I just read a 538 article yesterday on this same topic. Not getting my hopes up though...

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...ntons-in-2016/

Those more in the know, is there a chance the Supreme court repeals the ACA?

I'm going to bet that Justice Roberts doesn't let that happen.

A repeal of the ACA would only help Biden in November and then they'll pass something stronger with a public option next year. Roberts probably knows that and votes with the liberals again.

I'd also say that Roberts likely wouldn't buy the Administration's argument (which is a bit lame)

Trump Can’t Name One Thing He’d Prioritize if Re-Elected https://t.co/ZKSf82ZNfR pic.twitter.com/kGBPvzNGuD

— Peter Wade ��‍♂️ (@brooklynmutt) June 26, 2020

Experience is a great word, a beautiful word. The letter E appears four times. No other word has four E's.

The fact that he's publicly trying to cut health coverage during a pandemic with 125,000 dead and rising toward 150-170k by Election Day makes me wonder if Trump even wants to win.

It really is like asking a 5 year old a question he can't answer because some of the words in the question have more than 2 syllables. So from that I gather his main priority is to not let anyone drop bombs on people, awesome.

I really don't get the mentality of people who still think this is a dem hoax. I have a lot of right leaning people I know. Almost all of them are taking it seriously. They will defend Trumps response to the death and absolve him of any wrongdoing, but they take the virus itself seriously.

I just can't grasp how especially stupid or warped you must be to still be on the hoax train.

At worst, if the experts are 100% wrong about the effectiveness of standing 6 feet from people and wearing a mask, there is no harm in having done so. What it could possibly prevent, OTOH, seems to far outweigh any inconvenience.

Having slowly gotten back to driving again and realizing the number of a-holes on the road, I have to imagine the Venn Diagram of people who insist on driving slowly in the left lane and people who refuse to wear their mask because hoax/overblown/flu/God/don't tell me what to do, consists of just one giant circle.

Not sure about the hoax part, but my father feels the media coverage being so one sided with regards to COVID is their attempt to get Trump out of office. With regards to COVID he has been taking it seriously, wearing a mask, etc. This is after he was bitching about having to wear a mask.

Yesterday, with the COVID news exploding again, there was not a single story about it on the top of Fox News (like the dozen or so stories visible when you go to the front page without scrolling). It was mostly about the Seattle thing and something from their "greatest hits" like slamming James Comey or whatever.

Today, the top story is about how Trump is trying to defend churches from COVID closings. But there's nothing about how cases are spiraling out of control or how Texas had to roll back their opening. But they did have a couple of stories portraying African Americans in a bad light - one about $14T in repartitions being crazy and one about how one of the protesters in Wisconsin has bad social media posts. You know - front page news type stuff.

SI

My question here is, prior to Covid, was there any other reason that trump should or could be argued to support getting trump out of office?

Appeals Court denies Trump Administration from using military funding on his wall:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...awful-n1232287

According to my dad no and most of the accusations against him were designed to hamstring his presidency regardless of being successful in removing him from office or not.

My brother who is a single issue voter is not going to vote for a democrat because they are going to take our guns. That said he hates Trump and wishes there was an alternative.

Depending on the state, would it matter to him if he voted Libertarian? Because that's an alternative, esp in a non-battleground state.

Hasn't the Supremes let him take money from wherever he wants already?

Brother, is that you brother? It's been so long...

Not exactly. I believe in the previous case the SCOTUS ruled that the Sierra Club did not have standing to see the Administration.

JFC and now Trump wants to invite Putin to the G7?

EXCLUSIVE: A Russian spy unit secretly offered bounties to militants in Afghanistan for killing American troops, U.S. intelligence officials found. Trump and White House have known for months, but not authorized any response.
w/ @EricSchmittNYT @mschwirtzhttps://t.co/o5NKTRDE8h

— Charlie Savage (@charlie_savage) June 26, 2020

I'm pretty sure my dad and step mom agree with your dad. They feel like everything is always completely overblown and that nothing is really like they hear it is. Then again, they do get all their info from foox and some of their more politically extreme sr citizen friends in whooopin ft worth tx.

he's also not going to come out and publicly speak out against Putin getting a do over on his political term, so now he can legally serve until 2036. In the past, a US president would have gone to somewhere like Poland and denounced that sort of autocratic leadership and pronounce democracy as the way of the future. Now? Good luck.

