would be emotionally satisfying and politically meaningless. What's the upside of a really stupid and completely ineffectual gesture? To soothe the hurt feelings of liberals who hoped Bob Muller would be their Secret Santa? Operating purely on emotion and damn the torpedoes and consequences may seem to be the urgent need for the Left at this moment, but the more strategic move here is to play the long game and play it cool.
Less satisfying. Much more strategic. What's the Move here? Don't take the bait. Forget about Barr's gaslighting the Senate Judiciary Committee. Don't throw Brer Trump into that impeachment briar patch. That's where he wants to be. Don't give him what he wants. Be cool.
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Post by nighttimer on Apr 30, 2019 19:34:31 GMT -5
I didn't start Game of Thrones until this year. Figured, eh, I'd take the free week's trial of HBONow, watch a couple of episodes just to see what the hype was about. I ended up getting a subscription and binging the hell out of the first 7 seasons so I could watch season 8 with the rest of the world. I haven't watched the Avengers. Maybe eventually -- GoT sucked up most of my screen time! The other thing I very very highly recommend, by the way, is the Netflix series The Last Kingdom. I might actually like it better than GoT, and it's only three seasons in. No dragons and far less magic-y stuff than Game of Thrones (there's a bit, but IMO sometimes it's questionable whether it's even magic at all rather than just the characters' belief in magic), but a bit of actual history and lots of kickass fighting and acting. Like GoT, prepare to lose characters you love in horrible ways. Catch up before season 4 starts! (And yes, I am actively trying to push people to watch it. I want to make sure there's a season 5 and beyond!) Are you suffering from as much Binging as I am? I've been trying---not very hard---but trying to finish a book I received for Xmas. We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Neshi Coates. It's a book gathering the best of his essays in The Atlantic. Now I love this Coates' work and he's been on my radar since his days as a beginner at The Village Voice. Yet here we are with April about to turn into May and I'm not done with yet. Let alone read another book or three by now. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and all the others soon to be joined by Disney+ have weasled their way into my life and they're been very hard to exterminate. Binging Better Call Saul, Killing Eve, Luke Cage and Big Mouth requires less commitment than opening a book, sitting down, turning on a light and actually reading. I'm going to take a hiatus from both streaming services and social media in the not-too distant future. At least long enough to finish the damn book. My wife is rather annoyed with me as I tend to bing watch shows at night and I'm watching The Originals in netflix right now. She hates that she has to fall asleep to people being killed over and over again. I keep telling her, some of the victims walk it off. I offered to start Black Summer, but zombies aren't better than vampires in her opinion. I checked the first episode of Black Summer and thought it didn't suck. It just drops us into the Zombie Apocalypse and asks you to hang on. Oh, and you might wanna work on your cardio because we're talking 28 Days Later/Dawn of the Dead remake fast zombies.
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Post by nighttimer on Apr 29, 2019 10:44:15 GMT -5
When I came into work this morning, nobody asked me about the NBA or NHL playoffs. Nobody asked me about the shooting at the Jewish synagogue. Nobody asked me about the bald-faced lie Trump told about infanticide. Nobody asked me about anything except did I watch Game of Thrones and/or Avengers: Endgame.
No, to the former and yes, to the latter. The original plan was to wait on Endgame until today or sometime during the week. However, it soon became apparent to me that this wasn't going to work. There are two things the Internet does exceptionally well. Hate on things and spoil things. Every schmoe and his brother has a think piece, a review, an essay, a video, a podcast, and a soapbox in the park where they can shout to the world who lives, who dies and how everything in Endgame unfolds.
I called my son and he secured tickets for a 10:40 am showing of the film. I really, really liked it a lot and now it's safe to go back online because you can't spoil what has already been seen.
As far as GoT goes, I never got into it. No disrespect, but it's simply not my thing. On Sundays, I'm watching Killing Eve and there's no room for dragons, swordplay and incest. Guess I'll wait for the box set.
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Post by nighttimer on Apr 11, 2019 18:29:36 GMT -5
We've seen over the past few years how the Trump Administration deals with inquiries on Capitol Hill. It's more of an annoyance than anything else. Trump officials don't have a lot of patience dealing with nosy questions from dumb Democrats.
So what happens when Trump officials like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin runs into a Democrat like Maxine Waters, who is not just a liberal, but a woman and a Black woman as well.
Do not come for Auntie Maxine. You may not be ready to catch those hands.
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Post by nighttimer on Apr 11, 2019 18:07:23 GMT -5
Thanks for posting that, Cass, I had a read through. My initial thoughts when I heard about this yesterday was that this would be a hard case to prove. I mean, on its face it sounds a lot like the tough-talk a civil lawyer might dish out to settle a legit case. If Avenatti had a client with an articulable legal claim, it's not extortion to tell Nike he's going to scalp them in court, or in public. But looking into the weeds, it looks like the extortion lies in Avenatti wanting to be hired to do an internal investigation, which wouldn't make any sense. And that's what he wanted the big bucks for (more than $20 million), while his client (if he/she exists) was going to get a pittance ($1.5 million) compared to what Avenatti was asking for himself. That appears to be the nub of this case. Fascinated to see how it proceeds... I always like to look at the actual stuff filed in cases, where I can. I'll certainly be following this, with plenty of popcorn at the ready.
I know prosecutors love to overcharge defendants (hello, Jussie Smollett), but 335 years? What do you plea deal that down to? 150? Hell, if Michael Avenatti were to die and be reincarnated, a cop would show up by his crib and handcuff him.
"C'mon. Let's go. You know what you did. You got a lot more time to do."
Any attorney who would cheat and steal from a quadriplegic deserves to go to the Iron Bar Hotel for a nice long time and stuffed in a hole so deep sunlight has to be piped down to them. If I were to run into Avenatti before he joins Michael Cohen as a fellow jailbird, I'd have one question for him. How in the HELL did you think you would get away with this when you were fucking with Donald J. Trump and more importantly, Donald J. Trump's Justice Department? You should have known they were going to be up your ass like a proctologist. Speaking of being up your ass, you might want to ask Cassandra if you could get some of that butter that ain't butter. Lubrication, ya feel me? You big dummy.
BYE, FELICIA!
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Post by nighttimer on Apr 11, 2019 11:26:39 GMT -5
I don't watch The View. I watch clips of The View so I can find out what sort of utterly stupid shit is going to fall out of Meghan McCain's mouth. She rarely disappoints. She never lets anyone forget she's John McCain's daughter. That's her only claim to fame and boy, does she work it.
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Post by nighttimer on Apr 10, 2019 21:57:15 GMT -5
Hey, now here's a solution to everyone's AOC's problem. Brand her a "domestic terrorist." Maybe then someone will kill her.
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