13
   

Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

 
 
Lash
 
  -3  
Reply Fri 1 Nov, 2024 04:15 pm
US Greens response to eUrOpEaN gReEnS

https://www.gp.org/gpus_responds_to_european_greens
izzythepush
 
  3  
Reply Fri 1 Nov, 2024 06:29 pm
@Lash,
The problem you have is believability.

Nobody believes you're attacking the Democrats for moral reasons, that you really care about the Palestinians.

I have been an outspoken supporter of Palestinian self determination from when I first started posting on A2K.

I don't remember you congratulating me on my stance back then, instead we argued about Bush and the Iraqi war.

It wasn't until Trump and Mrs Clinton were running for president that you suddenly became 'ultra left wing,' although a unique form of left wing activism that meant you only attacked Mrs Clinton.

And now you're talking mental conspiracy bollocks lifted from the Protocols of Zion bollocks and echoing Trump's and Putin's talking points.

I remember how you claimed to have said it first when found to be paraphrasing Trump.

Trump said something similar, maybe next time you can paraphrase Mein Kampf before Trump and Hitler.

There is no Zionist world order, oligarchs run the world.

And I don't doubt that some are Jewish, and some are Arabian princes, but the vast majority are white guys like Roman Abramovich, Oleg Deripaska, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

You're letting those bastards off the hook by repeating their lies.

Btw, The fact that most Israelis want Trump to win speaks volumes.
hightor
 
  3  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 03:43 am
Quote:
Trump’s comments to right-wing media figure Tucker Carlson last night at an event in Glendale, Arizona, about former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), coming as they have after the extraordinary racism and sexism of Trump’s Sunday event at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, have have highlighted the centrality of the campaign's attack on women.

“She’s a radical war hawk,” Trump told Carlson, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Today, Trump surrogates have tried to say that he was referring to Cheney’s positions on American warfare, but it seems pretty clear he is fantasizing about seeing her in front of a firing squad. Journalist Magdi Jacobs noted the parallels between this statement and his 2020 command to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” the precursor to the Proud Boys’ attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. In both statements, Trump avoided explicitly calling for violence, but absolutely set the stage for it.

This morning, Cheney responded to Trump’s threat “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”

While Trump began to attack Cheney openly when she accepted the role of vice-chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, where her presence clearly made Republicans—like Cassidy Hutchinson, aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows—willing to share what they knew, Trump’s recent bloody fantasies appear to have broader meaning.

Cheney has emerged as the key figure to urge Republican women to vote against Trump, and it is becoming increasingly clear that Trump’s reelection is in trouble in part because white women are abandoning him. The early hints that this is happening, like the huge gender gap showing up in early voting, have sparked a right-wing frenzy of attempts to restore the power of white men over the women in their lives. Right-wing men are insisting that wives should vote as their husbands do, or that women should lose the ability to vote altogether.

Trump’s suggestion that Cheney should face a firing squad seems to be a general expression of the anger of white men accustomed to dictating the terms of public life when faced with the reality that they can no longer count on being able to cow the people around them.

Trump’s attack on Cheney has galvanized his unpopularity with women, while the larger meaning of the MAGAs’ attacks on women got additional illustration with the news broken today by Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana of ProPublica that a pregnant 18-year-old in Texas suffering from sepsis was turned away from emergency rooms twice before doctors at a third visit required two ultrasounds to make sure her fetus no longer had a heartbeat before they would move her into intensive care. She died within hours.

Today’s news continued to be bad for Trump. Last week, on the Joe Rogan podcast, Trump talked about the CHIPS and Science Act that authorized about $280 billion to encourage domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the U.S. While the law has brought significant private investment into the construction of new manufacturing plants and has created manufacturing jobs, Trump complained to Rogan, “That chip deal is so bad.”

