[shyams]

shyams, on 2020-November-12, 12:39, said:

May I point out that Trump will behave unlike any other ex-President?

The tradition is that an ex-Pres will rarely (almost never) comment on the current President's policies or decisions. This will most certainly not apply to Trump; I would expect him to give a running commentary in the form of endless tweets ridiculing every decision or policy of the new administration.

Unless he is found culpable in some criminal misconduct, he would also see himself as the next Grover Cleveland (two discrete terms in office).

I'm afraid this thread is not going anywhere any time soon. There is still 8 more years of life left in it

This was before he was banned by Twitter four years ago.

[barmar]

hrothgar, on 2024-November-05, 07:35, said:

Does anyone actually understand the weird objection to have tampon's in the men's room?

I understand that there's a bunch of ignorant bigots who get their panties in a twist over these sorts of issues, however, if you're talking to normal folks and not idiots, what's the issue?

I can think of plenty of times when a trip to the grocery store has involved my needing to buy tampons for a female friend.

Back when I was in junior high school or high school, a request from one of my friends to grab her a tampon would have probably been a bit awkward, but I think that society has a whole (and particular the younger portions of out society) have evolved significantly.

It's not about boys getting tampons for girls. It's for transgender boys who still menstruate but choose to use the boy's bathroom.

And that's why conservatives have a problem with it -- it acknowledges the needs of transgender students, and is seen as normalizing transgender rights.

These are the people who believe Trump's wild claim that kids are coming home from school with their sex changed.

[barmar]

BTW, I think we now have a definitive answer to the question in the thread title. Not only has it been trumped, but it's been doubled.

[hrothgar]

Interesting chart

https://cdn.bsky.app...h2oi6gfd4a@jpeg

[pilowsky]

So many things went wrong it's going to take decades to repair the damage.
Carville was wrong - it's not the economy, stupid.
Hunter S. Thompson was right - "When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional".

[hrothgar]

Tuesday night was horrific

I am much more worried about what's going to happen when

1. Musk goes crazy with ill founded cost cutting measures
2. Trump tries to enact his tarrifs
3. Trump attempts mass deportations
4. RFK Jr does god knows what to the CDC, NIH, ...
5. Trump attempts to pull the US out of NATO

[Winstonm]

There won't be a tariff on Novichok, though, and it might be a good idea to stear clear of any second-story or higher windows - I foresee an upsurge in defenestraion.

[Winstonm]

There won't be a tariff on Novichok, and progressives will need to avoid second-story or higher windows for 4 years to prevent an upsurge in defenestration.; the flaw in democracy is the bullies win, that the might of the masses creates right.

One thing I see no pundit discussing is that Harris received 14 million votes less than Biden, and the latest Trump count shows he garnered 3 million fewer votes than in 2020. This was a concern of mine, that the voting in 2020 due to the pandemic was easy to do, almost like drive-in voting, and that ease attracted a lot of votes that were not capable or engaged enough to stand in line for hours at the polls.

In a country of 300+ million, 72 million or so have guided us down a rabid hole.

[shyams]

Bill Ackman on Twitter: Posted Nov 5th late night. (https://x.com/BillAc...019674385547454)

---

If the election outcome is as I expected, it should cause the large minority of the country who supported @KamalaHarris and predicted her victory to begin to question their sources of truth.

Half the country has believed that @X is filled with mis- and disinformation, and that they could only therefore rely on The NY Times, MSNBC, CNN and other mainstream media for their news. And they did.

If, however, you have been active on @X for the last year, you have known the truth days, weeks, often months before the facts appear in the MSM. The MSM excerpted, clipped and cut to defame @realDonaldTrump while claiming that @JoeBiden was fit as a fiddle.

Then when Biden’s polls collapsed, @KamalaHarris was anointed the candidate and her hagiography was written with glowing acclaim from the press. But this could not hold as she ducked the media and held fast to the teleprompter. Citizen journalists with their phone cameras in hand captured the real Kamala forcing her to defend her record and her plans in more media appearances.

It did not go well and the public demanded to learn more so @KamalaHarris had to risk more unscripted media. The doom loop was underway with perhaps 60 Minutes as one of the more dramatic examples, even after CBS tried to save her, most glaringly by excerpting one answer to replace a word salad response to another. But the citizen journalists on @X quickly caught and outed this fraud and demanded a transcript.

As many who supported Kamala began to realize that they have been misled, they became open to Trump as an alternative, but they didn’t want to rely on the media to understand him because they did not want to be misled again. They wanted to hear the candidate in his own words and that is where @lexfridman and @joeroganhq long form podcasts came to the rescue. When Kamala was offered the same opportunities to explain herself, she rejected them. And the voting public could only draw a negative inference.

