He did it so he wouldn’t be seen or perceived as “beholden” to Harris if she wins. He’s not being spineless, he’s being unscrupulous. The WP and LA Times support endorse Harris, they just don’t want it hanging on them to say it publically.
It didn’t wake me up personally but shit my friends east of Tehran were less than 5KMs away from some targets. From what it looks like, Missile production sites and anti-air bombers were the targets.
5 Likes
Yesterday and today have been full of elections around the world.
In Georgia the opposition parties are in a political battle against Georgia Dream which has become increasingly authoritarian and aligned towards Russia.Yesterday many cases of political violence and fraud were recorded by observers casting doubt of the legitimacy of Georgia Dream’s victory in the general election.
Today in Bulgaria they will be having their 7th election since 2021. Political chaos is expected to continue as polling shows they are likely to elect a similar parliament that will either not be able to form a government or they’ll form some really unstable coalition that will just get toppled again.
In Lithuania it appears the unspoken law of Lithuanian politics that incumbents never get reelected may continue. Since Lithuania won independence in 1990 no political party has been able to successfully win and form a government 2 times in a row. Currently the incumbent TS-LKD (Center-right) is in a battle in the second and final round of voting against the LSDP (Social Democrats) who held a slight lead after the first round of voting.
Lastly, Japan held snap elections today in which the LDP (Right-wing) which has almost governed Japan uninterrupted since its founding in 1955 has lost it’s majority. Despite this it’s likely they’ll continue governing as they are the largest party and the CDP (Center to center-left) doesn’t have realistic coalition partners to oust the LDP.
Lots of elections. Not even including the U.S. elections and Moldova Presidential runoff election.
6 Likes
Let the dumpster fire begin… 
4 Likes
This is so weird from my German perspective. If some huge paper would endorse voting for some specific party here, they would get a huge backlash.
5 Likes
America is all about team sports. That’s it. It’s an us-vs-them mentality that we’ve had since our inception and isn’t going away anytime soon. Doesn’t matter which side you’re on, you have to win, they have to lose. Anyone not supporting you is supporting the enemy, which I’ve never understood, because your enemy will say the exact same thing, so yes, you can be neutral without supporting either side, and if that helps one side win, that’s fair, the other side could have done so, with no interference from you (Olivia can kiss my ass on that subject). So that’s why people are upset about this, because both sides wanted that endorsement to help bolster their chances of winning.
It’s less that the Washington Post isn’t endorsing Harris than it is Bezos vetoing an endorsement, and specifically this late into the race.
If they announced it a year ago, or just kept silent, people wouldn’t mind as much, but here it makes it look like the Washington Post is equating Harris with Trump. Bezos being a shady billionaire who stands to benefit from Trump’s tax cuts doesn’t help his case here either.
Frankly, we’re desperate. Trump has gotten away with so much, his supporters never stop worshipping him despite all the lies and hate he spreads and crimes he commits. This is not the time for the press to cower.
We are probably re-electing a man who sent a mob of rioters to the Capitol Building to hang the vice president, showed no remorse and promises to pardon them as President. Who knows what he and the GOP do next seeing that this behaviour is not only condoned but actively rewarded?
Let me ask, if the Nazis revived as a legitimate legal political party spreading their old hateful bile, you would want the press condemning them, right?
1 Like
I think his post was less about us vs. them (that’s a given in politics) and more about news outlets making clear endorsements. We have that to some extent in Europe but the big ones are mostly objective with their reporting.
I’m referring more to the team sports mentality in the USA. It’s not limited to politics. It’s in everything.
Trump’s campaign just got Terminated.
I don’t really do endorsements. I’m not shy about sharing my views, but I hate politics and don’t trust most politicians.
I also understand that people want to hear from me because I am not just a celebrity, I am a former Republican Governor.
It is probably not a surprise that I hate politics more than ever, which, if you are a normal person who isn’t addicted to this crap, you probably understand.
I want to tune out.
But I can’t. Because rejecting the results of an election is as un-American as it gets. To someone like me who talks to people all over the world and still knows America is the shining city on a hill, calling America is a trash can for the world is so unpatriotic, it makes me furious.
And I will always be an American before I am a Republican.
