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US Politics: Does the fat man singing count?


Ser Scot A Ellison

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50 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sure that's one way to see it, but I still think Republicans would have benefited from a last minute stimulus check, assuming it arrived in most people's bank accounts before the election. 

It's mind boggling that Republicans chose to do everything but act in a humane and sensible way to approach the pandemic.  No.latter how much Trump was loathed and needed to go, stimulus, PPE, use of the emergency powers act, all the things that would have shown leadership and, more import, humanity would have written their tickets in 2020...instead, they chose to twist the screws and clutch at fleeting power.  

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2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So priorities for the lame duck period for Trump includes bringing back firing squads for federal capital convictions? Apparently this is an idea that's been mooted to deal with lethal injection drugs being in fairly short supply.

I'm guessing legislation to end federal capital punishment won't pass unless there is a filibuster-proof majority in favour of it in the Senate.

First, if I were definitely going to be executed I might prefer a firing squad over whatever questionable drug cocktail they are authorized to dose convicts with. You won’t last a second against a firing squad whereas there have been plenty of horror stories about botched injections. The only reason they don’t do firing squads, or hanging, or the guillotine for that matter are the gory results.

The state wants people dead but knows today’s public would recoil from bloody methods. I think an interesting potential unintended consequence if Trump gets his way on firing squads is a faster-than-otherwise national abolition of the death penalty. I don’t think 21st century Americans are going to be as cool with the government shooting convicts to death in practice as they might think. It perfectly suits Trumps tough guy act, but I personally think it’s more likely to turn public opinion against the death penalty. 

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16 minutes ago, S John said:

First, if I were definitely going to be executed I might prefer a firing squad over whatever questionable drug cocktail they are authorized to dose convicts with. You won’t last a second against a firing squad whereas there have been plenty of horror stories about botched injections. The only reason they don’t do firing squads, or hanging, or the guillotine for that matter are the gory results.

Bodhi had the right of it. 

 

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1 hour ago, S John said:

I think an interesting potential unintended consequence if Trump gets his way on firing squads is a faster-than-otherwise national abolition of the death penalty.

The last time SCOTUS tried to abolish the death penalty it backfired hard - see Furman v Georgia (1972) and Gregg v Georgia (1976).  Anyway Trump/the DOJ's efforts here won't have any substantive effect before he gets the boot:

Quote

But a Justice Department official said "the federal government will never execute an inmate by firing squad or electrocution unless the relevant state has itself authorized that method of execution." [...]

"No one on federal death row committed the offense in a state that uses the firing squad to execute prisoners," Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said on Twitter Thursday.

 

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2 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

hmm...A (accidental) 'good deed by Trump?  That what he's after has had bipartisan support...but I see major downsides here as well.  

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-threatens-to-veto-major-defense-bill-unless-it-repeals-section-230-a-legal-shield-for-tech-giants/ar-BB1bxVWP?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=msnclassic

 

 

 

If you can prove in a court legal liability for what companies allow to be displayed on their platforms then good luck to you. They never needed a strict defence. There would probably be a flurry of law suits, that the tech giants can well afford, and then a bunch of judicial precedents would be established which gives everyone a good idea of what website owners can and can't get away with.

Freedom of speech has never meant freedom from consequences.

I'm sure the right will back off as soon as they realise a lot of the shit they put online will be banned on all the major platforms because of the exposure to legal action it causes.

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The hypothetical 'if Trump had handled the pandemic competently' is pointless. Trump has handled nothing competently. You might as well be saying 'if Trump were kind, modest, handsome, and caring, and also ten feet tall'.

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3 hours ago, mormont said:

The hypothetical 'if Trump had handled the pandemic competently' is pointless. Trump has handled nothing competently. You might as well be saying 'if Trump were kind, modest, handsome, and caring, and also ten feet tall'.

I dunno, I think he handled the Republican party expertly. Though possibly that's not much of a challenge and not much indication that someone can handle anything moderately demanding of competence.

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5 hours ago, mormont said:

The hypothetical 'if Trump had handled the pandemic competently' is pointless. Trump has handled nothing competently. You might as well be saying 'if Trump were kind, modest, handsome, and caring, and also ten feet tall'.

Eh, aspects of the economy did take off under him, even if they were artificial and shortsighted. I've heard a lot of people say they'd support him if he'd just shut up and get off Twitter. 

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48 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Eh, aspects of the economy did take off under him, even if they were artificial and shortsighted. I've heard a lot of people say they'd support him if he'd just shut up and get off Twitter. 

I think that with this reply you are merely proving mormont’s point! Trump could no more shut up and get off twitter than he could be modest and caring.