That, in any other presidency, would be one of the biggest scandals ever. Now? It is just your average Friday.

Imagine caring that much about guns.

Trump is either running national commercials on HGTV or New York commercials. Either way, I'm confused.

Well, I can understand their reticence, particularly after seeing how the government was treating protesters over the past month. They were out there protesting, right?

SI

I don't get it. When he was in college and I was in middle school, my parents and my brother thought I was crazy because I argued just because you did not need a gun did not mean you didn't have the right to own a gun because of the 2nd amendment.

30 years later, my brother is mostly a one issue voter and I am the only one that does not own a gun.

With regards to voting libertarian, not sure if my brother is going to go that route or not. I was accused of throwing my vote away in the 2008 and 2012 elections by both my father and brother because I voted libertarian in both elections. Of course, I lived in TN at the time and in both cases the state was leaning hard Republican.

We're losing suburban housewives. We have to hit HGTV hard!

New York I've no idea. Ego, maybe.

Even Trump's favorite job approval poll Rasmussen has him and 9% to the bad. I don't think I have ever seen this poll hit double digits before.

It is impossible to prove a hypothetical. But this morning I woke up wondering Whether the president would be a favorite for reelection at this point if he simply didn’t think that wearing a mask made him look silly.

If, from the beginning, he came out hard charging with the idea that masks were the way to reopen the economy. Then a lot more people would be wearing masks. And the virus would be much more under control. And at this point he would be getting credit for a V-shaped recovery.

I was brainstorming what Trump could do to change his poll numbers, but everything I came up with I rejected because it requires him to be someone he isn't. I think his only chance is voter suppression and dirty tricks.

Barr could cook up some charges against the Bidens or Trump could hold up a vial of water and claim it's the vaccine.

Based on his comments the past couple of weeks he seems to be coming to the realization that there is no silent majority that loves him and he really is hated by the majority of America. There has be a non-zero chance he sees defeat inevitable at some point and just quits.

I think that will be the one last thing he tries-announce a vaccine and take all the credit for it. I think that's what he was doing with the drug he was suggesting people take (and now the federal govt and Florida probably have a lifetime supply of). He desperately wants to be seen as the hero here and its pathetic the lengths he will go to for it. The sad thing is it could have worked if he had done what every other President would have done in this situation. He's playing golf today in Virginia so that should tell you how much he cares about what happens with America.

This isn't something Trump can really control, although he can take advantage of this sentiment which seems to be growing in popularity - or at least, making the rounds on social media...

If the far left continues to push beyond the obvious/more general consensus societal changes like taking down confederate statues and wants to expand that to things that many centrist/independents would oppose (like taking down Washington/Jefferson statues, destroying Mt. Rushmore, removing the term "master" from bedrooms, etc.), then I think he could swing people back under the fear that everything Republicans have said about Democrats is true. Biden needs to come out hard against some of the more fringy/ridiculous ideas.

Please tell me this is not a thing....

Dispute Arises Over the Term ‘Master Bedroom’ | Realtor Magazine

If they go after masturbation I am joining Team Trump all the way...

Holy shit, this is the exact overreach that turns moderates off. So many important things to focus on in regards to equality and racism. The fact that this is even on the list is such a disservice.

But even here he won't take full advantage of an opening. A different person could say yes to removing Confederate statues, but no to others, but Trump has already gone all-in on protecting Confederate monuments. That makes it much harder to sway suburban voters.

I just want to see Trump tweet how masturbation is a glorious and wonderful America institution and if Biden is elected the left will take your porn, lube and guns and how unchristian that is. He then goes on to pardon Ron Jeremy and threaten to send in troops if any statues of David and Venus de Milo are torn down.

Does that pretty much capture and invigorate his base?

True, but it's easy to lessen the impact of being in favor of protecting confederate statues when you can point to "the other side" wanting to do away with Mt. Rushmore or the National Anthem or other things that are pretty central to what most people would equate with being American.

I'm just saying... liberals, please do not F this up!

