A pre-election game

[Gunnar]

South Carolina is too red of a state for Graham not to win his re-election bid.

I fervently hope you are wrong about that! I also wish that Amy McGrath had a better chance of beating McConnell in Kentucky. He is arguably the most hated politician in the entire country. I wish that were also true amongst the Kentuckian electorate. McGrath might still have an outside chance at beating him, though.

In the case of Florida, even if Biden wins, the margin of victory will probably be so small that Trump will have a good chance of successfully challenging the result with the hard right conservative bias that now exists in the Supreme Court, thanks to the confirmation of Justice Barrett. If Trump litigates against a Biden win, I have little confidence that she will be honest enough to overcome her own bias and grant the win to Biden, unless he wins by an undeniably substantial margin. Even if she is that honest, I doubt that Trump's other two appointees, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will be.

On the other hand, though, given her high intelligence and education, I'm sure that she must be well-informed enough to have no illusions about Trump's character, immorality and pathological dishonesty. If she is as devout a Catholic as she is purported to be, I would find it hard to believe that she isn't at least somewhat disgusted with him. Now that she is safely seated on the Supreme Court, she need have no concern about Trump having any power over her should she oppose him in any way because of any disgust she may harbor for him.

[Morley]

Kish, while I get your point, neither Trump nor Jackson were picked by 'elite insiders.' I don't think either choice was an improvement.

Yes, I thought that someone would raise these guys, but I am going to have to push back, albeit respectfully. Look, the "elite" refers to a class of people, not the Illuminati or Skull and Bones. In other words, I am not talking about a conspiracy theory here. I am saying that the people who become president are supported, and to an extent pre-selected by members of a financial/political elite.

It is not the case that Donald Trump came out of nowhere. He flirted around with the idea of running for president for some time, and there were wealthy and connected people who encouraged him to do it. He may have been boosted by a small group of crazy billionaires, but he does have his Robert Mercers and Sheldon Adelsons. Were it not for the platform that Rupert Murdoch happily handed him, Trump would have gotten nowhere.

Dig into Jackson, and you will quickly encounter John Overton, plantation owner and Superior Court judge in Tennessee. Overton was one of the wealthiest men in Tennessee. The Overtons were powerful and influential Americans of English descent whose great-grandfather was a military commander for the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War. Jackson lost to Adams in his first bid, but he had the support of New York Senator Martin Van Buren and Vice President John C. Calhoun in his second. (Calhoun was a plantation owner and a staunch supporter of slavery, as Overton was.)

So, yes, it is true that there is no monolithic elite calling the shots. But these guys don't end up in range of the presidency by accident. They belong to an elite, and they are supported by fellow elites. Without that support, they would not get anywhere. This is part of the vetting process, haphazard though it may be, for the presidency.

Okay, I understand what you're saying. I wondered how you were going to develop the argument you'd set up. Thank you.



edit:

I see this as a problem with no obvious solution. (Adding primaries hasn't solved it.) Where am I wrong?

Maybe we need public financing of elections?

[Morley]

delete this doubling

[subgenius]

South Carolina is too red of a state for Graham not to win his re-election bid.

I fervently hope you are wrong about that! I also wish that Amy McGrath had a better chance of beating McConnell in Kentucky. He is arguably the most hated politician in the entire country....

Not sure there is much to "argue" on that one:

Favorability Ratings:

Trump = 41.6%
Pelosi = 36.6%
Schumer = 31.0%
McConnell = 27.2%

[Moksha]

It is not the case that Donald Trump came out of nowhere. He flirted around with the idea of running for president for some time, and there were wealthy and connected people who encouraged him to do it. He may have been boosted by a small group of crazy billionaires, but he does have his Robert Mercers and Sheldon Adelsons. Were it not for the platform that Rupert Murdoch happily handed him, Trump would have gotten nowhere.

Probably something Trump and Jeffery Epstein cooked up while doing some blow on the island. "What the heck, let's get the guys involved. See what they say."

[Kishkumen]

Okay, I understand what you're saying. I wondered how you were going to develop the argument you'd set up. Thank you.



edit:

I see this as a problem with no obvious solution. (Adding primaries hasn't solved it.) Where am I wrong?

Maybe we need public financing of elections?

I think publicly financed campaigns and elections are the answer. The people need to reassert control of communications, and the conduct of campaigns needs to occur within strictly defined parameters.

