[The Soup Nazi]

Nice that one can still come to this thread to simply marvel at batshit insanity... and laugh it off? Hmm. From The Daily Beast:

RNC Speaker Cancelled After Boosting QAnon Conspiracy Theory About Jewish Plot to Enslave the World

Mary Ann Mendoza, an "angel mom," was set to speak on Tuesday night. But then she took to Twitter to encourage followers to read a thread about the Rothschilds.

Keep in mind that this person is a member of the Trump campaign's advisory board. Noice...

[!@#$%!]

last night melanoma pretended to admit racism exists

but in april 2011: "It's not only Donald who wants to see [Obama's birth certificate], it’s American people ... They want to see that."

https://mobile.twitter.com/ErickFern...-racism-rnc%2F

lmfao

[Screaming Skull]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

last night melanoma pretended to admit racism exists

melanoma...ha! ha! ha!...I see what you did there. Her actual name is Melania and you changed it to melanoma...how clever of you!

[!@#$%!]

Room rentals, resort fees and furniture removal: How Trump’s company charged the U.S. government more than $900,000

By
David A. Fahrenthold,
Josh Dawsey and
Joshua Partlow
August 27, 2020 at 9:26 a.m. MDT
Add to list

The Secret Service had asked for a room close to the president. But Mar-a-Lago said it was too late. The room was booked. Would agents like a room across the street from the president, instead?

“I do have a Beach Cabana available,” a staff member at President Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla., wrote in March 2017 to a Secret Service agent seeking rooms for the upcoming weekend. “Across the street at the Beach Club, North end of the pool.”

The next time, the Secret Service didn’t take the same risk. It paid Mar-a-Lago to book rooms for two weeks at a time — locking them up before the club could rent them to others, according to newly released records and emails.

For Trump’s club, it appeared, saying no to the Secret Service had made it a better customer. The agency was paying for rooms on nights when Trump wasn’t even visiting — to be ready just in case Trump decided to go, one former Trump administration official said.

Trump has now visited his own properties 270 times as president, according to a Washington Post tally — with another visit planned for Thursday, when he is scheduled to meet GOP donors at his Washington hotel.

Through these trips, Trump has brought the Trump Organization a stream of private revenue from federal agencies and GOP campaign groups. Federal spending records show that taxpayers have paid Trump’s businesses more than $900,000 since he took office. At least $570,000 came as a result of the president’s travel, according to a Post analysis.

Now, new federal spending documents obtained by The Post via a public-records lawsuit give more detail about how the Trump Organization charged the Secret Service — a kind of captive customer, required to follow Trump everywhere. In addition to the rentals at Mar-a-Lago, the documents show that the Trump Organization charged daily “resort fees” to Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Pence in Las Vegas and in another instance asked agents to pay a $1,300 “furniture removal charge” during a presidential visit to a Trump resort in Scotland.

In addition, campaign finance records have provided new details about the payments the Trump Organization received from GOP groups, as a result of the 37 instances in which Trump headlined a political event at one of his properties. Those visits have brought the company at least $3.8 million in fees, according to a Post analysis of campaign spending records.

Since taking office, Trump has taken other actions that have shattered his early promise to “completely isolate” himself from the Trump Organization.
He tried to award the massive Group of Seven summit to his Doral resort in Miami, dropping the idea after a public backlash. He filmed video messages for big-spending private clients at Mar-a-Lago. He suggested that Pence visit a Trump property in Ireland, according to the vice president’s chief of staff. Pence then shuttled back and forth across Ireland, at U.S. taxpayer expense, to do government business on one coast and stay at Trump’s hotel on the other.

But the most frequent way Trump is known to have helped his properties has been just to visit them, with the vast, big-spending presidential entourage in tow.

“One would think that if he was trying to completely isolate himself from his businesses, he wouldn’t talk about his business, he wouldn’t promote his business, he wouldn’t go to his businesses,” said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Instead, Bookbinder said, “his businesses have been a constant presence in his presidency. No. The idea that he was going to isolate himself completely — it’s been quite the opposite.”


etc etc...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...aking-news-bar

drain the swamp? he’s the swamp itself lolololololo

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by Screaming Skull

melanoma...ha! ha! ha!...I see what you did there. Her actual name is Melania and you changed it to melanoma...how clever of you!

Almost as good as all the nicknames Trump comes up with, right?

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

Almost as good as all the nicknames Trump comes up with, right?

oh man why did you have to make the turd visible? ewwww

gross

[!@#$%!]

anyway i was back here to post


“I may never see these places again,” Trump said during a rally in August 2016. “Because I’m going to be working for you. I’m not going to have time to go play golf. Believe me.”

lolololololololol

“believe me.” a sucker born every minute...

