Trump Cowardly Backs Out of 2nd Debate

[_Jersey Girl]

ABC is keeping silent amid growing criticism of its town hall with Joe Biden after two of the attendees who asked the Democratic nominee questions were identified as an Obama speechwriter and the wife of a prominent Pennsylvania Democrat.

One of the questioners was Nathan Osburn, who worked for the Office of Public Affairs at the Commerce Department under the Obama-Biden administration and at the Small Business Administration.

Oh no! Is Osburn a registered voter? Did Biden answer the question?

You giant toe-sucking moron. Can't think your way out of a paper bag, can ya.

by the way, what position did Biden take on transgendered persons? Quick! Go see if Fu-cks News has something on it so you can keep faking like you know what the heck you're talking about.

[_moksha]

After the first debate:
66 Percent of Spanish-Speaking Americans in Telemundo Twitter Poll Think Trump Just Won the Debate

A Twitter poll?

[_Gunnar]

Democrats Have Found Their Battle Cry

U.S. presidential elections used to be about which candidate would best lead the free world. Now Democrats are advancing an unprecedented argument in modern American politics: Elect one of them to lead the free world; otherwise, Donald Trump will irreparably unravel it.

By cozying up to dictators and casting aside democratic allies abroad, and mimicking strongmen while undermining institutions at home, Trump is making the world safe for autocracy, the 2020 presidential candidates assert. The defining struggle of our time is between the forces of democracy and authoritarianism, they say, and the leader of the land of the free has strayed into enemy territory.

This was a central theme of recent foreign-policy speeches by Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg, and the rationale Kamala Harris offered in describing Trump as the top threat to U.S. national security during the first Democratic presidential debate. Last Thursday it was the core message of Joe Biden’s inaugural speech on international affairs.

The world’s democracies are now under more pressure than they’ve faced since fascism arose in the 1930s, buffeted by the ascendance of China and Russia and illiberal movements in many democratic societies, Biden observed. But “Donald Trump seems to be on the other team” and doesn’t “uphold basic democratic principles.” (We’ve reached the point in our politics where the former vice president and current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination is alleging that the U.S. president is in league with autocrats, and it barely registers in the news.)

As if on cue, the morning of Biden’s remarks, Trump “kidded” on Twitter about remaining in office well past his two terms and retweeted a far-right commentator praising the fact that Trump and like-minded strongmen such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán are now leading “proud nations.”

“You could never say in the last eight decades that an American president wasn’t standing up for the democratic world,” the former diplomat Nicholas Burns, who is currently serving as a member of Biden’s foreign-policy advisory team, told me shortly after Biden’s speech. Until now, that is.

[_Gunnar]

How Do We Fix American Democracy?

In the heady days after the 2016 election, a pair of political scientists, Valerie Bunce and Mark Beissinger, posed an unsettling question: “How might American democracy end?” Until Donald Trump’s ascent to the White House, such a question felt, well, academic. The United States was the longest-running democracy on Earth; its Constitution and system of checks and balances were a model for the world. Yet recent developments in the U.S., Bunce and Beissinger wrote, “bear an uncomfortable resemblance to those that foreshadowed the decline of democracy elsewhere in the world (Poland, Hungary, and Russia, and earlier, Latin America in the 1960s and interwar Europe).” For these two experts in the rise and fall of democracies, Trump’s victory and the conditions that enabled it were “disconcertingly familiar.”

They were right to be alarmed. Trump has been following the strongman playbook to a tee ever since he took office, calling for the imprisonment of his opponent, doling out government jobs to family members and pardons to political allies, lining his pockets with U.S. taxpayer and foreign funds spent at his properties, trying to fire a special counsel appointed by his own Justice Department, intimidating witnesses in criminal trials, and behaving in every way as if the rule of law didn’t apply to him. This year alone, he has attacked the integrity of our electoral process with lies about voter fraud, refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses, floated the idea of postponing Election Day, and publicly demanded that his attorney general arrest his election rival for imaginary crimes. With just weeks until the election, the editorial pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times are awash in hand-wringing over the likelihood that Trump will not accept the results if he loses, the violence that might ensue, and the possibility of military force to quell the unrest. In short, the American experiment is teetering above the abyss.

The first clue to me about how we might be heading toward possible tyranny and an onslaught on democracy was Trump starting out by claiming that the media or the free press was an enemy of the people, which was exactly what Joseph Goebbels proclaimed from the onset of the rise of Hitler's Nazism. This was a giant red warning flag to me, as it should also have been to anyone with more than a superficial knowledge of modern history.