I dunno. You're always going to find someone somewhere who will say something. There's bound to be someone who wants to remove Mount Rushmore or rename master bedrooms (though, really, WTF really cares about that). Then the moment will pass and it won't happen. Because, really, when was the last time the Dems effectively did anything of consequence that was actually, you know, liberal? That's the biggest difference between the modern GOP and the modern Democrats - the GOP will actually listen to and act on those crazy voices on the fringe whereas the left listens, pats them on the head, says "we hear you", and then does something to the right of what Reagan would have done. All the while, Fox News paints a free market solution to health care or toothless bank regulations or centrist environmental regulations as the brain child of the love child of Marx, Lenin, Castro, and Chavez.

SI

There is a non-zero chance the liberals find a way to fuck this up between now and November.

I say that as a self-identified liberal (but really more of a centrist). Growing up, I remember the rant against Republicans was all about keeping them out of our bedrooms. With my own party, I feel like the legitimate rant is keeping them out of my living room (i.e., political correctness, the constant re-definition of inclusivity, thought-policing). Overreach is the Democratic Party's middle name. I despise my own party because they largely seem to be whiny and stupid and determined to tell everyone else how to live...which is only marginally better than the Republicans, who I despise because they're authoritarian, manipulative, and borderline evil in their policies and thought-processes.

I long ago came to the conclusion that for my life generally, my ideal form of democratic process is gridlock between the various branches. Give me a Republican president and a democratic congress (or vice versa) and a Supreme Court that's always 5-4ing everything but the most egregious shit, and I'm happy.

Oregon State, Oregon agree not to use the term ‘Civil War’ for sports rivalry games - oregonlive.com

The left is becoming a parody of itself.

It's not the left, it's the far left extreme and a parody would be funny, this is detrimental and detracts from progress towards equality. It's no different than the far right don't tread on me buffoons. does nothing but create more animosity.

Given the renewed scrutiny on Columbus, I'm expecting a semi-serious movement to reconfigure Thanksgiving into something else as we approach the end of October. Maybe too late to give the right ammunition for the election, but I will not be surprised in the least if this happens. No one will agree to losing a 4 day weekend, but some sort of end-of-fall celebration that replaces the traditional pilgrims-and-indians story

Does Columbus have anything to do with Thanksgiving?

There are going to be stupid 20 year-olds with social media accounts who want to cancel everything. Ignore them. They are young and foolish.

There are going to be stupid 60 year-olds with social media accounts who want to paint the Confederate flag on everything. Ignore them. They are old and foolish.

Slippery slope arguments don't make sense here. We should tear down the statues celebrating the leaders of a treasonous slave empire that spent its entire existence fighting the United States. That's the easy case. We can worry about the harder cases when the time comes.

Oh, and while we are doing that, we could also note that Russia gave bounties to Talaban soldiers that killed Americans. Which is a bigger story that what I call the main bedroom in my house.

Right now, the Trump administration is trying to decide whether it looks worse that he didn't know or that he did know. Right now, they are saying he didn't, but if that makes him look like a weak commander in chief, then they might switch to he did know.

There is a danger that this becomes a competition to be the most woke possible

Video from Jonathan Pie from a weeks or so ago makes the point with a bit of humour. Whole thing is worth watching, but the relevant section is from 0:56 onwards

I think the statue thing went too far when they tore down Ulysses S. Grant. Who's next, Lincoln?

Yup

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...c93_story.html

The funny thing about that is the slaves weren’t even tying to say “master”. They didn’t have broken English...They were saying “Masa” which means oppressor in Hebrew...

#162 The Least You Could Do | Reply All (this is a link to a podcast episode)

This podcast episode is fascinating to me, I'd had a lot of people recommend it. A tl;dr is that in some spaces white people who are trying to "wake up" and take part in what's happening right now are doing it all wrong. A story about how a lot of black people are just getting random venmo payments from friends/former acquaintances like its some kind of mini-reparations. Small ones too, $5. And this is most common in middle class circles for people who don't need the money. A story about a black comedienne who did a skit that was basically "hey white people want me to absolve you of your white guilt? Pay me and I will!!" and it started as a joke but turned into a lot of white people confessing all their racist shit like they were looking for absolution.

