The Biggest Loser

JohnInCarolina

lousubcap said:

And here is CHEETO in his finest moment of today:
https://www.threads.net/@vincedmonroy/post/DAbK-huvbzu?utm_ 
What a F'tard!

JFC

DoubleEgger

JohnInCarolina said:

https://www.wired.com/story/trumps-dollar100000-watches-are-the-most-tragic-celebrity-watch-yet/

You aren’t buying quality; you are buying favor. 

dbCooper

Discounting captive markets, a 50% profit margin would be seen as unsustainable.  1900% could be money laundering scheme, or something?

Botch

https://youtu.be/3Utlp1RCS5s?si=V1ig6oa9bDbbbSfO
 
 

JohnInCarolina

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.

JohnInCarolina

Gulfcoastguy

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7s1th5omaLg

fishlessman

JohnInCarolina said:

the secret service should have called an 800 number for how to build a brick wall. a 22 could take that down

JohnInCarolina

fishlessman said:

JohnInCarolina said:

the secret service should have called an 800 number for how to build a brick wall. a 22 could take that down

Based on what I read, that was assembled by first responders at the request of the campaign, not by the Secret Service.  

fishlessman

JohnInCarolina said:

fishlessman said:

JohnInCarolina said:

the secret service should have called an 800 number for how to build a brick wall. a 22 could take that down

Based on what I read, that was assembled by first responders at the request of the campaign, not by the Secret Service. 

i dont know, saw it last night and just laughed at it. still its a step up from the secret service as of late or is it the last few decades......it looks like a hazard all on its own

Canugghead

fishlessman said:

JohnInCarolina said:

fishlessman said:

JohnInCarolina said:

the secret service should have called an 800 number for how to build a brick wall. a 22 could take that down

Based on what I read, that was assembled by first responders at the request of the campaign, not by the Secret Service. 

i dont know, saw it last night and just laughed at it. still its a step up from the secret service as of late or is it the last few decades......it looks like a hazard all on its own

It's by design and supposed to collapse on them when they duck, so they're protected against aerial assault as well 

Botch

This morning's email from Robert Reich had a nice refresher about recent history between unions and the republican party; I'm interested in seeing if any of this comes up at the debate tonight.
 

Tonight, JD Vance will almost certainly try to out-Trump Trump, setting himself up to be Trump’s heir and likely Republican presidential candidate four years from now. 

Listen carefully to Vance and you’ll probably also hear shades of Richard M. Nixon, because it was Nixon who first began peeling blue-collar workers away from the Democratic Party. Trump and Vance are the lineal descendants of Nixon — as well as Nixon aides Chuck Colson and Pat Buchanan.

Nixon wanted to undo FDR’s New Deal coalition and claim the mantle of the white working class for himself and the Republican Party. Using racism and cultural populism, he made some headway, which Ronald Reagan built upon. Trump and Vance are the latest manifestations. 

The decision of the Teamsters Union not to endorse any presidential candidate this year has roots in that Nixonian strategy. The Teamsters endorsed Nixon in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1980, and George H.W. Bush in 1986. 

Some years after Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa went to prison for jury tampering, conspiracy, and mail and wire fraud, Nixon henchman Colson helped negotiate Hoffa’s release. When in prison, Hoffa had named as his successor Frank Fitzsimmons, who became one of Nixon’s strongest supporters. 

Nixon and Colson wanted the Teamsters and other unions to break with the Democrats. The Vietnam War provided the first big opportunity. 

Colson can be heard on a White House tape recording made on May 5, 1970, urging several New York union leaders to organize an attack on student anti-Vietnam War protesters in New York. 

Two days later, on May 8, more than 400 construction workers attacked around 1,000 student demonstrators (including two of my friends) protesting the war. The workers were armed with lengths of steel rebar, their tools, and steel-toe boots. They carried U.S. flags and chanted “U.S.A., all the way” and “America, love it or leave it” as they chased and assaulted students in the streets.

More than 100 people were injured; most required hospital treatment. My friends who had been demonstrating against the war phoned me later that day. They had escaped injury, but they were traumatized. I remember them describing the rioting construction workers as a “pack of animals.”

Nixon exploited the riot for political advantage. His chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, wrote in his diary: “The college demonstrators have overplayed their hands, evidence is the blue-collar group rising up against them, and [the] president can mobilize them.” 

