September 30, 2023
Ron DeSantis tells Bill Maher "don't act like" it was a "unique thing" to say that the election was stolen...
... and gets applause from the "Real Time" audience:
"Let's go back to 2016. Your friends in Hollywood were cutting ads telling the Electoral College to vote against Trump... because the election was stolen. They said Russia stole the election. For years they said that."
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Not sure how much this is folks on the left coming to accept the situation versus Bill Maher's audience shifting based on the last few years of his commentary.
He should have waited his turn. Instead he was convinced by big Republican donors to immolate his political future. But he's certainly right about this. Trump was tied up for two years by a Special Counsel investigation that came up a dry hole based on fake charges cooked up by Hillary's campaign, after she said "#RESIST" and just so happened to blame Ukraine's arch-enemy, Russia for the election interference that Ukraine actually engaged in, BTW. and "resist" became a mantra to cripple the US presidency. Then an impeachment at the outset of the COVID pandemic brought by the same people who actually did interfere in the election hoping to get miss "We came! We saw! He died!", the US-Ukrainian war cabal.
Meanwhile, Trump organized a demonstration, offered security to Pelosi to keep it under control, and the demonstration, rife with FBI operatives, somehow got out of hand, due in large part to the lack of the very security Trump offered. Who harmed democracy more? One side kept the executive branch of our government tied up for an entire presidency.
Can anyone link us to a Hollywood-produced ad calling on the electoral college to upend the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton?
I recall that there was some low-level political chatter about a very few particular challenges; I also recall that they were all regarded as unserious by Democratic leadership. Please link us to the most serious electoral count challenge, which was supported by any senior leadership and the Clinton campaign.
Mrs. Clinton conceded her election loss the morning after the election.
She pursued no state recounts.
Her campaign filed no frivolous lawsuits.
She attended the Trump inauguration.
Ron DeSantis is a bad, and unconvincing, bullshitter.
You know, kudos to Bill for hosting true conversations and one on one debates. Gov Ron would be a good President if not this time around then certainly in the near future.
The Democrat Party is, like the cities they run, an evolving shit show. And Bill knows it.
For years they continue to say that. Hillary Clinton said it again last week.
I used to be an election stolen agnostic.
The county count for Obama, Trump, & Biden was to weird. The bellwether counties won was weird. The 81m for a guy couldn't draw a crowd as big as a one car funeral was weird.
I've seen too much
It was stolen
They know
We know
They know we know
They don't care
Many states illegally changed their election rules. Covid. Elections are stolen and covid was the key that they used.
“Either something very strange is going on, or every top Dem in the state [AZ] just fled rather than getting their photo taken [with] Biden,” said radio show co-host Sam Stone. - Just the News
Leland said: "For years they continue to say that. Hillary Clinton said it again last week."
Yes. That's because Hillary Clinton understands who is in power and how to exercise power. Power is taken; never given. Power is USED. That's the only purpose for power. You have to exercise it. You cannot merely grasp it. Power is worthless if it is merely grasped and not used.
Republicans don't understand how to wield power and thus are probably not the stewards you want in charge of a nation where tough decisions have to be made. If they understood power and how it should be wielded, Hillary Clinton would be in a cell at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Leland said: "For years they continue to say that. Hillary Clinton said it again last week."
Yes. That's because Hillary Clinton understands who is in power and how to exercise power. Power is taken; never given. Power is USED. That's the only purpose for power. You have to exercise it. You cannot merely grasp it. Power is worthless if it is merely grasped and not used.
Republicans don't understand how to wield power and thus are probably not the stewards you want in charge of a nation where tough decisions have to be made. If they understood power and how it should be wielded, Hillary Clinton would be in a cell at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
These nuts still think Russian interference was proven, slam dunk end of story Q.E.D., go read the Mueller report blah blah.
Keep saying it enough and it'll stick, no?
I'm a DeSantis guy. It's really remarkable what he did in Florida. Here's a purple state, a state that's been competitive for decades for both parties. And DeSantis came in with a very pro-life criminal law, a heartbeat law. And it's been very popular in Florida.
If you can do that in Florida, there's no reason he couldn't pull off something similar in federal law. I would love a federal law that recognized the humanity of unborn children and outlawed abortion when the baby's heart is beating. To me that's the best case scenario from a pro-life perspective, and that would be amazing if we could get that.
Trump's more pro-choice on abortion. Or, if you prefer, more "pragmatic." He focuses on weeks rather than biological criteria. That's the Althouse move. You're basically revealing yourself as pro-choice when you ignore the baby and her biology. People who focus on weeks are arbitrary as shit.
A heartbeat law is trying to take infanticide off the table. As a pro-lifer I support that.
Here's DeSantis defending his heartbeat law.
And here's Trump, in a wide-ranging interview on
Meet the Press. Transcript.
In the middle of that thing he takes a dumb shot at DeSantis.
KRISTEN WELKER:
If a federal ban landed on your desk if you were reelected, would you sign it at 15 weeks —
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Are you talking about a complete ban?
KRISTEN WELKER:
A ban at 15 weeks.
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Well, people, people are starting to think of 15 weeks. That seems to be a number that people are talking about right now.
KRISTEN WELKER:
Would you sign that?
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
I would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something, and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years. I’m not going to say I would or I wouldn’t. I mean, DeSanctus is willing to sign a five-week and six-week ban.
KRISTEN WELKER:
Would you support that? You think that goes too far?
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake. But we’ll come up with a number, but at the same time, Democrats won’t be able to go out at six months, seven months, eight months and allow an abortion. And Kristen, you have to look at this, because you said “no.” You have some states that are allowed to kill the child after birth, and you can’t allow that.
KRISTEN WELKER:
But Mr. President, again, no one is calling for a child to be killed after birth. No one is calling for that to be allowed —
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
But you have legislation —
KRISTEN WELKER:
But let me just ask you —
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Kristen, you have legislation in certain states where it’s allowed.
KRISTEN WELKER:
Mr. President —
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
The governor of Virginia, previous governor, who was a whack job —
KRISTEN WELKER:
Previous governor.
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
I call him the Michael Jackson governor.
