2020 US Election (Part Two)

[cardgame]

Ah yes, the same NYP that just torpedo'd its credibility with this National Enquirer hit piece.

He linked a different NYP hit piece. One that is not a complete fabrication like the hunter laptop one.

 

[innonimatu]

Mind you the "Steele dossier" was a collection of National Enquirer level hit pieces, had that didn't prevent the same media which now censors the NYP suspiciously electoral release from promoting them happily. After having first refused it, in some cases. It's nasty, this sausage-making.

The reason the 2018 piece seems interesting to me is that its contents are altogether plausible, knowing what is already public domain about these politician children's deals. It just goes into further detail and the names published and connections pointed out ought to be very easy to check.

 

[Estebonrober]

Mind you the "Steele dossier" was a collection of National Enquirer level hit pieces, had that didn't prevent the same media which now censors the NYP suspiciously electoral release from promoting them happily. After having first refused it, in some cases. It's nasty, this sausage-making.

The reason the 2018 piece seems interesting to me is that its contents are altogether plausible, knowing what is already public domain about these politician children's deals. It just goes into further detail and the names published and connections pointed out ought to be very easy to check.

First part is garbage there is plenty of circumstantial plus the same kind of evidence that is in your second part. . . yea they are all corrupt, so why would you repeatedly defend the more obviously corrupt party? Do you imagine your nation's politicians are not corrupt on some levels? I'm not tolerant of Democrat corruption, I'd vote for any Justice Democrat any chance I got jsut on principle of the fact that they do not take corporate bribe money.

 

[Birdjaguar]

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-n...10-16-2020/h_59c2acc5ded072efc84386de2085b7be

I think the moderator chooses the specific questions based on the topics.

Here is an article by a Republican member of the debate commission.

From the article below: "It’s also nonsense to suggest that the commission has allowed the Biden campaign to steer the final debate away from foreign policy. As the Trump campaign knows, subject matter for the debates is outside the commission’s province and is chosen solely by the moderators."

Trump’s attack on the debate commission is an attack on the election itself

Signs hang on the Belmont University building in Nashville where the second and final 2020 presidential debate is scheduled to be held Thursday. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
By John C. Danforth
Oct. 20, 2020 at 5:13 p.m. MDT
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John C. Danforth, a Republican, represented Missouri in the U.S. Senate for three terms and has served on the Commission on Presidential Debates since 1994.

Like all members of the Commission on Presidential Debates, I have maintained a strict vow of silence regarding my personal feelings about the current presidential campaign. Now, however, that President Trump and some of his ardent supporters have attacked the commission’s integrity, I feel compelled to respond.


The president’s apparent strategy is to challenge the validity of the election should he lose. We saw this strategy initially in his claims that mail-in ballots are the tools for massive election fraud. Now we see it as well in his assertion that the debates have been rigged by the commission to favor former vice president Joe Biden.

The president’s campaign attacked moderator Chris Wallace as “terrible and biased.” Its senior adviser, Steve Cortes, accused the commission of a “scheme to protect their preferred candidate,” and one of Trump’s strongest champions, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), branded the commission “a disgrace.” The claim is that the commission is composed of Democrats and never-Trump Republicans who — through their selection of moderators, their decision to make the town-hall meeting virtual, and (in the latest accusation) through the moderator’s selection of subjects for the final debate — have corruptly tilted the scale.

As for the commission’s makeup, I can only speak for myself. I am a Republican who has carried my party’s banner in six statewide elections and has supported countless Republican candidates over many years. I also have been highly critical of President Trump.

But the conclusion that any commission member would eschew fair play to push a partisan position is, to put it mildly, ironic. The same people who decline to extend the presumption of fairness to members of the commission rightly assert that Amy Coney Barrett will put aside her personal beliefs on the Supreme Court.

But more importantly, the attack is just wrong.

First, all the debate moderators the commission chose are highly professional and experienced. When the selection of the moderators was announced Sept. 2, neither campaign objected. The commission could not have anticipated that more than five weeks later, one of the moderators, Steve Scully — having been attacked by President Trump and his supporters — would reach out to a Trump critic seeking advice or that Scully would not own up to having done so. The commission relied on what had been Scully’s sterling reputation for professionalism.

