Who was president on 4 January 2016?

Barack Obama if I remember correctly.

And the reason I'm asking this is because of this article from Salon which was published on that date. The right wing extremists we see in the US Capitol didn't happen over night. It was pretty much well under way long before 2016.

So, yet another thing we can't pin directly on Donald Trump.

And it's also not a phenomenon that is limited to just the United States. Cas Mudde has a really great opinion piece in the Guardian about all this:

How and why did we get here? First and foremost, through a long process of cowardice, failures, and shortsighted opportunism of the mainstream right. Already in 2012, in the wake of the deadly terrorist attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, by a longtime prominent neo-Nazi, I wrote, “the extremist rhetoric that comes from so-called law-abiding patriots should be taken more seriously”. I advised Republican leaders to “be more careful in choosing their company and insinuations”. What happened, however, was the opposite: far-right ideas and people were mainstreamed rather than ostracized.

As in so many other things, Donald Trump has been a major catalyst of this process, but not its initiator. The radicalization of the US right wing predates Trump by decades. It even predates the Tea party, which mostly helped to bring the far right into the heart of the Republican party. Obviously, racism and racist dog-whistling have been key to the party since they launched their infamous Southern Strategy in the 1970s, which brought white Southerners to the Republican party, but this goes far beyond that. The radicalization is not just ideological, it is anti-systemic.

I'm not sure if I would say that Trump was a "major catalyst", but he has definitely played and been associated with this trend. I am also not sure that I would put the blame solely on the right, since no one has called out this movement with any real force on either side. It's too easy to finger point than to address this issue.

On the other hand, it is long past time to have done anything about this issue. But what needs to be done is some serious self-examination by all sides as to WHY the situation is what it is. There are some very real issues raised by all this, but it's easier to play games than to address the flaws in the system.

A major flaw is that US elections are indeed not very democratic from a two party system that shuts out other players, to gerrymandered districts, not directly electing the president, among a long list of problems screaming for reform. These problems are internal and not caused by foreign nationals.

The writing was on the wall long before Trump and may bring someone far worse than Trump unless the problems are addressed.

And the bad news is: You can't blame Donald Trump for what is wrong in the US anymore.

Of course, the people with Trump Derangement Syndrome probably will continue to do so long after he has passed from the scene.

Seriously, I wasn't sure which would be worse: Trump winning the same way he did in 2016 by taking the electoral college, but not the popular vote. Or Joe Biden winning and then having to deal with all his shit.

It looks like option two is the one on the cards. With an addition of Horrible Harris to make the package even more fun to swallow.

The real problem is that the "Democrats" spent the past four years blaming everything and everybody, but the people responsible for making Donald Trump president in the first place.

The "Democrats" themselves.

Toss in that the system is pretty much a mess to begin with.

I walked away in 2016 with the Demexit and will not go back, but the system has to catch up with those of us who know it is broken. The electoral system is in serious need of reform and trying to pass the blame on the other guy won't help the situation.

The Duopoly is like Brexit

I would have thought that the culmination of all the past four years of Brexit negotiations would have been much more exciting than the footnote it appears to be for the past four years. It reminds me of how David Cameron's gamble on an EU referendum was like the "Democratic" party's trying to get Hillary Clinton into office. The big difference between Brexit and the past two US elections was that there was an escape clause of an election for the US.

No second referendum for Britain.

On the other hand, the 2020 US election was like the Brexit negotiations with the Trump presidency being Brexit and Biden being the escape clause. Biden's campaign was like the effects of the Brexit negotiations in that people would make assumptions about what a Biden administration would be. Biden was somehow "better" than the alternative.

The real problem was that neither Brexit nor the US campaigns offered anything of substance for the electorate to make a choice on. The only thing being voted on was the dissatisfaction of the electorate for the status quo.

Things were "wrong", but no one was really addressing them. It was easier to blame "them" whether it's the people in DC or the EU. On the other hand, the real problem isn't them, but "us". There is a drift in both US and UK politics which has led to trying to come up with differences where none really exist.

