Posts Made By: Rod Kaufman

Originally Posted by James Brown

You have indeed reached a new low in sourcing Your comments, Rod.  You don’t actually believe this dude do you?

If you do, what do you want to bet that Cannon is not nominated to the Supreme Court if Trump get an opportunity to nominate someone in the next four years?

Originally Posted by James Lacey

I guess, despite the endorsement, someone else could get the nomination.

I fully support Biden dropping out, and I only wish he had done it sooner.

Originally Posted by James Brown

Here is a personal anecdote I think is interesting.  We are having some work done on our mountain place, and the three carpenters are all local guys in their late twenties or mid thirties.   Married with young kids.  They are not overtly politically dialed in, no bumper stickers or anything like that.  I have not asked if they are R, D, or even if they plan to vote.  This county is very mixed with the ranchers being very R and the raft guide and artist crowd being very D.  One carpenter is a former raft guide, and another is a hippy who lives in a bus, so I'm thinking that at least 2 outa 3 are D.  I am sure these carpenters did not watch the convention.   

But the other day, they were talking about how bad ass the AP photo of a defiant Trump was, with the bloodied ear and fist raised under the flag.  That photo pierced their bubbles, and one said he could not see Trump losing (to Biden of course at the time) after that photo made the rounds.   

This is an anecdote, not sound political analysis, but at least for these guys, Trump earned a lot of goodwill by the assassination attempt, and he did not squander it with his speech, since they, and I imagine a lot of voters, have better things to do with 90 minutes of their lives than watch an acceptance speech.  

I did not watch it but my brother did.  He thought the first 15 minutes were good for Trump, but it did not stop there.  Did Trump really claim he once stopped a war with a phone call?  And we thought Biden was delusional!  J

Originally Posted by James Brown

They do, and sadly, they are - apparently millions of clicks.  


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/15/trump-shooting-shows-conspiracy-theories-not-confined-to-right-wing

Originally Posted by James Brown

Maybe. It also certainly does not compare to the 3+ years of Russian Collusion hoaxing.  A trillion clicks?  That's probably extreme.  10s of billions.

Originally Posted by James Brown

Sorry, been out of town.   Manafort was convicted of tax fraud.   His contact with a Russian associate was insignificant and not cited as collusion by Mueller.   Your focus here is a lot like someone saying that the insignificant voter fraud that occurs every election justifies Trump’s big lie.

Originally Posted by James Brown

Sorry, been out of town.   Manafort was convicted of tax fraud.   His contact with a Russian associate was insignificant and not cited as collusion by Mueller.   Your focus here is a lot like someone saying that the insignificant voter fraud that occurs every election justifies Trump’s big lie.

Originally Posted by David Cotterell

I'm both with you and not with you on this, James.  

Consider Trump's 'you won't have to vote ever again' comments (I started a thread on this but it went nowhere) This is an example of saying the quiet part out loud and demonstrates that there are two phenomena in play:  There is the list of changes the conservative side would like to happen, either soon or down the trail a few years as shown in Agenda 47, project 2025 and even the policies of the PNAC from a couple of decades ago and there is what they are actually going to have to settle for, again, either soon or further down the trail.  

As you have said, there is a robustness to the American political system which will tone down or outright prevent the most radical ideas but, I fear,   the protections built into the Constitution etc. are not perfectly robust and some of the anti-democratic ideas will slip through..  

To be brief, if the Republicans win in November, American democracy will still be mostly ok but it will be less robust than it is now.

Dave