KRISTEN WELKER:
No one’s talking about that as part of their platform —
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
That governor —
KRISTEN WELKER:
I want to know what you want —
FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP:
Excuse me, that governor said you can kill the baby after birth.
Trump is a chaotic figure. And I appreciate him for speaking out when so many Republicans have avoided the issue. I appreciate him for his three Justices he put on the Supreme Court. And I appreciate him for speaking to the Walk of Life. But he's kind of moderate mush on the abortion issue. So in the primary, he's not my first choice. And he's way down on the list, to be honest. DeSantis might be a horrible campaigner (not sure yet) but he is a highly effective governor and I'm really impressed with what he's done in Florida.
He's the best Governor I've ever lived under- and I've lived in 7 different states spread over multiple decades (including CA and NY). He is simply a man of action. He's smart, tough, and would be a terrific President. The idea that 'he should wait his turn' is preposterous. He may not get a shot at it this time around, because there is so much loyalty to Trump within his base, but it was time to run now. Florida has term limits on it's Governorship, so his time is coming up. Over the past 4 or so years, he has been at the forefront of so many decisions that have been both loved by the majority of people in this state, and hated by the majority of the national media and talking heads. Which probably means he's done a great job. He was a great Governor during a period of national/global upheaval, while the State of Florida was receiving a massive influx of new residents and businesses. (It is the fastest growing state in the Union and the third most populous now.)
His time is now. I'm just not sure he'll get the chance. And if it's Trump vs Biden or Newsom or whoever the Dems finagle into that slot, it's not going to be great for the country. If you think Trump is going to have much of a chance to get anything done, you're fooling yourselves. If he runs, the Congress will become completely Democrat. And the trials and handcuffs will begin anew.
Need real life DeSantis Batman slap of Maher.
I always get the feeling I'm living in an alternate reality because someone like Bill Maher doesn't already know that. How many other powerful, activist Democrats are self-blinded to everything that's happened?
Bill Maher gives DeSantis the litmus test: "But Trump lost the election, right?"
DeSantis: "Yeah, Yeah."
Maher: "Okay."
The truth is, nobody knows. We can be honest about that (but not on Bill Maher's show) or we can choose to believe one way or another and fight about it forever.
If we don't solve the problem, that we can't, as things are currently structured, know the actual outcome of our elections, we're screwed. There's no reason we can't know the fair, honest sure and certain result promptly. Unfortunately, too many powerful people want things the way they are.
Who will accept the results of the next election? About half the population, probably, no matter who it is.
Sorry but come election time, Bill Maher will slander whichever Republican get nominated next year, even if they aren't Trump. He cares more about hating white Christian conservatives than fighting Wokeness or Tranny Supremacy.
Gov Ron would be a good President if not this time around then certainly in the near future.
I hold out hopes that Don will name Ron for the Veep slot on the GOP ballot.
It's not just 2016. 2000, too.
If Trump were sitting there - he would just name-call. That's about all he has.
Did you read where Trump called Nikki Haley a "birdbrain."
so classy.
it's OKAY when democrats say elections are stolen..
just like it's OKAY for democrats to possess classified documents..
just like it's OKAY for democrats to destroy evidence..
just like it's OKAY for democrats to take MILLIONS in bribes from foreign countries
HECK! just like it's OKAY for democrats to shoot people like Seth Rich in the streets
Strange how Trump supporters forget that Trump promised a special counsel for Hillary - and her private server for Clinton Cash, & her illegal destruction of documents and devices.
Trump reneged on his promise. Not only broke his promise - but fell all over himself saying "The Clintons are good people." & "I don't want to hurt Hillary."... and more recently - describing Hillary "Lovely" (WFT?)
Then her-> paid-for dossier (filled with BS) was used to take down Trump.
Trump should have seen Jan 6th coming. He screwed that up, too. He let the FBI and Pelosi walk all over him. and now many of his supporters rot in jail - (some did behave badly, but many are rotting in jail just for entering a public building that was open)
You know who else thinks Hillary is lovely? Dana Perino at Fox News.
Any negative droplet of anything about a Democrat is.... "RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION!"
The real Q? Maddow Democrats.
How does DeSantis wait his turn when Trump will have a VP who will rightfully believe it's their turn. Such a Trump talking point.
If you saw him say that ma’am, you’d realize the genuineness of that gesture. He had won. Legally. In any other world that fucking despicable criminal was gone. At that time I had no idea that those cocksuckers in DC were THIS FUCKING EVIL. Trump was ready to enact the Republican agenda, the one he ran on. Turns out the Republicans had no such intentions.
Anybody remember Tom Price? Physician, congressman (Mine at the time). He had a plan! Those cocksuckers were running votes in congress to repeal and pass Tom Price’s awesome plan. He’s a doctor! He knows this stuff! What happened? Tom Proce didn’t have a plan. Tom Price was a fraud scumbag. We can blame Trump for his picks. I mean Warmonger cocksucker John Bolton? Huh? But I say as very cynical guy, nobody knew just how evil EVERYTHING was. Now we know and unfortunately nobody is willing to burn it all down except the guy who is getting well and truly fucked. It has to be Trump or it has to be war, take your pick.
Can't wait to call him Mr. President.
Some people said things like that.
The entire Democratic Party and base however did not ground their entire politics in it for years afterward. They did not lose 60 court cases trying to establish that, and then persist in trying to establish that and insisting it was true anyway. They did not lose several independent or even biased state recount audits and then persist in trying to establish that. Most could tell the difference between a foreign country campaigning on their opponent’s behalf in underhanded ways and actually taking over the machines or controlling the results.
Their losing candidate went on to other things, she did not remain the party front-runner and their message did not devolve into a constant drumbeat of effort to insist on the impossible, just because she said so. She conceded the election and not break the law trying to raise slates of “fake electors” (Trump Team’s words) or interfering with state tabulation procedures or cheering on attempts to hang a VP for allowing the count to proceed as indicated.
They did not tell their military to look into ways of commandeering voting machines and establishing martial law so that the election results could be controlled by the federal executive.
Minor things to the empty-headed Republicans, but major and important facts and distinctions to rational people nonetheless. Not that facts matter to Republicans.
But I get it. This fake election thing is all they’ve got going for them. They lose 7 out of 8 national popular elections, their policies have shit resonance with the people (except for border fixations) and their front-runner is a malignant psychopath who lies constantly and yet is the only person they “trust.”