The US duopoly parties are pretty much the same. Despite certain people trying to make Hillary Clinton seem wildly radical, she was fairly conservative. And she couldn't run on the issues. Thus insane concepts such as "defund the police" can see the light of day instead of more bread and butter issues.

The past year was the best argument for a Sanders Administration with Medicare for All (M4A), Universal basic income (UBI), and general social insurance to make sure people can survive being forced to not work for the public good. No, these are not "free", but will require increased taxation. On the other hand, isn't taxing billionaires a good idea? 

Especially when those billionaires are literally making money off YOU!

The people who are afraid of government, yet are willing to give up their personal information to corporations that are making big bucks off that. There is a reason I like the EU and its data protection rules. Not to mention that the EU has been going after these monopolies for some time. the US just hasn't caught up.

But remember that the US tech companies helped get Biden and Harris where they are now if we are going down that track. 

The bottom line is that despite all this information out there, a lot of it is not really useful. There are a lot of reasons for that, but there seems to be a need for a true marketplace of ideas.

And the education to be able to use them.

Lesser evil voting results in evil, not good.

 

I am amused at the people who call themselves "progressives" being hopeful that Joe Biden will in some way show that he is sympathetic to their cause.

Dream on, progressives, you are the unwanted relative at the "family" gathering. The "Democrats" put up with you because they want your votes. But they prefer money. The more money you can cough up, the more they suck up to you. 

It doesn't matter that Bernie Sanders can run a campaign on small donations because the "Democratic" Party isn't. They prefer the large donors who are the people who propped up the formerly dead campaigns of Creepy Joe and Horrible Harris. 

The "Democrats" preyed on your being suckers that they were in some way "better" than the Evil Orange One. Yet they ran candidates that were just as bad, if not worse. The tame media didn't allow for any scrutiny into the chosen ones, or you would have had a harder time voting for them than you did Clinton-Kane in 2016.

If you didn't Demexit.

The "Democrats" didn't bother hiding their disdain for the progressives this go round.  "Progressives" for whatever reason voted for Biden despite his being a male Hillary Clinton with a public and private position on the issues. And his private position is that he will stay the course which resulted in Trump.

I've moved on from the "Democratic" Party because I know that they do not have the motivation to actually do anything. Actually, neither of the duopoply parties will do much of anything other than make the US a plutocracy that rewards the likes of Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, et al. There is a reason the tech companies supported Biden-Harris, and it's not because they are benevolent.

It's time for a change and one of those changes is to vote for a party that actually represents you.

Biden and Guns

OK, the main reason I didn't expect Biden to "win" the election was that he needed to win a few states which are pro-gun. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense for those people to get on the Biden Bandwagon if Biden is going to tighten gun laws. Not to mention telling a UAW member to basically fuck off because "no one needs an AR-14".

Biden has a long history on the gun issue, which is contradictory to say the least. It went from being pro-gun and being involved with the Firearms Owners Protection Act (FOPA) to now saying he wants to get tight on regulating "AR-14s". Personally, I think Sanders would have been a safer bet to address this issue than Biden: especially since Bernie is from Vermont.

On the other hand, Bernie is a commie. And the Establishment Dems don't like him.

Biden's campaign was:

increasingly worried about the polling in Pennsylvania and fear that his previous, slim lead could be slipping away at the eleventh hour. But this doesn’t sound like a move that would help him much, if at all, on that score. The vast majority of Biden’s support in the Keystone State is going to come from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. But the latter city is currently overrun by mobs and is going up in flames. Philly is one of the places where the demand for guns is off the charts in a Democratic stronghold and people can’t even get applications for permits, to say nothing of laying their hands on a legal firearm. Something tells me that even his base there doesn’t want to hear any gun control claptrap at the moment.

OK, I would like to believe that Creepy Joe and Horrible Harris will turn out to be a disappointment, but he has managed to surprise me by winning an election.

Despite the odds.

On the other hand, there is a lot of red in places like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina which might hold their nose and vote for the next Trump if Creepy Joe and Horrible Harris make good on their promise to ban guns.