After listening to that conversation, journalist Luke Radel asked House speaker Mike Johnson in a report aired today whether, with Trump opposed to the bill and with Republicans having voted against it, the Republicans will try to repeal the law if they get majorities in Congress. Johnson responded “I expect we probably will, but we haven’t developed that part of the agenda yet.”

Republicans are determined to cut government spending to make way for more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. But the CHIPS and Science Act has brought important supply chains home and has created more than 115,000 new high-paying jobs in the U.S.

And it has brought significant investment to battleground states: $19.5 billion to Arizona, $75 million to Georgia, $325 million to Michigan, $750 million to North Carolina, and $93 million to Pennsylvania. Johnson quickly realized that acknowledging the Republicans’ hopes of repealing it was a bad mistake days before an election and, claiming he had not heard the question accurately, said he had no intent to undermine the CHIPS and Science Act.

At a closed-door meeting earlier this week, Johnson said repealing the Affordable Care Act is a Republican priority. He tried to walk this comment back, as well, but Pennsylvania Republican senatorial candidate Dave McCormick kept the issue in front of voters when he was caught on a hot mic saying he wants to reform the ACA and that he opposes the provision in the ACA that allows children to stay on their parent’s health insurance until they’re 26.

Trump’s mental state continues to deteriorate, taking with it the former president’s inhibitions. After going on a rant about the people he blamed for troubles with his microphone at a sparsely attended rally in Warren, Michigan, the Republican nominee for president of the United States of America simulated oral sex on stage.

An official with the Harris campaign told reporters today that they “fully expect” Trump will replay the game plan of 2020 and claim victory on election night, before all the votes are fully counted. In an interview on Wednesday, Harris noted that they were ready if Trump prematurely declared victory: “We are sadly ready if he does and, if we know that he is actually manipulating the press and attempting to manipulate the consensus of the American people...we are prepared to respond,” she said.

Washington State governor Jay Inslee has activated the state’s National Guard so it will be “fully prepared to respond to any…civil unrest” before or after the election.

The Department of Justice today announced it would monitor the polls in 86 jurisdictions in 27 states to make sure they comply with federal voting rights laws. Although the federal government has monitored certain polls since 1965, officials in the states of Florida, Missouri, and Texas promptly announced they would not permit Department of Justice officials inside polling stations.

Meanwhile, Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris made two stops in Wisconsin today before packing the Wisconsin State Fair Exposition Center in West Allis near Milwaukee.

In Madison, Harris told a reporter: “What I am enjoying about this moment most is that in spite of how my opponent spends full time trying to divide the American people, what I am seeing is people coming together under one roof who seemingly have nothing in common and know they have everything in common, and I think that is in the best interest of the strength of our nation.”

hcr
hightor
 
  4  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 04:55 am
@Lash,
Quote:
I am completely in love with speaking and voting my conscience.
I’m so proud to be able to cast my vote for (Stein's platform).

You're completely in love with yourself. Rolling Eyes Your empty fulminations ring hollow and I suspect that your reasons for trolling this site are theatrical, not political. "Look, I'm getting voted down! My solipsistic existence is confirmed!"
Quote:
I would NEVER vote for genocide or empty climate rhetoric or being ruled by Zionists.

Neither would anyone else, as those choices aren't on the ballot.
Lash
 
  -3  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 06:47 am
@hightor,
Another political / social view should be offered amid all this wrong-headed thinking.

History will be our judge.

Lash
 
  -3  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 06:53 am
@izzythepush,
Fortunately, I’m not concerned about my believability on this site. I don’t think anyone here is acting in good faith.

I’ve agreed many times that I was wrong about Bush Cheney.
That was 2000-ish.

I don’t see you reacting to the Democrats’ current embrace of Cheney…

hightor
 
  2  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:09 am
Kemi Badenoch Becomes First Black Woman to Lead Britain’s Conservative Party

Ms. Badenoch is expected to move the party, now in the opposition, further to the right.