It’s how fascism operates. First deny factual reality. Then elevate someone to promote the fantasy and insist that only he can tell you what’s real.
As someone commented, Republicans have had their first taste of dictatorship. And they find it delicious.
And as David Frum said, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” And you have done so.
We appreciate those many voices on your side who have made this so plain to see.
>Saint Croix said...
"I would love a federal law that recognized the humanity of unborn children and outlawed abortion when the baby's heart is beating...Or, if you prefer, more "pragmatic." He focuses on weeks rather than biological criteria. That's the Althouse move. You're basically revealing yourself as pro-choice when you ignore the baby and her biology. People who focus on weeks are arbitrary as shit."<
Heartbeat has no more validity as a marker of life than when the moment the fetus first moves, or first sucks its thumb. Or, more essentially, when two fused living gamete cells become four very living embryonic cells -- four joined cells which most definitely possess "biology." Heartbeat is every bit as arbitrary as those and the idea that it is different is simply a fallacious appeal to emotion argument. "Ah, bless its little heart...it's beating! It's alive!"
"...immolate his political future"?
Puh-leeze. He's probably the best chance for us to avoid the four year shit-show guaranteed by the election of either of the current leading candidates.
The truth is, nobody knows. We can be honest about that
Ron can't be honest about that. If Trump's election was stolen then the Republican base should nominate Trump. Ron knows that so he has to maintain that it wasn't stolen. Trump lost.
One great question back would be to ask Democrats who won the Iowa caucus. Or the Wisconsin primary. That election was all kinds of messed up from early on. Why?
It has to be DeSantis this time.
The only thing that doesn't bode well for another Trump presidency is how idiotically Democrats are gonna act. It has nothing to do with how he runs things, because he did a good job before. Hell, as I've always said, I could do a better job than these guys with the right support.
The only thing that doesn't bode well for another Trump presidency is how idiotically Democrats are gonna act. It has nothing to do with how he runs things, because he did a good job before. Hell, as I've always said, I could do a better job than these guys with the right support.
Heartbeat is every bit as arbitrary as those and the idea that it is different is simply a fallacious appeal to emotion argument.
Actually, the difference is that the presence or absence of a heartbeat has been the legal definition of life and death for centuries. Today it is brain activity, so let that be the standard for both the end of life and the beginning of life.
hpudding - you clearly do not understand the definition of fascism.
It's state control over private industry. so - it's leftist.
We know you think it means "a name to hurl at my political enemy."
Also, for people who care about stuff like due process and criminal procedure...
15 weeks is a joke as a criminal line
there's no specificity like that in medical science
nobody knows when conception happens
obstetricians routinely guesstimate how many weeks via last menstrual period
even if you use a sonogram -- something the pro-abort lobby referred to as a rape of women -- you're going to have a photograph, but your age estimate could be off by weeks or even a month. That's assuming your abortion doctor is operating in good faith. To arrest and prosecute him, you'd have to prove his week assessment was wrong and intentionally wrong.
The people advocating weeks ought to realize it's an unworkable criminal law. I think a lot of abortion doctors will follow the law -- not wanting to risk getting arrested -- but there are any number of sketchy doctors providing abortions to people. If you actually want to save lives, we need to officially recognize the humanity of unborn babies.
Take homicide off the table. A heartbeat rule does that.
The last Republican who thought he would resolve abortion by issuing a bunch of arbitrary shit was Harry Blackmun. So how did that work out for Harry, Mr. Trump?
And as David Frum said, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” And you have done so.
Our Founding Fathers rejected democracy, and deliberately designed our government to avoid it as much as possible. I think they were right, and things have gotten worse the more democratic our government has become.
DeSantis sounds so ... sane.
Maybe his goofy smile will become a lovable quirk.
I suspect the applause was planned. Sounded like only a few people.
Agree - St Croix - that "weeks" is arbitrary. But - that's the reality in BS political terms.
Most abortions now done with pharmaceuticals. Not surgery.
The pills used are taken early. So a six WEEK ban on abortion isn't as controversial as Trump insists. but then again- he is an unprincipled jackass.
*fixed.***
re: 6 months and chemical abortion
Out of sight and out of mind. Planned Parent/hood. Concentration camps, too.
re: heartbeat
Yes, it may be stillborn. Granny, too, a la Whitmer et al Choice.
Even third-world nations are capable of auditing elections and ensuring democratic integrity.
April Apple wrote:
"Trump should have seen Jan 6th coming. He screwed that up, too. He let the FBI and Pelosi walk all over him. and now many of his supporters rot in jail - (some did behave badly, but many are rotting in jail just for entering a public building that was open)"
Perhaps, and it is a black mark against Trump that he hasn't taken a firmer stance against the persecution of these January 6th protestors. However, which of the other candidates has even taken a stance opposing this persecution that is stronger? Ramaswamy is the closest. It really does need to be said by every Republican candidate that they will pardon every single one of the people prosecuted for that protest- every single one. Without that, none of them will get my vote in the primary, and it will be a mark against them in the general election vote, too.
It is a stupid litmus test everyone on falls for. Joe Biden occupies The White House so it is easy to answer 'Joe Biden won the elction'. The douchebag asking the question will dutifully march your answer over to the 'Not Denier' pile but the pledge of fealty the question demands is easily circumvented and the question regarding election fraud of sufficient scale to award the election to the wrong candidate goes unanswered...and unasked.
Puddin
The president bragged about committing vote fraud.
Trump should have seen Jan 6th coming
The enemy has a flow chart of a thousand land mines. Step left we do this. Step right we do that...sometimes we can do both this and that- it doesn't matter. Like what they do at War College there's a thousand contingencies and you're gonna get them just by existing. See it coming's got nothing to do with it...
How dare Desantis state the facts! This is politics, where the past is only allowed to be used against Republicans, and every dawn is a new beginning for Democrats who are washed clean of all previous statements, actions, thoughts, ideologies, and practices by the fresh light of the new day.