[h8kurdt]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

oh man why did you have to make the turd visible? ewwww

gross

Cos I luvs yer

[_tunic_]

Clippers coach Doc Rivers reply on the Republican Convention

[The Soup Nazi]

Melania Trump, the prostitute? Nothing against sex workers, people, seriously, but... we might as well admit it, she's a freakin' prostitute, dude.

 

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by _tunic_

Clippers coach Doc Rivers reply on the Republican Convention

oh, damn. damn, damn, damn...

Originally Posted by h8kurdt

Cos I luvs yer

hahahah

ok—but please no fecal specimens!

[The Soup Nazi]

From The Guardian:

Michael Moore warns that Donald Trump is on course to repeat 2016 win

Film-maker says enthusiasm for president in swing states is ‘off the charts’ and urges everyone to commit to getting 100 people to vote


The documentary film-maker Michael Moore has warned that Donald Trump appears to have such momentum in some battleground states that liberals risk a repeat of 2016 when so many wrote off Trump only to see him grab the White House.

“Sorry to have to provide the reality check again,” he said.

Moore, who was one of few political observers to predict Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, said that “enthusiasm for Trump is off the charts” in key areas compared with the Democratic party nominee, Joe Biden.

“Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC [Democratic National Committee] to pull this off?” Moore posted on Facebook late on Friday.

Moore identified opinion polling in battleground states such as Minnesota and Michigan to make a case that the sitting president is running alongside or ahead of his rival.

“The Biden campaign just announced he’ll be visiting a number of states – but not Michigan. Sound familiar?” Moore wrote, presumably indicating Hillary Clinton’s 2016 race when she made the error of avoiding some states that then swung to Trump.

“I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much,” he later added.

He continued to voters: “Don’t leave it to the Democrats to get rid of Trump. YOU have to get rid of Trump. WE have to wake up every day for the next 67 days and make sure each of us are going to get a hundred people out to vote. ACT NOW!”

Moore cited CNN polling of registered voters this month to assert that “Biden and Trump were in a virtual tie”, including a poll that showed the pair tied at 47% in Minnesota. Moore said that Trump “has closed the gap to 4 points” in Michigan.

A national CNN poll this month showed that Biden’s lead over Trump has narrowed nationally, 50% to 46%, while a survey from the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group found Biden and Trump statistically tied at 47% in Minnesota, and Trump narrowly leading Biden in Michigan. The margin of error for the poll, which surveyed 1,048 people, is 2.98%.

Moore, a vocal supporter of Bernie Sanders’s leftwing candidacy, warned in October 2016 that “Trump’s election is going to be the biggest ‘f*** you’ ever recorded in human history – and it will feel good,” even as Clinton appeared to be sailing to victory.

“Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he’s saying the things to people who are hurting, and that’s why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump,” Moore warned at that time.

Moore’s latest warnings come as Trump said at a campaign event in New Hampshire on Friday night that he supported seeing the first female president of the United States, but recommended his daughter over the Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

“They’re all saying ‘we want Ivanka,’” Trump told his supporters. “I don’t blame them.”

[tw2113]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyoElzBhbXg

[_tunic_]

The unofficial White House stance on the NBA's call for social justice reform: 'I don't think we care'




I don’t think we care


Marc Short, the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, stated in a Thursday interview with CNN: “If they want to protest, I don’t think we care.”




I don’t think we care

[Bytor Peltor]

Protesting in the form of refusing to play a game is a meaningless gesture when fans aren’t in the stands. All the protest does is create a postponement, sort of like a rain out.

Refusing to play a game when the stadium if full, after people have purchased their ticket, paid to park and made their way into the stadium, the teams then choosing to walk away and not play......that would be more impactful protest!

A team choosing to play and donating their game checks to the family or cause would make a lasting impression, but not playing a game today and simply playing the missed game tomorrow.....?

[The Soup Nazi]

From Politico:

They tried to get Trump to care about right-wing terrorism. He ignored them.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security waged a yearslong internal struggle to get the White House to pay attention to the threat of violent domestic extremists. Frustrated, they gave up on the Trump administration.

[Kuhb]

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

Protesting in the form of refusing to play a game is a meaningless gesture when fans aren’t in the stands. All the protest does is create a postponement, sort of like a rain out.

Refusing to play a game when the stadium if full, after people have purchased their ticket, paid to park and made their way into the stadium, the teams then choosing to walk away and not play......that would be more impactful protest!

A team choosing to play and donating their game checks to the family or cause would make a lasting impression, but not playing a game today and simply playing the missed game tomorrow.....?

This is the weakness at the heart of liberalism. Feels over reals, sentiment over concrete action, idealism over rational compromise, a belief that ideology precedes materialism. Symbols of achiement and progress over actual achievement or progress.