Quote:
Britain’s Conservative Party announced on Saturday that it had selected Kemi Badenoch as its leader, putting a charismatic, often combative, right-wing firebrand at the helm of a party that suffered a crushing election defeat in July.

Ms. Badenoch, 44, whose parents were immigrants from Nigeria, becomes the first Black woman to head a party that has had three other female leaders — Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May and Liz Truss. She succeeds Rishi Sunak, who became the first nonwhite British prime minister after taking over the Tories, Britain’s oldest party, in 2022.

“It is the most enormous honor to be elected to this role, to lead the party that I love, the party that has given me so much,” a smiling Ms. Badenoch said to a group of Conservative Party members after being announced the winner. “I hope that I will be able to repay that debt.”

There is no guarantee, despite her swift ascent, that Ms. Badenoch will ever get to 10 Downing Street. The Labour Party’s landslide victory gave it a huge majority in Parliament and the Tories face at least four years in opposition before the next election is due.

While the Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer, has gotten off to a shaky start, his party remains more popular than the Tories, who left voters frustrated and exhausted after 14 turbulent years in government.

In a lively, occasionally bitter, leadership contest, Ms. Badenoch edged out Robert Jenrick, another former cabinet minister, by a vote of 53,806 to 41,388 among the party’s 130,000 or so dues-paying members (about 73 percent voted). She and Mr. Jenrick emerged as the two finalists in a multiple-round contest that left the members with an unexpectedly narrow choice of two candidates from the party’s right.

Ms. Badenoch has vowed to rebuild the Tory Party on more authentically conservative foundations, saying her training as a computer engineer had taught her how to fix problems. She speaks often of “first principles” like freedom and individual responsibility. And she has not hesitated to wade into thorny issues like transgender rights or Britain’s colonial legacy, deploring “woke” ideology and “nasty identity politics.”

In her brief speech, Ms. Badenoch vowed to “reset our politics and our thinking” and to be “honest about the fact that we made mistakes.” But she did not lay out any new policy positions, in keeping with her refusal during the contest to be pinned down on specific policies.

“It’s quite unusual to go into a leadership contest eschewing the idea that you need to put together policies for the party,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics and an expert on the Conservative Party at Queen Mary University of London.

Ms. Badenoch, he said, was also distinguished by her outspoken style and willingness to get into fierce debates over issues. He has described her as a “thinking man’s Thatcherite cultural warrior.”

That suggests the Conservatives could be in for an unpredictable, even bumpy, stretch as the main opposition party. Her predecessor, Mr. Sunak, was a more technocratic, if also occasionally querulous, figure.

And it is not clear, given the size of Labour’s majority, how much Ms. Badenoch can hope to achieve as leader of the opposition, a post that is sometimes described as the worst in British politics because of the dearth of power and shrunken media attention.

Like Mr. Sunak, whose parents are of Indian heritage, Ms. Badenoch’s story captures a slice of Britain’s varied immigrant experience. Born in London to a mother who was a physiology professor and a father who was a doctor, she spent her formative years in Lagos, Nigeria, where her family lived a comfortable life.

After political and economic upheaval swept Nigeria, her family’s fortunes abruptly declined. Years later, she recalled doing homework by candlelight during power outages and fetching water from a nearby well because the taps had run dry. She moved back to Britain at 16, taking a part-time job at a McDonald’s while she studied.

In a recent BBC interview, Ms. Badenoch described her early years back in Britain as a time of little money and low expectations. When she spoke of her ambition to become a doctor, she recalled, people asked her why she wouldn’t be content to be a nurse. Instead, she became a software engineer.

“To all intents and purposes, I am a first-generation immigrant,” Ms. Badenoch said after being elected to Parliament in 2017. In her well-received first speech, she quoted both Edmund Burke and Woody Allen.

Ms. Badenoch presents her British nationality as a stroke of good fortune — one that has instilled deep patriotism in someone who was raised “somewhere where the lights didn’t come on, where we ran out of fuel.”

She has joined calls for Britain to cut back the recent influx of immigrants, though she has avoided the kinds of strict, numeric targets embraced by Mr. Jenrick. And she has rejected his demand that Britain commit to withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, a post-World War II treaty, because he says it obstructs efforts to control Britain’s borders.

Ms. Badenoch’s views on immigration have evolved along with those of the rest of her party. In comments from 2018 that recently resurfaced, she welcomed the Conservative government’s proposal to relax restrictions on visas for skilled migrants. She said she has since changed her mind.

On immigration policy, Ms. Badenoch now says, “numbers matter but culture matters more.” The most important criteria, she said, is “who is coming into our country and what do they want to do here?”

A confirmed Brexiteer, Ms. Badenoch rose rapidly in the governments of Boris Johnson, Ms. Truss and Mr. Sunak. She worked first as minister of state for equalities in the Johnson government. Ms. Truss then appointed her secretary of state for international trade, and Mr. Sunak later named her to head a newly created Department for Business and Trade.


Along the way, Ms. Badenoch has sparred with journalists, opposition figures, members of her own party, and even allies like Michael Gove, a former Tory minister who spoke warmly about her leadership bid.

Ms. Badenoch met her husband, Hamish Badenoch, a managing director at Deutsche Bank, through the Conservative Party when they were both activists and he was on the list of candidates approved to run for Parliament. They have two daughters and a son.

“One day he said to me ‘I think you are a lot better at this than I ever would be, and I think you should go for it, and I will support you all the way,’” Ms. Badenoch told the BBC in the recent interview.

Her ascent troubles some in Britain, who believe that, despite her status as the first Black leader of the Tories, she could set back the cause of racial justice and equality because of her right-wing views.

“The question on the left is: Is this a cynical performative device by the right to champion an anti-woke, Black, right-wing politician to challenge antiracist policies, and therefore will it have regressive consequences?” said Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a research institute.

Mr. Katwala said he preferred to think of Ms. Badenoch as representing a kind of “migrant patriotism” — the idea that “migrants choose the country and the rest of you are born in it and don’t know how lucky you are.”

Ms. Badenoch’s political views, he said, “are very authentic,” and understandable in the context of a life that took her from privilege and comfort in Nigeria to a tough new start and hard-won success in Britain.

“It’s just that her life experience is quite an unusual Black British story,” Mr. Katwala said.

nyt
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:16 am
@Lash,
That is not what is happening.

Trump is so extreme that even the Cheney's have turned against him.

You have never admitted being wrong about Bush.

And it was 2001 -2009, best part of a decade, and 2009 is more recent than "2000-ish."
bobsal u1553115
 
  2  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:21 am
@Lash,
Quote:
I don’t think anyone here is acting in good faith.


Classic projection.
izzythepush
 
  3  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:22 am
During WW2 when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Churchill didn't start praising Stalin's purges, because we had a common enemy who was a far greater danger to both of us.

That's the situation today. Trump is the greatest threat to
American and Western democracy and freedom since Hitler, and such threatsgo way beyond partisan politics.
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:23 am
@hightor,
She has the same level of support as Truss.

She will never be pm, the people likely to vote for her policies will not approve of her race and vice versa.
izzythepush
 
  4  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:25 am
@bobsal u1553115,
We, at least, have been consistent in our position.
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  2  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:35 am
@Lash,
Quote:
Another political / social view should be offered amid all this wrong-headed thinking.


There are plenty of alternative views – do you think they have to be represented by a political party in order to be considered worthwhile? I have my own political views and I hold them even though I'm certain they'll never be adopted by a party and I'll never cast a ballot for a candidate who represents them. The thing is, the policies of the major political parties have a direct effect on the quality of our lives and communities, and those are the people who get elected.

