2024 USA Election: Wishin' and Hopin'

[filghy2]

Ben is evidently concerned about climate change, but perhaps he is unware of what RFK Jr has been saying on the subject lately.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-not-an-option

In recent interviews, he claims climate science is too complex and abstract to explain and that, “I can’t independently verify that.” He also says that the climate crisis is being used to push through “totalitarian controls on society” orchestrated “by the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates, and all of these megabillionaires”.

“In my campaign I’m not going to be talking a lot about climate. Why is that? Because climate has become a crisis like Covid that the Davos groups and other totalitarian elements in our society have used as a pretext for clamping down totalitarian controls.”

This about-face has earned him friends among the most prominent and dangerous climate-change deniers, including the Republican-aide-turned-disinformation-dealer Marc Morano, who says Kennedy is “undergoing a genuine transformation over his views on the climate agenda.” In podcast interviews, especially with rightwing hosts, RFK Jr now says he would leave energy policy to the market and describes himself as “a radical free marketeer.”

[broncofan]

If someone cannot even summarize the basics of a subject, their "theories" on that subject should not be taken seriously. RFK Jr. also said covid was engineered as an ethnic bioweapon to attack certain groups and when asked why he thinks that, said "furin cleavage site".

But why don't journalists ask him what a furin cleavage site is and why it supports his assertion? If he cannot give a careful explanation of what it is, and why it indicates covid was a bioweapon, then expose him as a charlatan. Ask him how mrna vaccines work? When asked to follow up on any of the quackery he parrots he almost always claims it's above his pay grade. If the evidence for his crazy theories is beyond his pay grade, then promoting such theories should be too.

There is a dangerously large segment of this country that thinks the death toll of covid is entirely made up. Climate change, which is supported by lots of evidence and has the potential to cause many times the damage to human populations, but which has not yet resulted in refrigerators full of bodies at emergency rooms, should be easy for them to deny.

RFK Jr. cannot be taken seriously. I'm not looking to insult anyone here but he is a serious moron and a crackpot conspiracy theorist. It's not really a matter of opinion.

[filghy2]

In the midst of criticising Biden's 'cognitive impairment' Trump warns of the risk of World War 2 and confuses Obama with Biden and Hillary Clinton.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-...tion/102866974

It often seems like Trump is judged by lower standards because noone expects anything from him but word salads.

[Stavros]

In the midst of criticising Biden's 'cognitive impairment' Trump warns of the risk of World War 2 and confuses Obama with Biden and Hillary Clinton.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-...tion/102866974

It often seems like Trump is judged by lower standards because noone expects anything from him but word salads.

But if Trump believes he saved 100 millions lives worldwide during the Covid Pandemic, that you need ID to buy a loaf of bread from a grocery store, that the 1918 Influenza Pandemic ended the First World War, then it is no surprise that when the White House lawyers told him he had lost the election in 2020 he simply did not believe them. If he believed the Earth is Flat, and was transported in a spaceship in an orbit of the Earth, one assumes he would return to Earth and still say 'the Earth is Flat'. How do you prosecute someone who insists they are always right, and that evidence is irrelevant?

Yes, he has the right to do that. But did he have the right to interfere in the election process in Georgia? Did he have the right to encourage Pence to 'delay' or 'pause' the transfer of power in Congress, or incite a mob to help him to do that? Is he so dumb he can't see the difference?
Trump says he ‘didn’t respect’ his lawyers who said he lost 2020 election | The Hill

Here in the UK, the former Prime Minister, Elizabeth Truss, is now flipping all the evidence to claim she was right and everyone else was wrong-
"The former prime minister will give a speech at the Institute for Government on Monday, almost exactly a year since her government’s “mini-budget”, which caused the pound to crash and ultimately led to her downfall.
Speaking days after it emerged that the UK economy shrank by 0.5% in July, Truss will say the UK’s current economic problems are not her fault."
Liz Truss: economic consensus since 1997 to blame for UK woes – not me | Liz Truss | The Guardian

We seem to have a generation of politicians in power who are so detached from reality one wonders how they get through the day. I can't imagine having a sensible conversation with either Trump or Truss, but I do wish they would just shut up and go away, we have enough problems do deal with as a result of their rank incompetence, their ignorance, their devotion to themselves.

[Stavros]

An intriguing article on how Trump could lose the popular vote and the electoral college but become President through a 'Contingent Election'. Scary stuff.

Here’s the scary way Trump could win without the electoral or popular vote | Stephen Marche | The Guardian

[Fitzcarraldo]

Interesting commentary:
https://newrepublic.com/article/1756...2024-spectacle

Excerpt:

We Have Two Medias in This Country, and They’re Going to Elect Donald Trump

It’s often asked in my circles: Why isn’t Joe Biden getting more credit for his accomplishments? As with anything, there’s no single reason. Inflation is a factor. His age is as well. Ditto the fact that people aren’t quite yet seeing the infrastructure improvements or the lower prescription drug costs.