And I am truly surprised that combination was able to pull off a win to begin with: especially with gun control on the agenda. 

But gun control is something which is talked about but rarely acted upon: especially by opportunistic politicians.

Not sure how to title this post about the presidential election results

I guess I should have known that the wrong conclusions would be made however the election turned out. I've already pointed out that the right/centre of the "Democratic" party is blaming the left for the poor results. No one is addressing that not having any real policy set out other than "orange man bad" might not be a good way to win votes.

While Fox News and Sky News Australia may try to paint Biden and Harris as extreme lefties: they are anything but. The Green New Deal, Fracking, Medicare for All and all those "lefty" ideas probably won't see the light of day, or will be transformed into something unrecognisable. FAIR's Counterspin pointed out:

After a historic election turnout, driven by mobilizations like Black Lives Matter, that signaled the longed-for end of the Trump presidency, it's sad to see corporate Democrats leap to blame the left, including activists, for denying the party a landslide—and call for immediate, compensatory overtures to the right. Sad, but not surprising, as that's been the practice of elite Democrats and their media abettors for decades.

    When Michael Dukakis chose Sen. Lloyd Bentsen as his running mate, he turned his back not just on Jesse Jackson, but on two decades of Democratic Party thinking. He sent an unmistakable message to the activist constituencies of the Democratic Party that the days of litmus-test liberalism are over.

That's the Washington Post's David Broder in 1988.

You could say everything old is new again, but corporate media's allegiance to an ever-drifting "center" gets more dangerous by the day.

Fair.org's Counterspin

In other words, AOC and Black Lives Matter can pretend all they want that there will be a leftward shift in the party. But the Dems will throw them under the bus as soon as they get their vote in favour of the big donors. "Creepy Joe" Biden and Hillary Clinton weren't chosen as front runners well in advance because they were popular or strong candidates. They were chosen because they brought the big money.

There were a whole lot of other black women out there who would have been a much better choice than Horrible Harris. Horrible Harris was the choice of the big donors in Silicon Valley. Black Lives Matter should have burned the country down the moment they knew Harris's record as a prosecutor if they had any real power. My guess is that Black Lives Matter will be forgotten until 2022, or maybe relegated to the dust bin because of the things that were said and unsaid in the Abigail Spanberger leaked phone call.

It was Groucho, not Karl, if the BLM person was a Marxist organiser. I was pretty certain that the "peaceful protests" were going to result in a Trump win, but the only thing those really generated was a run on "assault rifles" and "ammunition". Still, "Defund the Police" was enough to get some "Democrats" into squeaker situations. But was that actually the reason that people like Spanberger and Madeline Dean found themselves in tight races?

Nevermind, the "Democrats" have a long history of being anti-progressive and no matter of polling data that some of the ideas floated by the "socialists" were popular will change that opinion of the right/centre wing. The left needs to move on since the "Democrats" talk "big tent", but the reality is that one needs to follow the party line. Whatever the fuck that happens to be.

AOC, Black Lives Matter, and the rest of the vindictive branch of the "Democratic" party need to be careful. They go against the people with the power and they find they are the ones to be purged.

If they don't realise that they should exit the party to one more favourable to their ideals.

Voting Green Party, or Third Party, is not a waste

As the "Democrats" fall apart over whether they should pay attention to the Progressive wing, I have to point out that one of the many reasons I voted Green:

It tells the duopoly that we aren't part of their party.

The "Democrats" are currently feuding over whether progressivism is where they should be heading. Not whether the "Orange Man Bad" strategy actually works. The "Democrats" holding their centrist/Republican Lite position was my big fear for this election. How they react to it remains to be seen.

But it seems that turning on the progressive wing is once again the strategy: even though that is not a wining strategy. Not to mention it meant fielding two of the weakest candidates ever. And they will continue doing that because they know that like progressives will come crawling back like whipped dogs.

Lesser evil voting still nets an evil.

Voting your beliefs doesn't.

The squad, and other deluded progressives, may wake up to reality, but I don't have too much hope. 2016 and 2020 were the two elections where lesser evil voting really had no place. There was a choice of Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber if one chose a duopoly candidate.

