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I agree mostly. I do think the state of the union ends up mostly washing out. People have short attention spans and tire of scandals unless there are significant updates. The state of the union, Gaza, and 1000 other things will either be forgotten or have far less importance to voters by election day. Republicans can't really run on the Gaza situation because they're all for Israel steamrolling through there at any cost. 7 months from now its u likely to have much, if any, impact.
Abortion and the economy will be the 2 biggest factors in this election. The economy is strong fundamentally but people are still not comfortable with the combination of inflation and shrinkflation we're seeing. Abortion, though, is still killing the GOP. They lost a state seat special election in Alabama by 25 points in a district that Trump won and went +7 to the GOP in 2022 by heavily focusing on reproductive rights. |
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I really don't think those issues will go away. And I really think Democrats are making a huge mistake assuming that everyone is just going to come back to the table at election time. I'm sure some will, but I think they are vastly underestimating how many people are angry with Biden and his hard right shift and continuation of unpopular policies. Repeatedly antagonizing your base seems like a bad strategy. Maybe they have internal data telling them things are great. Maybe there is a plan to abandon Michigan because they think they can win North Carolina with these policies instead (they did think they could win Georgia in 2020 when most people didn't think they could). And maybe they think there are enough never-Trumpers to make up for all the people they are losing. But sure seems to me like a campaign that is fucking up bad (see their immigration stunt) and will need to pull out some excuses for why they botched another election to Donald Trump of all people. |
Here is how Biden is going to be haunted over the next 9 months. We're going to keep seeing stories like this pop up every week. They can't ban every social media site posting them like they want to with TikTok. This isn't a war that will end next week, it's going to go on till November and Netanyahu will do everything in his power to make Biden look bad.
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Joe Lieberman has died. He was one of the biggest names behind the "No Labels" party, who can't seem to find anyone interested in running for them.
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Our local news said he was 94. I about choked. But no, he was about Biden's age.
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He had a fall. That is just an example of how quickly someone of Biden or Trump's age can go down from something as simple as a fall.
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I'm pretty sure my parents bought their retirement house because the realtor told them that Joe Lieberman's wife's parents were a previous owner. She did grow up there in Gardner, MA, but, otherwise, unsubstantiated.
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That did surprise me so googling said 82. |
He was an enormous piece of shit.
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Y'all do realize that P. Diddy having his houses raided for sex trafficking almost guarantees he is going to be Trump's running mate, right?
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Diddy do it?
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Reaching the point where Trump would be a better choice in terms of foreign policy and at least slowing down genocide than Biden. Still think he'd allow a lot, but he understands the situation much better than Biden.
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So ignore all the other damage he will do? Beyond that, Israel won't listen to him anymore than they listen to Biden. You want them to listen, cut off aid until they allow complete aid and quit killing civilians.
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Israel absolutely listens when you turn off the money spigot. HW and Reagan did it and got what they wanted. Joe being a feckless pussy doesn't change that reality.
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We already know what Trump's foreign policy would be. It would be doing what Putin wants the U.S. to do. Given that you seem totally fine with Putin being allowed to do what he wants to do, RM, I could see how you would come up with such a ridiculous statement.
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I'm not fine with what Putin is doing. I just don't think we should be sending hundreds of billions in weapons for an unwinnable war. Also think the potential blowback of sending hundreds of billions in weapons to a poor country with extremely far-right militias and little oversight is a recipe for disaster (not to mention entering a proxy war with a nuclear power). Have a feeling we'll be seeing those weapons end up in some sketchy hands down the road. You'd think people would realize this after the other dozen or so times this strategy blew up in our face, but maybe this time is different. Trump sucks and all but his foreign policy is much better. It'd keep us out of nevernding conflict in Ukraine and save hundreds of billions. Plus he at least seems to have a line with Israel committing genocide that Joe doesn't. |
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From the first Trump Administration, a short-list:
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I would add legitimizing the Taliban and inviting them to talks at Camp David to that list.
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Yeah, Trump was pretty bad and still much better than Biden's foreign policy. That should tell you something. |
I mean, that's the short list.