Nixon aide Patrick Buchanan wrote in a memo to his boss that “blue-collar Americans” are “our people now.” 

Peter Brennan, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, claimed “the unions had nothing to do with” the riot, but his claim was bogus. Just before the riot began, Brennan rallied construction workers to show support for the war. Brennan explained that workers were “fed up” with violence and flag desecration by anti-war demonstrators. 

In the days after the riot, Nixon invited Brennan and a delegation of 22 other union leaders to the White House. They presented Nixon with several hard hats and a flag pin, after which Nixon praised the “labor leaders and people from Middle America who still have character and guts and a bit of patriotism.”

After the 1972 election, Nixon appointed Brennan labor secretary. In that position, Brennan strongly opposed affirmative action. He also prevented Labor Department officials from investigating allegations of corruption in the Teamsters Union and of Fitzsimmons, who had helped secure labor support for Nixon’s reelection.

Colson’s dirty work didn’t end with the hardhat riot. He assembled Nixon’s “enemies list” — people who would be subject to intensified IRS audits.

Colson also hired E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent, to spy on Nixon’s political opponents. Hunt then led a break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in June 1972. (Colson later became the first member of the Nixon administration to be imprisoned for Watergate-related felonies.) 

Nixon thought he could succeed by emphasizing cultural issues involving nationalism and class as well as race and gender. Buchanan said the Republican Party should embrace these growing working-class resentments. “The Republican moment [depends on the GOP taking] up the challenge from the left on its chosen battleground: the politics of class, culture, religion, and race.” 

The construction workers who attacked the demonstrators on May 8, 1970 and the police who egged them on were more likely to have family and friends in Vietnam than the college students who demonstrated. Many were veterans of World War II and Korea. They also lived in the same working-class neighborhoods. They despised the protesters as a bunch of pampered, long-haired, draft-dodging, flag-desecrating snots.

These blue-collar workers felt abandoned by the middle class and the college-educated who deserted their communities; they felt stiffed by the clever kids with draft deferments; they resented being forced to bus their kids to Black neighborhoods and accept Black kids into their schools; and they were burdened by an economy no longer delivering upward mobility. As the journalist Pete Hamill observed at the time, the workingman “feels trapped and, even worse, in a society that purports to be democratic, ignored.”

Buchanan ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and in 1996. Although he lost both times, he won about a third of the Republican primary vote, chiefly from the party’s blue-collar members. He ran again in 2000. Although he lost once more, his ideas began taking root in the party. He argued that Republicans should oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement, take a stronger stand against immigration, and support Russian president Vladimir Putin because he was anti-gay.

Buchanan’s rallies prefigured Trump rallies two decades later. The crowds he drew included many men wearing military fatigues. The press corps traveling with Buchanan were reviled and subjected to the same verbal threats that have become commonplace today. 

The cultural populism peddled today by Trump and JD Vance is almost the same as that of Nixon, Colson, and Buchanan — and with the same purpose: to capture an angry and disaffected working class. 

But I believe Republican cultural populism would never have got this far had Democrats been more willing to follow FDR and embrace economic populism.

JohnInCarolina

fishlessman said:

JohnInCarolina said:

fishlessman said:

JohnInCarolina said:

the secret service should have called an 800 number for how to build a brick wall. a 22 could take that down

Based on what I read, that was assembled by first responders at the request of the campaign, not by the Secret Service. 

i dont know, saw it last night and just laughed at it. still its a step up from the secret service as of late or is it the last few decades......it looks like a hazard all on its own

Trump finally got someone to build his wall!

JohnInCarolina

Legume

Why don't they just charge people to enter the country and then put a tariff on it when they want to slow it down. They'll make so much money, nobody's ever seen so much money.

Botch

Legume said:

Why don't they just charge people to enter the country and then put a tariff on it when they want to slow it down. They'll make so much money, nobody's ever seen so much money.

 

JohnInCarolina

JohnInCarolina

Someone is 🐓💩

lousubcap

Thanks for the above alert. Since my television viewing  is totally driven by DVR I will program it now.  On the one off chance that I fail to prerecord and want to watch the program I am immediately reminded why I'm in the DVR only camp.
The commercials are suffocating.  Never mind the political ads.  

Botch

Just finished watching the VP debate.  Not quite what I was expecting.  They were both cordial for the most part (mics were muted once, thank you CBS). Jpv was by far the smoother talker, but Walz was by far the more factual.  I wish Tim could’ve smiled/SMH/roll eyes occasionally; his “hometown coach” demeanor was completely absent tonight.  
 
Like most of the media has already said, the VP debate usually has very little effect on the whole enchilada, I expect the same here.  

Looking at flights to survey cheap Italian villas again; we’ll see what happens….  . 

StillH2OEgger

I had similar assessment on the debate. Walz appeared out of his element at times and didn't handle acknowledging his mistruth very well -- definitely less practiced at doubling down on the lies than his opponent(s) -- but he definitely had the upper hand on substance. Vance kept repeating the same tired lines regardless of question asked and his refusal to admit Trump lost previous election should be everyone's biggest takeaway from the evening.

JohnInCarolina

JohnInCarolina

He seems to be handling the news well.

JohnInCarolina

lousubcap

Had a very civil conversation a couple of days ago with someone who said "I will probably hold my nose and vote for CHEETO."  His reasoning, Harris is way too liberal. I offered that if Harris wins the odds are quite slim the D's will hold all the levers of power in the Congress so there will be guardrails in place.
OTH if CHEETO wins no guardrails (even with divided gubmint) as he won't care about the oath he takes and the Constitution.  The point was acknowledged but I doubt will change his mind.
CHEETO makes Nixon look like a saint.  
At least I am in flyover country where the outcome is a given but I still cannot see how anyone with any sense of decency, character and moral fiber can vote for CHEETO.  Therein is the issue, the acolytes have been drawn into the vortex so hard that any semblance of original thought has been manipulated especially those who have supported the grifter and his sales pitches.  

Buckwoody Egger

Good for you Cap!

JohnInCarolina

DoubleEgger

JohnInCarolina said:

Botch

lousubcap said:

...I still cannot see how anyone with any sense of decency, character and moral fiber can vote for CHEETO.  Therein is the issue, the acolytes have been drawn into the vortex so hard that any semblance of original thought has been manipulated especially those who have supported the grifter and his sales pitches.  

Agreed.  
At this point, I'm pretty much resigned to these possibilities:
 
1.  Harris wins by large enough margins, in most states, that no one can doubt the outcome.  (most will doubt this, but polls have already been proven wrong, badly wrong, the last two elections; particularly the massive "Red Wave" that turned into a pink phart).  I've seen no indication that "the polls" have since been adjusted to account for the fact that most folk who answer their land-line for a pollster, are older flyover country folk who bend highly towards the Faux News world.  And don't forget that the abortion issue remains VERY strong amongst over 50% of the electorate, including the younger ones who are registering in amazing numbers this year.  
 
2.  Harris wins, hugely by popular vote and marginally by Electoral College (this is what I'm expecting).  There will be challenges and refusals to certify across the board (the local levels have already been infiltrated with trumplicans) and I don't really know what to expect, other than court-entangled delays, all over the place.  There will be violence, but more at the local levels; the Jan 6 federal certification could be violent, but with the Democrats in charge of the DoD and the DC Nat'l Guard, I doubt it (but, again, I think things will be tied up in courts for much longer after that.)  
There's a Wild Card here: President Joe Biden.  He's proven he has the best interests of the entire country at heart (drug price reductions which apply to ALL Americans; renewable energy projects which have been more subsidized in rural, red areas; an economy that is red-hot compared to the rest of the post-COVID world, and so many more.)  He is still the sitting President; he is still highly intelligent (albeit not a good speaker at all anymore); but he too has been given carte-blanche wrt being held accountable for anything he does in an "official" capacity by the SC; and, he has nothing to lose, at this point.  There are probably many things that could be done, especially between Election Day and Jan 6.... many of them would enrage the trumplicans and martyr Traitor, so I hope he doesn't have to go there.  But, it's a Wild Card...
 
3.  Traitor wins.  I don't think he will, but he did once before.  If that actually happens, I'll just be resigned to the fact that my 37-yr career to defend the US and Her Constitution was for naught.  And the US deserves what the the majority of them voted for.  Glad I'm old, with no kids.    

JohnInCarolina

I’m afraid that if Harris wins, the margin really won’t matter one damn bit.  Even if it’s a blowout, his supporters will think it was rigged (and surely Trump will say this too).  

After all… how is it conceivable that Dear Leader could lose so badly?  The only explanation they’ll accept is that there was cheating.