I'm not happy because either of them was elected president.

Antrim County Controversy

 I have to question election results when they go against what I see in reality.

Pennsylvania is one, but Antrim County, MI also had me wondering. Andtrim County is about as red as a place can get. yet the election results were showing that it had gone for Joe Biden. That had me really wondering.

But what made this seem even stranger is that a little while later, the results from Antrim County went blank on the results map.

Definitely something strange:

Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy, a Republican who ran unopposed and won a third four-year term Tuesday in the strongly GOP county, said results on electronic tapes and a computer card were accurate but it appeared that some of the results were somehow scrambled after the cards were transported in sealed bags from township precincts to county offices and downloaded onto a computer.

In 2016, Trump won Antrim County with about 62% of the vote, compared with about 33% for Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump beat Clinton by about 4,000 votes.

Wednesday morning, Antrim results showed Democrat Joe Biden leading Trump by slightly more than 3,000 votes, with 98% of precincts reporting.

Officials had not checked the results before posting them, but later asked: "How could Democrats take over this county?" Guy said Wednesday.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Source: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/04/michigan-antrim-county-election-results-trump-biden-blue/6162541002/

Joe Biden may beat William Henry Harrison for shortest term EVER!

Maybe figuaratively, if not literally. William Henry Harrison died after a month in office. Biden has many options for a short term, but the main one is that the honeymoon is over now that the election is.

For what it's worth, Alexandra Occasio-Cortez is flexing what little muscle she has in the party. She was super at first, but her importance waned quickly as is the fate of any real progressive. The "Democratic" Party has a long history of destroying true progressives. She can threaten that she will destroy the "Democratic" Party, but it will chew her up and spit her out putting her back as a waitress earning what paltry minimum wage exists.

Hey, AOC, Bernie couldn't do it. What the fuck makes you think you can do it? You should #Demexit as soon as possible and help the Greens grow. Because your home is not in the Democratic Party.

Next, the long held criticism of Biden will come out. The best of which is that the Impeachment may be redone. Except this time it will be about the REAL criminal in that farce: Joe Biden. The info on Hunter Biden has come out, which was something any REAL inquiry would have done.

And then there is Dementia Joe's health. Other than the obvious mental decline, it seems he's not a healthy man. I'm amazed all the excitement hasn't killed him off to begin with.

The "Democrats" playing on people's wishful thinking instead of offering real solutions will show that the "bad orange man" wasn't the source of recent problems. the "Democrats" 2016 strategy of having the Orange meanie be the straw man candidate to counter their failure to offer any real agenda was doomed from the start.

Alas, the squad helped push them along in a continued free fall.

It's PRESIDENT BIDEN! What a 'relief' for the whole world!

 OK, I am going to use First Dog on the Moon's title since it pretty much sums up how I feel about this event. Trump winning would be pretty much in their face that the "Orange man bad" strategy was a failure. Dementia Joe being president with Horrible Harris as a fall back seems like it will be a relief.

Until it finally hits people that this wasn't really a win.

Dementia Joe pretty much made it clear to the big donors that nothing would change. So any hope of progress is pretty much a pipe dream. Getting Kamala Harris as a "black woman" was pretty much like Bulworth in the black church in South Central.

Virtue signalling is the name of the game from the "Democratic" Party which has a long history of fucking over progressives and people. Bulworth is the state of the "Democratic" party. 

Trump winning might have hit home the message the "Democratic" Party needs to learn, but now we have what 2016 would have been had the Electoral College not been in the way. Dementia Joe is going to have to deal with an opposition controlled legislature which is good and bad.

Bad in that nothing will get done that people were hoping to get from a "Democratic" president. But it's "good" for the "Democratic" party in that they can play how awful those republicans happen to be. Not that their candidates happened to get slaughtered and the expected "blue wave" didn't happen.

This neglects that nothing was really promised. And what WAS promised was pretty much nebulous. Let's toss in that neither Dementia Joe or Horrible Harris took any of the scrutiny that they should have. 

It's truly amazing that a public official whose record of 45+ years wasn't really looked into. I mean people used to tell me that Bernie's vote for the PLCAA was a disqualifier.

Biden not only voted for FOPA: he fucking drafted the thing! 

I know full well that Dementia Joe will talk about strict gun laws and an Australian Style gun buyback, but he's the last person on the planet who could pull it off! Especially if he doesn't have a cooperative legislature.

Which takes us to rejoining the Paris Accord on Climate Change.  Sure, he could get the US back in, but the he U.S. also would need to submit a specific pledge to reduce emissions, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution. That's the fun bit: getting the US to change its lifestyle to cut down on Greenhouse Gas emmissions. 

And Covid-19? The Dems really think that can fight it without some form of national healthcare, universal basic income, with a little bit of surveillance tossed in for contact checking?

The "Democratic" party thinks it can knock the "socialist" and "socialists" in their ranks, but what is it going to do to make sure it can actually make good on the nebulous promises it made?

They can't blame the Russians, or anybody else, for their mistakes now. 

Biden Remorse

I seriously have a hard time accepting that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris could win an election, but it seems we live in an age of miracles. 

 

Or is it because any criticism of Biden was not allowed. Glenn Greenwald quit the Intercept due to a blackout on the coverage of Hunter Biden's influence peddling. Likewise, Axios commented that "Joe Biden is the luckiest, least scrutinized frontrunner."

A deeply flawed candidate whose campaign was considered dead, until "Super Thursday" has suddenly become the likely president of the United States.

Even more amazing when you consider that the States that put him past 270 Electoral College votes were pretty much "pro-Second Amendment".  Not to mention how Nevada was hit hard by the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Unless there is the hope that Second Amendment sanctuaries in MOFN will see a rise in population due to Biden's making "AR-14s" and similar weapons NFA items. Seriously, I have a problem accepting that anyone in their right mind in some of these places actually voted for Biden.

And while I believe that there should be an Australian style gun buyback coupled with strong gun laws: the likelihood of that happening anytime soon seems far more impossible than a 78 year old, senile, has been politician miraculously winning an election.

Even if he does it by the skin of his teeth.

I'm not sure if there was election fraud involved, or if enough people hated Donald Trump to vote for someone who is as bad as Trump, but "nicer". Unless you happen to be a UAW member who gets into an argument with Biden about gun control.

I mean, Biden is someone who actually tells you to vote for someone else!

I took that advice and voted Green Party.

I knew what I was getting into. But I think a lot of people had no fucking idea what they were doing.

And they will regret it pretty soon.

Something stinks

There are five states which have to report final results as of now: AZ, GA, NC, NV, and PA. What stinks is that Arizona has been called with 88% of the votes counted. Likewise, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman said that the Second (Allegheny) and Third (Montgomery) largest counties have come up with final results. Luzerne county is supposedly near in their final result. The red counties aren't giving final results yet.

The problem with Pennsylvania is that there are a lot of "Second Amendment" types. In fact, all of these states have a lot of "gun nuts". Why the fuck would those people vote for Biden who has made it clear that he would ban "AR-14s" with hi-cap magazines?

Nevada was supposed to have been announced at noon eastern time. Then it went to one. Yet Nevada supposedly has 24% of its votes yet to be counted.

These states are close in the possible outcomes. But something stinks.

OK, I am still going with a Trump win.

There are only a few states which haven't been called yet and here is a diagram of the State, Votes Left to Count, Current Margin, and Current leader from the Guardian. At this point Trump is the leader in most of these states.

Which takes us to what the current state of the electoral votes would be with the race being 272 to 268 with Biden winning.

Of course,Trump could flip Nevada or Michigan. There are also a few more absentee ballots out there which could help Trump get a close repeat of 2016 by winning AZ, MI, NV, and WI. I think that would be a stretch, but Trump winning MI and NV is a definite possibility.

The Guardian has a mail in ballot tracker which is useful to see how many registered voters there are and how many of those ballots have come back. It's also interesting to see since some of these races may turn out differently from the way they are currently being characterised.