I disagree with some measures favored by the Democrats but I know that many of their policies address things I'm concerned with, concerns that the Republican Party doesn't address at all, unless they're threatening to repeal progressive legislation. I also know that my views would never be embraced by a majority of the electorate so I'm better off with elected representatives who reflect some aspects of my thinking than holding out for an organization dedicated to enacting my personal political philosophy. Getting watered-down versions of progressive policies under Democrats is preferable to getting nothing from Republicans and losing rights and freedoms as well.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  4  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:41 am
@Lash,
Lash wrote:
I don’t think anyone here is acting in good faith.
On the basis of what sources do you arrive at this belief?

hightor
 
  3  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:42 am
@izzythepush,
Thanks, izzy, I was hoping you'd weigh in. Minority representation in the Tory leadership is interesting, though. Is there some sort of backroom calculation going on, with the hope of attracting non-white voters, the way the GOP does here?
Walter Hinteler
 
  4  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:51 am
@Lash,
Lash wrote:
Another political / social view should be offered amid all this wrong-headed thinking.
In the last general election in Germany, 53 parties were on the ballot paper: from ‘European Love’ to the ‘HipHop Party’, from the ‘MLPD - Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany’ to ‘Alliance C - Christians for Germany’ and (even further to the right) the ‘III. way’).
Only the well-known ones got into parliament.

Do you think, Americans would act differently? And why?
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  3  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:54 am
@hightor,
The problem the Conservative party has is it's too right wing.

The current consensus is it's losing votes to Reform because it was too left.

That may be the case with die hard right wingers but not most people.

Over here parties always in the centre.

After Blair won, William Hague became leader and made no difference electorally, then Ian Duncan Smith (IDS) got in with the support of a third of mps, similar to Badenoch.

Ian Duncan Smith was another failure which is why David Cameron got the job who straight away went on a green based global tour.

He got in because he was seen to be left of Hague and IDS.

The Tory party membership is overwhelmingly white and elderly, reactionary and imperialistic.

They voted for Truss, that's how out of touch they are.

izzythepush
 
  3  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 07:58 am
@izzythepush,
The final two candidates presented to members were both of the right.

There was no one nation conservative.

There was no real competition.
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  2  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 08:03 am
@hightor,
As our leadership elections are chosen by party members it's really dependent on the whims of members.

Both Labour and Liberal parties have a more diverse and pragmatic membership, but the Tories are stuck with an overwhelmingly white elderly members who yearn for the days of empire.

They're really not equipped to make pragmatic choices, they vote with the gut.

And it will stay like that until the membership changes.
izzythepush
 
  1  
Reply Sat 2 Nov, 2024 08:14 am
@hightor,
hightor wrote:

Is there some sort of backroom calculation going on, with the hope of attracting non-white voters, the way the GOP does here?


If James Cleverly had been elected leader you may have had a point.

He is more central than the others, and he was the front runner among mps right up until the last round where he still got about a third of the votes.

It was very close, and shows none of the candidates have the support of a majority of mps.

As it was the right wing membership was given the choice of far right or even further right.

And, as expected, they voted for the most right wing.

Personally I think Cleverly would have lost against either candidate had he gone through.

The Tory membership is not interested in winning elections but in idealism. This is their Jeremy Corbyn moment.
 

Related Topics

Obama '08? - Discussion by sozobe
Let's get rid of the Electoral College - Discussion by Robert Gentel
McCain's VP: - Discussion by Cycloptichorn
Food Stamp Turkeys - Discussion by H2O MAN
The 2008 Democrat Convention - Discussion by Lash
McCain is blowing his election chances. - Discussion by McGentrix
Snowdon is a dummy - Discussion by cicerone imposter
TEA PARTY TO AMERICA: NOW WHAT?! - Discussion by farmerman
 
Copyright © 2024 MadLab, LLC :: Terms of Service :: Privacy Policy :: Page generated in 0.77 seconds on 11/25/2024 at 12:51:52