The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Paul Brancato]

5 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

W-

Thanks for your comments. 

Of course, we agree on the indefensible treatment of non-white voters, and women voters, until recent decades. 

But if you use the ID-politics lens exclusively, perhaps you lose sight of the conversion of the New Donk Party into Deep State apparatchiks. 

The Deep State can fly the rainbow flag, and get Colin Powell or Lloyd Austin to serve as a visual cue,  but in fact every event or episode is used to expand US military presence globally, whether it be 9/11 or Ukraine.

The purpose of the US military, although paid for by US taxpayers, is to serve as a global guard service for multinational corporations. 

Just more than 600 days into office and Biden has vowed permanent increased missions to Europe, the Mideast and the Indo-Pacific. 

I understand the Saudis are a large oil producer, and oil markets are global.   I still see no need to get involved in wretched Mideast wars (including Yemen) or to publicly appease MBS.

Biden's fist-bump with MBS was beyond the pale. Surely, Biden did not ponder the optics, or was unaware of what he was doing at the time. 

(Separately, absentee ballots have been a mechanism for election fraud going back to at least 2000  and 2004, and were likely used to tip Ohio into the Bush Jr. column in 2004. I do not support the use of absentee ballots. In France voting is by hand, in person, after showing ID and, then counted by hand.)  

 

Addressing your last paragraph Ben - I’m sure we’d all like to see vote in person and hand counted. But as long as Election Day occurs on a Tuesday we can never have a high voter turnout. France votes on Sunday. There is a provision in France for proxy voting if the voter cannot for various reasons show up at the polling place. 

[Paul Brancato]

Robert - it’s a bit on an insult to ones intelligence to be told that this represents a threat of assassination. You’ve suddenly become quite dismissive of other posters here, diagnosing them with cute phrases. How would you describe what you do here? 

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, Robert Wheeler said:

I've seen a few old school lefties come to there senses. When they do, and in particular if they have some level of celebrity, they are probably the most effective at red-pilling the blue masses.

Remember when John Stewart questioned the origin of the Chyna virus a few months ago?

Bill Maher has been short-circuiting the automatons for a few months now on issues ranging from tranny's ruining female sports to the excess vaccine deaths.

Jimmy Dore escaped from the Libtard plantation more than two years ago. 

The two biggest influencers in my sphere got involved because they were Bernie backers and they did not like it when the DNC railroaded his 2016 nomination run.

In fact, one of these guys I know did a lot of volunteer work for Obama in 2012, like driving VIPs around. He was (still is) a semi-retired lawyer who still considers himself a Lefty in the old-hippy sense (he is a musician too) who would have laughed at the idea of ever voting "R" ten years ago.

The list of "old" Leftys or just Leftys ("old" to me implies old enough to have participated in the 1960s movements) is pretty substantial and growing.

Aside from Stewart, Maher and Dore, (the comic contingent) you have Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Naomi Wolf, and Bari Weiss (journalists) off the top of my head. 

In the world of academics and activism, Eric, and to a greater extent, his younger brother Brett Weinstein have become fully Red Pilled. Brett Weinstein is an evolutionary biologist who was a devout lefty of "the academy" until his name was dragged through the mud and career destroyed for daring to bow to insane levels of wokeness at Evergreen College. (I never miss his Darkhorse Podcast; on much of which he talks about non-political issues, like how rattlesnakes evolved rattles, or why humans have a high affinity for hot saunas but a low affinity for freezing water. In fact, I learned just yesterday that the average humans physiological capacity to hold their breath is four times long than their ability to hold their breath, to side track.)

The absolute king of Red Pilled lefties is Robert F. Kennedy Jr..

As the last relevant Kennedy, his absolute destruction of Dr. Fauci has no doubt caused a level of cognitive dissonance among covid cultists their brains have started to bleed. (Alternatively, the vax has caused their brains to bleed, but I'm sure you get the point.) 

I think Jim Dieugenio said here, or on some other forum that RFK Jrs. book about Fauci looked like a worthwhile read. It was like he just discovered RFK Jr. had issues with Fauci with the publication of the book. Meanwhile, RFK Jr. had been criss-crossing the planet for the previous 18-moinths warning about Fauci and the Covid cults duplicity and eventually put it in book form.

I agree with this, in a way. Even Rogan would have identified as a liberal. These guys are doing the best job of waking people up. RFK Jr, Rogan, Weinstein and others are all doing long form discussions via podcasts, none of these news sound bytes, in depth conversations. 
 

RFK Jr’s book was a demolition of Fauci. 
 

I look at the way the above people have been demonised in the news and it reminds me of a Gustave Le Bon quote. 
 

“The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.” 

 

The price some of these truth speakers have paid is enormous. 
 

Maher is getting there, slowly ...

[Kirk Gallaway]

With Wheeler's post, I don't think any of those people mentioned have defected to the Republican Party, though I think I heard that Rogan stated he'd consider voting for De santis. But he's not political anyway, has just come upon 90 million  dollars, and recently had to go through a bit of a riff from the left concerning his covid comments and I thought handled it well. Glenn Greenwald is just generally angry, has his hair on fire, so he's a wild card who could vote for anyone.

For the 50th time  I don't know why the possibility that the virus came from a lab is a red/ blue issue at all, and I know of no people here who defended that it couldn't possibly be.

[Matt Allison]

Whenever I see message boards suddenly saturated with MAGA/Kremlin talking points, it's usually because some really nasty news is about to come down for America's most criminal and traitorous ex-President.

[Kirk Gallaway]

Let's see if we can have a decent conversation.about a possible arch nemesis to the right in 2024.

 

Obviously there's a number of people here from California who are more familiar with Gavin Newsom, I remember we did have a short discussion about the recall campaign against him, and I remember some pretty strong reactions against him from people from other states. Natives or not.There are some pretty smart and thoughtful people here and  I'm curious as to everyone's impression of Gavin Newsom.

 

I tend to think it's going to be a reset. I think neither Biden or Trump will be their parties nominees in 2024. It's obvious Newsom is going after Ron de Santis with the ads he's taken in Florida.

Newsom is a very vulnerable candidate, and Fox can use his hypocrisy over his shunning masks with his friends while employing some of the most stringent anti covid measures in the U.S.in  California, and now his discouraging state employees from visiting Montana because of their backwards LBGTQ policies while going fishing there for a vacation himself. Image wise, he's  going for the liberal  elitist Kennedy card,(though not Ivy League) and of course he looks the part of the great white liberal hope.I do think he's a much more dynamic presence as a candidate than VP Kamala Harris. He definitely has prospects, if he doesn't shoot himself in the foot. In this clip , he's not mincing words. He's deliberately taking on the Red States, and unfavorably contrasting the Red State performance to the Blue State performance.

 

These clips and commentary of Newsom's Florida ad are from Brian Tyler Cohen. There's no doubt that he's a fellow liberal who is enthusiastic about Newsom because he thinks that the Democrats have to fight back and start calling the Republicans on their policies and they're obviously not getting that with a very mainstream politician President who keeps telling us how  he wants to pull us all together, when there's obviously nothing he can do that will please his opposition. I basically like Cohen and I'm with him on that.

 

They start with his  gun lobby legislation, a couple of hunter friends of mine aren't upset with that. Then Newsom talks about how California  has spent 100 million dollars to manufacture insulin. Then telling Floridians that if they love their freedom they should come to California?? What kind of stupid idea is that?  Obviously the heavy Covid lockdown will be used by the Red States as hardly emulating freedom, while the cultural tolerance strength to more homogenous Red States will not be thought of as at all desirable. So the assertion itself is polarizing.

From about 5 minutes on, Newsom lists the superior economic performance of the Blue States, the fact that Blue states have lower murder rates,  that fact that Republican led states have a higher covid death rates, and asking, what is more desirable?

 

 

When I was young in the 60's California passed New York as the most populous state. In discussions with other California natives I grew up with or met there is a general consensus that we were no less than blessed to live all of our lives here.

The irony is that  Newsom is holding up California as if it's still in it's prime. It's on a later stage cycle unlike Texas and Florida. But still they are going to give each adult up to $1050 dollars to offset inflation and the cost of gas. How does any state afford to do that?  The answer is they tax the wealthy Californians. The Bay Area and  Los Angeles are world class destinations. The mega wealthy who have several homes around the world and have homes in the U.S. inevitably have them in SF or LA or NYC, and now there's a great interest in Miami. These people will pay whatever state taxes are asked of them.

 

You can take an attitude that California is doomed for a fall. There have been a number of strong boom and bust cycles over the years but will that stop the world community from living out their California Dream? Ultimately I don't think so. But there's a horrible downside to that.There's not enough affordable housing, people are forced out of the housing market and the rents are going sky high!

 

Here's sort of a side story. I wanted to check out Fox Business one day at the opening bell with Stuart Varney. What a joke! There was no hard business news. It was an hour straight of how people are fleeing in droves the California dream and leaving it to Florida and Texas. 30 years ago the patsy was NYC and New England but I guess they realize that it may look hypocritical now because all Fox News lives there.  Everything is political now and Newsom as well as De Santis are really polarizing figures.

     

Newsom's reign in California is very vulnerable to Fox News and right wing criticism as being a big spender. They can site that people are leaving in droves while it really isn't true. There's not a massive migration. But apart from that is the fact is the state is burning up just like the rest of the U.S. and but with one important difference. The water levels are not getting replenished during the rainy season. So there's a lot to criticize whether it's Newsom's fault or not.

 

But as far as the current problematic trends in California. they really are due to Capitalism. Well off people throughout the world will continue to come here and force the everyday people out. In California there's a lot of real estate bought up by foreigners, including a lot of Chinese  owners, who aren't even there 50 weeks a year. Obviously some of this ease of foreign investment is akin to cutting our own throats.

I have checked out a number of expat sites as the prospect of living overseas for at least a time st this stage of my life, and I'm not at all encouraged of what I'm seeing now. These are hard times everywhere, and if you look to the more well off G7 countries they are experiencing the same problems with rising inflation, in most cases greater than the U.S. with rising rents throughout the world. If you go check out Latin America or Asia there's still massive economic displacement and unrest resulting from the covid pandemic. It's a tough time, period!

 

Anyway, I'm just trying to present some balance. It seems like both De Santis and Newsom are going to be even more polarizing figures. What do you think of Newsom, his candidacy and chances?

 

 

[Douglas Caddy]

 

 

[Douglas Caddy]

[Douglas Caddy]

 

[Ray Mitcham]

19 minutes ago, Douglas Caddy said:

 

I wonder if it will hit home with the people who believe it, Doug. I doubt it though, very much.

[W. Niederhut]

7 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Addressing your last paragraph Ben - I’m sure we’d all like to see vote in person and hand counted. But as long as Election Day occurs on a Tuesday we can never have a high voter turnout. France votes on Sunday. There is a provision in France for proxy voting if the voter cannot for various reasons show up at the polling place. 

Paul,

     We've been using mail-in ballots here in Colorado for several years.  They're terrific.  No taking time off from work, no driving to the polls, parking, standing in line, etc., and no significant voter fraud.

     The only reason red state Republicans oppose them, as far as I can tell, is that they want to suppress voting.

Edited July 17, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[James DiEugenio]

In my opinion, mail in voting works.  I think they have it in Oregon also.

But California is really the best because we have mail in voting, plus a week long window for people to vote. 

Newsom has done a good job on this.

Now, if he would just let Sirhan free.

[Matt Allison]

3 hours ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Whenever I see someone make a low effort comment blaming the Russians for the 1 millionth time

I'm sorry truth is such a triggering mechanism for you, Bert.

[W. Niederhut]

31 minutes ago, Robert Wheeler said:

Yes that's the reason W., because we are racists and transphobic. 

Nothing to do with all those Spanish American War veterans living in Michigan all deciding to mail in their votes for our guy in the Whitehouse now (Joe, not Hunter.)

Rob,

    To my knowledge, the incidence of verified voter fraud with mail-in ballots in the U.S. has been almost nil.

    (I'm not talking about the ubiquitous Republican disinformation on the subject, but the actual incidence.)

The Myth of Voter Fraud | Brennan Center for Justice

[Douglas Caddy]

 

Joe Manchin is 'intentionally sabotaging the president's agenda': Bernie Sanders (msn.com)