2020 American Political Scene

[Double Edge]

Given their OPOPBJs, which was never about electing Trump, to cause ruckus within the US political system, they've more than succeeded in spades and cause headaches and heartaches years after the election.

That can only happen if Trump won. Some how he did.

He's anti-establishment, that's enough to cause a ruckus.

My point is they could not pull it off in Europe despite trying in several countries.

So it's a stretch to think they can pull it off in the US.

[Double Edge]

I wonder how Trump's followers will spin this one. Who am I kidding, they don't even give a shit lol.

Why it said so in the article...did you read it : P

Notably, even with Republicans highly dissatisfied with the state of the nation, they continue to overwhelmingly approve of the job Trump is doing as president (91%). Consequently, their dissatisfaction may have more to do with what is going on in the country -- the coronavirus and its effect on economic activity, the focus on matters of race -- than the administration's handling of it. To some degree, it could also reflect Republicans' awareness of pre-election polls showing Trump trailing Democrat Joe Biden by a significant margin.

There's no sugarcoating the no sitting president winning re-election on the back of a bad economy though.

I'm saying i don't think his handling of the pandemic will be a factor here because you're still left with the same or worse economy.

One that was not of his own doing but was foisted on him.

He'll hold onto this base. Whether the fence sitters follow remains to be seen.

[Officer of Engineers]

That can only happen if Trump won. Some how he did.

They've succeeded before the Americans went to the ballot. Bernie was mighty pissed what the DNC did. What happened after the elections was just icing on the cake.

[Albany Rifles]

but not just that. the parties need more avenues for beneficial cooperation. the do-gooders whom got rid of pork barrel spending thought they were making Congress a cleaner place, but that also means that the only way for Congressional members to distinguish themselves is through political theater.

I remember screaming at the TV when "the bridge to nowhere" was all the rage. You idiots! Once man's pork is another man's civil project. It was how our infrastructure got fixed.

And the very thing which pays for those improvements....the federal gas tax....has been stuck at $.018.3 for 27 years...thank you Newt & Grover Norquist, may you both rot in hell.

This broke the political social contract and it has gone to hell ever since.

[DOR]

Why it said so in the article...did you read it : P



There's no sugarcoating the no sitting president winning re-election on the back of a bad economy though.

2012.

Economic growth in the six quarters to Q-3 2012 was 2.0%, inflation 2.8%, unemployment 8.5%, real wages falling 1.7% p.a.

Barack Hussein Obama II was reelected.

[TopHatter]

'America Doesn't Have Kings': GOP Senator Slams Back At Trump Attack

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) snapped back at an imperious attack by President Donald Trump on Monday, angrily reminding him that “America doesn’t have kings.”

Trump accused Sasse earlier Monday of going “rogue” after the Republican senator harshly criticized the president for signing four new executive actions Saturday that the senator said overstepped Trump’s authority. Sasse called them “unconstitutional slop.”

Trump gloated that Sasse “needed my support and endorsement in order to get the Republican nomination” in his state.

“I understand that you’re mad,” Sasse politely began in a statement on his campaign Twitter account. But then he unleashed this: “No president — whether named Obama or Trump or Biden or AOC — has unilateral power to rewrite immigration law or to cut taxes or to raise taxes. This is because America doesn’t have kings.”

He also snapped that he “never asked” for Trump’s endorsement — “nor did I use it in the campaign.”

Trump’s executive actions included deferring the payroll tax that exclusively funds Social Security and Medicare, and cutting the enhanced unemployment benefit from $600 to $400 a week (provided states pay $100 of that). Sasse slammed the move in a statement as “unconstitutional,” adding that Trump “does not have the power to unilaterally rewrite the payroll tax law.”

Trump threatened to “terminate” the payroll tax if he is reelected, which would eliminate funding for Social Security and Medicare, America’s bedrock safety-net programs. Only Congress can cut taxes.

Trump’s executive actions appear to be frozen in legal limbo and ambiguous language.

Governors are also complaining that their cash-strapped states can’t afford the extra $100 a week in unemployment benefits that Trump promised on their behalf. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) compared the extra burden to “handing a drowning man an anchor.”

Trump’s measures are partly a gambit to get the Democrats and Republicans back to the table to negotiate a larger COVID-19 package. But that hasn’t yet worked.

In fact, Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman speculated that Trump “blew up” that possibility with the executive actions he signed during his golf weekend.
__________

[TopHatter]

I (Still) Believe the President, and in the President
By George Conway

I believe the president Made America Great Again. I believe we need him reelected to Make America Great Again Again.

