Sadly, I know a couple of people on my street, that would probably embrace that, but not this guy. Waiting for the "Let's go Brandon" flags next.

Hey....it's at least one reason to live in an HOA.

It’s pretty bad if an HOA is the only thing keeping your neighbors from planting multiple flags of Trump dressed as Rambo

My neighborhood, which has an HOA, butts up to one that doesn't. The easiest in/out for us is through the other neighborhood. On the corner leading out of the neighborhood onto the street that takes us out to the main street is a big-time Trumper who regularly flies oversized Trump flags. The one during the election said " Trump 2020 No More Bullshit," but it's been a steady stream of them (although with winter/snow he hasn't had them up all the time). It's an eyesore and unnecessary (it sits under an oversized American flag because, you know, he's a patriot and wants us all to know it) but no one will or can do anything about it. Same guy has threatened to call the cops on a 10 year old whose dog stopped to pee in his yard (my wife's foot doctor's kid). Apparently he videos every angle of his house and regularly confronts people for seemingly innocuous things that he sees on tape.

Seems nice - not at all the Trump supporter stereotype.

I would totally fuck with this guy.

Reminds me of the people who are post FB memes about "Well, time to go out and fly my giant Biden flag. Oh wait, I'm not crazy so I don't do that"

SI

There's a house on the same street as my younger son's school (6th grade) that this fall had big Let's Go Brandon signs out, right up against the road.

Due to COVID, most parents have been driving their kids to school instead of having them take the busses, so the pick-up line in the afternoon tends to extend down the street. Since it's a regular-width suburban street, what happens is that people park on the shoulder for pick up.

Anyway, although our suburb is technically a 50/50 Dem/GOP split based on voter registration, it's one of those places where most of the GOP voters didn't vote for Trump (based on the detailed election results).

So, long story short, people kept running over his signs and eventually he gave up.

Please PM me when a house goes up for sale in your neighborhood :)

I've actually seen the opposite of that. MAGA folks on my timeline posting memes about "Isn't it funny how you never see anyone wearing a Build Back Better hat?"

I think that the message is supposed to be that it proves that Biden and his policies are not popular. But I more think that it is weird that the default should be wearing lots of political swag.

Yep. And this goes back to people like my niece - as young as 13-14, she's been wearing Trump stuff and has a Trump flag in her room. And I'm like, who the hell does that? Aside from Alex P. Keaton, how is it normal for a teenager to do those kinds of things? If that's the new normal, we're doomed.

The fascinating question is whether this cult worship survives Trump. MAGA folks will always be right wing. But is your niece going to be hanging Josh Hawley flags in her room in 10 years? Or just voting GOP but not making it a lifestyle brand?

dola: Nice Alex Keaton deep cut, too.

My 2 nephews moved to some shithole in Ohio away from both parents and the rest of the family because there were too many liberals in California and both post MAGA shit on social media. It seems to me like in the social media age this is the equivalent of a Che Guevara t-shirt, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about the way this country is going to be sure.

You guys have very short memories. This was plastered everywhere on shirts, signs, etc.

Not the same when you look at the totality

I know porn when I see it and when you see the whole:

Q flirtation
Stolen Election
Masks are similar to control
Vaxx is nazi
Racism hidden behind immigration fear

“But wait there’s more”

A poster for either side doesn’t in and of itself equate to cultish behaviors

The whole of trumpism and it’s take over off one of the parties is reminiscent of cult growth by definition


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Obama definitely had a personality cult, I count myself among those that bought into it. After he was elected, the reality of governing set in and the "Republicans Suck" mantra which continues to this day was more predominant by the time the 2012 election came around.

Honestly, I think the Democrats need to build up a new cult like figure because that's what it takes. Just make sure it's not a person that buys into their own cult status!

I agree with Flasch that the Trump situation is different, but it's different only in degree. I.e. we can recognize that both Obama and Trump 'benefited', at least in a political sense, from personality cults. And still also recognize that there is a difference in how the impacts of those played out.