Anyway, its a really great podcast episode, highly recommend even after my tl;dr. One of the conclusions it draws is that there are a lot of people looking at themselves for the first time and where they fit in the world of systemic racism. And its easy to feel super guilty about your role in this, or just the fact that you have it easier than black people - generally speaking. And so a lot of people want to do something, a lot of companies want to make sure they're on the right side of things, but they haven't learned nearly enough, and you end up with these weird, off the wall performative gestures that are really just meant to make the white people feel less guilty, but not to actually... DO anything.

The super far left can go overboard, but I think on many of these cases you've got well meaning liberals and moderates across the spectrum who have no idea what the hell to do with all of the energy going on but feel like they need to do something, and man it backfires a lot.


Ya'll surely know me as someone who is super far left at this point. I've seen conversations about the term master and where its used, and about how much casual language can have racist beginnings. If you work with computers on systems that have a master/slave relationship, maybe (QUIETLY) change that. But if you're in real estate, instead of worrying about the master bedroom, go educate yourself on how black people have disadvantages when trying to find housing for all kinds of reasons, and start working (QUIETLY) to make sure you and your company don't do things with black clients that might perpetuate that system.

Easy.

However, we should rename the fucking Washington Redskins and not write that off to far left crazies. :P

https://twitter.com/meganpratz/statu...97641696657408

Mississippi Flag is about to change.

Who had “State Of Mississippi goes about removing problematic images much more appropriately than civil rights protestors” on their 2020 bingo card???

We all knew this was coming soon...


https://twitter.com/projectlincoln/s...710113793?s=21

Another in a long series...

I can't imagine any other president going with, I had no knowledge, if similar information had leaked to the press.

That Lincoln Project video is fantastic! And, I realized that since they are putting it up all over, Biden gets the benefit of the negative ads but also being able to say he's not running a negative campaign.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Right. A lot of people are looking at these issues for really the first time and thinking about how they themselves perpetuate white supremacy and the first things that pop up are the superficial ones. So people go, oh is calling it the Master Bedroom ok or is calling it The Civil War ok, when the real issus are how does systemic racism manifest itself in the housing market (and there are BOOKS on that) or in university systems. Hopefully these white folk feeling guilty actually look more deeply into their professions are get the rot out rather than focusing on the superficial stuff.


Though Mississippi only took down the flag because the SEC said they were going to pull all championship games if they didn’t. And the SEC only did that because of the moment we are in, which includes people tearing down statues of Confederate leaders. It, as Radii pointed out got people to really think about how problematic all this stuff was. So while some people yell and carp about “erasing history”, a bunch of people were like... wait, why do we have statutes exoling these people.

And remember, South Carolina took down their Confederate flags after the Charleston 9 shooting after a civil rights protestor climbed up a flag pole and took the flag down - leading to a discussion of why it was up there.

Trump admits it: He's losing - POLITICO

The headline is crazy enough, but when you get to one section, it's like "Whoa, I'd inject this right into my veins, but they'd explode"

“Under the current trajectory, President Trump is on the precipice of one the of the worst electoral defeats in modern presidential elections and the worst historically for an incumbent president,” said former Trump political adviser Sam Nunberg, who remains a supporter.

Nunberg pointed to national polls released by CNBC and New York Times/Siena over the past week showing Trump receiving below 40 percent against Biden.

If Trump's numbers against erode to 35 percentage points over the next two weeks, Nunberg added, “He’s going to be facing realistically a 400-plus electoral vote loss and the president would need to strongly reconsider whether he wants to continue to run as the Republican presidential nominee.”

Trump getting 400-bombed in November would be.. well, I couldn't realistically imagine it, but we'd need a new ocean for the tears of the Trumpfaithful

I can't imagine Trump would drop out at this point anyway (or the chaos that would occur as everyone attempted to grab the brass ring. Although then again, Jared Kushner's been doing everything for Trump, why not make it official and make him the nominee?)

Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!! https://t.co/4Gg1iGOhyG

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2020

Nothing like our president applauding the divisiveness he has created while retweeting a video where someone yells white power.

