Moderators: dakomish23, mpharris36, j4remi, NoLayupRule, GONYK, Jeff Van Gully, HerSports85, Deeeez Knicks
SmoothLefty21 wrote:For a long time I thought Trump was a lock to get a second term but man this dude is going down in flames. Maybe the silent majority will save him again but he is coming out with terrible look after terrible look.
K-DOT wrote:SmoothLefty21 wrote:For a long time I thought Trump was a lock to get a second term but man this dude is going down in flames. Maybe the silent majority will save him again but he is coming out with terrible look after terrible look.
Dude lost by 3 million votes last time. Only Republican to win the popular vote in the last 27 years was Bush in 04
It ain't a majority, and ain't nothing silent about them.
Jimmit79 wrote:Yea RJ played well he was definitely the x factor
K-DOT wrote:SmoothLefty21 wrote:For a long time I thought Trump was a lock to get a second term but man this dude is going down in flames. Maybe the silent majority will save him again but he is coming out with terrible look after terrible look.
Dude lost by 3 million votes last time. Only Republican to win the popular vote in the last 30 years was Bush in 04
It ain't a majority, and ain't nothing silent about them.
SmoothLefty21 wrote:K-DOT wrote:SmoothLefty21 wrote:For a long time I thought Trump was a lock to get a second term but man this dude is going down in flames. Maybe the silent majority will save him again but he is coming out with terrible look after terrible look.
Dude lost by 3 million votes last time. Only Republican to win the popular vote in the last 30 years was Bush in 04
It ain't a majority, and ain't nothing silent about them.
The phrase "silent majority" doesn't mean a literal majority.
GONYK wrote:Trump nearly got impeached trying to kneecap Biden over Hunter last summer. It didn't stick and now Biden is kicking his face in.
If it hasn't worked for the last 15 months, what makes Trump think it's going to stick in the last 500 hours before the election?
j4remi wrote:KnicksGod wrote:Greenwald is sort of fascinating. He seems to be openly rooting for Biden to lose. There's no way to really justify that. Democracy is a compromise, that much is not going to change really. When the demographics change and attitudes change (or some combo), then you can go more left. Or maybe there's a reasonable deal to be made with the Lincoln Project folks, as much as he reviles them.
He doesn't own goodwill or ideas. Trump is a fire that you have to put out. And he didn't come about because the left wasn't far enough left ... I know some think that but I just think that's not the right lesson to learn from 2016.
I realize many may not agree with this. I'm not even moderate really. But I don't think you can lose sight of some indicators or realism, and if that makes me moderate, okay.
The thing about Greenwald to remember is that he was attacked in bad faith over the Edward Snowden leaks. THAT'S where the "Russian agent" crap began, NOT 2016 and its aftermath.
Greenwald went from being welcome on MSNBC because his critique of American imperialism went after Bush. To getting kicked out of those circles because he kept his critiques about American imperialism when Obama took over. His principles didn't change. Then he helped break a major story about mass surveillance. They painted him a Russian operative over revealing real infringement on citizens' privacy. He wasn't attacked for lying, he was attacked for revealing the truth. Here's a long story that details the whole thing, but I want to grab some excerpts that might help explain why his point of view has become so jaded and negative toward the Dems.
Again bare in mind that he got this treatment because what he revealed was real and the article in earlier points goes into detail about how he protected the information and got it to journalists and organizations to properly handle it.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/snowden-and-greenwald-the-men-who-leaked-the-secrets-104970/In August, Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, was detained at London’s Heathrow Airport over the Snowden matter. Miranda was on his way home to Rio after a week’s vacation in Berlin, where he had visited Poitras, who’d given him some of the Snowden documents to bring back to Greenwald. As he was entering the transit lounge, he was stopped by British police. The authorities seized the materials, as well as Miranda’s laptop, cellphone and other electronic devices, and demanded passwords for the encrypted electronics. They detained and interrogated him for nine hours, before finally allowing him to continue on to Brazil.The question is whether Greenwald is considered a threat by the U.S. government. While he is certainly doing better than Snowden, Greenwald too, as Radack says, is “free but not free,” living comfortably in Rio, but unsure when he will be able to come home. Though Attorney General Eric Holder recently said that “I’m not sure there is a basis for prosecution,” Greenwald isn’t reassured. He believes it unlikely that he’d be hauled off a plane and arrested at immigration – if only for the negative press that would cause – but there’s no way to know. “They could indict you in secret and just seal it, but there’s no way to ever make them tell you one way or the other if they intend to arrest you. So you could theoretically be in legal limbo forever.”Snowden, Greenwald says, has become “a huge celebrity” in Russia, where people muse about his whereabouts, wondering about his next move. Russian paparazzi, frustrated in their attempts to find him, have taken to selling fake pictures of Snowden shopping at the supermarket. “He’s like Elvis,” Greenwald says. But he’s still in Russia. “I think the U.S. actually wants him in Russia because that’s what lets them demonize him.” And demonizing him is important, he adds. “If a whistle-blower becomes a hero, people start thinking, ‘Wow, the stuff he saw must have really been awful for him to go and risk his life and blow the whistle.’ But if you get to say, ‘He’s crazy, he’s unstable, he’s a Russian spy,’ it de-legitimizes the premise of the whole act, which is that he saw something so fundamentally wrong that his conscience demanded that he do it.”