I believe Joe Biden is “Sleepy” and “weak.” I believe Biden could “hurt God” and the Bible.

I believe that if Biden is elected, there will be “no religion, no anything,” and he would confiscate all guns, “immediately and without notice.” He would “abolish” “our great,” “beautiful suburbs,” not to mention “the American way of life.” There would be “no windows, no nothing” in buildings.

I believe the news media would have “no ratings” and “will go down along with our great USA!” if the president loses — and that this would be bad even though the media is fake.

I believe it’s normal for the president to say “Yo Semites” and “Yo Seminites,” “Thigh Land,” “Minne-a-napolis,” “toe-tally-taria-tism,” “Thomas Jeffers” and “Ulyss-eus S. Grant.” I believe it’s Biden who’s cognitively impaired.

I believe the president “aced” a “very hard” impairment test, and that his “very surprised” doctors found this “unbelievable.” I believe it was “amazing” he remembered five words, such as “person, woman, man, camera, TV” — in correct order. I believe he took the SAT himself.

I believe the president has “a natural ability,” like his “great, super-genius uncle” from MIT, which is why he understands “that whole world” of virology and epidemiology.

So I believed the president in January and February when he said covid-19 was “totally under control,” that it was Democrats’ “new hoax,” and that he was “not at all” worried about a pandemic. I believed him in March when he said he “felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

I believe the president and the doctor who believes in demon sperm and the medical use of space alien DNA, and not Anthony S. Fauci, who’s an “alarmist” and “wrong.”

I believe the president’s suggestions that physicians should try injecting patients with household disinfectants, and shining ultraviolet light inside their bodies, make perfect sense.

I believe the “books” and “manuals,” if someone would just read them, say “you can test too much” for covid-19. I believe we now have 5 million cases because we test so much, and that the president was right to slow testing down, unless he was kidding — in which case he was right not to.

I believe that the president has done a tremendous job fighting the virus — and that he shouldn’t “take responsibility at all”— even though about 160,000 Americans have died. I believe the virus “is what it is.”

I believe it isn’t racist to call the coronavirus “kung flu” or “the China Virus.” It isn’t racially divisive to say Black Lives Matter is a “symbol of hate,” to celebrate Confederate generals as part of our “Great American Heritage,” or to share video of someone shouting “white power,” which, like displaying the Confederate flag, is “freedom of speech.”

I believe that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” and that the president was just stating a fact, not making a threat, when he said that. I believe it was fine for federal law enforcement to fire tear gas and rubber pellet grenades at protesters so that the president could pose with a Bible in front of a church.

I believe that a 75-year-old protester in Buffalo may have been “an ANTIFA provocateur” who intentionally cracked his own skull in a “set up.”

I believe Rep. John Lewis made a “big mistake” not attending the president’s inauguration. I believe the president has done more for Blacks than any other president — perhaps even Abraham Lincoln, who “did good” although the “end result” was “questionable,” and certainly more than Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which hasn’t “worked out” so well.

I believe the president has been treated worse than Lincoln, even though Lincoln was assassinated. I believe the president should be added to Mount Rushmore, pronto.

I believe it’s normal that the president wished his friend Ghislaine Maxwell “well” and good luck,” even though his administration charged her with sex trafficking teenage girls for another presidential friend, Jeffrey Epstein, whom the president says may have been killed in federal custody.

I believe the president rightly said of Maxwell, “Let them prove somebody was guilty.” I believe we don’t need evidence against former acting attorney general Sally Yates, because she was “part of the greatest political crime of the Century,” about which “ObamaBiden knew EVERYTHING!” And I believe it was fine for the president to baselessly suggest that a television host committed murder since the host said mean things about the president.

I believe that the reports Russia paid bounties to have U.S. soldiers killed, and that the president was briefed on it, are another “Fake News Media Hoax,” and that such intelligence never reached the president’s desk, even though his administration said otherwise.

I believe absentee voting, where voters mail in their ballots, is good, and that mail-in voting, where voters mail in their ballots, is totally different, and bad — and will result in “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election” in history. Except in Florida, where absentee and mail-in voting are the same and both good, “because Florida has got a great Republican governor.”

I believe we should “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote” — but that “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!”

I believe the president won the popular vote in 2016 “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” I believe he shouldn’t accept the election results if he loses in November.
________

This man currently commands the unblinking, uncaring, loyalty of 35% of Americans.