Heartbeat has no more validity as a marker of life than when the moment the fetus first moves, or first sucks its thumb. Or, more essentially, when two fused living gamete cells become four very living embryonic cells -- four joined cells which most definitely possess "biology." Heartbeat is every bit as arbitrary as those and the idea that it is different is simply a fallacious appeal to emotion argument. "Ah, bless its little heart...it's beating! It's alive!"
I'm familiar with deconstructionist arguments, and people who say with a straight face that don't know what a person is, or they don't know what a baby is, or they don't know what a woman is. You're attempting to say that we have no idea whether or when a baby is alive. You're full of shit, okay?
Heartbeat is a biological criterion that doctors use to determine if people are alive. It's been in use for centuries. I don't claim it's the best possible biological criterion for human life -- I think electrical activity in the brain is the most exact rule -- but it's certainly a very strong rule.
I've never heard of "thumb-sucking" as a possible rule. That's a new record for stupid suggestions.
Q: "Doctor, why did you stab that newborn?"
A: "He wasn't sucking his thumb, and I was convinced that he would never be useful as a fully functional human being."
I predict exactly zero states enact the "thumb-sucking" rule of abortion politics. Throughout time and space, that has never been a rule. Multiple states have been enacting heartbeat rules.
Or, more essentially, when two fused living gamete cells become four very living embryonic cells -- four joined cells which most definitely possess "biology."
Smart academic people say shit like this, as if there is no moral or legal or ethical difference between swallowing Plan B and stabbing a baby in the middle of birth. There's a huge fucking difference.
Plan B is not a homicide. The latter is a homicide. Homicide is one of the most serious crimes a person can do, if not the most serious. You want to say that our death statutes are "arbitrary"? Fine. I think they're a good faith effort to determine when people die. And I approve of laws that link our unborn children to us. We should strive to apply laws to people universally. What we should never do is single out a class of human beings, define them as "non-people," and then hide the bodies because we're ashamed of all the shit we're doing.
Yancey - DeSantis has come out strong against what they are doing to Trump. No matter what the criteria is for defending Trump - It's never good enough.
Desantis needs to start attacking Biden. HARD. Go after him for trying to Jail Trump. Go after him for not enforcing the immigration laws. Go after him for inflation, gas price insanity, & rising interest rates. Go after him for refusing to secure our border while spending BILLIONS to secure Ukraine's border.
Attack, attack, attack.
Instead, he's trying to be Mr. Sober Citizen. Mr only adult in the Room. Mr. I'll bring the country together. Mr. Gosh I'm so reasonable.
This is a loser. How many fucking times have R's talked like this and lost. Ford, Dole, Romney, McCain. And Bush I ran in 1992 as a moderate and lost.
And quit talking about abortion. Its a state matter now. The POTUS isn't going to do jack-shit about Abortion.
>Saint Croix said...
I'm familiar with deconstructionist arguments, and people who say with a straight face that don't know what a person is, or they don't know what a baby is, or they don't know what a woman is. You're attempting to say that we have no idea whether or when a baby is alive. You're full of shit, okay?
Smart academic people say shit like this, as if there is no moral or legal or ethical difference between swallowing Plan B and stabbing a baby in the middle of birth. There's a huge fucking difference.<
Heh, you're like that BBC "So you're saying" buffoon who interviewed Jordan Peterson and who, unable to argue with what he actually said, created straw men to argue with for every straightforward point he made. It was pointless for him to discuss anything with her. For me too...
The track record of ‘unsubstantiated claims’ that later panned out is with Trump.
So, going with Trump on something nobody, from the courthouse to outhouse, wants to look at, is not at at all far fetched.
And Maher makes a joke instead of admitting he is wrong, again.
you clearly do not understand the definition of fascism.
It's state control over private industry. so - it's leftist.
How fun. I guess I’m going to be lectured to by an uneducated Trumpanzee.
So when Trump and the RNC tell FOX what to report, it sounds like you’re saying your politics are one of fascism? Or when Ron DeSantis tells Disney how to mistreat their employees and their LGBT families? He got REALLY ANGRY over THAT ONE!
In any case, since you don’t think things through, you don’t realize that you’re saying that any nationalized or even regulated industry is fascist. Which is a stupid way of saying that you think all businesses should be lawless. If money is made from something, then no laws can touch it. Which would legalize the hit man industry. And the poisoning industry. And slavery. Etc., etc.
Interestingly, the Nazis heavily privatized industry - as much as they worked with them and provided them with slave labor. They made the poisons used in concentration camps, they profited off of the war, they built cars for the autobahn.
So by this definition you would call them not fascist, even though their economic policies (which you agree with) were definitely Nazi!
HBTPFH,
It's state control over private industry. so - it's leftist.
Well, of course it is. Though you will find rather few people ready to say so. Fascism is "public/private partnership." Remember what the fasces are. They're a bundle of sticks, easy to break one by one, impossible to break when bound together. I'll bet that HRC doesn't, because her "Stronger Together" slogan is exactly the fascist argument.
Looks like there’s a lot of dudes on this thread (and April Apple) going through long, drawn-out treatises for why they want to increase the maternal death rate by forcing pregnancies to term and forcing births. How typical.
The Republican male. Not only is he willing to force a woman to stay pregnant and deliver an infant she can’t care for, but he’s willing to do as an incel. No way he’s going to let his total lack of any experience with sex or childbirth or child-rearing get in the way of telling a woman how she should be forced to keep a dead fetus in her abdomen for two months until it’s delivered “at term.” Or that she should incubate a fetus developing without a brain or sufficient thoracic cavity to stay alive for longer than a day post-delivery. They’ve got rules and that’s more important!
Trump should have seen Jan 6th coming. He screwed that up, too.
LOLOL. He saw gallows for Mike Pence and told Mark Meadows that Pence “deserved it!”
Lemme guess, also an unfortunate but innocent gaffe?
You guys are hilarious.
first moves, or first sucks its thumb
Rigormortis. A pinky? Granny, too.
What came first, abortion or life from conception ("big bang")?
A 3/5 compromise with slavers and diversitists with an impending revolutionary war.
A 1/2 compromise with progressives, liberals, and feminists... demos-cracy is aborted with a democratic/dictatorial consensus.
A wicked solution to a hard problem: keep women affordable, available, and taxable, and the "burden" of evidence sequestered, perchance cannibalized in darkness.
