2020 the battle of the septuagenarians - Trump vs Biden, Part 2

Overheal wrote: »

Not to be obtuse, genuine ask: can you walk me through what antisemitic things each has said? I know Omar and/or Tlaib have been pilloried before, with comments about Israel, but I hardly find that to be as antisemitic as many of the things one ordinarily associates with Antisemitism. It's one thing to criticize the policies of Israel, another to lament "the Jew run media" etc.

Booker is a supporter of Louis Farrakhan. As is Tamika Mallory who said in an interview that there shouldn't be a Jewish state. In her defence, she's not very bright and I don't think she realised the implications of what she was saying. She resigned from the Women's March committee over this. Rashida Tlaib said something very similar although not quite as on the nose. Ilhan Omar said on Twitter “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and let them see the evil doings of Israel” and of course her infamous "It's all about the Benjamins" comment obliquely invoking the conspiracy theory that the US only supports Israel because of the Jewish money. Her and Tlaib have hobnobbed with people connected to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation which is a terrorist group which pays the families of suicide bombers who kill Jews. Both congresswomen refused to take a congressional trip to Israel and instead took a trip to Palestine with a group that is openly anti-semitic. Linda Sarsour is the more fringe of all these characters she has spoken alongside people such as Rasmea Yousef Odeh who was convicted of a bombing that killed two people in Israel. Because of this, 100 holocaust survivors signed a letter trying to cancel her from giving the commencement speech at CUNY. She's a delightful character who tweeted to Ayaan Hirsi Ali that she wished she could take her vagina away. Ali is a victim of female genital mutilation.

Of course, all of these people have openly supported BDS, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction movement against Israel. BDS is a movements, the leaders of which reject the two-state solution.

Yes, there's nothing anti-semitic about simply criticising Israeli policy, but once you question it's right to exist, or to exist as a Jewish state, you are treating a Jewish state in a way that no Arab or Christian state would be treated. That's anti-semitic.

Overheal wrote: »

I agree and I have been saying so since 2016 but Trump is Trump, and will be Trump. He never grew into the whole 'be presidential' thing, like he teased he would do after securing the election. And it would have been the easiest thing for him to do, just read the lines, act stoic, and feck off to golf, his approval would have been 10-15 points higher I would think.

Agreed.

Overheal wrote: »

Her handpicked Lt Gov (Henry McMaster) vetoed emergency funds passed by the legislature to replace schoolbusses that were literally catching themselves on fire while being driven around with children in them. He's not been a total disaster, I admit, but he's not not a piece of **** either. He's actually a decent governor when it comes to doing crisis management, except, you know, the crisis of putting schoolkids in the way of imminent danger. And his first pick for acting Lt Gov. (Kevin Bryant) was a disaster, pro-life alt right nutjob that ended up running against him. Now he's back in the private sector running some small local business, I'm frankly just glad I don't have to address another one of his conspiracy theories about planned parenthood or migrant caravans.

I'm happy to take all of this at face value since I don't think it bears any relevance to Nicki Haley's conduct. She was a very good governor and proved herself capable of standing up for her principles. It was her who ordered the taking down of all Confederate flags from public property after a mass shooting by a white supremacist in her state who posed with the flag before the shooting.

Overheal wrote: »

In a way yes I'm playing the ball. It is what Republicans do, and I expect them to take it how they serve it. I do have evidence for what I said though.

Fair play to you for owning up to your whataboutism but nonetheless it is whataboutism and I'd sooner discuss the merits of the issues rather trading sideswipes.

Overheal wrote: »

Shifting the goalpost a bit there aren't we. You can simultaneously elect a minority governor and have problems of racism.

Okay, so if your standard for a country being racist is that it has "problems of racism" then every single country on earth is racist. Every. Single. One. Because you can be sure that every country with more than a million people has racists in it. The question is: Are the racists influential enough that they have permeated societal and legal institutions? In most Western countries I would say the answer is no. By and large Americans do not hold racist opinions. A Gallup poll found that less than 4% of Americans would have objections to living in a neighbourhood with members other races. The percentage was lowest among english speaking countries. It got higher in continental European countries such as France. It was highest in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

America is not a racist country. It elected a black president to two terms, before that it had had black Secretaries of State and a black Supreme Court Justice etc.
The state that started the Civil War, South Carolina elected a black man to the US Senate and an Indian governor.