I would argue that the one big difference is that if Obama lost to Romney in 2012, most Democrats wouldn't entertain him running for President again. The bubble would quickly burst.

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They keep saying this shit and it's going to happen.

Michigan state senate candidate Mike Detmer (@DetmerMike) tells a crowd that he wants citizens to bring guns to polling places: “…if we can’t change the tide, we need to be prepared to lock and load. So you ask, ‘What can we do?’ Show up armed.” #mileg pic.twitter.com/emIKnfyqsi

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) January 30, 2022

How do they not arrest these dopes?

Nothing horrible can come from that idea, right?

I seriously want to know what the response will be from chuckle fucks like this guy when someone does that.....Let me guess, "thoughts and prayers"

They will say THEY didn't mean it literally.

Since we know that Democrats and Republican are equally polarized and it doesn't mention his party, I'll just assume this guy is a Democrat.

Being equally entrenched in viewpoints does not mean that both viewpoints are equally as bad, it means that those entrenched on each side will not entertain discussions outside their narrow parameters, and the situation will never improve

This is so abstract I can't make sense of it. What specific narrow parameters are required by liberals and what are the narrow parameters are required by conservatives? The conservatives in the US are like 99% focused on culture war. They have next to no policy positions and no platform. What is there to discuss?

I get your joke here. But it actually got me thinking of what the reaction would be if a black Democratic candidate was speaking to a crowd of black voters telling them to "lock and load" and bring guns to the polls.

The only time we ever got close to a whisper of a hint of gun control in this country was when the Black Panthers started legally arming themselves.

Trump is now issuing statements criticizing Pence for not “overturning the election.” He’s not even pretending it was not a coup attempt anymore. If he was caught on a hidden tape saying this, it would be seen as a huge scandal. But he has really figured out a loophole in the system. Just brag openly about your crime. People still have no idea how to handle that.

If Trump is saying that he'll pardon the 1/6 folks, does that mean he's going to pardon antifa, or that he's admitting the 1/6 folks attacked the capitol?

Good thread, I think.

Dr. Lisa Corrigan on Twitter: "Wedge issues like book bans appear when fascists have no plan to govern and just want to direct white rage at public institutions like schools to erode support for the public good."

(Putting this in the Trump thread, as this is really more about GOP tactics than anything Biden.)

More homegrown terrorists. Article a little outdated as they have had to close down indefinitely. QAnon terrorists keep coming.

National Butterfly Center closes for the weekend following threats from right-wing rally | TPR

Yeah this just isn't true. What they have are policy positions and platform that liberals think are ridiculous, and in many cases they are absolutely right about that. But it's not the same as not having one.

It is true. Can you show me the 2020 official GOP platform that came out of the convention? I believe it was very explicitly "whatever the orange guy wants." Although I guess if you want to add book banning and rewriting history as a policy position, that's up to you. This is one of a growing number of reasons I left the party.

Oh yeah, there's "not tax and spend" which is different than the Dems "tax and spend" I guess, although both allow Rand Paul to make his perfunctory objections before they pass in either case.

So I guess, technically, they did not adopt a new platform in 2020, they said "ditto 2016's platform", which, I mean, in an optimistic viewing is "our 2016 platform was so good we didn't need to change it". Or, less charitably, kindof looks like "we turned in that homework assignment last semester so we're not doing it again".

SI

The point that was made here is that the GOP, officially, stands for nothing.

And that is true.

People may think that it is a good thing or a bad thing.

But it is a thing.

I read that as we support Trump's agenda and will not adopt a new platform. They didn't even reiterate support for the 2016 platform, just that they were putting out this resolution because too many people in the media and on twitter were making fun of the fact that they had capitulated the party (and their principles) to Trump. And then the resolution confirmed it!

Well to be fair, did you expect them to put out a platform that was out-of-line with the incumbent president?