The fact of the matter is that the first Trump Administration's foreign policy more-or-less completely consisted of delivering on the hopes & dreams of autocrats everywhere, but especially those who had bankrolled TrumpCo over the years (Russia, though much of that was money laundering) or bankrolled Jared Kushner during the administration (Saudi Arabia) or allowed Ivanka to make money (China, granting IP rights), while simultaneously alienating long-standing U.S. allies. If that's what constitues a "much better" foreign policy, then at least be honest about it. And let's not forget that part of the problem with Israel right now is down to the fact that Netanyahu has been supported and emboldened for years by the same evangelical right donors that are also Trump's most fervent supporters. To think that he's magically going to bring Netanyahu to heel is fantasy, magical thinking. He'll do whatever 2025's version of Sheldon Adelson wants him to do in Israel. Or be persuaded to let Israel sweep Gaza off the map so he can get in on the seaside real estatement investment opportunities that his son-in-law talked about. |
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You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. |
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As bad as the Taliban is, they're actually the more moderate group in the country. Beats supporting the absolute psycho Salafists and some of those warlords. |
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Taliban edict to resume stoning women to death met with horror | Taliban | The Guardian How are the other groups worse? |
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Worth noting that most of those things you mentioned, Biden supports. Increase defense funding, drone strikes, West Bank settlements, weapons to the Saudis, betraying the Kurds, and the embrace of war crimes. On the others, he hasn't cared enough to change them. On top of it, Biden is spearheading a genocide in Gaza where even our own citizens are being executed by the Israeli government. Netanyahu is openly mocking him on a daily basis it seems. One of the lowest points in American foreign policy history that will have repercussions for the rest of our lives. The Ukraine War has cost hundreds of billions and ended up with us being less safe and Ukraine still losing (still too cowardly to implement and act on any sanctions that may harm wealthy people). The Saudis embarrass him a few times a year for fun. Even Sisi in Egypt has gotten in on that. We've had some terrible foreign policy Presidents in our country, but he has to be up there as one of the weakest. Being subservient to tiny ethnostates and authoritarian regimes to the point that he sides with them over the deaths of his own citizens. |
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Read up on Salafi jihadism. They view the Taliban as fake Muslims who are too secular. They're the ones that just shot up that concert hall in Russia. As wild as it is, they're far more fucked up than the Taliban and believe their cause should be global. |
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Really? Here's my list, again:
Which of those does Biden support? |
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So you're saying he'll just continue on doing what Biden is doing? Also, drop the "it's evangelicals causing this" nonsense. Liberals have defended the genocide (including many on this board). Almost all Democrats in power support it. Biden has supported it for decades and is pushing for more of it. |
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Listed above. If you're looking for some big Biden foreign policy win, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was genuinely a good decision. Although it was mostly just a shift of one neverending war to prop up defense companies to another. Also added this for your "pardon war criminals" point. :lol: |
This isn't genocide. It's exactly the sort of war that hawks want because it gets results. It's total war.
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Nazis said the same thing. |
Also, what results are they getting? Starving a bunch of kids probably creates far more extremists than they can kill. Israel is sort of proof that committing genocide against a group creates extremists in that group in the aftermath.
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This could be huge for the upcoming election. If it passes, it means Biden would have to win one of Georgia, Arizona, or Nevada where he is down heavily (assuming he can win Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania).
I'd be curious to see what that passing does to his odds. Seems like his best route was the MI, PA, WI path even if Michigan is a tall task now. |
Supposed Trump's VP list. My guess is Scott or Vance. Rubio should just say no and keep whatever pride he (and his wife) has left.
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I don't understand what Rubio would bring to the table, at all. It's like picking a slightly less annoying and polarizing Ted Cruz.
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This is one step in the process to ensure the deck is stacked for Trump. The other is legislatures ordering their state's slate of electors to vote for the candidate they tell them to. |
The founders intent thing is such BS. Winner take all wasn't a major thing until 1824.
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I think you win by equating Jews and Nazis on the same side of the table. Good going. |
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Call it a hunch but ... it might merely be intended as an F.U. to DeSantis |
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I'm equating what Israel is doing to what the Nazis did. Genocide to continue their push for an ethnostate. Judaism is a religion and no sovereign country owns it. |
Couldn't Maine just do the same thing and even it all out?
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Hah, didn’t think of that! You may well be right. |
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I think Stefanik has to be pretty high on the list. She's changed her entire political profile to lobby for the role. Plus I feel like Trump would be more comfortable with a New Yorker. Still can't fathom Scott getting the nod. A closeted black man from South Carolina is not going to help much. I think Britt torpedoed her chance with the weird SOTU rebuttal. If I was betting, I'd still take the field over any of the names listed. I think it'll be a woman who won't upstage Trump. Someone like Kim Reynolds. |
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Reynolds endorsed Desantis, so she seems doubtful. I think Noem fits the profile. |
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Noem likes to be in the media too much. Trump doesn't want someone that's going to pull attention away from him. |
I'll be quite surprised if he doesn't pick a white guy ala Pence. Burgum seems like a fit, older white guy who made a lot of money.
