Thursday, November 14, 2024

Links - 13th November 2024 (2 - Donald Trump)

wanye on X - "All this talk about wives hiding from their husband that they voted for a Kamala, but in my own life the only related situation I’m aware of is somebody extremely close to me who is terrified to tell any of their family members that they’re going to vote for Trump"
Left wingers were projecting as always

Meme - "I voted for Trump, my wife sent me divorce papers.
What do I do? I didn't even know it was possible to be served divorce papers this quickly. I don't even know what to say. I'm shocked I married somebody willing to throw away our entire life over politics. Last week we were happy, today we're getting divorced. She won't have a discussion, says nothing will her mind. Insists she i: going to report my parents because they live off disability but my dad does some cash work auto repair, so now I'm worried for my while family. She wants me to buy her out of the house, we have $300k in it plus built a 4-bay garage since we bought it 3 years ago. I can't afford that. When I told her as she was packing her things, she said "I guess you're finally going to really know how it feels to f***ed by a Democrat." ETA: her name is on the deed but not the mortgage. I'm not confident that I can reason with her. What do I do? Where do I start? How do I fix this?Is anybody else experiencing this in the wake of election results?"

Kevin Bass PhD MS on X - "Yale psychiatrist Amanda Calhoun, a medical doctor and mental health expert, advises MSNBC viewers to break off ties with family members who voted for Trump and refuse to see them on the holidays"

The Daily Beast on X - "Liz Cheney is calling on George W. Bush to make his voice heard on the “danger that Donald Trump poses.”"
James Kirkpatrick on X - "For someone who was in college during Bush/Cheney, and who became politically aware watching lefties scream how Republicans then were theocrats, fascists, and Nazis, I can’t tell you how surreal this is, watching Journos and Democrats rally around these people."
Ironic that left wingers keep banging on about teaching history, when they're so ignorant of it themselves

Meme - John M. Cameron: "Here's a reminder of the jury pool all J6ers faced, and all venue changes were denied."
District Of Columbia: "3 Electoral Votes. Harris - 92.59%"

Gunther Eagleman™ on X - "This is sickening. They are forcing J6 political prisoners to undergo “reeducation” that teaches them Trump is a threat to Democracy. This is like Soviet era gulag."
Yuri Bezmenov's Ghost on X - "Remember, for Marxists like Lenin, 'democracy' means forcibly suppressing non-Marxists. Gulags and graves."
"Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people--this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to communism."
This is enlightening in explaining why left wingers keep going on about "threats to democracy", when they are the ones destroying it

False claim on Project 2025, National Hurricane Center | Fact check - "A Sept. 25 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) by the liberal Facebook page The Other 98% warns of what it claims would happen if the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 is implemented. “As Hurricane Helene is upgraded to a Category 4, it might be a good time to remind you Project 2025 intends to close the National Hurricane Center,” reads the post. It was shared more than 25,000 times in two days. Other versions of the claim spread widely on Facebook and X, formerly Twitter.
Our rating: False
The Project 2025 political playbook doesn’t include plans to close the National Hurricane Center, though it does say its work should be reviewed. Project 2025 does recommend modifying and downsizing the agency that the center falls under.
Playbook says center serves 'important public safety' role...
USA TODAY has debunked an array of claims about Project 2025, including false assertions that it proposes a military draft for all public school seniors, that it says the “only valid family” is composed of a working father and stay-at-home mother and that it is a plan from former President Donald Trump."
Of course, The Other 98% was very upset about the facts and claimed that "Poynter... have interns write this stuff, make embarrassing mistakes, play word games, they say half true, when it's 99% true, semantic bullshit aside. This is daily now, I'm just like those checks from Heritage must be nice, cause they are systematically destroying their credibility and legitimacy as honest brokers." When you realise you're spreading lies but double down... Of course, in the comments people are upset about the fact checkers pointing out that they themselves are spreading fake news (like about Project 2025 and the draft)