When the story of this election is written, I expect it will be as much about how half of America woke up to the reality that they have been manipulated by the media. This should lead to an abandonment by many of the MSM as their primary source of information. It will push more people to @X, to podcasts and other empirical sources, and it will lead to a more informed public.

The other outcome I hope happens is the implosion of the Democratic Party. The Party lied to the American people about the cognitive health and fitness of the president. It prevented, threatened, litigated and otherwise eliminated the ability of other candidates for the primary to compete, to get on ballots, and to even participate in a debate. The Party and the administration used lawfare in an attempt to imprison, bankrupt or otherwise kill off Trump as a candidate. These acts are collectively grave threats to our democracy. With the highest irony in order to hide these acts, the Party accused the opposition candidate of being the grave threat to democracy.

The Democratic Party proved itself to be fundamentally undemocratic. It needs a complete reboot. The leadership should be thrown out and those responsible should apologize to the American people.

Honest Abe said it best: You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

---


Bill Ackman got one thing wrong IMHO. The mainstream media did not claim Joe Biden was "fit as a fiddle"; they insisted he was "sharp as a tack"

[kenberg]

I am fine with being cautious about what I hear on the media, any media. But I am not ready to switch to X in general or Bill Ackman in specific.

There is much to think about.

[PassedOut]

Regarding the media, for 60 years now I've witnessed this cycle over and over: a series of articles explaining what was going to happen followed by a series of articles explaining why it didn't happen. Long ago I learned to skip both types. This recent election followed the usual pattern, and I followed my normal strategy.

For a time many years ago (during the Vietnam war) I had many interactions with the media. Some reporters gave accurate accounts and quotes, some did not, and some (radio announcers in particular) made stuff up. So I have no built-in trust for the media.

When it comes to reporting what actually did happen, outlets like the NY Times and the Washington Post hire experienced professionals dedicated to reporting facts. When they make mistakes, which they do, they correct them and state what had been wrong.

Fact checkers in the Times and Post compare what candidates say now to what they said or advocated before. For example, Harris was against fracking and now she isn't.

Fact checkers in the Times and Post also compare what candidates claim to what actually happened. For example, Trump claimed in his debate with Harris that five young men in New York (the Central Park Five) had pled guilty to assaulting a jogger: That statement was false. Trump has claimed, and repeated several times, that he actually won the 2020 election: Those statements are false.

The internal effort to correct lies that had been present in sites like Twitter and Facebook has been throttled. So when it comes to facts (all I really care about), any suggestion that social media posts are more trustworthy than the reporting of the Times or the Post about what did happen is just plain wrong.

[shyams]

never mind, im wasting my time

This post has been edited by shyams: 2024-November-08, 08:45

[kenberg]

shyams, on 2024-November-07, 21:42, said:

My great-grandparents lived in a rural part of the country of my birth; all their water supply was manually fetched from a nearby well. By the time my granddad had his own wife & kids, he was in a mid-sized city and had water on tap. It still needed to be boiled to make it suitable for drinking, but that was negligible effort vs. his childhood.

It's been 70+ years since everyone in my family has had access had potable water straight from the tap. Nobody alive today remembers having to fetch it, boil it, or store it for their daily use.

The media channels are on the opposite side of this trend. Maybe 60 years ago, you could "drink straight from the tap". However, there is ample evidence that nowadays you are better off going to numerous wells of information, fetching your own, checking it for impurities etc. One has to put in efforts (pretty much every day!) in order to get good, fresh, reliable quality news.

That's my view. However, it honestly doesn't matter to me what news you consume. Your life, your choice.

FYI: It's not twitter or facebook. There are thousands of independent professionals (a few of them are Pulitzer Prize winners) who serve out news to their subscribers. Yes, it costs money to subscribe to some of them and you'd probably need numerous sources and professionals to get the full picture. However, I am in zero doubt that if anyone tried this, within a short time you'd be 10x better informed than anyone in your peer group.

Caution: If we discuss the old days, I am 85!. In my youth we had tap water but the shower was cold water only. I had plenty of experience with well water and outhouses when we visited my grandmother or when we rented a cabin for our extended fishing trips. I learned to drink coffee when I was ten or so, I was spending a week at my uncle's farm up near Brainerd, in iron mining country. The water had enough iron in it to make it almost undrinkable straight from the tap so coffee was the way to go. Not only did I learn to drink coffeee, I also practiced shooting a deer hunting rifle (tough on the shoulder) and I learned that there is a lot of work for ten year olds on a farm. Mathematics is an easier way to earn a living.