[The Soup Nazi]

From The Washington Post:

Never forget that our presidential electoral system is an abomination

Opinion by Paul Waldman
Columnist
September 2, 2020

If you opened up your newspaper and read that Joe Biden was campaigning in California, you’d think that something had gone terribly wrong with his campaign, or perhaps with the world as a whole. What could cause this madness? Why on earth would either of the party’s nominees visit a state that is home to about 1 in 8 Americans?

Yet when you read reports such as this one, nothing seems odd at all:

Last week’s Republican convention had just concluded when Joe Biden’s top strategists began hearing from worried Democrats. They told the officials that President Trump’s singular focus on a “law and order” message, coupled with images of violence in cities, threatened Biden’s standing, particularly among White voters in the industrial Midwest.

Over the past few days, Biden has offered his response, reorienting his campaign. He delivered a forceful anti-Trump speech in Pittsburgh, afterward bringing pizza to a firehouse. He began giving newfound attention to Minnesota, a state Democrats haven’t lost in nearly 50 years, and his campaign is eyeing potential trips to Wisconsin and Michigan.

I’m not talking about the “worried Democrats,” which are a constant, nor am I referring to the fact that the presidential race hasn’t actually changed since the Republican convention. It’s the fact that the Biden campaign — or anyone else, for that matter — should actually care what voters in Minnesota are thinking, any more than we do about voters in any of the other 49 states (plus D.C.!).

As the article explains, “Central to Biden’s success is maintaining the support of voters like Kevin King, a 59-year-old retired Marine from Alexandria, Minn.” Which is both perfectly true and utterly bonkers.

Because we’re so familiar with the first part — swing voters in swing states, they’re the ones the campaigns worry most about — we seldom stop to remind ourselves how ludicrous it is that the inclinations of Mr. King (who I’m sure is a perfectly nice guy) should matter any more to Biden and President Trump, and all the people who work for them, than Frederick Flapjack of Bonner Springs, Kans., or Maryanne Moxytoes of Scituate, R.I. Or you.

We’ve heard this all before, you may be saying— another complaint about the electoral college. But we have to remind ourselves — particularly given the fact that in two months we could have yet another election result in which the candidate who got more votes does not become president — just what an abomination this system is.

By all means, we can devote extreme scrutiny to the moves the campaigns are making in the Midwest. That’s one area where they are focused, after all. But every time we do, the fact that it’s an affront to every democratic value should be at the top of our minds.

Right now, almost no one outside of deranged Trump partisans thinks the president will win the popular vote in November. His only chance for victory — and it’s a good one — is to once again assemble the right combination of state wins to get him 270 electoral votes. Which would mean that in half the presidential elections of the last 20 years, the vote loser wound up winning the White House.

In other words, it’s not just an unusual occurrence, something that was always possible but we seldom had to worry too much about. It’s now a regular feature of presidential elections.

How likely is it? Take a look at this analysis from FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver:

 

Turnout projections are running at around 150 million this year (140 million Americans voted in 2016), which would mean that if Silver is right, Biden could win by 3 million to 4.5 million votes and still have less than a 50 percent chance of becoming president. If Biden won the popular vote by 4 percent to 5 percent, or 6 million to 7.5 million votes, Trump would still have a 1-in-10 shot of prevailing.

The proper response to that isn’t to say, “Well, whaddya gonna do? It’s always been that way.” The proper response is unending, incandescent outrage.

I’d like to think that even if the situation were reversed and it was Democrats who were given a giant thumb on the scale by the electoral college, they’d still be eager to get rid of it, since that’s what anyone who has even the barest commitment to democracy simply has to believe. And it’s conceivable we’ll find ourselves in precisely that situation in the near future.

Although things can change in many places — Missouri and Ohio used to be swing states but now are pretty comfortably Republican, and Arizona and North Carolina were solidly red and are now purple — within the next few years Texas will probably become a swing state, and if it keeps moving in the same direction and eventually turns solidly blue, that will make Republican electoral college victories somewhere between difficult and impossible.

I’ll pledge right now that if that should happen I’ll keep raging against the electoral college. Because we could have a different future.

To see what it’s like, all you have to do is look at how things work in every other democracy in the world. Pay close attention, because it gets pretty complicated: People vote. The votes are counted. The person with the most votes wins. Weird, huh?

That could be us too, whether we do it through the National Popular Vote compact or through a constitutional amendment. Let’s never think we have to live forever with what we have now.

[The Soup Nazi]

Shocker: Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok. I'm floored. Trump fires 257 tweets per hour about the dumbest fucking things; on this and Jamal Khashoggi, radio silence. The kompromat must be some really fucked-up shit.

[tw2113]

i won't deny that in general, I'm confused by the electoral college, Surely the founding fathers and whatnot had legit reason to create and/or use it, but one has to wonder if it's outgrown itself since. I don't fault them for thinking it'd be a great idea, but we're also 200+ years after and much larger as a population.