You mean, something traditionally conservative? No, I suppose that would have been a bridge too far.

Like everyone else, it seems as if we live in 2 separate countries. The GOP platform seems to be this:

Spending is out of control and needs to be curbed, unless we are in power and said spending is defense/war where 60% of our spending already goes.

Debt is bad and growing too much and we are killing our future, unless we are in power and pass tax cuts for our buddies.

Medical decisions about vaccines are your own personal choice and between you and your doctor, unless the medical choice has to do with abortion in which case it is our business.

There is so much fraud in voting, we need to ensure the process is safe and fair by taking state control of counting in every county, but the feds can't oversee because elections are state affairs. Oh, and we want black people to vote as long as they drive a few hours, produce state ID that we've made it hard for them to get, and only vote between 9-5 on election day.

Climate change is a hoax, but the only way to combat it is by fracking. And all these monthly pipeline spills are just the cost of doing business. Do you want more expensive gas???

Oh, and history is bad and should not be taught because white people may feel guilty and bad. But we should not remove confederate monuments that were erected decades later because of history.

Anything else?

Exclusive: Sen. Josh Hawley is calling on the Biden administration to drop longstanding U.S. support for Ukraine's eventual membership in NATO. https://t.co/DkbjjzPmzW

— Axios (@axios) February 2, 2022

Support for Russia and rejection of NATO.

You can follow them and see what they talk about. Most of it is culture war stuff. Heck, the recent Virginia gubernatorial race was all culture war. These people spent like a week having a fit that they couldn't jerk off to a cartoon M&M anymore. Actual policy is pretty far back on the burner.

Or you can follow what laws they are passing at the state level. Lots of stuff about what companies can say and what teachers can teach. I guess they've also mixed in election stuff by either preventing their opponents from voting or just setting up a system where they can change the result if they don't like it.

Two can play at that 'what they pass at the local level game'. Again this isn't whataboutism, but there's a whole lot of NIMBY that goes around when it comes to liberal priorities as well.

As shown here by noted right-wing attack dogs the New York Times

All this tells me is that people are hypocrites in general (not all of them, and they do skew right these days, etc.). There's a whole lot (still) of anti-Trump rhetoric that still gets spouted from the left. The usual retort is 'but that stuff matters'. Sure, but the right thinks what they are shouting at the rain about matters to. They really, really do in most cases.

We can compare trump to any other US president and the response to him and whether or not it's a simple decision about just 'hating him', when the behavior of the two men are similar and comparable.

Until then, painting the disgust from one side as the same as the vitriol from the other, as equal, can't fly.

I doubt he's doing it for intellectually consistent reasons, but I was opposed to NAtO expansion for a pretty simple reason - if Russia invades Western Europe we'll stand together & fight them, but if they invade Belarus or Ukraine will we? We've already shown we won't IMO, so letting them in to NATO just weakens NATO instead of protecting Ukraine. By all means expand into Ukraine with free trade or bilateral agreements, but it shouldn't be NATO or NATO stops meaning what it does.

So what? I think you're attaching *way* too much important to a document that's largely just there for PR. Candidates quite often differ *considerably* from the platform the convention that nominated them approves, both on the campaign trail and in actual governance.

I mean, just look at the record. As odious as I find the GOP's various activities on the voting rights issue, they are policies. What they've done generally about taxes are policies, about foreign relations, about trade, about CRT/education, the efforts to overturn the ACA, First Steps (bipartisan ofc), abortion ... all of these are actual policies. What happened when Trump was in office? Were zero bills advanced? Did Congress go completely silent and no members propose legislation? Of course not. Bad ideas and policies are still ideas and policies.

It's one thing to say those policies are absurd and wrong and stupid and crazy and nobody should support them and whatever other adjectives. It's another to claim they don't exist, which would have to be the case for the original statement to hold.

6 years.

Memphis woman faces sentencing in voter fraud case

This guy got probation and out of jury duty!

https://apnews.com/article/election-...4146931127caff