How can so many people close their eyes, compromise their morals and sacrifice their self-respect to such an obvious fraud. How? I'd just like to know how they're able to do these things in the face of all of the above. Or even just a tiny portion of the above. How?

[Albany Rifles]

The nightly dinners in the Conway household must be LIT!

[TopHatter]

Sean Hannity conducted a phone interview with Donald Trump and foolishly asked him a direct question. The very stable genius immediately ran off the road into a ditch of idiotic rambling.

At 1:17 in the YouTube link below:

Hannity: "Your reaction to her [Kamala Harris] attacks on him [Joe Biden] on the issue of race?"

Trump's reaction to this softball question was to eat the softball:

"Well first of all what you said about Russia the New York Times is fake reporting, it's a fake newspaper as far as I'm concerned, and er, Washington Post likewise I always try and figure out which is worse. And then you have CNN, and frankly ABC, CBS, NBC, and but you have some good ones in between, locals are great, locals we do great in, er, I couldn't possibly be here, and on, er, social media, I don't, does anybody do better in terms of er people watching and the importance of social media is so we get the word out but you know the sad thing is you have so many incredibly talented writers, journalists, frankly including yourself cuz I consider you really a journalist to, to a very, to the largest extent the job you've done cuz you got the Russia hoax correct, and your people that came on that show night after night including by the way, er, our great Congressman, and, and Senators, and Senators, you had John Kennedy on tonight you have a lot of em on, but, a lotta people got it right, and a lot of our Congress, and, and Senate, they got it right, and, they got it wrong and they got Pulitzer Prizes the Pulitzer Prize is worthless as far as I'm concerned because when you have the Maggie Habermans getting a Pulitzer Prize and she got it all wrong she doesn't I haven't spoken to her in forever, she's like my biographer, like she knows everything about me she knows nothing about me, and they talk about they have sources they don't have sources they're made up they make em up in their mind they have no sources I know when there are sources but, if you look at the Times and I guess the Washington Post they got Pulitzer Prizes and they were totally wrong. And they got em I guess before the end result. And there was no collusion, and now this thing turns out to be a total hoax and now it finds out that we caught Obama, Biden, er, that's why I didn't think that Susan Rice could get it cuz she's part of this whole, er, illegal thing that happened which is one of the worst perhaps the worst, political scandal in the history of our country, and they got caught, now let's see what happens but they're caught red-handed, and, er, but these writers, the writers got Pulitzer Prizes, and that shows you a Pulitzer Prize is worthless and frankly you ought to start a petition to return the Pulitzer prize cuz they were all wrong, they were wrong on the, on the whole subject of, Russia Russia Russia it was made up, fabricated, it was a crime that was committed, and you look at Hillary Clinton where she paid for the fake dossier and now the dossier is proven to be totally fake, it's a disgrace what happened and no other president should have to go through it Sean."

Pretty sure we should've taken Grandpa's car keys away years ago....

[astralis]

you know, I thought that Palin was about as incoherent as they come -- and then along came our current President.

[TopHatter]

you know, I thought that Palin was about as incoherent as they come -- and then along came our current President.

Palin is like Winston Churchill compared to Trump, and apparently a decent enough human being to wish Kamala Harris well and give her some sincere and meaningful advice.

[Bigfella]

Palin was the 'gateway drug', Trump is the hard stuff....and his supporters are snorting like there is no tomorrow.

[DOR]

you know, I thought that Palin was about as incoherent as they come -- and then along came our current President.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the GOP.
Scraping the bottom of the barrel since barrels were invented!

[TopHatter]

Trump has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, says leading psychoanalyst

A leading psychoanalyst and clinical professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine has claimed that president Donald Trump suffers from “narcissistic personality disorder”.

Dr John Zinner, the former head of the Unit on Family Therapy Studies at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), made the claim in an interview with Yale forensic psychiatrist Bandy X Lee for Raw Story.

During the interview, that was published on Tuesday, Dr Lee asked the psychoanalyst what he thought of the claims made by the president’s niece Dr Mary L Trump about her uncle’s mental health.

Dr Trump, a clinical psychologist, claimed that Mr Trump is a “narcissist,” in her memoir, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, that was released in June.

Dr Zinner, who researched narcissistic disorders during his time at the NIMH told Dr Lee that he agrees with the diagnosis.

“We are being struck by a perfect storm, a combination of a deadly pandemic combined with an utter failure in leadership by the very person who should have been in charge of preventing this terrible national emergency,” Dr Zinner said.

“Donald Trump has failed us because he is, as he has always been, incompetent, and he suffers from extremely severe mental disorders, which render him incapable of attending to any issue beyond his own personal need for adulation.