The president and his supporters have charged that the commission’s purpose in deciding to conduct the town-hall debate with the candidates in remote locations was made to favor Biden. This is nonsense. (Speaking again for myself, had I wanted to help the Biden campaign, the last thing on my mind would have been to restrain the technique President Trump exhibited in the first debate.)

In fact, the commission’s decision that the town-hall debate would be virtual was made in a phone meeting where — after the president’s covid-19 diagnosis — the sole concern was the health of citizen participants and the commission’s 60-member production staff. We believed that the best way to mitigate this concern would be for the candidates to participate remotely. The result would not be ideal, but it would be similar to the countless remote meetings to which Americans have become accustomed. Our decision was endorsed by the Cleveland Clinic, the commission’s medical adviser.

It’s also nonsense to suggest that the commission has allowed the Biden campaign to steer the final debate away from foreign policy. As the Trump campaign knows, subject matter for the debates is outside the commission’s province and is chosen solely by the moderators.

Some have suggested that the Commission on Presidential Debates disband, and that in future campaigns the candidates simply negotiate the debate rules among themselves.
Good luck with that.

The first question would be, who would be parties to the negotiations and debates in addition to Democratic and Republican candidates? The Libertarians? The Green Party? Others? Then would follow other contentious matters: the number, scheduling and duration of debates, their format, locations and moderators. Etc., etc., etc. It is unimaginable that candidates left to themselves would successfully negotiate these conditions. If the commission disbands, another intermediary will have to replace it.

It is always fair to question any organization’s decisions, and the Commission on Presidential Debates is not above criticism. Some have suggested we should have postponed the town-hall debate until we were certain the president couldn’t spread the disease. Some have said we should have done better at communicating with the two campaigns. But there’s an enormous difference between criticizing good-faith efforts and accusing the commission of corrupt favoritism. The first is helpful for improving our work. The second destroys public confidence in the most basic treasure of democracy, the conduct of fair elections. The second paves the way to violence in the streets.

It is not the honor of the commission that is at stake here. What is at stake is Americans’ belief in the fairness of our presidential debates and, in turn, the presidential election. When that faith is undermined, the damage to our country is incalculable.

 

[Ajidica]

Mind you the "Steele dossier" was a collection of National Enquirer level hit pieces,

The only reason anybody remembers the "Steele dossier" is because Trump asked the FBI director for personal loyalty and then went on national television to directly contradict his own DoJ official and said Comey was fired because of "the Russia thing".
I remember at the start everyone was noting that the "Steele dossier" was a collection of completely unverified rumors and suppositions. As you have noted before, multiple 'papers of record' passed on the "Steele dossier" because they had no idea what to make of it. It was Buzzfeed, that paragon of journalistic integrity, that published the "Steele dossier" and it got wrapped up in all the stories circulating around regarding the Russians getting up to some dodgy stuff in the election. Subsequent investigation has shown how small the actual Russian operation in 2016 was, but at the time it was genuinely unknown how large and widespread it was. Couple that with Trump's strangely pro-Putin statements and financial reporting showing he/Trump Towers had strange links to Russian organized crime/intelligence figures, it was not unreasonable to wonder if there was something more substantial ongoing.
That the media by and large screwed up reporting on Trump's connections to Russia does not mean there was nothing concerning.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Here is an article by a Republican member of the debate commission.

From the article below: "It’s also nonsense to suggest that the commission has allowed the Biden campaign to steer the final debate away from foreign policy. As the Trump campaign knows, subject matter for the debates is outside the commission’s province and is chosen solely by the moderators."

Ah, so you were right.
The moderator selects the debate topics.

My apologies.

 

[Farm Boy]

Ok then I'm combining the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho into one state. fair trade

Same answer to every little hardball suggestion.

 

[Estebonrober]

Same answer to every little hardball suggestion.

Your boys get to play while the rest of us get to watch? . . . no thanks.

