TechyDad

Good point. Of course, the next question would be: How long until a police officer arrests a Latino American despite them having their papers and confiscates the papers claiming that they are “forgeries?”

(If the 2017-present has taught us anything, it’s to never underestimate how cruel and corrupt people in power can be.)

A peace officer, which is broadly defined and can include such people as local police officers and security officers of the state medical board, can inquire about a person’s citizenship and immigrant status if they think they have entered the U.S. illegally. If so, a magistrate can order them out of the country.

How long until Latino Americans are stopped by police officers and have their citizenship papers demanded or else they’ll be arrested and threatened with deportation? How long until a judge railroads the case because they are convinced that Latino = Illegal Immigrant and the American citizen is deported?

They do blame Obama for how he acted as President after 9/11. Time is a difficult concept for them to understand. A bit too wibbly wobbly timey wimey perhaps?

Cue the Republicans quickly impeaching Biden for “trying to stage an insurrection.” The proof being… (Crickets). Then, the red courts declaring that this means Biden can’t be on the ballot.

True, but this removes him from the primary. If enough other states do this, you could have Nikki Haley or someone else winning that state. Then again, Colorado’s primary takes place on Super Tuesday (March 5th). By the time, Haley is announced the winner, it would likely be too late to stop Trump. (Assuming nothing else stops him first.)

I always have suspicions when I see “do you approve or disapprove of how X is handling Y polls.” Disapproval might mean that the person wants X to move to the left or to the right, but they are both labeled as “disapprove.”

For example, say John wants Biden to withhold all aid to Israel until there’s a ceasefire. He would say he disapproves of Biden’s handling. But now say that Jim thinks the US should go in and bomb Gaza until nobody is left. He also disapproves of Biden’s actions.

The fact that more people sided with Israel (47%-20%), thought that Trump would do a better job (46%-38%), and watched FOX News (13% vs second place CNN at 10%)leads me to think that this poll got a lot more Republicans than Democrats. This likely just shows “Republicans aren’t going to support Biden” rather than “Democrats are fleeing Biden.”

Polls like this really need to include “do you want X to move more to the left or more to the right” in their disapproval questions. (Though likely phrased better than that.)

I definitely agree about the long term plan. The Republicans excelled at this. I hate the goal, but can admire how much effort they put into things like overturning Roe vs Wade. During the 50 year span, they had many, many setbacks. They didn’t just throw in the towel, though. They changed their goals, being temporarily satisfied with small steps backward instead of running an entire backwards marathon. And as they did this, they got closer and closer to their goal until they hit it. (Of course, their goal has now shifted to include much worse things.)

Imagine if Progressives could harness this kind of planning for positive changes. As satisfying as it would be to elect a Progressive President with a Progressive Congress that would work together to make the courts Progressive as well, that’s not going to happen in 2024. Heck, it’s not likely to all happen in 2028 either.

We need to step back, assess where we are, where we want to be, and make a plan for how we get there. “Just only vote for Progressives” sounds good on paper until you realize that, in many areas, Progressives would be unelectable. What happens if the Progressive can’t be elected and the Progressive Congress doesn’t come to be? If the entire plan is “just only vote for Progressives,” then it will fall apart quickly.

If instead, the plan is “move the county one step to the left. And then another step. And then another step,” then we can make some real changes. Sure, they won’t come for years and it can be frustrating to wait, but this also means that change will come, it will be easier to recover from a misstep, and there won’t be as large of a backlash.

(On this last point, one of the things I’ve noticed is that society tends to have a momentum to it that’s hard to change. If you try to change society too quickly, a backlash can result that can roll back many of the changes. Slow steady changes can wind up taking root a lot more than quick sudden changes.)

There’s also the “perfect is the enemy of the good” problem that I’ve seen a lot of Progressives display.

They want a perfect, ideal candidate. They refuse to settle for anything less than perfection. The problem is that perfection isn’t attainable. If you name your “perfect candidate,” then someone will find a flaw with them. They then cease to be the perfect candidate anymore and must be ditched for the next “perfect one.” Meanwhile, the right just decides that their candidate is perfect regardless of any flaws (or perhaps because of what we’d call his flaws).