There is no one reason. But there is one overwhelming factor in play: the media. Or rather, the two medias. It’s very important that people understand this: We reside in a media environment that promotes—whether it intends to or not—right-wing authoritarian spectacle. At the same time, as a culture, it’s consistently obsessed with who “won the day,” while placing far less value on the fact that the civic and democratic health of the country is nurtured through practices such as deliberation, compromise, and sober governance. The result is bad for Joe Biden. But it’s potentially tragic for democracy.

Let me begin by discussing these two medias. The first, of course, is what we call the mainstream media: The New York Times, The Washington Post, the major (non-Fox) news networks, a handful of other newspapers and magazines. This has also been known as the “agenda-setting media,” because historically, that’s what they did: Whatever was the lead story in The New York Times that day filtered down, through the wire services and other delivery systems, to every newspaper and television and radio station in the United States.

Then there’s an avowedly right-wing propaganda network. This got cranked up in the 1970s, when conservatives, irate over what they (not incorrectly) saw as a strong liberal bias in the mainstream media, decided to build their own. Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post. In the 1980s, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon started The Washington Times. In the 1990s, right-wing talk radio exploded (enabled, in part, by a 2–1 decision by a judicial panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals making the Fairness Doctrine discretionary; those judges were Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork). Then the Fox News Channel was launched.

Back then, even with the launch of Fox, the mainstream media was much larger and more influential than the right-wing media. If the mainstream media was a beachball, the right-wing media was the size of a golf ball.

[Stavros]

Interesting commentary:
https://newrepublic.com/article/1756...2024-spectacle

An interesting read, from which I pluck this quote: "A media environment that doesn’t put truth above all other considerations is by definition a media environment that promotes spectacle."

Spectacle, impression management, these seem to me to dominate: they are the headlines that scream and shout that are intended to create an impression, and it doesn't matter if the facts do not support the intention. It also means that the tedious job of reporting on the implementation of policy is either ignored, when it works, or is the news when it doesn't, or doesn't seem to work. Immigration and crime are examples of the latter, inflation reduction and higher employment examples of the former.

And yet, people can tell the difference, and if it is the case that a substantial amount of voters are opposed to policy, for example on Abortion in Republican run States, then voting matters, and the ruling party could be in trouble, though one notes how Republicans -and I assume Democrats in some States too- have attempted to deal with voter diversity by diluting it, or neutering it through gerrymandered District Boundaries.

In the UK it has meant that slogans rule -'Take Back Control' was the perfect example in the Brexit campaign, implying we had lost control, thereby failing to register the actual influence the UK had had on EU policy making. 'Stop The Boats' is another, a convenient way of attacking illegal immigration by ignoring who is on those boats - 'Stop The Children' doesn't have the same effect.

But, again, there is little coherent presentation of detail in either policy formation or its implementation, and while it may often only be an impression policy has failed, on a range of issues on both sides of the Atlantic, it has. And thus, if there is a lack of detailed debate it makes that debate harder, because people respond to headlines more than details, undermining the purpose of civil society and democracy, which is to have a population engaged in the debate, inclusive, diverse and equal,

Murdoch loathes Government, he loves Markets, especially the ones he owns a large share of. It is that simple, but maybe he and his supporters should be frank about what it means -defunding the Government, scrapping the regulation of industry and business, isolating the State from international affairs.

But is this what the people want (on either side of the Atlantic)? And how will we know when we know?

[filghy2]

An intriguing article on how Trump could lose the popular vote and the electoral college but become President through a 'Contingent Election'. Scary stuff.

Here’s the scary way Trump could win without the electoral or popular vote | Stephen Marche | The Guardian

This is not new. It's essentially what they tried to do last time - find a pretext to reject the electors chosen by the voters so the President would be chosen by a state-based vote in Congress.

[Stavros]

This is not new. It's essentially what they tried to do last time - find a pretext to reject the electors chosen by the voters so the President would be chosen by a state-based vote in Congress.

I think the procedures for a 'Contingent Election' are different from what Trump tried in 2020/21, I doubt he has a clue what it is, and I don't recall seeing it material from the 'Constitutional Expert' John Eastman.

[filghy2]

The term 'contingent election' does not appear in the Constitution, but we are talking about the procedures laid out in the 12th Amendment if no candidate has an absolute majority (270+) of Electoral College votes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contingent_election

This was evidently the outcome they were trying to engineer in pressuring Mike Pence to reject the electors from the states won by Biden that they were disputing.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/05/p...ege/index.html

A first option – which the lawyers have told Trump is unlikely to succeed – is that expected objections to the Electoral College brought by Republican lawmakers would lead to so much gridlock that the contest is decided by the House of Representatives. That is viewed as a very remote possibility since the number of senators and representatives currently on board with raising objections is not nearly a majority.

More convincing to Trump has been an argument that after Pence listens to the objections, he refuses to certify electors from the six states that are in dispute: Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia.

Decertifying those six states wouldn’t make Trump the winner; instead, because neither of the candidates would meet the 270 vote threshold, Trump’s lawyers believe it would send the question to the House of Representatives. Because each state delegation (as opposed to each member) gets one vote, Trump would presumably prevail.