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Pence was perfect in that he didn't need a lot of attention and wasn't ever going to show enough charisma to outshine the boss. Meanwhile, he loved the job because Trump didn't care about policy and Pence could do whatever he wanted behind the scenes.
So many of the candidates for VP now are obviously trying to raise their own profile and I can't see Trump elevating them. They all want the job because they hope Trump dies soon. |
Pence was a great pick.
The evangelicals are now 100% MAGA. But that wasn't the case in 2016. There were some folks who wondered if they would support such a . . . secular candidate. Pence was a (successful) way of courting them. And the GOP had a lot more establishment leaders and voters in 2016. Picking a boring Midwestern governor was a sign to those folks that you could back Trump. And, as others noted, he did not fight Trump for attention. Really, in hindsight, one of the best picks he could have made. That he ended up helping save the Republic four years later was just a bonus for the rest of us :-) |
Just pick one of his kids (or in-laws) who doesn't reside in Florida. Not sure why he'd want to risk dying and not passing the torch directly anyway.
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He can always pick one of his fellow convicts like bannon or navarro and we can all learn about Vice Presidential Immunity"
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BTW, No Labels has failed to find a candidate willing to run and will not be putting a Presidential candidate forward. Millions of dollars well laundered.
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Don Jr is too coked up. Eric is too dumb. Ivanka already got her billions from the Saudis and has no reason jump in that mess again.
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This has to be the dumbest country.
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Oh she's a bonafide nutjob. She occasionally entertains/amuses me, and at least she votes right most of the time ... but that's almost a stopped clock exception (or a savant skill). She's a nutter ... and she's a near-perfect representative for that district tbh. (A district that plays right into my contention that no candidate ever gets elected without votes from a fair number of pretty complete idiots) |
Her and a number of other people like her being voted into office seems to me to be a sign as well - a sign that, as Slayer says, God Hates Us All.
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The earthquake is at least plausible if you're going that route because we don't really know when they'll happen. But I think we've been able to track eclipses for a few hundred years I believe.
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It was centered pretty close to Trump's Bedminster course, so maybe God is pissed at the grifting Bible salesman.
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So the house Dems after repubs introduced a bill to rename Dulles Airport in D.C. after Trump, had a much better suggestion:rename the miami correctional facility after Trump. I love this-we can send peter navarro, steve bannon, all jan 6 participants and planners, and trump lawyers when they all lose their license. i'm sure they can have a golf course there so Trump can cheat them all and say he won every match. yes i can see it now,,,
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This isn't news but I just listened to Trumps response to the Florida 6 week abortion ban and how anyone can take him seriously is beyond me.
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Trump says 100 crazy things a day in public, and none of it is widely reported.
He says one moderate thing (leave abortion to the states), and WaPost and NYT can't wait to make that their A1 headline. The media isn't pro-Trump. But it is pro-clicks. Which amounts to the same thing. |
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In the NYT's case, they didn't like Hillary in 2016 so their coverage was anti-Hillary and mostly neutral for Trump. Which is pro Trump. For 2020 they realized Trump was bad for the country and pushed Biden. This election they seem to be repeating 2016. |
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For wedge issues he goes with what polling shows. He's been 100% against abortion because that's what his base wanted. Now that it's losing elections he's trying to be more moderate. He's doing the same with Israel. He would have been pushing Israel to flatten Gaza as president and early on was saying they need to see it through and finish the job. It's not polling well on the dem side so now he's saying slightly more moderate things. He's even admitted it's because they're not winning the PR war. You still can't take anything he says seriously because once he's in office it's going to be Stephen Miller and others deciding policy while he chases revenge on the Biden administration. He's a useful tool for the real facists. |
He’s not winning any dems and very few independents talking about post birth abortions. That’s something only the most brainwashed on the right believes.
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I just saw a car with an "I love Catturd" magnet on the trunk. I hate this version of the simulation.
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I agree on that abortion position though. Probably not a popular stance on this board though. |
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I will be pretty disappointed with the Biden campaign if they don't post a picture of Trump staring at the eclipse (from 2017).
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The states thing |
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I think there's a Healthcare standard for women that isn't met when it's left to the states. Women shouldn't be going through the horror stories we're seeing because a bunch of old guys don't understand that abortion is a legit medical procedure. |
You do know that a sizable number of women also oppose abortion right?