That’s why, this week, I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
But a candidate who won’t respect your vote unless it is for him, a candidate who will send his followers to storm the Capitol while he watches with a Diet Coke, a candidate who has shown no ability to work to pass any policy besides a tax cut that helped his donors and other rich people like me but helped no one else else, a candidate who thinks Americans who disagree with him are the bigger enemies than China, Russia, or North Korea - that won’t solve our problems.
It will just be four more years of bullshit with no results that makes us angrier and angrier, more divided, and more hateful.
We need to close the door on this chapter of American history, and I know that former President Trump won’t do that. He will divide, he will insult, he will find new ways to be more un-American than he already has been, and we, the people, will get nothing but more anger.
8 Likes
Wow, look at that. The lowest earning people will get 3x as much under Harris as Trump, while the top earners will get only slightly more than 1% less per year, an amount that they won’t even notice. Yet so many of those top folks are willing to sell their souls to the most evil man to ever enter American politics just to keep that infinitesimal, unnoticeable amount they’d lose, and make it even smaller if they can.
2 Likes
3 Likes
Yeah part of the reason why American news is so uniquely terrible is that the entire framework is built up around the assumptions that:
- It’s about making money first, news second
- People who own things can use them for whatever they want
- 1st Amendment means they can say what they want
So the usual expectations on non-partisan and focusing on public interest just don’t apply to their major channels etc, hence why FOX News has been unable to use the same model anywhere else:
This also makes the rest of the world’s scandal based news confusing and incomprehensible to lots of Americans, since they rely upon implications and not saying the quiet part out loud.
Basically its become traditional in the US for their editors of publications to take on this sort of public elder position where they deliver wisdom from up on high, with the assumption since they’ve actually been paying attention to the news, they’re best equipped to tell you what is going on.
Unlike the rest of the world where they’re basically considered untrustworthy for all the times they slipped up and didnt make sure an article was unbiased, etc
6 Likes
Of course, it’ll probably be better if Biden shut his big fat mouth, but I don’t think it’ll go down as bad as Hillary’s gaffe. Deplorables backfired because Trump supporters were thought to be good innocent people and not sore loser insurrectionist traitors.
Trump bravely defends his supporters by showing he indeed is leading a bunch of garbage.
After some effort…
3 Likes
No, it’s good that he said it. Somebody needed to say it, finally, and he’s got nothing to lose. And it’s not gaining any traction except with those on the right. And that’s important too, because it shows what hypocrites and whiny babies they are. They all loved it when that guy said that about a group of American citizens, and that’s just the one the media focused on; that wasn’t the only thing he said, wasn’t the only group he talked about, and he wasn’t the only one who said stuff like that. Steven Miller, Rudy Giuliani, Tucker Carlson, etc.; they all said things like that, and the republicans loved it, they loved being able to publicly gather in a large group of others like them and say these things out loud while on camera, without hesitation. They loved being able to finally stop hiding who they are.
Then Biden says one of those same things about them, the tamest insult you can throw at somebody, in response to their behavior on Sunday, and yet they start clutching their pearls. After nine fucking years of them openly being the most awful human beings they can be, and the rest of us having to put up with their bullshit, they deserve to have a sitting president be the one to tell them exactly who they are and what he thinks of them for a change. And that’s exactly what people are seeing. The reporting on that rally hasn’t stop, slowed down, or painted it in any kinder way for once, and everyone knows about it, and now people are seeing how those same people are reacting to Biden saying it about them and seeing the utter hypocrisy in them.
This isn’t going to hurt the democrats at all. I wish Biden had used a stronger word. In fact, once the election is over and it doesn’t matter anymore how offensive anyone finds it, I hope he does it again. I hope he just goes full Dark Brandon and in front a crowd and news camera, calls the MAGAs cocksuckers. Let them have their strokes over it.
2 Likes
If, God forbid, Trump wins, sure, Biden can let it fly, but it’ll need to be coherent, sharp and witty, or it’s probably going to be seen as a temper tantrum and/or sundowning. Then again, what would be the point? We already lost.
If, God willing, Harris wins, well, we already saw what happened on January 6th, and that happened despite Biden and Harris being gracious with their victory. And we can already see how Trump supporters are acting right now.