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I see from reports that Trump is determined to golf and party as long as he can. There are Christmas parties at the WH booked for many nights. Video from last night’s party show crowded rooms with very few people wearing masks.

Another superspreader event, except this time it will be a series of events! Don’t be afraid of Covid-19!

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31 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I see from reports that Trump is determined to golf and party as long as he can. There are Christmas parties at the WH booked for many nights. Video from last night’s party show crowded rooms will very few people wearing masks.

Another superspreader event, except this time it will be a series of events! Don’t be afraid of Covid-19!

It's called the World Series for a reason, and it comes at the end of the (Christmas Season).

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13 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

It always seemed like McConnell was going to sink a deal absent Trump browbeating him publicly over it. I still think it's bizarre though that Republicans didn't go for a second direct stimulus package say a month out before the election. Trump would have probably gotten most of the credit, and who knows how that could have changed the electoral results. I don't really see a scenario in which it would have hurt Republicans. 

It is weird. It's like Pelosi thought giving them a deal would help them, and they thought doing a deal would hurt them, and in the middle of all this 3 dimensional chess our elected politicians are playing, sit people facing evictions, no food, sad Christmases, and the like. One side surely would have benefitted from passing something. Perhaps both sides. 

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5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I dunno, I think he handled the Republican party expertly. Though possibly that's not much of a challenge and not much indication that someone can handle anything moderately demanding of competence.

There's a debate to be had, who got played for suckers there.

The GOP or Dumbs.

The GOP got their judicial appointments and the tax cuts for sugar daddies. In exchange for putting up with a Twitter Trumptum now and then. And in four years, all will happily pretend it never happened, and the justices are still in place. Or a bit more pointedly put. Humiliation is temporary, judges are forever.

What the get the orange one and his clan get out of this? Four years of playing President (most of the scorn for debasing the office). Presumably a great many law suits and indictments pending over their heads (no pardon power for state crimes). They are regarded as pariahs in their home town (NYC), which is supposedly esp. hard for daddy's aryan princess and her Ken doll husband. So they have to relocate to Florida.

I fail to see, how the Republicans got the short end of the stick here.

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Just now, DMC said:

"Now and then" ?!?

Personally I think, his twitter account has become sorta white noise after four years. And he has mainly been raging about the Mueller probe, and fake news media.

Do you think a senile mutant senate turtle (wanker in a half-shell) gives a shit?

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1 minute ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Personally I think, his twitter account has become sorta white noise after four years.

Doesn't this impetus demonstrate in and of itself that it's far more than now and then?  And, no, of course neither McConnell nor any other elected Republican gives a shit.

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12 minutes ago, DMC said:

Doesn't this impetus demonstrate in and of itself that it's far more than now and then?  And, no, of course neither McConnell nor any other elected Republican gives a shit.

How often were they the target of the Trumptrums since he took office?

Yeah, he was raging now and then towards them (but that was the exception not the rule). If you had offered him all those judicial appointments, he probably would've let you piss all over him, like a Russian hooker and posted the video himself (not just figuratively).

Either way, point was, I disagree with the idea, that the Dump family played (or abused) the Republican party. If anybody got played, it was Twitler. Just that him and his family Klan are too thick to see it. If he continues to tweet shit, and the media cover it, they'll be equally happy that he continues to be the useful idiot for Mitch.

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7 hours ago, mormont said:

The hypothetical 'if Trump had handled the pandemic competently' is pointless. Trump has handled nothing competently.

Trump could have managed a less-incompetent response than he did.  He wanted to get reelected, and he is quite capable of pandering to win votes.  If the WH had understood that COVID is going to be a huge deal and that COVID, not the economy, would define the 2020 election, then I definitely think that Trump would have done better.  It's not even that hard for Trump to get big PR wins as a result of COVID, it's actually a great fit for a populist president. 

 - Blame China from the start, rather than the weird subservience to them in Feb/March. 

 - Mock people who don't wear masks as insecure and unamerican. 

- Use the resources of the federal govt to purchase PPE and use the war powers act to ramp up domestic production.

- Hold press briefings and read from the teleprompter about how many lives your PPE has saved, and have that number constantly increasing (to combat the death toll headlines). 

 

None of those things require any particular competence from the Trump WH.  But they couldn't even take the easy wins. 

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4 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

How often were they the target of the Trumptrums since he took office?

Well, they were targets for him quite often.  But anyway, I wasn't disagreeing or arguing with any of your substantive points.  Dunno why you think I was.  The only thing I took issue with was you saying "Trumptrums" were only "now and then."

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