I'm already seeing different results between the BBC and the Guardian coverage as to the margins of victory.

But we know this is going to be a close and contested election.

Joe Biden fracks up his chances to be president

 Joe Biden said I shouldn’t vote for him if I wanted to ban fracking.

The problem with Joe is that he is WORSE than Hillary Clinton for switching positions. Climate Change, Fracking, and the "Green New Deal" are a case in point.

His position switching make him untrustworthy.

Let's add on top of that the allegations of accepting bribes from foreign countries, which he denies. Despite the "laptop from hell" confirming any suspicions about this matter.

Joe's record is out there and it's not good. He's not "progressive" by any standard unless you are Fox News. And the same goes for Harris. They were both candidates whose campaigns tanked.

As Steve Bannon pointed out, Bernie Sanders would have been the nominee if this primary process was on the up and up.

Don't blame the Russians when Biden loses, unless the Russians run the DNC.

Can Trump really win again in 2020?

 Yes, I am still of the opinion that Trump will win again in 2020 and that any other outcome is wishful thinking.

Trump supporters are (1) still fairly solidly behind him, (2) not very vocal in their support, and (3) going to be more inclined toward him that a Biden-Harris ticket. Let's toss in that most voters have pretty much already decided who they will vote for and will not switch.

Biden supporters are the case in point. Trump derangement syndrome has literally set in. How to tell if you have it: would you be vaccinated if Donald Trump announced there was a vaccine for corona virus? 

Remember that any approved vaccine would have to pass FDA regs.

Biden is unscrutinised and even when scrutinised things like #metoo and "Believe all women" goes down the shitcan when it's Tara Reade. And never mind all the videos out there. Same goes for the allegations of bribery from Ukraine and China.

"But Trump..."

On the other hand, can the allegations that Trump "mishandled" the pandemic lockdown play that well with voters who are having to actually deal with the lockdowns? I have the luxury of their being an inconvenience, but this is a hardship for a lot of people.

The proper course of action would indeed be things like medicare for all, universal basic income, job security, and other "socialist" programmes. Toss in contact tracing and a lot of other things which people in the US would balk at.

Despite what Fox and Sky News Australia say, Biden is in no way willing to do the necessary steps to truly handle Covid-19. I would also guess that Harris wouldn't either. It seems to be one of the qualfications for being a Democratic nominee that you have a public and private position. Biden has made it clear that nothing will change if he is elected, but there will be lots of committees and investigations. 

I'm not sure how persuasive Biden and Harris are to the people who will really decide the election: the actual undecided voters. On the other hand, both Biden's and Harris's campaigns were considered dead until the "super Thursday" miracle. Then what was previously left for dead was declared the hope for the US.

The prognoses are still not good, but we can't criticise the chosen ones or we are somehow "helping Trump win".

Wouldn't running a couple of the shittiest candidates imaginable (even shittier than Hillary Clinton) count as "helping Trump win". "Trump bad" only works with the sufferers of Trump Derangement Syndrome and not uncommitted voters.

Or voters who want to hear real policies and agendas instead of what one would expect someone who has been in the US legislature to spew out.

Given the possible outcomes. 

1. Trump wins and the Dems really sit back and do some serious self-examination. Although, deep in my heart I know the Dems will blame everyone and everything except for the fact they chose to run an unpopular candidate.
2. Biden wins and the self-satisfied "Democrats" feel vindicated in shoving shit candidates down the people's throats. The ultimate outcome is that something far worse than Trump becomes president.

A Trump win is the better choice since real reform can only come from having to make compromises and changes to the system. The "lesser evil" system is how we got into this mess. Case in point, the Presidential Debates, which at one time were run by a non-partisan body, the league of women voters, but are now run by the "Commission on Presidential Debates", a partisan body.

 The two party system sure as fuck isn't how we will get out of the current mess in US poltics. And it would have made a lot more sense to work on electoral reform the past four years than chase imaginary Russians.

I voted Third Party and I don't regret it.