[_Gunnar]

American democracy is as threatened as it’s ever been sure “in living memory,” according to Freedom House.

A respected watchdog group on human rights is sounding the alarm: President Donald Trump poses an existential threat to American democracy, perhaps the greatest challenge it’s seen in modern history.

“Trump has assailed essential institutions and traditions including the separation of powers, a free press, an independent judiciary, the impartial delivery of justice, safeguards against corruption, and most disturbingly, the legitimacy of elections,” Freedom House president Mike Abramowitz writes in a special section of this year’s report, released on Tuesday morning. “We cannot take for granted that institutional bulwarks against abuse of power will retain their strength, or that our democracy will endure perpetually. Rarely has the need to defend its rules and norms been more urgent.”

Freedom House is a respected bipartisan watchdog group that compiles an annual report on the state of democracy and human rights around the world. This report, known as Freedom in the World, is widely cited by policymakers and academics who study democracy. It’s a serious endeavor done by serious analysts — and this year, it’s heavily focused on Trump.

Freedom House’s system ranks countries on a 0-to-100 scale, with 0 being fully authoritarian and 100 being perfectly democratic. Countries gain points based on the freedom of their elections, respect for basic rights like freedom of speech, the quality of their independent press, and other core liberal democratic rights.

The US, for all its problems, has historically done quite well on these metrics when compared to the rest of the world — scoring above 90 along with other advanced democracies. But its score has been in slow decline since 2009, due to things like the rise of hyperpartisan media, political polarization, and state-level restrictions on voting rights.

Then there was a noticeable dip in 2018, from 89 to 86, which Abramowitz attributes largely to Trump’s influence. The US is currently below Italy, a fairly dysfunctional democracy with a governing coalition that currently includes the far-right Northern League.

“The total score of 86 still places the country firmly in the report’s Free category, [but] the current overall US score puts American democracy closer to struggling counterparts like Croatia than to traditional peers such as Germany or the United Kingdom,” he writes.

The reason this is so worrying, according to Abramowitz, is that Trump is following an established playbook from countries like Hungary and Venezuela where elected leaders have subverted their country’s democracy. Trump’s rhetorical and policy attacks happen to focus on the same institutions — the ones that help safeguard democracy.

“His attacks on the judiciary and the press, his resistance to anticorruption safeguards, and his unfounded claims of voting fraud by the opposition are all familiar tactics to foreign autocrats and populist demagogues who seek to subvert checks on their power,” Abramowitz writes.

These tactics take time to work, and are most effective when there’s limited public attention. The following chart from the report compares the US under Trump to several other countries that have elected leaders with authoritarian inclinations; you can see how America is still on the early side of the democratic decline inflection point:

Please see the charts and graphs in the article that illustrate the alarming trends. I forgot how to paste them into a blog post on this forum. :redface:

[_Gunnar]

A guide to the Trump administration’s biggest scandals, accomplishments, and policies

Deregulating America

Episode 1: When President Trump entered the White House, his administration had a clear goal: erase the last eight years of the Obama administration. Much of the deregulating that has happened in the last four years has not dominated the headlines, but it will have a huge impact on the environment and financial systems in this country for years to come.

America First?

Episode 2: On immigration and foreign policy, the president has kept a lot of his promises. But does a more broken immigration system and shaken alliances really put “America First”?

The investigations

Episode 3: After four years of investigations, whistleblower complaints, indictments and trials, there is still a lot we don’t know about Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2016 election. But one thing Robert Mueller’s investigation and the impeachment trial revealed is President Trump and his campaign will go to any lengths to win.

Health of our nation

Episode 4: President Trump failed to overturn the Affordable Care Act in his first days in office, but what has his administration done to change the health care system in the US and, seven months into a global pandemic, what state is that system in?

What’s next?

Episode 5: Many issues have been illuminated in the past four years: From the Women’s March to the Black Lives Matter movement, from economic inequalities and a fractured health care system to a shift in the balance of the US judicial branch — and more. These issues didn’t begin when President Trump entered the White House, and they will continue long after he’s gone. So how does the country move forward?

[_subgenius]

Please see the charts and graphs in the article that illustrate the alarming trends. I forgot how to paste them into a blog post on this forum. :redface:

Set aside the fact that Vox is a liberal rag, and we have to admit that Freedom House isn't a watchdog, it's a think tank and most likely a CIA contractor.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has field offices in about a dozen countries, including Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Jordan, Mexico, and also countries in Central Asia.
Check their resume bruh.