Trump's big, diverse tent a true haven from wokeness run amok - "Highlights of the convention have included a rousing, pro-worker speech from the president of the Teamsters union, a jaunty primetime address from a top-grossing OnlyFans model and the recitation of a Sikh prayer to close out day one on Monday. A time traveler from the B.T. (Before Trump) times would no doubt have mistaken the affair for the rival Democratic National Convention — at least if it weren’t for the plethora of red hats on display in the crowd. This certainly isn’t your father’s GOP. Above all, the RNC’s multifarious lineup of speakers reflects a broad rejection of the class-driven and colour-coded brand of identity politics long favoured by the Democratic party. Americans from all walks of life are finding haven from the excesses of “woke” culture under Trump’s big red tent. “The left told me to hate Trump,” recalled model and influencer Amber Rose during her primetime speech on Monday. “And even worse, to hate the other side, the people who support him.” Rose, who is biracial, told the audience that she was at first hoodwinked by the “left-wing propaganda” that Trump and his followers were racist. However, after reaching out to Trump voters at the urging of her father (a Trumper himself), she says she soon saw the error of her ways. “I realized Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re black, white, gay or straight. It’s all love,” said Rose to a spirited round of applause. “So I let go of my fear of… getting attacked by the left and I put the red hat on too.”... Not too long ago seen as a party that catered principally to America’s shrinking core of white, middle-class Protestants, the Republican party has, paradoxically, widened its tent substantially under the often politically incorrect Trump. This despite the frequent conniptions from left-wing media outlets over Trump’s history of making culturally insensitive remarks and alleged footsie-playing with white nationalists. The broadening of the Republican party’s appeal beyond its traditional base was, in fact, one of the more underreported developments of Trump’s four years as president. Buried under the headlines of the messy 2020 presidential election were sizeable gains the Trump campaign made with both black and Latino voters. Trump had a notably strong showing among black men, likely a reflection of meaningful steps he took as president to curb mass incarceration. Then-president Trump also made inroads with long-ignored Indian Americans prior to the 2020 election, notably appearing with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a 2019 rally in Houston, Tx. attended by an estimated 50,000 people. These efforts now look to be bearing fruit, with polls showing Indian voters rethinking their longtime support for the Democratic party. Not coincidentally, the representation of Indian Americans within the Republican party has grown tremendously under Trump’s watch, with players like Ramaswamy and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley moving to the party’s upper echelons. (Trump brought Haley to the national stage by naming her his Ambassador to the UN in late 2016.) Indian American political operative Kash Patel has been identified as one of the Trump Republicans’ most influential behind-the-scenes figures. Trump, a self-styled “blue-collar billionaire”, has impressively transcended economic classes as a political figure, earning a level of support amongst union households not seen by any Republican political figure since Ronald Reagan. Labour union members were indispensable in Trump’s breaching of the Democratic party’s electoral firewall in the so-called “Rust Belt” states of the Midwest and Northeast. There is arguably no one who better represents the Republican party’s fast-changing demographics than J.D. Vance"
Left wingers keep claiming they lost their parents to Fox News and NewsMax, but ignore their own radicalisation by the left wing media