“The mental condition he suffers most from is formally known as a severe instance of narcissistic personality disorder,” he added.

Dr Zinner said that the disorder “is the failure in childhood and beyond to develop an inner sense of worth or self-esteem,” and added that it “makes one’s worth entirely dependent upon admiration from others.”

In 2017, Dr Zinner claimed that the president’s mental health posed an “existential threat” to the world as he has the ability to launch nuclear weapons at any time.

“[He] has a particular kind of character that’s very well known, especially by psychoanalytically orientated mental health people,” Dr Zinner said about the president in 2017.

“What it involves is a fundamental self-esteem problem; an insecure self-esteem, side by side with a sense of grandiosity. So the person has a very contradictory image of themselves,” he added.

Dr Zinner did not diagnose the president with anything specific in 2017, but he is now among 37 other mental health professionals who have speculated on the state of Mr Trump’s mental health, following the release of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, edited by Dr Lee.

Many of the long-standing claims made by Dr Zinner and Dr Lee about the president’s mental health have drawn judgment from some in the psychiatric establishment.

The American Psychiatric Association states it is unethical for members to speculate about the mental health of a public figure they have not personally examined, under the Goldwater rule.

However, Dr Zinner claims that the rule does not apply to the president, and he told Dr Lee that “the basic guidelines for the ethical canons says that a psychiatrist’s responsibility, ‘first and foremost,’ is to his or her patients and to society and to his colleagues and himself, in that order. It does not include a public figure.”

In 2016, after multiple journalists asked for the organisation to comment on Mr Trump’s mental health, the American Psychological Association president Susan McDaniel said that the ruling does apply to public figures and added that she and her colleagues could not comment.

She added: “Our Code of Ethics clearly warns psychologists against diagnosing any person, including public figures, whom they have not personally examined.”
_________
But but but the GOLDWATER "RULE"...!!!

Let's see, a psychologist sees the average patient for a couple hours every month, or every couple of weeks. But let's say it's every week.

Donald Trump is on display, raw and uncensored, practically 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And has been for years. Decades, even.

There's no comparison between the two.

[GVChamp]

GVChamp,



most people will blame the incumbent President and the holders of the legislative majorities for failings...which is why Dems got it in the neck in 2010, and then in 2014. (and of course, why the GOP will very likely get it in the neck this year.)

I highly doubt that had the GOP held its nose and let, say, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins vote for it to give the ACA the fig leaf of being "bipartisan", it would have spelled political disaster for the GOP.



this is the argument that political victory trumps norms...pun intended.

there's "standing up for your principles" and there's "playing dirty"; these are two different ideas.

Gingrich decided that this was one and the same, and he's opened a Pandora's Box. REDMAP and Mitch McConnell followed. the GOP has burned down norms and played "hardball" to compensate for weakening political power; they've benefited richly from it.

as I said, that's why I sincerely hope the next Dem Congress and President blow up the legislative filibuster, and then jam through the statehood of DC, Puerto Rico and maybe even Guam. the GOP must be made to understand that weakening norms is a -double-edged sword-.



indeed-- the spigot of dark money has severely weakened the power of the party to exercise control.

but not just that. the parties need more avenues for beneficial cooperation. the do-gooders whom got rid of pork barrel spending thought they were making Congress a cleaner place, but that also means that the only way for Congressional members to distinguish themselves is through political theater.

I don't think Olympia Snowe flipping on one high-stakes vote is going to substantially change the narrative in the 2010s. The attitude expressed was that the ACA was a Republican plan taken whole cloth from the Heritage Foundation and implemented by Mitt Romney and the GOP was wrong to offer the slightest bit of opposition to it. That's political theater. Regardless, Snowe flipping is not bipartisanship, it's just a fig leaf.

REDMAP is Red Meat. It's a long-existing political game in most states that needs to be solved by having truly independent redistricting. States like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were already gerry-mandered in a GOP leaning direction back in the 2000s. Adding WI and NC and FL to the mix in the 2010s certainly doesn't help the Democrats, but it's not new. The GOP were more effective because they picked up some states in the wave election, and the Democrats have done their damndest to alienate rural white voters in a way that is going to further reduce their efficiency. But it's not new, and it's definitely not Gingrich's fault, and the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for their shitty local campaigning for most of the decade. Sorry you can't keep running Russ Feingold and Evan Bayh and get free progressive Senate votes. Adapt your strategy instead of rerunning the same morons. See Joe Manchin.