Sorry, Rachel Maddow, but getting the Green Party off the ballot by the "Democratic" Party won't stop people from voting Green there. I wrote in Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker. My ballot has been received and will be counted in some way or another.

I am not as enthusiastic about the Green Party presidency as I was in 2016 when Jill Stein ran. My support has been behind Lisa Savage, who is running as an independent in Maine. My hope is that State's use of Ranked Choice Voting will result in a Green Party victory. I won't get into the mechanics of that system, but that is what a truly "Democratic" Party would have supported.

The past four years would have been better spent on looking at what went wrong in 2016 and fixing those problems instead of wasting time on imaginary Russian Interference and ignoring Ukrainian bribery of the Biden family. Election reform makes far more sense, but we can't make US politics unprofitable.

That's the only reason US elections drag on interminably: MONEY.

I don't have Trump derangement syndrome which makes it easy for me to see that Biden and Harris are just as bad, if not much worse, than Trump and Pence (unlike this person who is sadly stuck in the duopoly mindset). I want a party which comes offers what Bernie Sanders did and am under no illusion that Party is not the "Democratic" one.

It ain't called the "Green New Deal" for nothing and you won't get it from any other party than the Greens. Biden made it quite clear in the first debate that he will not cater to the left wing of the Party.

The problem is that Sanders WAS popular. That has been neglected in all the analyses of 2016 and his 2020 run.

Bottom line. There needs to be new players in the US political game. There also needs to be a serious reform of the electoral system: ranked choice voting, get rid of the big money/cut the cost of campaigning, putting the debates back in the hands of the League of Women Voters, etc.

And if they give you ruled paper, write between the line.

Why I believe Biden will lose.

 I am not swayed by polls and am still firm in the belief I stated back in June that Trump will get another four years. Time has added new reasons to the ones I mentioned in that post. The Democrats should have trashed any hope on Biden after the failed attempt to impeach Trump.

I am very familiar with Ukraine and the criminals in that case were the Bidens who saw the cess pit of corruption that is Ukraine as their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  But Biden and the Democrats have put their hopes in the fact that Trump derangement syndrome will blind people to how

BAD Biden happens to be.

Toss in that the press  has pretty much laid off any serious questioning of Biden. He was pretty much given a hand by Chris Wallace during the "debate". Axios pointed out that Biden "is the luckiest, least scrutinized frontrunner" in that the press is basically ignoring his glaringly obvious problems. 

Biden must be grateful to Covid-19 for allowing him to hide from the press so that he doesn't have to walk down the street roped off from the crowd the way Hillary Clinton was. The media's obsession with Trump coupled with his ability  to dominate the news has allowed Biden to purposely and persistently minimize public appearances and tough questions.Biden has yet to be pinned down on a variety of important issues, which is a good thing since he switches positions on issues even more than Hillary did.

As Scott Jennings said in USA today:

Biden changes his stripes more than a chameleon in a Skittles factory. And he’s doing it again by claiming the mantle of unity in this election. Today’s Biden is a made-for-media candidacy untested by interactions with his base.

Fox News is wrong. Biden and Harris are not socialists and do not appeal to the left/progressive wing, unless it's the meaningless virtue signalling version. I'm not sure if Biden appeals to the Republicans who don't like Trump either since Biden presents a nebulous position on pretty much every topic.

Another thing which will effect this election are the silent Trump supporters. I'm not sure if the silence is due to fear, or a lack of media attention to anyone who supports Trump.

Anyway, I already voted and it wasn't for either Trump or Biden. I doubt that Rachel Maddow will bother with trying to get a third party voter on her show, but I gave up on her once she began to push Hillary Clinton and then went on to push that Russia was responsible for Trump's win.

The DNC needs to have a purge if the Russians were responsible for their failures in 2016 and 2020.

Maybe the Dumbocrats will take a serious analysis of what went wrong if I am correct, but I am not hopeful. I know they will continue to blame everyone and everything except themselves.

Have some fun predicting who will win the election here. I think Trump since most of these states are "pro-gun" or effected by the riots.