 

[RobAnybody]

I think there's a branding thing here in PR+DC we're missing. 50 states is a nice, round number, which most people have subsumed their whole lives. 52 can maybe be sold; 51 CANNOT. Flat out cannot in today's day & age. It's gotta be 52.

The anti-commercials with weird flags just write themselves. So, PR is a given, that could absolutely be sold to the public, but I'm not sure about DC. It almost seems to play right into the "anti" crowd" - "DC Is Supposed To Be Separate!!" will be the marketing (plus the goofy flags, you know they're coming). And without DC, which is tiny & a hard sell: "51 feels wrong" takes hold, which leads to... the Dems have squandered their good will & political capital on this (valid, but politically dead-end) issue

So why should we have 52? Don't sell me on PR. Sell me on the 52nd state. Why, other than equality, 'cause that ship ain't gonna fly in 2021 if Biden wins, should we add 2 states to the USA? Granted, I'm LARP'ing here a bitt, but how is this going to be sold to our country?

'Cause it's easy to say but is gonna be a Big F-ing Deal. Again, PR is easy, don't even focus on that. But 51 loses, 52 *can* win. So how is it marketed to the public?

 

[Farm Boy]

Your boys get to play while the rest of us get to watch? . . . no thanks.

Nah, just a vague hope all the hardballers get hurt and bleed out.

 

[Kyriakos]

Hm, any new polls of note?
And any estimate on what percentage (roughly, of course) of the expected voters already voted by mail?

Also, are there good measures taken to ensure large-scale (meaningful scale) double-voting won't take place? (given Trump instructed his flock to both mail the vote and go check if it was registered and potentially vote in person too - some magas may just try to vote twice for the hell of it; can't trust the deep state).

 

[Estebonrober]

Nah, just a vague hope all the hardballers get hurt and bleed out.

well this is definitely a possible outcome.

 

[Arwon]

Hm, any new polls of note?
And any estimate on what percentage (roughly, of course) of the expected voters already voted by mail?

Also, are there good measures taken to ensure large-scale (meaningful scale) double-voting won't take place? (given Trump instructed his flock to both mail the vote and go check if it was registered and potentially vote in person too - some magas may just try to vote twice for the hell of it; can't trust the deep state).

Electoral roll reconciliation will reveal any instances of double voting. It's embarrassingly easy to catch, even if the initial checking-off system isn't instant and electronic and able to show someone already voted when they show up a second time.

In terms of polls, the best thing to do is watch the poll aggregators like 538.

 

[Takhisis]

Fossil fuels are still necessary until we can get new systems online.

Fixed. We already can.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Too much news and none of it good from Trump.

1. For 500+ kids separated from families at border since 2016 the government has no way to find their parents.
2. Trump has a secret (as in unreported on his federal disclosure forms) bank account and company based in China and in 2017 it had $17 million in revenue of which Trump took $15 million out as cash. The source of the money has yet to be determined. The $17 N was more than the total revenue the company had over the previous 5 years.
3. Today Trump publicly ordered William Barr to indict Joe Biden before the election.

 

[Kyriakos]

Hm, well #3 is really a desperate move. Hopefully it means Trump has reports that he is bound to lose.

 

[Berzerker]

Who occupies the White House for the next four years could play a critical role in the fight against dangerous climate change, experts say. Matt McGrath weighs the likely environmental consequences of the US election.

Scientists studying climate change say that the re-election of Donald Trump could make it "impossible" to keep global temperatures in check.

Trump keeps bragging about energy independence as if he was responsible. No, it was the fracking boom under Obama and Biden. It has been argued Biden will listen to the scientists, so what were they telling him back then about climate change and fracking and was he listening?

I’m not really even sure the U.S. has had a foreign policy for almost the last thirty years. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, not as a communist state but as a recognized political entity, left a large void.

What’s been the biggest development since 1991? The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but Afghanistan is still unstable and Iraq was never a threat to U.S. hegemony in the first place.

Maybe the only other noteworthy development was slowly aligning India towards the U.S., but even that’s not thorough enough to call a policy. A better description would be a discovery of mutually-beneficial interests in light of India’s massive post-License Raj economic reforms.