Donald Trump, the survivor, will make a great president - "In 2015, Donald Trump was almost the only prominent American who detected the level of discontent in the lower half of American income earners. Donald Trump had been polling comprehensively across the United States for years. He saw the political implications of these figures and concluded that the bipartisan consensus in Washington was failing a steadily larger number of Americans... Americans were largely sympathetic to Trump’s critique of post-Reagan American politics: the federal government was composed entirely of Democrats in an entirely Democratic city where Democrats and Republicans who were almost indistinguishable from Democrats in policy terms politely exchanged incumbency as the country steadily drifted left, but with sweetheart arrangements for Wall Street, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. So comfortable and complacent were the ruling elites, they had no concept of their own vulnerability. In eight consecutive presidential terms, from 1981 to 2013, one member or other of the Bush or Clinton families was president, vice-president or secretary of state. The nation’s highest offices were being handed back and forth between two families that rose to high office because George H.W. Bush was rewarded by Ronald Reagan for losing the race for the Republican nomination in 1980, and because Bush allowed the charlatan Ross Perot to hive off 20 million Republican votes in 1992, elevating the Clintons. As a man who made billions of dollars as a quality builder in one of the most competitive markets in the world, and who has a successful television show that garnered high ratings in a prime time slot in the United States every week for 14 years, and who successfully executed a political strategy of gaining election as president by the endless pursuit of celebrity and notoriety, even by unutterable acts of hucksterism and flimflam, exploiting the American star system and genius for the spectacle, he had objectively achieved more prior to being inaugurated than any previous president of the United States except those who contributed invaluably to the founding of the country and its political institutions, or who victoriously commanded great armies in just wars: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower and possibly Herbert Hoover for his relief work in Europe during and after the First World War. His opponents were so horrified and incredulous at his election in 2016 that they never conceded his right to govern or even to be taken seriously as a party leader. President Barack Obama and then vice-president Joe Biden, as well as Hillary Clinton, surely knew that the Clinton campaign had aimed to corrupt the National and Central Intelligence Agencies and the FBI with intelligence of a pastiche of defamatory lies fabricated by an ex-British intelligence agent. They all likely knew the allegation that the Russian government and the Trump campaign colluded in 2016 was a falsehood and yet they hobbled the Trump administration for years with a spurious investigation. When Trump asked the president of Ukraine if the Bidens had behaved with financial probity in his country, seeking an honest and not a partisan response, he was impeached but ultimately acquitted by the Senate. We now know that the Bidens conducted an international influence peddling operation for years, which, whether it was legal or not, was, to say the least, unseemly. In office, Trump virtually eliminated unemployment, reduced taxes and petroleum imports, almost ended illegal immigration, shaped up NATO, which had degenerated into a freeloading ”alliance of the willing” where the Europeans treated the United States as a great St. Bernard: they held the leash and gave the orders while the U.S. did the work and took the risks. He revived economic growth and there was no more talk of China imminently surpassing the United States as the world’s greatest economy. It was certainly a record that deserved re-election but he was defeated by the rabid hostility of the American national political media, because moneyed Americans donated nearly twice as much money to the Democrats as the Republicans could raise, because the FBI helped muzzle social media outlets after the intelligence establishment claimed the allegations against Biden’s son was Russian disinformation and because the COVID pandemic was invoked as the excuse to dramatically increase mail-in voting and vote-harvesting, the constitutional objections to which went unchallenged by the courts. This is why Trump convened a very large crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, and asked them to demonstrate “peacefully and patriotically.” The Democrats accused him of attempting to incite an insurrection (by unleashing lunatics swaddled in American flags and dressed up like Wagnerian operatic characters to wander aimlessly in the halls of the U.S. Capitol). They assumed that the dreadful meteor had passed, but he returned and his opponents’ next gambit was a scandalous abuse of the prosecution service to hurl a farrago of spurious criminal charges at him. He has withstood all of this, and an assassination attempt, and is now heavily leading all polls and betting odds and has executed one of the greatest political comebacks in U.S. political history. He has established himself as a very formidable historic political phenomenon. The Democrats’ only election argument is that Trump is a menace to democracy, which is tawdry and absurd, and the vintage Saul Alinsky tactic of accusing your enemy of the misconduct of which you are yourself guilty. It is also difficult to invoke after last weekend’s near tragedy, and the subsequent calls for moderation. Biden has run a terrible administration and has broken down personally and is about to be discarded. Trump has his infelicities, but he is a capable executive, has had an excellent convention and is now probably unstoppable. He will be a good president. Canadians should outgrow the nonsense they have gullibly ingested and sharpen their perceptions."
The people who claim that both parties are the same should support Trump, since there're establishment/legacy figures on both sides who hate him and they're willing to destroy democracy to stop him

Globe and Mail fails on Trump - "It would also be useful to remember that the present secretary of state, Antony Blinken, “triggered” a letter from 51 past senior intelligence officers on the eve of the 2020 election that attested that evidence against Joe Biden’s son, which has now been completely authenticated, was “Russian disinformation.” The directors of the National and Central Intelligence agencies, James Clapper and John Brennan, who signed the letter, had previously lied under oath to congressional committees and Clapper publicly announced that Trump was a Russian intelligence asset and Brennan accused him of “treason.” The March 12 Globe editorial accuses Trump of attempted insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. As everyone knows, he faces a number of indictments and impartial legal experts, including political opponents, such as Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley, are almost unanimous in regarding these indictments as politically motivated and legally dubious, and it may safely be assumed that if there was one scintilla of evidence connecting Trump to an attempted insurrection that would have been charged. It has not. Readers might wish to reflect what the reaction would be in this country if the leader of the opposition were indicted on scores of far-fetched charges in the run-up to a general election... Trump was understandably annoyed that the courts declined to hear any of the 19 lawsuits taken against the constitutionality of the changes to voting that permitted millions of unsolicited mail-in ballots... The editors of the Globe and Mail credit President Biden with a successful term and make no effort to explain why President Trump is leading the polls. The answer is that most Americans have higher taxes and lower disposable incomes than they had four years ago when there was effectively no unemployment, minimal inflation, petroleum exports exceeded imports for the first time in nearly 70 years, no serious war in the world and almost no illegal immigration compared to the eight- to 10-million people that have been allowed to enter the country in the last three years, including several thousand rapists and murderers. There is also a steadily increasing number of people who are more alarmed at the threat to constitutional democracy posed by the politicization of the justice system than they are averse to the return of the ex-president."
Left wingers hate Poilievre so probably many of them would support lawfare against him