If Trump's election was stolen then the Republican base should nominate Trump.
This statement makes no sense to me. Sure, maybe he lost the 2020 election unfairly. Why does that mean he should be the default nominee in 2024? The nominee should be whoever can earn the nomination in 2024. If it is Trump, great. If it is not, great.
Our Founding Fathers rejected democracy,
Ok, good. So then if Trump really did win the 2020 election it’s only right that he didn’t stay in office. You know, cause democracy bad. The system worked!
and deliberately designed our government to avoid it as much as possible.
They avoided offending the Southern “sensibilities” of states with significant slave populations who might have voted for slavery and slave interests not to exist. But decided with the fifteenth and seventeenth amendments and Voting Rights Act to expand and protect the franchise, allow for direct election of senators, and otherwise stay true to the founding vision as it was perfected in the wake of abolition. How pitiful that you would seek to apparently narrow it back to whom? Only landowners? Only white, males? It takes real obtuseness to believe we’re going back to that, or repealing two amendments that have been in place for over a hundred years and that no one wants to repeal. All in the name of forcing people to have less say over their government.
I think they were right, and things have gotten worse the more democratic our government has become.
So says you.
But the problem with rejecting democracy is that you then have to decide whom you’re going to restrict things TO. To just a monarch? Or a non-hereditary tyrant? And to whom will you restrict the vote? Sounds like you’d have to trample over a whole lot of people to remove their rights and redefine narrower groups of people to whom they should then apply more limitedly.
But things have only become worse.
Things became worse after forty years of Reaganism decimated the middle class, completely screwed over the working class, de-unionized our labor and left the only groups with any political access the billionaires and lobbyists who have the only means left with which to “persuade” (i.e. bribe) the government.
IOW, it’s just as you want it. You’ve restricted access to the government to the very people your party thought should have more power and more say - i.e. the wealthy.
Things were better after FDR. It was Reaganism’s rape of the franchise and redefinition of it to only apply to the wealthy that made things worse. You’ve gotten exactly the result that your elitist political ideology wanted.
BTW, the founders didn’t “reject democracy.” They didn’t design a government run by an Athenian direct democracy where every decision is an at-large referendum by the entire voting public. (But they had no problem with New England town halls very effectively operating this way, as they do to this very day).
They very deliberately went for a representative democracy which - although restricting the franchise from populations that would have threatened the cotton and tobacco plantations that enslaved them - was and still is quite democratic otherwise.
The system of legalized bribery however that the conservatives ushered in with the Citizens United ruling does, along with gerrymandering, heavily dilute the power of non-wealthy and average voters to influence the government. It also makes things much more corrupt, which the founders weren’t fans of either.
But we definitely have a system of, by and for the wealthy now, which it’s arguable that the founders sympathized with. I’m just not sure why more Republicans can’t openly say if that’s what they favor or not.
Being a right-winger requires you to be very sneaky about your ignominious preferences. It also forces you to favor systems of control (i.e. tyranny) so that all the rabble can’t change it.
Sneaky and controlling. It’s the right-wing way.
"Interestingly, the Nazis heavily privatized industry - "
So you believe that companies in Nazi Germany were free to do as they wished, in contradiction to what the Nazis wanted?
HPudding - you have proof that the RNC tells Fox what to report? No - you got nothing.
Meanwhile - Biden just opening asked the media to shill for him.
You really are a leftist joke.
Hpudding - you're a typical cookie cutter hive-mind pro-dead-baby leftist fascist.
i've had a low opinion of maher for at least 20 years, the peak was when he demanded a recession' so we could recover our democracy, sarc,
It's (D)ifferent when Hillary does it.
It's pretty funny if you look at a picture of the "gallows" not carefully aligned with the Capitol Dome or with somberfilters added, you see a collection of two by fours that look like they were screwed together by an amateur with a cordless drill and some screws, that wouldn't hold the weight of a body, much less a group of people carrying a man up to be hanged. On the side of it was a sign that said "this is art"
Have the people behind it been identified and charged? I can't find where that has happened. It seems like we can't have these people who have the power to overthrow the government after spending $50 at Home Depot, and an hours labor, running around loose!
hpudding writes, "The Republican male."
hpudding, the socialist gender-fluid whatever, eager to kill babies. To it, there's nothing more beautiful than a dismembered human infant in a pan. But not cattle, hpudding thinks meat is murder, don't you?
Fascism has become the subject of a definitional shell game.
That is because the word "fascism" has become a hot potato, especially as those on the progressive left are edging toward the Italianate version of fascism. They have made their formerly absolute claim of commitment to civil liberties far more conditional and nuanced (e.g., hate speech and misinformation should be censored), and at the same time become champions of massive government partnerships with selected allied corporate interests, and they have become supporters of military solutions, and big supporters of an activist FBI, CIA etc.
Don't worry comrades, you will never be fascists. We can rebut accusations of fascism by just parsing Ron DeSantis's latest speech and redefining fascism in a way that matches DeSantis's themes.
Puddin: "He saw gallows for Mike Pence and told Mark Meadows that Pence “deserved it!”
Sure he did...right before he knocked out his Secret Service protection, grabbed the controls of an M1 Abrams tank and headed to the Capital to Lead The Insurrection (TM)!!!
LOL
Puddin' provides the answer to the question: who would be stupid enough to believe ANOTHER Cassidy Hutchison lie after EVERY OTHER previous Cassidy Hutchinson hearsay lie was destroyed in near real time in under oath testimony by the actual people present..lies Hutchinson crammed in to the latest Michael Wolff-caliber lie-fest book!
April Apple,
I was not asking about the persecution of Trump- I was asking about the persecution of the January 6th protestors. I find no strong condemnations from any of the candidates other than Trump and Ramaswamy, and no promises to pardon all of them, but maybe I missed it.
Blogger Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker: "Yancey - DeSantis has come out strong against what they are doing to Trump."
No. He hasn't.
Because he can't since the ENTIRE rationale and strategy for his campaign REQUIRES Trump to be removed by Team GOPe/Dem lawfare.
There never was and is not any other path for DeSantis to gain the nomination.
Unfortunately for DeDantis, his globalist funders and GOPe/Bushite/establishment DC consultants convinced him Trump could not survive what they had planned for Trump.