The reason I bring all this up is because, when Greenwald fails to vet Guccifer later on and when he takes on a "they're just fearmongering with the Russia stuff" stance; it's not because he's a Russian plant. It's because he broke a major news story and that sort of bad faith attack targeted him directly. People he cared about were harassed and detained. He's skeptical of all the Russia stuff because he's been a victim of false accusations relating to Russia.
Now...does that vindicate him of shoddy missteps after the Snowden fallout? Hell no. Do I agree with his stances? Nah, I think he's gone off the rails. But I also think that the push to delegitimize his entire career is the second best example of how Manufacturing Consent really does function that I can call to mind (the coup in Bolivia is just incredibly perfect as an example so Greenwald/Snowden takes second place).
It's also worth noting that Greenwald continues to be outspoken against fascist behavior when he's not caught up in his own biases. The Bolsonaro government tried to target him as a criminal for his work earlier THIS year. This is a guy who has been targeted by multiple governments from both the liberal and conservative sides of things.
If we were to look at actual contributions to society from career beginning to now Greenwald >>> The Lincoln Project even with his more recent misgivings and failings. The Bush cronies cashing in on Trump hate while they set themselves up to either steal the Democratic party's center or jump right back in to fighting the Dems with better data on how to trick them is probably the most annoying part of this entire election season for me.
That's a thread worth reading...those dudes are opportunists and I can't stand how often I have to hear BS about them just because they know how to play the game in a way someone like Greenwald refused to.
j4remi wrote:robillionaire wrote:GONYK wrote:Trump nearly got impeached trying to kneecap Biden over Hunter last summer. It didn't stick and now Biden is kicking his face in.
If it hasn't worked for the last 15 months, what makes Trump think it's going to stick in the last 500 hours before the election?
idk they have to try whatever hail mary they can
people are literally dying and unemployed nobody cares about hunter biden
Literally ANYTHING they can throw at the wall. The GOP in California committing voter fraud to prove voter fraud exists is one of the wildest stories I've seen in a while but I'm legitimately concerned at how far the GOP will go to try and invalidate mail-in ballots (already submitted mine but it's Jersey so I'm good).
stuporman wrote:
Let's not ignore the looming homeless crisis as soon as the eviction moratorium ends because millions will owe more than they can pay with little to no income and no savings. Think about a January in the middle of winter and twindemic with millions of people getting kicked out of their homes.
KnicksGod wrote:It’s powerful and dangerous how social media metastasizes propaganda, but to be expected. RealGM the only outlet dedicated to real truth.
SmoothLefty21 wrote:K-DOT wrote:SmoothLefty21 wrote:For a long time I thought Trump was a lock to get a second term but man this dude is going down in flames. Maybe the silent majority will save him again but he is coming out with terrible look after terrible look.
Dude lost by 3 million votes last time. Only Republican to win the popular vote in the last 30 years was Bush in 04
It ain't a majority, and ain't nothing silent about them.
The phrase "silent majority" doesn't mean a literal majority.
?Phish Tank wrote:fuq NBC, especially Chuck Todd.
Also fuq Axios, Maggie Haberman, and Politico.
Expressing concern about voter fraud and disenfranchisement, Fitton called on the audience to find a way to prevent mail-in ballots from being sent to voters. “We need to stop those ballots from going out, and I want the lawyers here to tell us what to do,” said Fitton, whose organization is a tax-exempt charity. “But this is a crisis that we’re not prepared for. I mean, our side is not prepared for.”