J.D. Tuccille: Trump's tax candy promises get in the way of real tax relief - "The combined offers of relief had many Americans contemplating how they could structure their compensation to shield themselves from Uncle Sam’s predations. “Can someone get paid in primarily tips and overtime?” joked Cato Institute vice president of economics Scott Lincicome. “Asking for a few million friends.” Lincicome spoke tongue-in-cheek, but he understands that exempting some types of compensation from taxes without considering consequences will affect economic activity. Economists foresee big changes in how people will get paid when they know they’ll get to keep a lot more of one form of pay than another. Writing for the Tax Foundation, Garrett Watson and Erica York predict that “employees would be encouraged to take more overtime work, and hourly or salaried non-exempt jobs may become more attractive if the benefit is not extended to salaried employees.” With regard to exempting tips from taxation, their colleague, Alex Muresianu, similarly believes “the proposal would make more employees and businesses interested in moving from full wages to a tip-based payment approach.” He foresees previously untipped occupations, potentially including highly compensated professions like law and accounting, replacing wages and fees with tips to escape taxation and avoid Uncle Sam. That’s not idle speculation. Government interventions warped worker compensation in strange ways in the past, with effects lingering into the present. Many benefits Americans receive from their employers are direct results of efforts to dodge intrusive restrictions on compensation during World War II. For example, wage and price controls were imposed by the federal government for the duration of the war, but employers still needed to recruit workers. They took advantage of a 1943 ruling by the War Labor Board that contributions to insurance and pension funds were not wages and so not subject to restrictions. “In a war economy with labor shortages, employer contributions for employee health benefits became a means of maneuvering around wage controls,” according to the 1993 book, Employment and Health Benefits: A Connection at Risk, and “by the end of the war, health coverage had tripled.” “If a wage freeze led to workers relying on employers for health and retirement plans, why wouldn’t tax exemptions result in many people getting the bulk of their pay from tips and overtime pay as they shift their compensation to escape income taxes?”... People are entitled to use their money for their own priorities, not those dictated by politicians. But a big, unplanned decline in revenue, especially when D.C. runs massive deficits, and economists working for the Penn Wharton Budget Model warn of a looming default on debt that would “reverberate across the U.S. and world economies,” is likely to panic the political class. Rather than consider comprehensive tax relief, they’ll be inclined to push big tax increases."

Donald Trump offers growth, while Harris pitches economic stagnation - "Low corporate taxes are essential to keeping the U.S. a competitive place to do business for corporations. A more efficient tax system rather than taxing highly mobile corporations, instead should be focused on taxation of less mobile individuals, ideally their consumption over their income (with some progressivity). Harris does not want small tax hikes on individuals, to say the least, with enormous tax hike plans to raise the top marginal income tax rate on all forms of income to 44.6 per cent, while promising to keep taxes on brackets below $400,000 unchanged. This promise may be difficult to believe, since almost all significant enhancements of the welfare state around the world end up in middle class tax increases like in Canada and elsewhere. There simply aren’t enough ultra high income individuals to tax. Another area where Harris significantly errs is on supporting price controls, say on groceries, as well as nationwide rent control. Price controls have a long history of failure ranging from Roman emperor Diocletian to U.S. President Richard Nixon. Price controls create warped incentives that lead to less production, less supply and shortages, to the detriment of the broader population. In the dying days of Biden’s campaign, the Biden campaign proposed national rent control as a last minute ploy to shore up support from the socialist progressive left. Harris has said she will continue with pushing for national rent control. Such a policy of rent control, time and again, has been shown to slow housing supply growth, contribute to housing shortages, and incentivize less maintenance and upkeep on units. Further on housing, Harris is also proposing $25,000 in down-payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, which does not sufficiently address the root causes of why housing is so unaffordable: land use regulations and housing supply. Instead, her proposals could very well boost demand, making housing prices (before subsidies) even higher. Many advanced countries suffering from affordability issues like in Canada or the coastal U.S. need fewer land use regulations to increase housing supply, and a federal government that supports it. Pierre Poilievre in Canada has made this a focus of his campaign. Former President Barack Obama also mentioned land use regulations as a problem in his DNC speech, which is a welcome statement. To move the needle on housing supply, the U.S. has to craft its own policy similar to Pierre Poilievre’s proposal in Canada, to withhold federal and state infrastructure funds if housing supply growth is not being achieved at the municipal level. While there’s lots of populism in both candidates, when it comes to regulation and taxes, it’s clear that Trump has the better pro-growth economic policy plan that can help those below the median income in the long-run."