As for info, in 1952 I was 13. One night I came home from my Boy Scout meeting to see the tv on with Joe McCarthy explaining that Adlai Stevenson, the Dem candidate running against Ike, was a commie. Me, I had an "I Go Pogo" button in support of a possum that, in the comics of the day, was running for president but if a thirteen year old could actually vote I would have voted for Stevenson. I believe my parents "Liked Ike" but I don't think this was because they thought Stevenson was a commie. Info is not always correct. Got that.

[Winstonm]

I don't think any bridge players here on the WC need lessons in media trust or are gullible enough to think this wasn't a bad time to have a too old to run again president. My fear at this point is an overraction by the Democratic party, a lurch to the right that is uncalled for. I've always been concerned about turnout, that it was so easy to vote in 2020 due to the pandemic that Joe Biden coaxed 10-12 million more votes than did Harris, while Trump lost about 1/2-1 million.

That sounds about right for Trump but odd for Harris until you factor in that in 2020 you could basically do drive-in voting and this time you had to stand in line for hours. The urgency or expediency or ease of access simply wasn't there.

I don't see a red wave; what I see is the blue tide went out.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2024-November-08, 12:31, said:

I don't think any bridge players here on the WC need lessons in media trust or are gullible enough to think this wasn't a bad time to have a too old to run again president. My fear at this point is an overraction by the Democratic party, a lurch to the right that is uncalled for. I've always been concerned about turnout, that it was so easy to vote in 2020 due to the pandemic that Joe Biden coaxed 10-12 million more votes than did Harris, while Trump lost about 1/2-1 million.

That sounds about right for Trump but odd for Harris until you factor in that in 2020 you could basically do drive-in voting and this time you had to stand in line for hours. The urgency or expediency or ease of access simply wasn't there.

I don't see a red wave; what I see is the blue tide went out.

Yes, the blue tide went out, very much so. It has been happening for a while. Some very serious thought is needed. We will see. If something is incomprehensible, we need to find ways of comprehending.

[Winstonm]

I admit to being slow on the uptake often, but it only now occurs to me that creating a difficult environment to vote works as a proxy for gerrymandering, as when the chaff is winnowed out of the voting crop, only the most rabid are left to cast votes.

To my untrained eye, it looks like Trump lost about 500,000 votes from 2020, about right for disaffected Republicans willing to vote nonetheless, so the rabid produced his numbers; on the opposite side, the urgency simply wasn't or couldn't be taken seriously enough to overcome the threshing machines.

[kenberg]

Here is someting to consider:
The Democrats need to put forth a candidate who can win on his/her own merits.

Obvious? Well. sure. But a frequent argument for Harris, and for that matter for Biden and for H. Clinton, was that Trump is awful. Yes, Trump was, is and will be awful. But that fact should not be the central, or even a prominent, message of the campaign.

Voters are longing for better.

The Dem leadership must look for answers. I am suggesting one to consider. More than one is needed.

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2024-November-07, 07:45, said:

One thing I see no pundit discussing is that Harris received 14 million votes less than Biden, and the latest Trump count shows he garnered 3 million fewer votes than in 2020. This was a concern of mine, that the voting in 2020 due to the pandemic was easy to do, almost like drive-in voting, and that ease attracted a lot of votes that were not capable or engaged enough to stand in line for hours at the polls.

The pandemic may have had another effect. We were in the thick of it at the time, and Trump was clearly not managing it well -- this was when he was downplaying its severity while many people saw relatives getting really sick and dying, and he was advocating things like injecting bleach.

So many people may have voted against Trump because of his mishandling of the pandemic. But now they're concerned about other things.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2024-November-08, 14:16, said:

Here is someting to consider:
The Democrats need to put forth a candidate who can win on his/her own merits.

Obvious? Well. sure. But a frequent argument for Harris, and for that matter for Biden and for H. Clinton, was that Trump is awful. Yes, Trump was, is and will be awful. But that fact should not be the central, or even a prominent, message of the campaign.

Voters are longing for better.

The Dem leadership must look for answers. I am suggesting one to consider. More than one is needed.

With Kash Patel and the other sycophants back in positions of power, we are dependent on the kindness of stangers to keep a republic where voting matters - do you really think it isn't a real possibility that it's over and the USA is now Hungary? The MSM reports this like a normal horse race; it was Hannibal and his elephants come to make war.

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2024-November-08, 15:04, said:

The pandemic may have had another effect. We were in the thick of it at the time, and Trump was clearly not managing it well -- this was when he was downplaying its severity while many people saw relatives getting really sick and dying, and he was advocating things like injecting bleach.

So many people may have voted against Trump because of his mishandling of the pandemic. But now they're concerned about other things.

Trump's vote count was virtually unchanged from 2020; what changed was the 11 million people who voted for Biden but either didn't, wouldn't or couldn't vote this time.