At the February meetings, attendees discussed plans for seeking an advantage in the upcoming vote. Two said the right will begin “ballot harvesting,” a controversial technique that involves the collection and delivery of sealed absentee ballots from churches and other institutions.
“And so our organization is going to be harvesting ballots in churches,” he said. “We’re going to be specifically going in not only to White evangelical churches, but into Hispanic and Asian churches, and collecting those ballots.”
Jimmit79 wrote:Yea RJ played well he was definitely the x factor
Clyde_Style wrote:stuporman wrote:
Let's not ignore the looming homeless crisis as soon as the eviction moratorium ends because millions will owe more than they can pay with little to no income and no savings. Think about a January in the middle of winter and twindemic with millions of people getting kicked out of their homes.
Trump will have produced the greatest tidal wave of evictions and homelessness imaginable. This is getting really ugly fast.
Biden's going to have to explode the national debt to bail out millions of people from this situation. Trump won't do it, but Biden will be forced to by circumstances. Some of the Euro countries pretty much did it pre-emptively and nobody got tossed into the street because they couldn't make rent. And that was smart, because it is better for their economies to have people housed and stable and capable of working while preventing defaults on mortgages.
? stuporman wrote:Clyde_Style wrote:stuporman wrote:
Let's not ignore the looming homeless crisis as soon as the eviction moratorium ends because millions will owe more than they can pay with little to no income and no savings. Think about a January in the middle of winter and twindemic with millions of people getting kicked out of their homes.
Trump will have produced the greatest tidal wave of evictions and homelessness imaginable. This is getting really ugly fast.
Biden's going to have to explode the national debt to bail out millions of people from this situation. Trump won't do it, but Biden will be forced to by circumstances. Some of the Euro countries pretty much did it pre-emptively and nobody got tossed into the street because they couldn't make rent. And that was smart, because it is better for their economies to have people housed and stable and capable of working while preventing defaults on mortgages.
You mean more than the ten trillion plus that Trump has already exploded the debt for the benefit of the wealthy and corporations?
Here's a secret about 'national debt'... as a country that prints it's own money which happens to also be the world reserve currency the national debt is insignificant and that 'debt' point only serves to be used as a political ploy by whoever wants to push a narrative with it.
I've been listening to some very well educated economists the past couple years to get a better understanding of macro economics and they say some very interesting things that aren't standard mainstream talking points or concepts.
For one thing the whole currency system is a big 0... meaning the 'national debt' is merely a 'credit' elsewhere. Where? In our economy. Every dollar of national debt is public wealth and a dollar working in the economy so to erase the debt it needs to be taken from the populous. The national budget doesn't operate like personal or business budget.
The reason for taxes is taught to us as a curb inflation because too many dollars chasing goods and services will drive up prices. Except that hasn't been happening for...um.... the whole existence of the Federal Reserve Bank. The only inflation in the US came from scarcity of raw materials or supply chain disruption.
Taxes don't pay for government services..... let me repeat that in bold TAXES DON'T PAY FOR GOVERNMENT SERVICES. They can do anything they want as far as expenditures and programs regardless of the tax money that is collected. Expenditures happen before and don't rely on taxes but what they pay for can either help or hurt an economy, not whether it is 'debt'.
There are a number of reasons why inflation doesn't effect the US, one I already mentioned about global reserve currency but another is globalization itself. The few things that cannot be cheaply outsourced is real estate, equities and to a degree health care which is why those things are inflating in prices.
The government can bailout the people directly, back rent & mortgages, college debt even cash right into their accounts month after month for years or permanently if they wanted....without relying on 'taxes' to pay for it.
All of this demand side funding would not just make everyone's lives better immediately and in the long run it would create so much economic activity plus an increase in innovation and GDP there would be another 'new deal' boom for decades.
Believe it or not they don't want that, they want 90%+ of the population struggling to survive day to day always on the edge of calamity. They do this because they want to control people, that fragility allows them to manipulate people into voting them into power again and again.
The top small percentage will make their wealth either way and they keep everybody else under their thumb so they won't ever be challenged. This is why they don't want widespread economic prosperity because when people are suffering and struggling they can't change anything.
This isn't new.... it's been going on for thousands of years. We just have fancier gadgets and tools now but it's the same primitive ways.