If Trump supporters have the gall to riot at the US Capitol building when Biden is actively calling for unity, what will they do when if Biden actively insults and taunts them, especially after we elected the first female President?
The Capitol and every major government building throughout the 50 states will probably be reinforced, but what about local crime and political violence?
2 Likes
That’s gonna happen either way. Some are gonna take action, the rest, most of them, are just gonna stew and simmer. No difference beyond comeuppance if Biden lets fly to really make them wallow in it.
2 Likes
President Joe Biden’s record is his record, and history can’t overwrite it. During his years in the White House, he signed major pieces of legislation regarding economic stimulus, infrastructure, clean energy, gun safety, the American semiconductor industry, marriage equality and more. They were not foregone conclusions. They have brightened many Americans’ futures. He’ll be remembered admiringly for that.
But his legacy all in all hinges on Nov. 5. If Vice President Kamala Harris beats Donald Trump, Biden is golden — not just forgiven for his long delay and fierce reluctance before giving up on a second term but also lionized for letting go of that dream.
If Trump wins, Biden will face a much different judgment.
All of us who recognize the danger and depravity of Trump are on tenterhooks, and all of us will suffer, as a country, if he returns to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But Biden’s stake in this election is singular, and that’s not even factoring in Trump’s sinister and chillingly undemocratic pledge to sic federal investigators and prosecutors on Biden and his family.
The historical anomaly of how Harris emerged as the Democratic presidential nominee and the unusually hurried, compressed nature of her campaign are the direct result of Biden’s initial insistence, despite voters’ clear concerns about his age and vigor, on running for re-election, and of his persistence for more than three weeks after his disastrous performance in a debate with Trump in June.
By the time he dropped out of the race on July 21, three days after the end of the Republican National Convention and less than a month before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention, there was no real opportunity for any mini-primary to determine his replacement. No way to see how various candidates might stack up against one another in a competition for the nomination. Perhaps Harris would have prevailed. Perhaps not.
And the postmortems after a Trump victory would not focus primarily on any ill-considered, easily weaponized remarks, such as a comment Biden made on Tuesday that seemed to refer to Trump’s supporters as “garbage.” They’d emphasize and dwell on the unanswered questions surrounding the primary that never happened.
They’d be postmortems like no others, because Trump is such a dire threat. That was the proposition of Biden’s 2020 campaign — he came out of quasi-retirement in his late 70s because, he told us, stopping Trump demanded it. And barring Trump from the White House is similarly central to Harris’s closing argument. She spoke on Tuesday night from the spot in Washington where Trump infamously riled up the hellions who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a reminder: Trump is an enemy of democracy and an agent of chaos.
Which is truer than true, and which is why a transition from Biden to Trump would prompt a magnitude of despair and an intensity of soul searching unfamiliar from party changeovers past.
There’d be recognizable elements of that reaction, such as a hindsight-is-20-20 analysis of the losing candidate’s strategic decisions and strengths and weaknesses. What if Harris had chosen a different running mate? What if she’d more quickly, squarely and eloquently articulated the changes in her positions? What if she’d done more probing media interviews sooner, to beat back any suggestion of excessive caution?
The list would be endless, and I hope it would at some point yield to the acknowledgment that Harris burst into her sudden candidacy with a remarkable assurance and poise that greatly exceeded her detractors’ expectations. That she summoned enormous energy and demonstrated formidable drive. That she delivered an excellent convention speech. That she demolished Trump during their one debate.
But she was denied the experience — the seasoning — of a full primary process. What if she’d benefited from that? Or what if that process had produced a Democratic candidate who could have more easily established separation from the incumbent?
What if that incumbent hadn’t held on so tightly for so long? That’s the question that so many other questions would come back to, in a manner that would tie the verdict on Biden’s presidency to the name of his successor with an ironclad tightness. That’s no doubt part of why Biden has reportedly itched to get out on the campaign trail on behalf of Harris — he understands not only how much the country has riding on this election but also how much he individually does.
And that’s the millionth reason I’m fervently hoping and desperately praying that Harris prevails. I believe Biden to be a good man who has done much good for us. That can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom.