TheVat

IIRC Trump was boasting at rallies many months ago that he would start solving the nations problems the day after the election. Pretty sure "goat rodeo" was one of the first phrases that popped in my head, on hearing this. As @Airbrush noted, it's all for show and very little of his harebrained plans will ever be implemented at full scale. Though a lot of the RW in the US has had their wet dream of shrinking the federal government and giving states more autonomy (and no money). This could happen to some degree. One of their dreams is to eliminate income tax entirely and run the fed on a sales tax. As nutty at that is, it has a shiny surface appeal.

Your posts all touch on information firehose problems I have also reflected on. My current response is that if many lack gatekeepers, then they will try to develop some kind of philosophy (for some, maybe "spiritual" is applicable, e.g. the Zen of web browsing) that can help see what knowledge does, and how to disconnect and go visit the analog world. And, also important, how to humbly acknowledge where their knowledge is gappy or absent, i.e. that reading a wiki or watching a Veritasium video on YT doesn't make an expert. That TT influencers are just amateurs and/or cranks. Maybe we will need more people like that philosopher who writes a column in The Atlantic. (Arthur Brooks) Who (just looked) also has a YT channel, haha. So then there's that paradox where someone with actual wisdom is on a medium that is mostly garbage and might be trying to warn you that it is mostly garbage (but trust them). Sigh.

Is there meaningful word salad?

I stopped at a friend's office one Xmas with a block of Vermont cheddar as a gift. Security guy stopped me at the entrance. He said, sorry, but you can't bring anything sharp into the building.

Res ipsa loquitur.

To Americans (after reading of Trump's choice for head of Homeland Security): Lock up your dogs! One hopes Noem's unruly pets policy will not be extended to our bipedal citizens. Regarding Trump's choice for Secy of Defense: We warned you Trump voters what his next administration would look like.

No, even with a unity government (assuming House will get the four seats they need) there is the power of the filibuster. Bad news is that liberal Supreme Court justice Sotomayor could retire within four years and the Senate only needs a simple majority to approve a Trump nominee. And Thomas is also at retirement age. A good summation of the whole shitshow that was election 2024. American voter memories seem really short. Or many just never pay attention to news, so there are no unpleasant memories of the former Trump administration to retrieve.

There is also the fruit tree theory for innovative ideas slowing down in a field. Einstein, Heisenberg, Feynman et al expertly picked the fruit from the lower branches. Now there's the more difficult process of getting at the higher branches. Sudden epiphanies don't work as well, and progress is less dramatic. Hypothesized particles like the Majorana are very difficult to observe, so waiting times get very long. Axions have been searched for over 40 years, Majorana fermions since 1937. Of course, someone could come along and shake the tree violently and some massive paradigmatic shift could, say, scrap cold dark matter.

It's never the economy as such. It is that people think they have an idea of how the economy is. Americans love playing amateur economist. And if a candidate can link that idea to high prices and brown invaders stealing their jobs and using up all the housing, or radical leftists locking up all that oil God gave America and leaving them shivering in the cold, then that candidate is tweaking their amygdala bigly. Some sense the manipulation and get so fed up with politicians they opt to stay home. Others don't and embrace whoever is putting the fear in them as a father-protector. The border issue is economic, in the minds of many Americans. They link migrants with an invasion of people who will rob the country, not help grow it. Some of my ancestors, on the Irish side, were subjected to this same toxic equation. The demagogue never tires of reformulations of the basic equation. Sláinte!

My question is: How was the 2016 election free of voter fraud, the 2020 rife with voter fraud, and the 2024 election miraculously free of voter fraud? Wait, sorry, the 2024 election was rife with fraud - a few days ago, Trump was tweeting that law enforcement should be sent to Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee because election crime was happening right then! - until the wee hours of Wednesday, November 6, when it all vanished. That's even more miraculous! Harris' problem was the classic too little too late. We needed a primary, one where the victor would have a laser focus on pocketbook issues, a relentless counterpoint to Trumpian harebrained economics that could hold steady all through spring and summer. As others noted, barnstorm Main Street, keep meeting with workers and let them know you feel their economic pain and very clearly state specific solutions - don't spend so much time on what an asshole your opponent is or how much you will elevate the ideals of equality and civil rights and helping the oppressed. Those are important, but as Bill Clinton used to remind us, when it comes to a campaign, "it's the economy, stupid."

NPR had over 30 million listeners (more if website readers counted) in a recent year, across fairly broad demographics. Some hope, maybe. That's more than double Joe Rogan followers.

That fellow who just knocked that woman down and ripped off her clothes while she screamed for help...he could be a rapist. I'm not denying that rapists do come into women, but I don't trust the rhetoric and I'll wait until more measurable actions like full penetration happen before coming to such a conclusion.

