Tag: politics

In the post-ideological age, a nominal affiliation with ideas does not serve as an accurate indication of genuine loyalties. Republican elder Bob Dole reveals that the debate commission is 100 percent anti-Trump despite half of them being Republicans:

The Commission on Presidential Debates is supposedly bipartisan w/ an equal number of Rs and Ds. I know all of the Republicans and most are friends of mine.  I am concerned that none of them support @realDonaldTrump. A biased Debate Commission is unfair.

You are living in a post-ideological age. Understand this. Accept this. It is time to stop thinking in terms of Left and Right, of Liberal and Conservative, of Democrat and Republican, and think in terms of identity instead.

“In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” 

—Lee Kuan Yew 

We’re rapidly approaching the week when the media will most heavily exaggerate the polls before having to dial them back on the final stretch into the election. Consider the polls from the week of October 19-24 and the reported lead for Hillary Clinton:

• 10 CNBC
• 12 Greenberg
• 13 Associated Press
• 10 USA Today
• 12 ABC News

I didn’t see it. But perhaps you did. Discuss amongst yourselves.

CNN: Harris 59, Pence 38

Drudge: Pence 71, Harris 29

Translation: Pence won handily.

Red October appears to be in session:

I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!
– President Donald Trump

Meanwhile, Facebook has gone to unprecedented lengths to dismiss QAnon because it is obviously nothing more than a silly LARP.

Facebook said Tuesday that it is banning all QAnon accounts from its platforms, a significant escalation over its previous actions and one of the broadest rules the social media giant has put in place in its history.

It’s long past time for the elected representatives of the People to make it abundantly clear to the intelligence agencies that they do not have the right or the responsibility to refuse to disclose any information requested by the President, the Senate, or the House of Representatives.

Two top House Republicans issued a rallying call on Sunday to combat resistance from intelligence agencies to disclose classified information that they argue will blow wide open a controversy surrounding Russia’s role in disrupting the 2016 election.

Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, went so far as to raise the possibility of an overhaul of the U.S. intelligence community if leaders are not more forthcoming with their findings, even as national security experts warn of sources and methods being put at risk and Democrats charge Republicans with pushing Russian disinformation to boost President Trump ahead of the 2020 election.

“We want every damn bit of evidence that every intelligence agency has, or it’s maybe time to shut those agencies down,” the California Republican said on the Fox News show Sunday Morning Futures. “Because, at the end of the day … our liberties are more important than anything else we have in this country. And they have been stampeded over by these dirty cops.”

Nunes and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, another California Republican who also appeared on the show hosted by Maria Bartiromo, both confirmed they have seen underlying evidence to a letter released last week from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe that said in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies received “insight” into a Russian intelligence analysis alleging that Hillary Clinton, then a candidate for president, approved a campaign plan to “stir up a scandal” against Trump tying him to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

“Every member of Congress should read the underlying information behind this,” McCarthy said. “This is really a bombshell of what we have wasted so much time on, that it was created by Hillary Clinton.”

The only “national security” threat more dire than that of a rogue intelligence agency is a rogue military. And given how far out of control these agencies are, and how questionable their loyalties are, shutting them down would be a lot less risky than permitting them to continue to operate without effective oversight.

Not content with attacking the 1st Amendment, Neopalestinians in Congress are now seeking to give Israel a veto over U.S. arms sales:

A bipartisan bill introduced in the House of Representatives would enhance protections for Israel’s qualitative military edge to include an effective Israeli veto on US arms sales to the Middle East.

The bill “would require the President to consult with the Israeli government to ensure [qualitative military edge] concerns are settled” when it comes to arms sales to Middle Eastern countries, said the news release Friday announcing its introduction the previous day. The release came from the office of the bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill.

Existing law already guarantees Israel a qualitative military edge in the Middle East, but Congress — not Israel — is the arbiter of whether an arms sale meets QME standards.

Do they not truly understand that this sort of machination is going to fill the average American with the hitherto undiscovered desire to sell nukes to Hamas and Iran? Or is it that they do not care?

The stupidity and short-sightedness is relentless.