Progressives will often threaten to rage quit politics if they don’t get 100% of what they want right away. They don’t seem to realize that doing this gives power to the Republicans. So we take five steps forward, Progressives rage quit because we didn’t take twenty steps forward, Republicans take over, and we take ten steps backwards. Now, did rage quitting put us in a better position? Of course not. But the perfect is held up as the only allowed outcome and Good isn’t good enough.

The Republicans who are embarrassed over this aren’t Republicans anymore. There might be one or two who still are willing to publicly declare Russia a geopolitical enemy, but they are an endangered species.

Now, you basically have two kinds of Republicans: The ones who privately see Russia as an enemy but say “the right things” to get more power and the ones that cozy up to Russia because they see Russia as a template to follow for turning America into a fascist, white supremacist dictatorship.

There have been rumors for years that he keeps a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. He also has spoken glowingly of how various dictators keep their populace in line.

Of course, by himself Trump is too clumsy to install a dictatorship. If it was just him, I’d predict a second Trump term would involve a lot of bad stuff, but no outright dictatorship as he’d get distracted by some Twitter/X/Truth Social feud.

However, once you add in Project 2025 and similar people who would likely have roles in Trump’s second administration, then things get truly scary. They admire dictators too and they are capable of planning and executing the death of democracy.

Well, not on the Georgia one or the NY civil case. Those are state level charges and the President can’t pardon those away.

“He just wants to keep America, America.”

Translation: “He just wants to keep America white with as few black or brown people as possible. But saying that out loud at this point might be a step too far. So he’s slowly backing into this while echoing Nazi sentiment. Meanwhile, I - as a FOX ‘news’ talking head - have to reassure everyone that repeating Nazi lines is totally a normal thing and nothing to worry about.”

And he’s also said that Jews (like myself) should be “grateful” for what he did for Israel.

Assuming he actually did anything meaningful for Israel (which I’m not totally convinced of), there’s a big problem with this. I’m an American Jew - not an Israeli citizen. Doing something good for Israel doesn’t immediately impact me. I guess it gives me a place to flee if the US turns into Nazi Germany, but that’s not a really good selling point - especially when Trump is echoing Nazi talking points.

“Hey, be grateful you have someplace to run to when I open the concentration camps” isn’t a line that makes me want to vote for a guy.

The whole “we did something to benefit Israel so Jews should be grateful” is an anti-semitic trope and it’s insulting when the right uses it. (And it’s sad when people like my parents fall for it.)

Reminder that Trump said “I like taking the guns early … Take the guns first, go through due process second"

Trump has said that he’s being treated differently than any other defendant. He means that he’s being treated worse, but he’s accidentally right. Trump has been consistently treated with soft kid gloves. Had you or I done 1% of what he did, we’d be awaiting trial from a jail cell.

Trump is being treated differently, alright. He’s being given much more leeway than anyone else would be given.

I’d say it’s more like 40% of us are being dragged by 25% of us while 35% watch on, refusing to participate either way despite the fact that they’ll be dragged in next.

He’s still holding up a lot of other spots by holding those top general slots as well. For the lower promotions to go through, they need the people moving into their top general slots to vacate their positions. And for the even lower ones, they need the lower ones to move up.

Tuberville essentially said that he’s not going to hold up the entire line of people, just a few at the head of the line. But holding up the head of the line means the rest of the line is impacted.

True, but Republicans constantly tout the stock market’s performance when they are in charge. Every tick upwards is declared to be thanks to them. Every dip is said to be because Democrats got in the way.

So a Democrat in charge of the White House and the stock market rising is a good refutation of their talking point. For “common man economy indications,” I’d instead point to things like the extremely low unemployment rate.

Also worth noting: only one of them holds elected office.

Did Hunter Biden break the law? If the indictments against him are true, then yes he did. But I’m not voting for Hunter Biden in 2024. He’s not running.

“His son broke the law so Joe Biden must be guilty too” isn’t anywhere close to enough to base an impeachment on.

Given Trump’s penchant for grifting and fraud, I’m wondering if he kept the suit, had someone buy a series of similar looking suits as cheaply as possible, and then cut those up to sell. Why would he care if the hunk of fabric that he SAID came from his suit actually came from some thrift store find?