I happen to believe that is correct by the way: Trump will be removed.
The entirety of the Federal govt, all the dems and at least 3/4 of elected GOPe republicans are desperate to see that happen.
Again, unfortunately for DeSantis, its now also clear that a solid plurality, if not majority, of the republican base will not go along with the forced removal of Trump and they sure wont go along with DeSantis and his advisors when they deploy the voting blackmail strategy of "voting for Ron is the only way to keep Trump and his children out of jail".
A better approach than Trump's is to say that Dobbs returned the issue of abortion to the states and that Congress has no authority under the Constitution to pass laws regulating abortion. Nothing in Article II authorizes Congress to do,that. So there's no need (and no authority) for Congress or the president to decide how many weeks
Interestingly, the Nazis heavily privatized industry - as much as they worked with them and provided them with slave labor. They made the poisons used in concentration camps, they profited off of the war, they built cars for the autobahn.
So by this definition you would call them not fascist, even though their economic policies (which you agree with) were definitely Nazi!
Tell me you are ignorant (but think you're educated) without telling me you're ignorant (but think you're educated).
The entire Democratic Party and base however did not ground their entire politics in it for years afterward.
Horseshit, yapper dog.
You people are still bitching about the 2000 election.
Heh, you're like that BBC "So you're saying" buffoon who interviewed Jordan Peterson and who, unable to argue with what he actually said, created straw men to argue with for every straightforward point he made. It was pointless for him to discuss anything with her. For me too...
Did you or did you not suggest thumb-sucking was just as valid as a heartbeat law?
Weeks are arbitrary as shit. It has zero correlation to the baby's life or death. Zero! It's the moral equivalent of saying that we can stab or poison anybody who reaches 80 years of age. And then to have some other moron say, "it should be 87 years." Instead of getting stuck on a fucking calendar, why not think about the critical life-or-death criterion you would use to determine if any human being is alive or not alive.
You say heartbeat is "arbitrary," like you and I don't have one! And that's in sharp contrast to all the dead people who don't have a heartbeat. I challenge any of you alleged "liberals" to come up with some death statute that you would be willing to apply to all of us, born or unborn. But you fuckers don't believe in equal protection anymore. Like you don't believe in free speech.
Mussolini developed fascism to make communism palatable to the Italian middle class. Mussolini was a communist first as was his father. The roots of fascism is communism. That Hitler hijacked fascism for his own purposes is niether here nor there. He got the industrialists to get behind him by threatening to nationalize their industries. He was an fervent hater of the communists. Mostly because he ,like Mussolini, wanted the backing of the middle class. Hpuddin', like a good progressive, labels anything he cannot comprehend as fascist.
I've written on the irrelevancy of conception to the abortion debate. It's important in many ways, spiritually and scientifically. But in criminal law? Nobody knows when conception happens. We have no scientific way of telling when a sperm fertilizes an egg and a zygote has been created. Such a law would only be relevant in IVF clinics, where scientists are joining a sperm and an egg in a lab. Completely irrelevant as a criminal law in a pregnancy case. You can't prove a pregnancy at that stage. You can't prove that an abortion happened.
The Texas attorneys who argued in favor of the state's criminal abortion laws in Roe v. Wade used implantation as the basis for the criminal law, not conception. That's because implantation is the first moment when we can detect that a woman is pregnant. Once the zygote implants in the walls of her uterus, her body will start producing the pregnancy hormone. That's how all the pregnancy tests work. Conception is and remains a mystery to humanity.
I would argue that Texas moving from implantation in 1973, to heartbeat in 2023, is a recognition that people need some moral reason for the outlawing of abortion. Why is it bad? I continue to insist that many abortions are horrific because they are homicides. And the people who say we cannot define when human beings die aren't serious people. They are glib and shallow about unborn children.
Ice Nine,
You mock heartbeat laws (even though such laws are still on the books in many states, protecting you and me). And you mock the emotional reaction that parents have to hearing the heartbeat of an unborn child. Are you really so cold and callous that you don't give a shit about parents loving their children?
Heartbeat is every bit as arbitrary as those and the idea that it is different is simply a fallacious appeal to emotion argument. "Ah, bless its little heart...it's beating! It's alive!"
That's what the EMTs say when they're trying to rescue you from your heart attack. "We got a heartbeat, she's alive." Do you really think the EMTs are making a "fallacious appeal to emotion"? Or are they using a widely accepted biological criteria for a live human being?
hpudding,
No doubt I'm just another "uneducated Trumpanzee," though UC/Berkeley might beg to differ. But you misunderstand the point. Fascism isn't "nationalization" or "regulation"; instead, it's the State co-opting business without ever formally taking it over.
"Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato." Meaning, among other things, that businesses in a fascist state are fine, so long as they do what the Gummint wants them to do. Why bother nationalizing them?
As for "regulation": quit it. If regulating business in any way whatsoever is "fascist," the entire planet is under fascist rule already. Since I suspect even you do not believe that, perhaps we can start the argument over, from more favorable ground.
Agree - St Croix - that "weeks" is arbitrary. But - that's the reality in BS political terms.
No it's not. Heartbeat is a viable political strategy. Multiple states have enacted heartbeat laws, including purple states like Florida. It's a pro-life strategy, one that wants us all to focus on the unborn child and her right to life.
There are any number of Republicans who have won the White House saying that "life begins at conception." So the idea that nobody can get elected with pro-life rhetoric is not true.
Obviously under Roe v.Wade, their rhetoric was completely irrelevant. Now it's highly relevant!
I rewatched this clip and DeSantis looked a lot better.
He's the best Governor I've ever lived under- and I've lived in 7 different states spread over multiple decades (including CA and NY). He is simply a man of action. He's smart, tough, and would be a terrific President. The idea that 'he should wait his turn' is preposterous
The exact same rallying cry for Wisc Gov, Scott Walker, I don't pretend to understand the why, but its tough to translate State politics to National results.
The exact same rallying cry for Wisc Gov, Scott Walker, I don't pretend to understand the why, but its tough to translate State politics to National results
------
Local issues can help bring crossover voters. So, a good governor can win super for reelection from people who won't vote for him in a presidential election.