[_Gunnar]

Please see the charts and graphs in the article that illustrate the alarming trends. I forgot how to paste them into a blog post on this forum. :redface:

Set aside the fact that Vox is a liberal rag, and we have to admit that Freedom House isn't a watchdog, it's a think tank and most likely a CIA contractor.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has field offices in about a dozen countries, including Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Jordan, Mexico, and also countries in Central Asia.
Check their resume bruh.

Yes, I understand. Everything you disagree with must be liberal. Reality itself is incorrigibly liberal. Sucks, doesn't it? The Freedom House report is only documenting and amplifying trends that I already saw happening, to my great despair. That you still can't see that is an indication of your own blindness and your unwillingness or inability to care.

This is an argument against the group’s own interest. Roughly 85 percent of Freedom House’s annual revenue comes from federal grants, per a 2016 audit report. If a vindictive Trump or his allies in Congress went after the organization, the consequences for its bottom line could be dire.

They are literally risking their own existence and funding by sounding this warning! This, to me, is a credible indication of their integrity and genuine concern. They are not just in it for financial gain, power or their own security!

Of course they have field offices in numerous other countries! How else can they gather the evidence and documentation they need to be an effective and credible watchdog? And if they are a contractor to the CIA, as you allege, how does that necessarily make them suspect? Don't you think data collected by them or anyone else about anti-democratic, despotic trends would be a legitimate concern of our primary intelligence service? Do you buy into Trump's paranoid conspiracy notions about our own intelligence agencies are merely part of "The Deep State" out to get Trump?

That you still can't see what a corrupt, dishonest load of excrement Trump and his sycophantic cronies are is astounding to me!

[_subgenius]

Set aside the fact that Vox is a liberal rag, and we have to admit that Freedom House isn't a watchdog, it's a think tank and most likely a CIA contractor.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has field offices in about a dozen countries, including Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Jordan, Mexico, and also countries in Central Asia.
Check their resume bruh.

Yes, I understand. Everything you disagree with must be liberal. Reality itself is incorrigibly liberal. Sucks, doesn't it? The Freedom House report is only documenting and amplifying trends that I already saw happening, to my great despair. That you still can't see that is an indication of your own blindness and your unwillingness or inability to care.

This is an argument against the group’s own interest. Roughly 85 percent of Freedom House’s annual revenue comes from federal grants, per a 2016 audit report. If a vindictive Trump or his allies in Congress went after the organization, the consequences for its bottom line could be dire.

They are literally risking their own existence and funding by sounding this warning! This, to me, is a credible indication of their integrity and genuine concern. They are not just in it for financial gain, power or their own security!

Of course they have field offices in numerous other countries! How else can they gather the evidence and documentation they need to be an effective and credible watchdog? And if they are a contractor to the CIA, as you allege, how does that necessarily make them suspect? Don't you think data collected by them or anyone else about anti-democratic, despotic trends would be a legitimate concern of our primary intelligence service? Do you buy into Trump's paranoid conspiracy notions about our own intelligence agencies are merely part of "The Deep State" out to get Trump?

That you still can't see what a corrupt, dishonest load of excrement Trump and his sycophantic cronies are is astounding to me!

So, you still know nothing about Freedom House. But you're going to insist that they are experts on releasing an agreeable point of view....mk.

[_Gunnar]

So, you still know nothing about Freedom House. But you're going to insist that they are experts on releasing an agreeable point of view....mk.

Everything I have found out about them, so far, indicates that are an admirable and highly respected organization. What they claim to stand for is certainly agreeable to me. The strongest thing I have found in their favor, so far, is the fact that you apparently hate them. It is hard to imagine a more ringing or convincing endorsement than that!

From Wikipedia:

Freedom House is a U.S.-based,[4] U.S. government-funded[5] non-profit non-governmental organization (NGO) that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights.[6] Freedom House was founded in October 1941, and Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt served as its first honorary chairpersons.

It describes itself as a "clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world", although critics have stated that the organization is biased towards US interests. The organization was 66% funded by grants from the U.S. government in 2006, a number which has increased to 86% in 2016.[7][8] The reliance on US funding has been acknowledged as "a problem" within Freedom House, but accepted as a "necessary evil".[9][10][11][12]

The organization's annual Freedom in the World report, which assesses each country's degree of political freedoms and civil liberties, is frequently cited by political scientists, journalists, and policymakers. Freedom of the Press and Freedom on the Net,[13] which monitor censorship, intimidation and violence against journalists, and public access to information, are among its other signature reports.

Other than the fact that they are justly critical of your Lord and Master, Donald J. Trump, what do you have against them?