2023 Political Thread

[bjdeming]

Trump will flap his gums enough to make the race close. The Dems likely want to push Biden through the election and then 25th him after the inauguration to put Harris in his seat.

Haley: "It's either gonna be me, or it's gonna be Kamala Harris," Haley warned while campaigning in Orangeburg, S.C. last weekend."

'Warned.'

Maybe that is how to sell herself in this climate, but is her goal POTUS or the Veepery? She won't get the latter if Trump gets the nomination, for sure, and he seems most likely to at this moment

Can she get to the White House? Haley/DeSantis after all (he said he would support whoever won the nomination, right?)?

 

[bjdeming]

Simply because it's not being covered (had to do a name search), Haley won the DC primary yesterday and, according to this radical rag:

Haley also got another potential boost on Friday when she received Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) endorsement ahead of the state’s caucuses on Tuesday. Murkowski, a vocal Trump critic, is the first sitting senator to endorse Haley.

No cheering for imminent victory here, by any means, but the other day Jonah Goldberg wrote what I feel even though I'm an independent and he is a conservative.

 

[Mike S]

I would like to congratulate our stupid primary/caucus system rendering my vote practically meaningless yesterday. I didn't even bother with POTUS as I decided to vote in the Libertarian primary.

In all honesty, it would not have made a difference but I would have at least liked to think Haley, or anyone other than Trump, had a chance when all votes were on the table.

 

[ghost]

Agee totally

 

[ghost]

 

[Evan]

I didn't even realize we had a nationwide Presidential election this year. Here I was thinking it was an election for President of the Whistling Creek retirement home's bingo commission.

On one side you've got a guy who's a demented fool, and, then, on the other side you've got Joe Biden who's barely cogent most days. I'd love an across the board age cap for both POTUS and VPOTUS and SCOTUS. You have to be playing with a half-deck of cards yourself if you think either of these doddering geriatrics should be anywhere near the White House.

 

[bjdeming]

Every now and then, while following the Iceland eruption with Google's help -- stay with me, please -- some local news article on another topic hits me.

Yesterday it was RUV's coverage (autotranslated) of the sentencing in that Michigan shooting case.

They just presented the facts but it also conveyed a sense of the full tragedy, in so many aspects.

And that has led me to realize that both sets of Boomer-era radicals -- leftists who seized control in 1968 and rightists who came to power some ten or twenty years later -- have jumped the shark in 2024.

And I say that as someone who watched the Happy Days segment when it aired and didn't understand -- then -- why it felt so stupid.

There is SO much needing to be done in the middle! People are doing it where it matters, face to face, out of the spotlight, in families and other quietly vital parts of this country , but it takes so long. I wish the media and those who mistakenly think that matters and therefore exploit it, would get the message.

 

[bjdeming]

Either the world's drinking water is laced with LSD or the people running politics in the US have left the shark far behind and are on their way to the Kuiper Belt.

Dave Barry last year summed up among other things the Republican House leadership crises nicely, and that party's presumed presidential candidate is a mess in so many ways plus being in his prime back in the 1980s.

On the other side of the aisle, I have to share this autotranslated story from The Onion The Babylon Bee a foreign country's national media company:

Biden can hardly believe that his cousin was eaten by cannibals​

The leader of Papua New Guinea plays down US President Joe Biden's comments that his uncle was eaten by cannibals in that country during the Second World War. The uncle's plane crashed, but nowhere near land, but in the Pacific Ocean.​

Markús Þ. Thorhallsson
April 22, 2024 at 06:45 GMT

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape.
EPA-EFE/MICK TSIKAS
James Marape, Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, also downplays US President Joe Biden's comments that his uncle had been eaten by cannibals in that country. Marape says he does not believe the president believes his own words, nor do they reflect his feelings towards the country and its people.
The relations between the countries are good, but it can happen that people let one thing or another wander. Biden said last week that his cousin Ambrose Finnegan had been shot down along with the crew of a cargo plane over Papua New Guinea during World War II.

...

Marape says that he met Biden several times, he always spoke nicely about the country and never mentioned a single word about cannibals.

There is historical evidence that cannibalism was once practiced among a few tribes in remote areas of Papua New Guinea. For many years, the countrymen have done everything to shake off outdated rumors that only cruel savages live there.

US Department of Defense documents show that Finnegan's plane was indeed forced to make an emergency landing, but that it happened over seas. The cargo barge crew rescued one, but no trace of the other three has been found.

Prime Minister Marape further urged Biden to thoroughly clean up after the world war, as the country's citizens fear that unexploded bombs will kill them. By doing so, the spirits of the lost soldiers on Finnegan's table can be given a long-awaited rest.

Biden has let things slip before, confusing people and their names...

Please tell me that someone out there is playing a cruel joke on us. I'll be in the den, watching a replay of the De Santis/Haley debate, wondering which competent younger adults the Democrats might have fielded instead of their own incumbent 1980s-prime candidate, and dreaming of what Election 2024 might have been and what I hope 2028 will be.