Michael Taube: In the battle of imperfect presidential candidates, Donald Trump is the best choice - "rump is a far more competent political leader on his worst day than Harris would ever be on her best. Harris, a one-term California Senator of little importance, has long been regarded as a left-wing political lightweight. She ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries and was polling in the single digits before dropping out . She only became the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024 when a weak, ineffective and feeble Joe Biden stepped aside on July 21 and endorsed her. Harris leads Trump by less than 1 per cent on average in the popular vote... Why hasn’t Harris been able to make significant gains against Trump? She’s weak and ineffective, too. Her political and economic views are horrendous. Pro-abortion, pro-affirmative action and pro-gun control. She favours higher corporate taxes, is soft on illegal immigration and crime rates, and believes in more state-centric policies like public health care, sanctuary states and a Green New Deal . Harris is clearly a progressive’s progressive. As for foreign policy, Harris is completely inexperienced and hopelessly inept. How would she be able to handle major wars between Russia and Ukraine or Israel and Hamas? How could she strike fear in the hearts of totalitarian regimes, rogue nations and terrorist organizations that want to obliterate the U.S. and its allies? That’s the problem — she couldn’t. America and the world would therefore be far less safe with Harris as president. This wouldn’t be the case with Trump in the White House. It’s no secret that Trump can be volatile and unpredictable. He often marches to the beat of his own drummer. He will argue with world leaders, the media and even members of his own cabinet. He doesn’t pay strict attention to briefing notes, and believes he knows more than the experts do. He’s expressed levels of admiration for controversial leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. He handled the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol poorly. He faced impeachment not once, but twice. In spite of all this, the former president is better equipped to handle the burden of leadership than his political rival... Trump is more supportive in principle of free markets and private enterprise than Harris. Like most Republicans, he respects the need for tax cuts, economic growth, profitability and a competitive marketplace. He would also suppor t fair trade policies, work with farmers and trade unions, and help middle-class Americans achieve greater economic success and prosperity. Trump would be a stronger advocate for safety and security than Harris. He supports hard-working legal immigrants, and wants to crack down on illegal immigration. He will eliminate the black market for illegal weapons and drugs, appoint more right-leaning judges and make cross-border travel and trade quicker and more efficient. In that same vein, he would also push for more individual rights and freedoms. This includes his strong support for free speech and greater protections for Christian, Jewish and moderate Muslim communities across America. As well, Trump would be a much stronger and more confident political leader on the international stage than Harris. He created a tense environment at times with some world leaders and international organizations. Nevertheless, he’s achieved more than his fair share in foreign affairs. He’s staunchly defended Israel and supported a new Middle East peace plan. He withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, left the Paris Agreement, rolled back relations with Cuba and launched airstrikes against Syria. He pushed back against NATO, the G7 and the United Nations to make them more accountable, and became the first U.S. president to visit North Korea. Not a bad record, all things considered."

American women removed from British Airways flight after fight over MAGA hat: report - "One of the women reportedly demanded the other remove the red Republican hat with Donald Trump's Make America Great Again slogan on it. Punches were thrown in the airport... London's Metropolitan Police removed the women from the plane without an arrest but interviewed them after they both made claims of "affray" against each other"
Clear proof that Trump incites violence and MAGA hats need to be banned
If someone demands a Muslim woman removes her hijab and the Muslim woman is removed, good luck

'Get right with history': Analyst demands George W. Bush apologize for Trump — now
Naturally, left wing extremism has nothing to do with Trump. It's always the right at fault

Puerto Rico Is an “Island of Garbage”: Outrage Grows over Trump’s Racist & Xenophobic NYC Rally
Trash Crisis Leaves Puerto Rico Near ‘the Brink’ (2021) - "Most of Puerto Rico’s landfills fail to meet federal standards and are almost full. Residents and experts worry that trash will soon overwhelm the region."
Left wingers don't understand comedy once again (but of course we cannot overreact to Kathy Griffin's severed Trump head). Why don't they Trust the Experts?
Reality has a known racist and xenophobic bias

Puerto Rico struggles with growing garbage problem (2010)
Hilariously, I saw someone claiming that Puerto Rico only was full of trash because "two major hurricanes wreck your country and the inept president at the time does as little as possible to help"

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