Yes, actual issues is where the current GOP most clearly displays its racist and sexist perspective, on everything from women's reproductive rights to mocking the rights of victims of sexual assault to which immigrants pose the greatest menace to America. It's right out there in plain sight, from the Springfield Ohio comments of Vance, to Trump last August sharing a social media post with footage of dark-skinned people walking in line. The accompanying text said: “If you’re a woman you can either vote for Trump or wait until one of these monsters goes after you or your daughter.” If you haven't been following news, the GOP put away their dog whistles and broke out the megaphones. As with the above, this stuff is public record, not some rhetorical spin from the opposition. Repubs are outing themselves just fine, no oppo rhetoric needed.

There is a lot of gloom over things that could go wrong in the coming years, but I will admit I fail to see how Trump can actually implement his deportation plans, at least at the level he has promised his fear-sodden voters. It is actually incredibly difficult and expensive to find and round up people, and even more so to ship them back to nations that may well close all ports of entry and refuse to take them back. Moving, what, 11 million people is expensive. Putting them all in internment camps while you wait to figure out where to send them, even more expensive. And then there are all those economically essential labor jobs that those people do, sometimes for wages that native born Americans would find unacceptable. Point is, like most harebrained vague plans, there is a lot of handwaving and pandering but no practical way to implement it. Not to get too dark here, but there is a reason that Hitler's regime quickly landed on a different approach than expelling their undesirables from the country. We'd better hope our Constitution holds up better than the Weimar one did. @MSC, real estate is reasonable in places like Saskatchewan, but I can't recommend the winters there. If I were thinking Canada-ward, I'd probably be looking more at British Columbia. But you might have to buy land and start out just dragging a prefab barn onto it and putting in utilities, floors, etc. yourself. Or just stay here - we can definitely use a few true Scotsmen. Just don't eat our pets, please!

Yep. Looks like we're getting a GOP majority in Senate, too. And they already had a voice on vast tracts of the Internet. Bumper sticker cognition is winning. I was definitely including Ukraine in my "sorry, Europe." I don't quite see how UK and EU can make up the shortfall in funding if US backs out of its commitments.

I can't believe there ARE so many retarded Americans. 😛 Woke up, read the news. Oh boy. Feel like the Spanish asthma patient in The Plague, by Camus. He stays in bed all day transferring dried peas from one bucket to another. Refuses to get out of bed. Anyway, fuck Pennsylvania. No POTUS has won the US election in 80 years without winning PA. I had a bad feeling about PA for days, but kept pushing it aside. We really need to take the Electoral College and bury it deep out in the cornfield. Sorry, Europe, UK, Canada, Oz, et al. We really tried.

I started one, too, using my last initial, J. You can find it at jism.org! As for Rhism....die, heretic! Burn in Hell for 12 aeons! NON SATIRICAL PORTION OF POST You need to post your theological material, doctrines, core beliefs, metaphysical postulates, whatever, in the OP. See the rule about not requiring members to click on your external webpage, ok?

Unfortunately all my TP stains look like Trump, so that won't be as useful as the tea leaves. Should I reduce my fiber intake? Given the binary choice, any correct prediction is statistically not impressive. But I'll give ya a plus one because Kamala is all about spreading the love. Which you'll need, what with the cracked ribs and such. Cheers, and happy Fawkes Night!

Clearly Chase Oliver was the candidate for suspicious looking facial moles, an underserved community. For a Libertarian, letting moles prosper and grow without interference is an important plank of the party platform.

That's a new trick. Nasty business. I will stop using the gift link button then, and just get screen shots. I think a wildcard in this election lies in evolving attitudes toward women heads of state. There is in America a fair number of people with a bias against a female commander in chief - they'll vote for a woman for mayor or governor or congress, but still draw a line at POTUS. There are also sexist attitudes towards women leaders in some US ethnic minorities which are otherwise strongly Democratic. Obama pointed this out recently and got some flak for it.

You might find this look at the Stop the Steal groups, as they've spread over the web and entrenched for the 2024 election, useful in determining what sort of Harris victory would suffice to get them to pack up and go home. (paywall free version, courtesy of my WaPo subscription) https://wapo.st/48z6QUZ As long as our social media are lax about misinformation rules, there will be mass circulation of "election fraud" videos like the one detailed in this article. Musk, in particular, seems to be fully committed to running X as a propaganda arm of the MAGAists and the Far Right generally. One ray of light, as @toucana mentioned, is that former Trump stalwart Nick Fuentes has turned against the grand cheetoh and denounced MAGA as a cult.

You've dialed back my nervousness a bit, thank you. Or maybe it was the herbal tea you recommended. (with a shot of Seltzer, ha!)

It's an outlier poll, unfortunately. Other Iowa polls are showing them about even or Trump up a point.

Really had to dig down for that one, eh? Even McCain didn't want her as running mate, preferring Joe Lieberman but talked out of it by his advisors - he later expressed regret at following their advice. Palin was recognized as not the sharpest tool in the shed, for good reason. It wasn't just rhetoric. https://thehill.com/homenews/news/386392-mccain-i-regret-picking-palin-as-my-vice-presidential-nominee/