A better approach than Trump's is to say that Dobbs returned the issue of abortion to the states and that Congress has no authority under the Constitution to pass laws regulating abortion. Nothing in Article II authorizes Congress to do,that. So there's no need (and no authority) for Congress or the president to decide how many weeks
Dobbs overruled Roe. It's been a while since I've read the opinion. But it's a highly impressive legal opinion from Alito. People used to mock him and call him "Scalito" or "Scalia light" or some damn shit like that. I'll go out on a ledge and say that Alito's opinion is Dobbs is stronger than any opinion from Scalia I've ever read. And I'm a Scalia fan! But Alito's opinion is fucking tight. No humor, of course. It's just an ordinary judicial opinion, like any other judicial opinion. He overruled Roe like it was no big deal at all. Impressive at the level of craft. And because of the way he wrote it, and how business-like and ordinary his opinion is, I will go out on a second ledge and say the Supreme Court will never bring back Roe or anything like it. It is dead dead, and Alito's magnificent opinion killed it.
Anyway, it's been a while since I've read it, but I'm 90% sure that this statement...
"Dobbs returned the issue of abortion to the states"
... is a wish fantasy about what the opinion actually says. I don't remember any discussion of federalism in Dobbs. Nor do I remember any sort of passage about what the federal government can or cannot do. Alito had one mission, destroy Roe, and that's what he did.
What I do remember is Alito talking about "substantive" due process, a lot. And he spent some time talking about stare decisis, too, so mission #2 was wipe out Casey, and he did that, too.
That's all he did. So of course Trump (or any other politician) is free to say that "abortion is a state issue" and just ignore it. But so far I have heard zero people in the federal government make that argument. They love their power and they are loathe to give it up.
As for me, I insist that the equal protection clause gives protection to innocent people who are brutally treated by oppressive state government. I can make that argument all fucking day. And I'm at an advantage to my dishonest opponents, all of whom know what a "person" is, but they are too dishonest to admit it. Let's just say you dubious fuckers think Exxon is a person and a baby is not one. Good luck running for office on that plan.
The whole 5 minute clip is really good. DeSantis is terrific. He's friendly and warm and makes valid points. He always struck me as a cold fish, but he's great with Maher. And Maher is great with him, too.
Maher once joked that he had "hate sex" with Ann Coulter. I love that he's friends with her and he's stood up for her and invited her to his show multiple times. There have been so many Republicans on Maher's show, he's really pretty good about trying to be fair to opponents.
"On a scale of 9 to 10, what did you think of my monolog?"
That's a funny line. I didn't hear the monolog, but DeSantis was very gracious. "it made me laugh, I'll give you that" and "from both sides of the aisle." So it sounds like Maher did a monolog where he ripped Republicans and the woke, which is pretty typical for him.
DeSantis also invited Maher to move to Florida if California keeps annoying him. And Maher mocked his cowboy boots and DeSantis schooled him with the all the cattle farms in Florida. (I had no idea, so I was schooled on this as well!)
Bill Maher: "Oh, all right, I stand corrected." I was like, holy shit! And people in the audience were laughing.
Later in the interview, DeSantis made a point that had never occurred to me, and I think he surprised Maher with this as well.
I think people should watch the whole clip, but if you want to see the best part, it starts at the 2:36 mark and it goes to 3:47. DeSantis offers a reason for Republicans to vote for him and not Trump, and it's a good reason. And I'd never heard of that one before, or even considered it.
(Basically, he's attacking Trump for the lockdowns. A lot of people -- including Maher -- would agree with DeSantis on this, I think. And DeSantis talks about "cleaning house" at the CDC and NIH, and how Trump will never do that. I think that's a winning argument with a lot of Republicans and libertarians and even many Democrats).
As for "regulation": quit it. If regulating business in any way whatsoever is "fascist," the entire planet is under fascist rule already.
That’s not my point. That’s the point of the HBTPFHs, the Rustys and all the other right-wing clones - as you can see above. If it sounds easy to parody that’s because it is.
And yes, Mussolini had certain ideas but they went far beyond economics as did his brand of fascism generally. And the Nazis were still fascist despite taking their economy in a whole ‘nuther direction, privatizing it to a point that would be the Republican wet dream. Or maybe Ayn Rand’s
Fascists are flexible on the economic front. What they’re not flexible on is their veneration of the dictator who embodies the nation in its entirety and champions the domineering national patriarch that he presents himself as. He talks about a mythical time of heroic national perfection from long ago that only he can return the country to, and does not tolerate anyone challenging his power or the lies he tells in his “monopoly on truth” to hypnotize the nation on their journey to reach it. He enforces a strict gender binary where women are baby-makers and men foot soldiers recruited into his hyper aggressive drive to bring order, structure and perfection to the nation. Brawls, threats and violence are common displays that he welcomes in achieving this anti-democratic vision and the fear he instills in enforcing it.
You people are still bitching about the 2000 election.
So says yet another right-wing confederate clone who no doubt still bitches about the outcome of the 1860 election. As well as the outcome of the war they started the next year.
Hpuddin', like a good progressive, labels anything he cannot comprehend as fascist.
I appreciate your superior understanding of Nazism compared to mine, Rusty. I don’t doubt that you are much more personally familiar with it.
Matt Taibi has a great take-down of Anthony Fauci.
So for Republicans considering who to vote for in the 2024 primaries, DeSantis will clean house at the NIH and CDC and NIAID. Will Trump do that?
Dr. Anthony Fauci was secretly escorted to CIA HQ where he tried to influence spy agency's probe into origins of COVID.
I always appreciate someone as frenzied in his slavish devotion to Trump as Drago is clarifying who is and is not a liar. Trump followers definitely appreciate honesty and the truth. The closer their lips get to his behind the better they are at sniffing out the truth!
hpudding, the socialist gender-fluid whatever, eager to kill babies. To it, there's nothing more beautiful than a dismembered human infant in a pan. But not cattle, hpudding thinks meat is murder, don't you?
Queasy-Tor, the fascist incel, eager to force the women he can’t attract to make and birth babies. To it, there’s nothing more beautiful than a woman forced to carry an infected fetal corpse, or one without a brain or one that will die in agony on its first day post-delivery from a rib cage too small to allow lung expansion. Or a woman like the one who dies of a septic miscarriage in Ireland before they voted to change its barbaric papist laws. The number of atrocities he doesn’t see but would support are as great as his medical ignorance.