The way the Daily Mail described the U.S. presidential debate makes it clear to everyone that Trump crushed Biden in the debate:

Donald Trump and Joe Biden shout over each other and insult each other as Fox News anchor Chris Wallace loses control of ‘dumpster fire’ that was the first US Presidential debate

Joe Biden asked Donald Trump to shut up during their contentious first presidential debate Tuesday night

The Democratic nominee later called the president a ‘clown’  

The president tried to command the stage from out of the box, interrupting his rival repeatedly to make his point, counter Biden, and push himself into the conversation 

It happened so many times that moderate Chris Wallace stepped in, asking the president to let Biden finish his answer

The 90-minute show down between the presidential contenders proved early on that it would a be a knock-out, drag-down match 

Trump wouldn’t say when he will finally make his personal taxes public as he has long promised, but claimed he paid ‘millions of dollars in taxes’ 

Biden called Trump a ‘racist’ when the two men debated race relations and said he is ‘the worst president America has ever had’

Trump brought up a Senate Republican report that claimed Hunter got $3.5 million from the wealthy wife of the former Mayor of Moscow 

When asked if he would condemn white supremacist groups, Trump attempted to skirt the question 

He finally said, ‘Proud Boys — Stand back, stand by, but I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not right-wing problem….. This is a left wing problem’ 

When the media attempts to minimize the event rather than attack the more right-wing individual, that tells you everything you need to know about what happened. 

 As Q predicted, it’s all hands on deck time for the Demon Staters. This leak of Trump’s 2016 campaign data is an extremely risky move, because it almost certainly involves lawbreaking on the part of numerous government employees.

Channel 4 News has exclusively obtained a vast cache of data used by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign on almost 200 million American voters. It reveals that 3.5 million Black Americans were categorised by Donald Trump’s campaign as ‘Deterrence’ – voters they wanted to stay home on election day.

Tonight, civil rights campaigners said the evidence amounted to a new form of voter “suppression” and called on Facebook to disclose ads and targeting information that has never been made public.

The ‘Deterrence’ project can be revealed after Channel 4 News obtained the database used by Trump’s digital campaign team – credited with helping deliver his shock victory to become president four years ago.

Vast in scale, it contains details on almost 200 million Americans, among more than 5,000 files, which together amass almost 5 terabytes of data – making it one of the biggest leaks in history.

What’s interesting about this action is that it’s clearly aimed at keeping blacks and white liberals within the Democratic fold. Literally no one who was a Trump voter in 2016 will care about the fact that the Trump campaign sought to reduce turnout among the strongest anti-Republican demographics. And if the Demon State is desperate enough to risk sacrificing a few high-level assets inside the FBI or NSA just to prevent blacks from voting for Trump, the Biden campaign must be in very bad shape indeed.

I enjoy publicly posting 538’s presidential election forecasts for future reference. These are 538’s predictions as of September 27, 2020.

Chance of winning

Biden 77 percent, Trump 22 percent

Electoral votes

Biden 331, Trump 207

Popular vote

Biden 52.9 percent, Trump 45.8 percent

My prediction remains exactly the same as it was on November 9, 2016. Donald Trump will win the presidential election in a Trumpslide that is bigger than his 2016 victory. #Trumpslide2020

 President Trump appoints Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court

President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Saturday, capping a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide a needed boost to his reelection effort.

Barrett, a former clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, said she was “truly humbled” by the nomination and quickly aligned herself with Scalia’s conservative approach to the law, saying his “judicial philosophy is mine, too.”

Barrett, 48, was joined in the Rose Garden by her husband and seven children. If confirmed by the Senate, she would fill the seat vacated by liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It would be the sharpest ideological swing since Clarence Thomas replaced Justice Thurgood Marshall nearly three decades ago.

I don’t particularly like that Barrett is Catholic or that she has adopted Haitians, but she appears to be sincere in her faith, she is almost certainly reliable on abortion, she doesn’t seem to have a plethora of questionable decisions behind her, and she appears to be sound on guns and immigration. While it is simply wrong for a white Protestant nation to be ruled over by a haphazard collection of Catholics and other minorities, there is no question that Barrett should be a marked improvement on the late, unlamented Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 

But we will have to wait and see how it goes. We simply can’t know if she is a ticket-taker or not, or what the ramifications of that will prove to be.