Overheal wrote: »

That's not a fair characterization, ultimately it was Scott's compunction to run and join the Republican ideology. However, Republicans clearly have hoisted him to undue prominence because of his particulars. If you look at who else joined the Senate Republicans in 2013 it was him, Ted Cruz (also minority particulars) and - Deb Fischer, who nobody talks about. The only person with minority creds iirc that is more senior in the senate republicans is Marco Rubio.

I apologise for the mischaracterisation.
If Tim Scott is a more prominent Senator than he would otherwise be if he were white, then that is a result of the fact that Democrats have attempted to maintain the black vote, not by the merits of policy but by racialising party loyalty. They've established the narrative that the Republican Party is racist through and through while it was the Republicans who freed the slaves and attempted (unsuccessfully) to stop Jim Crow and advance the cause of blacks during Reconstruction. It was Republican President Ulysses Grant who decimated the KKK and the first black US Senator was elected in 1870 from Mississippi during his term. Lyndon Johnson could never have passed the Civil Rights Act without Republican support in Congress. Blacks voted reliably Republican up until this time. Yet, the Democrats lied and claimed that once the South started voting Republican, all the racist Democrats became racist Republicans even though studies have shown that the older racist Democrats never stopped voting Democrat.

They got away with instituting this racial loyalty test among blacks. It's for that reason that whenever someone like Tim Scott bucks the trend that we all take notice. It's a shameful thing that his race is an issue at all. But it's an issue because Democrats made it an issue. Not Republicans.

Overheal wrote: »

It's not racist, it's just a fact that they have catapulted Tim Scott to the forefront of their party brand. And it's no wonder: peruse yourself the long historical list of all Black Americans who have served in our Congress, you'll note surely that one party in particular seems to dominate the enfranchisement of Black Americans:

Yes. Republicans.

Eric Cartman wrote: »

no evidence of, or relevance to that at all.

Plenty of evidence for it. Front row seat at a Trump rally back in January. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/ellievhall/kenosha-suspect-kyle-rittenhouse-trump-rally

Kyle Rittenhouse has been arrested for 1st degree murder.

What is mind-boggling to me is, since police were right there at the scene but the arrest has only been in the last few hours, then how and why was he allowed to just walk away from the scene?

The optics on this are beyond woeful, especially with police apparently being on camera chatting away with the heavily and illegally armed Rittenhouse and telling him they 'appreciated' him being there, especially in the same night the RNC almost inexplicably had the McCloskeys talk at their convention.

Eric Cartman wrote: »

ok evidence, yes, ill give you that. But relevance, in a 2 party system country he was probably backing one of them ?

And again with the excuses


Sickening.

Cody montana wrote: »

Yeah, it's always someone else's fault, never the leader of the actual country.

What is he supposed to do? He shut down travel with China and Europe. He provided state governors with everything they requested. He negotiated contracts with companies to start making PPE. Not a single American died for lack of a ventilator.

It's not Trump's place tell states that they have to lockdown or wear masks by executive fiat. This "national mask mandate" that Biden keeps going on about is blatantly unconstitutional.

Pretty much every state took measures that were appropriate to their situations, when Cuomo wasn't shipping the oldies back into nursing homes with COVID.

Cody montana wrote: »

Job numbers are now one of the worst in history.

As was the case in every country that got hit hard with COVID. This was the cost of the lockdown.

It doesn't help the fact that Democrat states like New York, New Jersey and California never opened up at all despite very low deaths and case numbers. Again that's a state issue. Trump can't force them to open any more than he can force them to shut down.

Cody montana wrote: »

Trump lied, deflected and downplayed the pandemic from the very start and still is.

Dude said a bunch of crap.........and then he did everything he was supposed to do.

Cody montana wrote: »

The voters won't judge governors on the pandemic, they will judge the president.

And if they judge them fairly, they'll re-elect Trump and kick out Democratic governors.

Cody montana wrote: »

No one cares that the deficit is 3 TRILLION?

That's right. They don't care. I'm not saying they shouldn't care but the fact is that they don't.