This is completely incorrect. I remember the timeline very well. The shootings took place on a Wednesday. Haley was in Charleston before the weekend building grassroots support. That Monday, she started off her day with a meeting—I believe at 8 or 9 am, as in it was the first order of business for the day—with top Democratic leaders in South Carolina telling them she was going to be pushing for the flag to come down. Monday afternoon, she held a press conference saying that the flag needed to come down, and the process and conversation was fully in motion then. It was the following weekend that Bree Newsome climbed the flagpole. Iirc, the SC General Assembly had already had its initial overwhelming vote by then. It was nothing more than an illegal, unhelpful, and purely symbolic publicity stunt.

I don't think its fair to generalize all the "left". But it does seem to be getting out of hand with some left-wing extremists. Re: statues, there are some statues that should be torn down but there is a lot of grey (and not sure to how resolve them). George Washington seems to be going too far.


Yeah, basically agree with this.

It's not good enough for Trump to lose by a few electoral points. He needs to lose large where it shows a repudiation of his Presidency.

No, I can't imagine him dropping out either. He'll stay on and if he loses, will claim wide-spread fraud, cheating which will be a rallying cry for his supporters and Trumpism (to go on for another 4-8 years).

The problem is there are people that are tearing down statues because they are old white men. When statues of Grant who arguably did more for blacks than any one besides Lincoln in the era has his statues torn down, people have gone to far. Not to mention some of the abolitionist statues that have been torn down. Why? It is some old white dude.

Are we going to remove “master” from the language?

Did Vader say, “Last time we met, I was the learner, now I am the teacher.”

It’s the proverbial we’ve given the protestors an inch with regards to police brutality, but they are trying to take a mile and remove history. There could be a great discussion regarding Confederate monuments (I am against them being put up to begin with), similar to what places in Europe have done with holocaust sites.

Let’s focus on one thing at a time and not lose the momentum on realistic and justified goals (police reform).

And then he'll go play a round or two of golf.

Except no one is actually going to do most of those things you're talking about. There will be a handful of rando events. But if anyone's going to go back and screw up Star Wars further, it's going to be Lucas. And we know it's not going to happen (well, ok, except the Lucas part but I don't think the Mouse would let him).

And, surprise, surprise - the police reform isn't coming. Sure, Colorado has done some good stuff. There are a few places where officers are resigning at a slightly higher clip than normal. But the Senate GOP wanted to pass a stupid bill that would do next to nothing tangible but allow them to claim everything was fixed so, of course, the Dems blocked it. So nothing's going to come of that, either.

SI

The headline on FOX News website is how Trump is pushing back at the NY Times over the Russian-Afgan situation with a picture of Trump saying "Nobody briefed...Me"

Do they not understand the fact that he didn't know about this makes him look borderline worse?

The sad thing is, it is completely believable he wasn't briefed. He barely listen to any briefs as is, but reports say he gets very angry with any report that is negative about Russia. I can totally believe that the intelligence people where afraid to tell him. Of course, that in and of itself is terrible.

If the IC did not brief the President, then the people who made that call need to be exposed and fired.

The military/IC going rogue and deciding to keep their elected civilian leadership out of the loop is unconscionable and needs to be dealt with in the harshest way possible.

Also, when stuff like this happens, it excuses voting for Republicans because people will think "Oh, it won't get too bad because *someone* will keep it from getting that bad." That's so dangerous. People need to know that if you vote for these guys, you get all of it. All of the corruption. All of the cronyism. All of the prioritizing other countries over America. No one is coming to save you. So even if your woke friends on facebook are really annoying, you need to decide whether voting GOP in order to own them is worth bounties being placed on American soldiers with impunity.

FWIW worth the source does claim Trump was briefed about the bounties in March.

Trump (and Russia and the Taliban) is now denying the story.

I don't trust Trump but I'm also skeptical of anonymous sources too.

It appears one of his handlers got to him as he deleted the retweet.

So at this point, he either thinks there are enough racists in this country to carry him, or he really just doesn't care about a second term and doesn't have the balls to just walk away.

There is no way you miss that when it is the first guy in the video

British intelligence confirms that it is true.
Russia paid Taliban fighters to attack British troops in Afghanistan | UK News | Sky News

Well, an anonymous source in British Intelligence confirmed it was true.

