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@TeWaio said in US Politics:
Mike Pence has just changed his twitter banner to a photo of Biden and Harris 😅 and unfollowed Trump
No and No. It's a photo of Pence and his wife. And he didn't unfollow Trump. Both were widely reported and incorrectly reported.
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A rumour from inside the Beltway is that Trump has been trying to negotiate impunity from prosecution after he leaves office. Apparently, yesterday was meant to be a show of force of what his supporters might do if asked, but it got all rather out of hand. Certainly it was very ugly and damaging for the reputation of the USA. A otherwise peaceful transition is now crucially important.
I've been impressed by both Pence and Biden in the last 24 hours. Trump and Giuliani less so. The sooner those two disappear from public view the better for the rest of us.
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@Winger said in US Politics:
If he can't win this time with 74 + million votes (an increase of around 10 million) he will never win again.
Winger, saying this same thing over and over again doesn’t make it any better an argument.
Even setting aside the electoral college element, your argument about the total popular vote is flawed. The election is not just an enumeration of Trump votes. Stating that he got 10m more votes is not relevant in isolation, you also need to take into account the additional votes the Democrat voters cast.
Remember that Trump actually received fewer popular votes than Clinton in 2016 (63m vs 66m more or less). So in fact although Trump received 11.2m more votes in 2020, the first 3m were just to catch up to where Clinton ended up, even if the Democrats had just stood still. But they didn’t. For reasons well rehearsed here and elsewhere, Biden was a much more attractive proposition that Clinton was, and his vote was a massive 15,437,949 higher than she received. So 11m more people voted for Trump, but 15m more voted for Biden.
Now you can argue all you want about the legitimacy of the votes cast, but let’s stop throwing around the “10 million” votes Trump got as if it means anything by itself, shall we?
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@MajorRage I think the argument that Winger has been making for a while now is that the Democrats can’t possibly have won because Trump got 10m more votes than he got last time. But that’s without taking into account that there were nearly 27m more votes cast this time.
I agree Trump is done, but it’s not because he has had the 10 or 11 million additional votes he got cancelled out by fraudulent votes. It’s because for every 2 additional people who were motivated to support him this time around, 3 additional people got off their arses and voted for the Democrat candidate.
This whole vote fraud argument bemuses me. It’s as if there is no possibility that any of the Trump votes are suspect, but all the Biden ones are. When did the Republicans get a monopoly on probity?
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@rotated not to be a pedant but only one person was shot. The others sound like medical issues like heart attacks etc. The woman who was killed was shot by secret service rather than a member of the police force. At that point I'm pretty sure the SS were blocking access to the inner chambers while people were being evacuated. Then they gapped it and we ended up with those muppets taking selfies in the chamber.
It shows the failure by authorities in getting caught out by the riot - there had been plenty of coverage (inc from the folks going to the rally) that things would likely kick off. Can't recall who had requested the national guard be deployed but got turned down - so I guess that person wanted more security available.
imo if this had been a BLM rally/protest there would have been a much bigger police and national guard force ready to manage things. But that'd be due to how things went last year with other protests turned riots - ie lessons learned. Not sure if that would translate into more shooting from enforcement, but I'd have expected a lot more tear gas and less-lethal bullets would have been used well before people got anywhere near the Capitol building.
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@rotated said in US Politics:
@Victor-Meldrew said in US Politics:
Can't disagree with any of that, but the likes of Biden, Obama, Clinton & Pelosi share equal blame for the inflammatory language they have spewed out against Trump and his supporters these last 4-5 years.
I'll give you a couple of those but where was Obama inflammatory? If anything he seemed like one of the few Dems who understood the election strategy of making any 2016 Trump voter wanting to switch to Biden in 2020 crawl over broken glass, beg for forgiveness and be publicly flogged was counterproductive.
Obama has a long history of insulting Trump - once calling his presidency a "two-bit dictatorship" - and said this of blue-collar Republican voters.
" .... they are bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Not that much different to Clinton's deplorables, but Obama was smart enough to make them at a private fund-raiser but not smart enough to know they were being recorded.
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@Victor-Meldrew said in US Politics:
@rotated said in US Politics:
@Victor-Meldrew said in US Politics:
Can't disagree with any of that, but the likes of Biden, Obama, Clinton & Pelosi share equal blame for the inflammatory language they have spewed out against Trump and his supporters these last 4-5 years.
I'll give you a couple of those but where was Obama inflammatory? If anything he seemed like one of the few Dems who understood the election strategy of making any 2016 Trump voter wanting to switch to Biden in 2020 crawl over broken glass, beg for forgiveness and be publicly flogged was counterproductive.
Obama has a long history of insulting Trump - once calling his presidency a "two-bit dictatorship" - and said this of blue-collar Republican voters.
" .... they are bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Not that much different to Clinton's deplorables, but Obama was smart enough to make them at a private fund-raiser but not smart enough to know they were being recorded.
Trump himself is fair game surely.
One quote from over a decade ago doesn't really support the proposition he has been inflammatory over the past 4-5 years. In fact that selective quote, in it's entirety was actually an astute observation at the time and reflects well on him IMO (what he did to help things is another question obviously)
*"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."*
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Washington D.C. police and federal investigators have begun the process of trying to identify rioters photographed occupying the United States Capitol on Wednesday.
D.C. police have posed 38 images of individuals suspected of unlawful entry during a violent insurrection carried out during the final Congressional vote recording for the 2020 general election.