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that post birth abortions are a thing? |
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And I support their decision to not get one. |
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Those women tend to change their mind when they're put in a situation where their health is in danger or the child isn't viable. The problem is the vast majority of people equate abortion to a form of birth control. It's a medical procedure and a lot of people have a very difficult time accepting that until they need one. |
We can see with the mess that we are having with the states that state mandates are just chaos. Even if you are for a general abortion ban, states shouldn't be putting burdens on women for general health and reproductive care. No one should have to hire a lawyer or go before a judge to get what is regular health procedures done. They definitely shouldn't have to go to another state for care nor face prosecution from their home state if they do.
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The abortion issue starts with the fact that we do an absolutely horrible job of teaching women's health in this country. It's better in some places than others, but there isn't a place in this country that teaches it well. Men, generally speaking, have no clue on women's health issues and a depressing number of women aren't much better.
The term abortion has a negative stigma attached to it even though it is a legitimate medical procedure that saves lives on a daily basis. There's a significant number of women in this country that have had abortions and have no idea they had one. Hospitals refer to them as D&Cs when discussing it with mothers because they don't want to even get into any religious or political debates when someone's life is in danger. The issue with turning it over to the state is we now have various levels of standard care for women. What about exceptions for life of baby or mother? The problem is the wording. When you say there's an exception for life of baby or mother doctors now have to wait until the life is in danger before providing care that should have been given much earlier. Entopic pregnancies are just one example. We know that fetus isn't viable and will put the mother's life at risk. Doctor's in abortion banned states, right now, have to wait until that fetus puts the mother's life at risk before they can move forward with the abortion. In Texas, since the abortion ban went into effect, infant deaths caused by severe genetic or birth defects has gone up over 20%. This puts a massive amount of undue suffering on families and a newborn child that wasn't viable from the beginning. I work in a hospital, but I'm IT and by no means an expert on this. My wife, however, grew up in a very conservative Christian home that was and still is very anti-abortion. She was a medic for several years in the hospital I work in and saw these things first hand. She's now very passionate about reproductive rights and women's healthcare. |
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It's like having a no peeing section in the pool. the reality is this effects minority and low income people on a much higher level so the GOP doesn't care. |
This is a nuclear bomb of an ad.
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Arizona just banned abortions; women are cattle now. |
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This is well said. I remember that one of the Duggar women had an abortion a couple years ago. The fetus was non-viable and maybe a danger to her at some point. But it was still an abortion. They of course didn't call it that. She was provided condolences (from the Governor even!) even though she broke the law in her state. There was a great piece put together about people who work at these clinics. They came across a lot of conservative people, including those who had been protesting the clinic on a daily basis. They all had reasons why their abortion wasn't the same as other abortions. They were "too young" or "didn't want to ruin their life" or whatever reason they could use to justify why they were different. In the end, this has never been about abortion. Most people support it when it comes down to it when it comes to their personal life. It's about controlling women. It's why things that reduce abortions like access to birth control and health care are rebuked by anti-abortion activists. Their goal isn't to reduce abortions. |
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Since Dems have no issues to run on besides this, this is all they should be talking about. The people convincing them to run on immigration should be fired. |
With fluoride in dental products so we still need it in drinking water
I'm going to start standing really close to particle accelerators and hope that I am jumped into another timeline. This one really is the stupidest of all possible worlds. |
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These aged well. |
West Bank settlements have been going on long before Trump (I understand this is new to some of you). Nuclear deal had nothing to do with Iran's retaliation. That deal didn't cause their consulate to get bombed.
I get your foreign policy stance is blowing up in your face again like people said it would (and like it has for 70 years). But it's going to be tough to blame this one on a guy who hasn't been in power in over 3 years. |
Conveniently leaving out the execution of Iran's general and the retaliation of dozens of injured U.S. servicemen.
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The attack was retaliation against Israel for blowing up their consulate. It was not directed at American forces. This is the result of Biden's foreign policy of letting Israel do whatever they want and to start a regional war. Not going to be able to orange man bad your way out of this one. |
Trump's lack of ground game and the RNC's lack of money to even have one is going to hurt them. Trump hasn't even had the money to have his rallies lately.
I guess the RNC also fired most of their experienced people due to failing the "loyalty test" they made them take to keep their jobs when Laura Trump took it over. |
Funny what happens when you get a reputation for not paying bills.
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I think it'll hurt them down ballot in a big way. Already seeing some people talk about how bad the Republicans Congressional hopes are looking. Think there is a good chance the House flips again which would at least be some check on Trump. |
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This sounds like doing what Putin wants us to do. Tell us again how we care about Ukraine "winning" this war. |
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This aged well. |
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