I note you didn't reference the first part of my post where I note MS doesn't take down their flag if people didn't move against Confederate Monuments (why was pressure applied now by the SEC). Secondly, while the process was in motion, it was not complete. Bree Newsome Bass climbed the flag pole on June 27 and the SC House didn't vote on it until July 9. And you may consider it unhelpful and purely symbolic, but to many she was a hero. Rev. William Barber compared her to Rosa Parks after all. The minority leader of the SC House offered to represent Bass in court. Symbolic gestures matter. It is considered a significant part of the Charleston 9 story. And like it or not, it'll be remembered far longer than the name Nikki Haley.

And of course it was illegal, that's the point. She willingly went to jail. But all charges were dropped because it had become such a powerful symbol.

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Even the White House is not denying the report, only the part that the President was briefed.

You are right, we should just believe Trump. He's been so truthful before.:rolleyes:

Any advice for someone who has a "child" indoctrinated as so anti-capitalism that he/she literally thinks that you're an idiot to want to work "unless there's a gun to your head"? Asking for a friend.

That's exactly what I said :rolleyes:

There have been a couple statues torn down of people who didn't deserve it. I think that is just more about some people hell bent on destruction.

But many of the statues torn down should be. There is no need to glorify Confederates or Columbus (which has always been comical today). Tear that shit down and put up statues of people who deserve it.

If they can make a life like that work for them, then great! I hear Portland's nice.

If I was a parent, I just wouldn't be able to handle things like this. I respect parents a lot.

Depends on how old the kids is.

Low 20s.

Tell them to go live on their own and see how it goes

"His point in tweeting out that video was to stand with his supporters, who are oftentimes demonized," says @PressSec, on Fox, explaining why Trump tweeted out a video of a supporter at The Villages yelling "white power."

— Annie Karni (@anniekarni) June 29, 2020

Thankfully someone is standing up for the unfairly maligned white supremacists!

SCOTUS struck down a Louisiana abortion law - mandating abortion providers had to have 'admitting privileges' at a hospital.

5-4, Roberts joined the liberal 4.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...-1323_c07d.pdf

This is very good news. The laws that these states have passed regarding abortion are archaic.

And pretty much identical to the Texas law that was struck down a few years ago

SI

Roberts is only concurring because it just got ruled against 4 years ago (where he voted to strike it down). He's ruling for the precedent. It's more of a 4-1-4 ruling than 5-4

Yes, but how often do you see a Justice voting for stare decisis on a case they voted against? It's not common. I have a feeling he's being very cagey to protest the reputation of the Court (again).

I think Roberts realizes the other four conservatives would burn the place down and he's standing between them and a Dem packed court.

The Lincoln Project

@ProjectLincoln


Kavanaugh tried to strike down a 4 year precedent, but instead strikes down Susan Collins' 24 year Senate career.

Actually Gandhi. TIL that he's a racist.

That's exactly it. His rulings on the ACA, LGBTQ rights, and now abortion show that he's being very political in his rulings. He knows one wrong step can end up destroying the Court.

Yup. He's a brilliant guy playing the long game.

This has actually been a lowkey debate in South Asia for the last 5 or so years. Though it was from things he said when he lived in South Africa, so maybe he changed when he went back to India - but basically part of his plea to the British was that the Indians were superior to blacks so Indians should be treated better in SA.

Statues of Gandhi have been vandalized in South Africa in the past because of this.

Exactly.

This is an important point. I wouldn't read this opinion as a big win for abortion rights going forward. It is a set-up for losses in future years when cases come to the Court that aren't exactly the same as cases decided previously. https://t.co/ctLZE4V9yR
— Sasha Samberg-Champion (@ssamcham) June 29, 2020

This is the critical doctrinal announcement by CJ Roberts today. Going forward, it will be irrelevant to the undue burden analysis whether an abortion restriction has any real medical benefit or is just a sham. https://t.co/rm2yO2KfJI
— Sasha Samberg-Champion (@ssamcham) June 29, 2020

Not a lawyer, but it seems like he loves to throw in little nuggets that he can use in the future to gut things at a future date. Basically, isn't he saying "any other restrictions, we're good with, but don't be so stupid as to put in ones that we just ruled against".

SI