Local police are offering rewards of “up to $1,000” for help identifying photographed individuals, according to an online posting from the DC Police website.One of these guys is well known if you are a fan of a particular US heavy metal band from Tampa.
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@JC said in US Politics:
Now you can argue all you want about the legitimacy of the votes cast,
But this is the main issue. One that no one has looked at. Not the courts (no one or group seems to have standing). Not the Senate or congress. Various parties have got lots of 'evidence' but no one or body with the power is willing to look at it. And this means all future election are almost meaningless. A future that many seem to support. My view is with the Great Reset (build back better etc) the Wests future will be (very) grim if this isn't addressed now. Where the elite and their puppets will go on a path (you won't own any property and will be happy) that can't be stopped through the election process.
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@Kiwiwomble absolutely - there has been a huge difference in the public messaging (ie lots of evidence of fraud) and what has actually been said in court. Very telling given only one of those settings has legal implications for lying isn't it. Not one case has been picked up as the lawyers for Trump (inc Guliani) have not tabled sufficient evidence for the case to proceed. So the assertion that it hasn't been looked into, and that there is evidence that isn't being considered, is incorrect. I think there were 1-2 'wins' for Trump but those were around maintaining the segregation of some ballots so they could be checked out, and nothing came of that as they were legit.
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@rotated said in US Politics:
Trump himself is fair game surely.
And that's the problem. Which arises when the likes of Biden, Obama, Pelosi and co. assume some sort divine right to decide on who is fair game and which violent protests are acceptable or not. Just like Trump thinks he has a right to do.
One quote from over a decade ago doesn't really support the proposition he has been inflammatory over the past 4-5 years.
Check out what Obama has said about Trump in the last 4-5 years - particularly the 2016 election - particularly when he backed Clinton's attacks on Trump's mental health.
In fact that selective quote, in it's entirety was actually an astute observation at the time and reflects well on him IMO (what he did to help things is another question obviously)
Imagine the outcry from Obama if Trump made similar comments about left-behind areas with African American populations like Detroit.
His comments may have been astute, but I'd argue they simply underlined his antipathy and disdain for blue-collar Republican voters and their values - which may be why he did bugger-all about those problems and wrote those people off.
I'd hazard a guess that when historians look at the divisions in US society in the current period, they'll attach a lot of the blame to Obama
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Not to mention some of the cases drawing some pretty strong rebukes from the presiding judges. Remember the November case about observers?
Judge : “Are your observers in the counting room?” Trump lawyer: "There's a non-zero number of people in the room".
Yeah.
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@Paekakboyz said in US Politics:
Not to mention some of the cases drawing some pretty strong rebukes from the presiding judges. Remember the November case about observers?
Judge : “Are your observers in the counting room?” Trump lawyer: "There's a non-zero number of people in the room".
Yeah.
But the Observers were kicked out (or held so far away from the action). There's video evidence to support this.
The issue now is millions of people have lost faith in the election process. And both the Supreme court and Senate and Congress failed to address these issues
If the election was fair why not shine a light of all the 'false' claims of election fraud. As it is one foundation that the US stands on (free and fair elections) has been destroyed.
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@Winger said in US Politics:
If the election was fair why not shine a light of all the 'false' claims of election fraud.
So they should prove the false claims by highlighting them?
Surely all the 'evidence' of fraud that has already been thrown out of numerous courts, or ignored given there is very little or no evidence at all, therefore this has highlighted all the false claim?
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@Winger - that has been debunked well and truly - from people showing up at the wrong stations, to limits on numbers of observers, to misunderstandings on what the observer role entails, where it doesn't mean they inspect and validate every ballot and how it's processed.
Why hasn't that made it further if it is such clear and compelling evidence?
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@Winger said in US Politics:
@Paekakboyz said in US Politics:
Not to mention some of the cases drawing some pretty strong rebukes from the presiding judges. Remember the November case about observers?
Judge : “Are your observers in the counting room?” Trump lawyer: "There's a non-zero number of people in the room".
Yeah.
But the Observers were kicked out (or held so far away from the action). There's video evidence to support this.
The issue now is millions of people have lost faith in the election process. And both the Supreme court and Senate and Congress failed to address these issues
If the election was fair why not shine a light of all the 'false' claims of election fraud. As it is one foundation that the US stands on (free and fair elections) has been destroyed.
a video of someone being ushered away doesn't mean that the correct number of observers weren't already there. there have already been counter articles saying that those asked to leave weren't official or were additional to what was allowed
you talk of shining a light...but once again, isn't it really a case of there's nothing to shine a light on, they've said the process as documented worked more or less as it was supposed too (there are always small anomalies in any election) and those claiming fraud haven't been able to actually prove enough to actually require answers?
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Doesn't look like people want to heal division and bring people together anytime soon.
In a lengthy statement released on social media, Michelle Obama said: "Seeing the gulf between the responses to yesterday's riot and this summer's peaceful protests and the larger movement for racial justice is so painful. It hurts."
Decrying the sight of "the traitorous flag of the Confederacy", she lamented the "cracked skulls and mass arrests" that she said had been seen at Black Lives Matter protests.
"Millions voted for a man so obviously willing to burn down our democracy for his own ego," she said
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@Victor-Meldrew said in US Politics:
Doesn't look like people want to heal division and bring people together anytime soon.
nope, seems an awful big hole in the heart of America that aint gonna heal anytime soon...while Trump has helped further the divide, it is pretty clear it has been there simmering for a very long time.
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