I dont remember who it was, maybe Jon Stewart (no, John Oliver), but they showed a map of the Middle East with all our military bases surrounding oil supplies and Iran. I dont know if Bush 41 actually screwed up or suckered Saddam into invading Kuwait, but that sure started a chain reaction of events enlarging our footprint. Look at the push back Trump gets when he tries to end wars.

I want to hear what Biden will do with Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Iraq. If I hear anything about 'listening to the experts' I know we're either staying or going back in. We destroyed these countries and lotsa people are getting rich off it and dont wanna leave. But the Biden camp knows Americans dont want to stay so they wont tell us about their plans.

Well, we have the usual list of Paris Climate Accord, JCPOA, pulling out from the WHO, and so on. In Europe, Trump has gotten European nations seriously wondering about the future of NATO and the transatlantic alliance. France openly wondering if America can be relied on in NATO and calling for Europeans to take the lead in their own foreign policy? Fine, France is always trying to get Europe to foot the bill for their imperial adventures. Germany openly wondering if America can be relied upon? That's a whole different ballgame. America and the EU are increasingly on different tracks on key questions of international security, which when coupled with uncertainty about America from both the governmental and popular level, raises serious questions about how much effort Europe will put into maintaining the transatlantic alliance and whether its continued existence is dependent on who controls the Presidency.

In the Middle East, our policy has likewise been a mess. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem means nobody can even pretend America is a neutral party in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which increasingly cuts us out of any mutli-party talks. Constantly providing cover to Saudi Arabia, even as they chop up journalists, along with Trump's abysmal civil rights/civil society record, does no help to Arab democrats or non-Islamist parties. Our attempt to patch together an anti-Iranian alliance through some deeply unpopular ultra-conservative Gulf princes is not viable long term as it relies on propping up corrupt autocrats and literal slave-states. And then of course there was the time that uniformed US forces openly assassinated a serving, uniformed non-belligerent foreign general in a neutral third country.

In Asia, our foreign policy has been likewise rubbish. Trump's domestic policies have given the Chinese government plenty of "and you are lynching negroes" to throw at us. We condemn them on the Uighur concentration camps, they condemn our baby cages whose detainees the US argued in court we were not obliged to provide soap or toothpaste to. Chinese influence needs to be countered, but Trump's America First nonsense means it is increasingly hard to offer reasons for the other SEA countries to side with us when push comes to shove. Trump's hostility toward NATO means our security guarantees aren't worth much, while economic agreements are dodgy because of Trump's ridiculous "trade war" with China. Further, Trump's hostility toward anything to do with climate change left open a massive gap that China has stepped into. In a recent speech before the UN General Assembly, Xi made it very clear China is planning on going hard on green energy.

My God thats horrible... Couldn't he just invade a few countries instead?

Biden would have foreign policy goals largely similar to Obama: rebuilding the transatlantic alliance, multilateral agreements to make agreements more resilient, and a more sustainable policy in SEA.

Didn't Obama start several wars?

I remember at the start everyone was noting that the "Steele dossier" was a collection of completely unverified rumors and suppositions.

Which was used by Obama's FBI to get a fisa warrant to spy on Trump

 

[Farm Boy]

Having destroyed several countries, it would seem to be our onus to offer up Iowa farm boys and Californians/New Yorkers/Pennsylvanians/Georgians/whatevers of comparable type for fatal doom in the various "horsehockyholes" of the world until we can generally build a nation for our allies in each situation or import them all here.

Abandoning the Kurds(again) is a failure. Abandoning the Armenians(again) is a failure. Everything else is just prevarication, self-interest, or "hardball."

 

[Berzerker]

I like the Kurds but they dont get to keep land belonging to people who fled our war in Syria

 

[Farm Boy]

Our war in Syria didn't start the claims to land. But if you're going to get involved and kill until a resolution, you're involved. Or you're faithless.

That's actually a really good word for The West, these days.

'sic 'em: treacherous, disloyal, untrustworthy. Useless New York and Chicago presidents, in this regard.