[Kishkumen]

Probably something Trump and Jeffery Epstein cooked up while doing some blow on the island. "What the heck, let's get the guys involved. See what they say."

Robert Mercer, a supporter of Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, has been called the single most important financial supporter of Trump and the decisive actor in getting him elected.

Maybe Jeff Epstein is in there somewhere. Did he manage some money for Mercer? It is not clear to me why Mercer would have needed Epstein's help in any way, except maybe as a procurer.

[Moksha]

Here is an interesting article called The Oligarch Threat. https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/ ... h-threat/

[MeDotOrg]

Predicting elections make me feel like Charlie Brown when Lucy is holding the pigskin:




But at the risk of humiliating myself once again: Biden 321/Trump 217.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Here’s a funny and on-point Redditor reply to the Hunter Biden BS Rudy and Bannon tried pulling:

“I will have enough for an entire book before this “scandal” is done.

Hunter, while living in California, decides to fly 3,000 miles to Delaware. All to drop off a laptop for repair, coincidentally at a huge MAGA fan shop. he decided to never pick up his own laptop.

There’s security footage of it, but it got lost. Epstein style. But don’t worry- the MAGA man swears he saw him drop it off. Turns out he has a mental condition where he CANNOT RECOGNIZE FACES (I’m not joking) he knew it was hunters though, cause of the stickers on the laptop... MAGA man, naturally, didn’t just erase and resell the laptop, but did the totally normal thing of duplicating the hard drive and spending hours sorting through thousands of emails to find one that suggests Hunter might’ve tried to arrange a meeting with daddy Biden no evidence any meeting ever occurred, but who cares.

In comes Rudy Giuliani, cyber security expert, and talking set of teeth -who was tricked by Borat, and periodically butt dials reporters on accident -he has ‘confirmed’ the information not even the FBI could. Rudy was so worried about the intel, he sat on the laptop for months until 3 weeks before the election.

Naturally, it proves Hunter was into pedo devil sex too, but the proof is secret and for Rudy’s eyes only. there’s a video of said drug fueled sexcapades, but again, you just gotta trust rudy

Rudy refuses to send any electronic proof of the emails to anyone. But it’s definitely real, and definitely exists Heh. Again- not a single news agency has actually seen any proof, except for photos of printed emails. This is why ThEY WoNT CoVeR iT
He was ‘confirming’ it the same time Trump received an intel briefing that Rudy was unknowingly being used by Russian operatives to spread disinformation. Lmao.

Rudy, tired of getting made fun of, tweets some more ‘source material’ text messages... except the text is in an app that didn’t exist at the time it supposedly happened, and...literally in Russia. Poor guy.

This was all also investigated by a real Post reporter who refused to put their name on it, as no part of it could be verified. Several news outlets also passed on the story for the same reason, including FoxNews and WSJ. Ended up written by Sean Hannity’s producer. Lol.

Now comes a guy named Bobulinski - alleging he, uhh met with Biden to discuss a Chinese business deal. He has proof, of course: ‘documents’ he says naturally, he actually hasn’t released anything.

The WSJ opinion section finally publishes a Bobulinkski piece. Note: opinion section, not news, as they still couldn’t verify anything. It alleges the above Chinese deal. They very next day, the WSJ news section refutes the entire thing, using Bobulinksi’s own source material.

Here comes Tucker Carlson. He is about to release a bombshell. All the emails. Proving everything. Unfortunately, these apparently only existed as single physical copies. The emails. Electronic mails. Only existed as one physical copy. (Got that?). Sadly, these printed non-electronic emails were lost (stolen!) in the mail, and no one ever made a copy , so we may never know which dog ate Tucker’s homework or who made-up this made-up story.

Next up is Martin Aspen, Swiss intelligence operative. He is the basis for many of these allegations and brought it public in a dossier that the PRESIDENT received.. it turns out he is not real. Literally, they made his face on a face generator and gave him a cute linkedIn profile at a fake company. Probably just a cover for the deep state.

I think I’ve got it all, but hard to say as they keep making new stuff up.
​
Edit: Tucker has retrieved the mystery documents. Still don't know what's in them, but coincidentally he thinks we should give Hunter a break, and pretend like none of this happened.

I've posted a partial list of sources below. I'm supposed to be working right now, so its all I've got time for.

Also, I refuse to remove my emojis. Screw all of you.”

- Doc