But those lives and deaths are way less important than Queastor’s need to feel that women will do his bidding when it comes to the pregnancies he cannot and would never be permitted to achieve with them.
How fun. I guess I’m going to be lectured to by an uneducated Trumpanzee.
And with that one, sour sentence, you automatically lose the debate. Thanks for playing.
hpudding said...
"Hpuddin', like a good progressive, labels anything he cannot comprehend as fascist.
I appreciate your superior understanding of Nazism compared to mine, Rusty. I don’t doubt that you are much more personally familiar with it."
I am. Having to deal with people like you day in and day out. It's obvious that you've been promoted far beyond your actual abilities.
DeSantis is superior to Trump in a million ways. Why Trump and his democrats need to take him out.
Pudding for brains is a low level obedient leftist interwebz brownshirt. Poor thing.
HPudding 3:03 - no one is doing what you suggest - you liar. ah - but you are a dedicated leftist lying liar who lies - so your lying comes with the territory.
I really feel for Rusty, good little boy that he is. I really do. He actually feels so persecuted that he believes life in America has for him been like living under the Third Reich. Maybe he needs to clean out the toxic fumes in his tool and die shop. Or he could take part in the next March of the Living and present his experience to the participants on what it’s like to make a living as a machinist in Auschwitz, Illinois.
Let’s see your abilities match that.
HPudding 3:03 - no one is doing what you suggest
All anyone has to do to determine how pregnancies have been impacted in red states is to ask the obstetricians and gynecologists how difficult it has become for them to practice effectively under those states’ forced birth regimes.
But you can’t really expect someone who would support a president who assaults women (having bragged about “grabbing them by the pussy” and losing a $5 million court settlement for the same) to know anything about gynecology, let alone gynecologists and OBs. Can you?
Blogger Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker: "DeSantis is superior to Trump in a million ways. Why Trump and his democrats need to take him out."
A breathtakingly moronic reversal of reality.
But not surprising in the least.
FLASHBACK: Donald Trump on 60 Minutes, 2016: "The Clintons are good people" Trump- the man we should trust. Blindly. + immature name-calling. Where is Trump on bashing Biden? I predict Trump will say 'the Biden's are good people' soon enough.
hpuddin' said,
Your parents should ask for their money back.
HBTPFH's official position is Trump and the democrats are working together to take out DeSantis.
Just going to let that one sit there and marvel at it.
hpudding@2.41 a.m. (!),
The point about regulation was your point. If you didn't mean it, now you have said so; but that doesn't change when I read your prior statement.
Mussolini "had certain ideas," yes. And if you don't think the image of the fasces has anything at all to do with fascism, you're delusional. It is, as I've already said, the precise equivalent of HRC's "Stronger Together." As for Hitler's and Mussolini's economics, they aren't very different, frankly. Again, Mussolini wasn't interested much in nationalizing things; you'd find more enthusiasm for that in, say, the post-war UK Labour Party. Meanwhile, do you really think that (say) Volkswagen or AG Farben were "private companies" under the Nazis? Sure: "private companies" that did only and exactly what the Government demanded of them.
And as for this:
He enforces a strict gender binary where women are baby-makers and men foot soldiers recruited into his hyper aggressive drive to bring order, structure and perfection to the nation,
it's, oh, perhaps decades out of date. Who are the so-called "fascist" leaders in Europe right now? Well, there's Marine Le Pen, right? Georgia Meloni, right? Alternativ fuer Deutschland has had leaders of both sexes. I trust a search among the leadership of the major parties of the Scandinavian nations would turn up an awful lot of female "fascists" by your current definition. Especially as it regards rebuffing waves of refugees, real and pretended, from anywhere-but-Europe. Merely "baby-makers" one and all, eh?
The entire situation is far more complex than your ideology allows for.
I should have known when I saw over 100 comments to this post that it had turned into a food fight.
When Hillary Clinton stages a coup to try to stay in power, then the 2016 comparisons will be apt.
Pudding,
I'm not sure I want to get sucked into your tapioca thought processes
"oh fuck, I'm trapped in jello"
and so I hesitate to ask who the sexually-inexperienced Republican virgin incel is on the thread
are you yelling at the pope?
Anyone who can’t tell the difference between quoted material (from 10:43) and an original response is not worth taking seriously. It’s 2023, a supposed Berkeley graduate should be able to pass thread reading 101 and not insist on ascribing positions to others that they did not take, especially after being informed that they were not taken. Lacking a capacity (twice!) to distinguish comments from satirical responses to them can be sad.
It really is easier to continue making a fool of someone than get them to admit that they were fooled initially.
hpudding, you're digging yourself in deeper. You do realize that, yes?
I replied to the 10:43 comment in my own @2:51, citing HBTPFH as the source, and responding to him. Not you. Why on earth ought I to respond to you on that comment? I was responding to you trashing HBTPFH wrt that comment.
I don't know exactly what you intend by "satirical responses," though it's frankly damned difficult to machete myself through the undergrowth and guess what's "satiric" and what is not. Where were you satirical, and what/whom were you satirizing. Go ahead, treat me as just another Trumpanzee (though you don't know how I voted and probably never will). Explain it all in words of one syllable. I mean, the previous sentence contains words of more than one syllable, as does this one. But go on. The cat sat on the mat!
This "supposed Berkeley graduate" has degrees in mechanical engineering (BSE, 1988) and also in musicology (MA, 1991), from that university. If you feel like pursuing this matter, you ought really to take it up with them. I, for my part, have never questioned whatever academic credentials you assert yourself to have. I'm afraid I don't even know what they are. I apologize if I missed them; very likely the subject just wasn't of enough interest to me for it to grab my full attention.
Well, enough of that. I'll ask two questions again:
(1) Is not the symbol of the fasces exactly HRC's "Stronger Together"?
and
(2) Are Hitler's and Mussolini's economic policies actually very similar, in that neither was particularly into nationalizing industries, while both were very keen on co-opting ostensibly private industries into doing their respective governments' bidding anyway?
But none of them long words, y'hear? Me so dum I ain't hear nuthin'.
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