Today is not "Victory in the Pacific"

That's because Japanese holdouts(残留日本兵), who were soldiers and sailors that continued to fight after the surrender of Japan in August 1945. Japanese holdouts either doubted the veracity of the formal surrender, rejected demobilization for ideological reasons, or were simply not aware because communications had been cut off by Allied advances. 

Using the logic of Juneteenth, the Second World War in the Pacific could have continued well into the 1990s. Although the last confirmed surrender was Private Teruo Nakamura, a Taiwanese-born soldier who was discovered by the Indonesian Air Force on Morotai, and surrendered to a search patrol on December 18, 1974. Nakamura, who couldn't speak Japanese or Chinese. He  was discovered 29 years, 3 months, and 16 days after the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed.

Likewise, it can be shown that slavery still exists, which knocks another premise of Juneteenth: that it was the end of slavery. Any luck it will go back to being the virtue signalling non-entity is was before this year.
 

But, please feel free to have your picnic and parade. Juneteenth is a quaint reminder of the horrors of war.

Some people get cut off from world events.

Mention "nationalism" if you want to start me on a rant.

I am posting this in response to something I just watched called "What It Mean To Be Pro-European?" The person who made it is working under this mistaken belief that European nations are somehow homogeneous.

This Alsatian/German-Belgian/Polish-Ukrainian/British/Balkan/etcetera person calls bullshit.

This animation sucks because is only shows the Northern shore of the Med. European culture has been tied to Asia and Africa since prehistory.

And let's not forget that Europeans have been at each other's throats for millennia, but I can't prove that since that also gets into prehistory. And some groups find themselves living with other groups. And fighting over which alphabet to use, or which religion to follow.

And that's even within Christianity.

Let's not forget that Europe is a stone's throw from Africa in the West (at Gibraltar) and connected to Asia/Middle East in the East. Islam has had an influence on European culture. Especially Spanish culture. After all, Europe is separated from Africa by the Mediterranean.

The Celts, Romans, and Vikings all spread out and went native while we're at it.

Italy and Germany only date to the mid-19th Century. But some European countries are more recent than that. After all, Yugoslavia had a bad break up. They don't call it "Balkanisation" for nothin' (can't forget I have Balkan in me as well).

I call myself "European" since that is the best way to describe myself since my ancestors came from countries which no longer exist, or were swallowed up by other countries. Also, accepting the diversity of cultures, some of which I can't relate to, requires me to take on a blanket term.

And, unless I want to be really provincial in the true sense of the term, I have to describe myself using a blanket term. People from the United States describe themselves in a blanket term as well since they call themselves "Americans" or US citizens, not citizens of the state they are from.

Brexit has shown that "European" isn't a national descriptor, but a blanket term for people living in the European continent: no matter what their ethnicity. Likewise, the same applies to US citizens.

Juneteenth. or social media mind control WTF!

 

I thought I did a post about Juneteenth being relatively unknown until recently. Google Trends analysis of searches on "Juneteenth" only show a massive interest starting from the end of THIS May to around the 23rd of June.  There was minimal interest in this "holiday" prior to that date.

You weren't crazy if you were wondering why you had never heard of it before this year,

And you were among a very small group of people if you DID know about this prior to this year.

While the media tried to make this sound like something which had been around for a long time, the reality is that the Juneteenth this was steamrollered over us. Wired points it out in their Why Juneteenth Went Viral. Wired's piece tends toward this being something contemplative, but I do question the interest in Juneteenth, as opposed to Odunde, as being virtue signalling.

It's no coincidence that the movement to celebrate Juneteenth came during the Black Lives Matter riots (sorry, but more than one city was trashed and these were counterproductive as fuck. So, fuck you, I'll call them as I see them). It's more of the meaningless virtue signalling to try and calm the rioters.

But it was a small group of people who made this a thing as Protocol's How a Group of Creatives made Juneteenth 'spread like wildfire'. Yeah, "creatives" as in advertising types. Not just any advertising types, but ones connected to the social media industry.

I am trying to break from the surveillance economy,. Not only do they keep tabs on you, but they try and influence your opinion.

I cried"bullshit" about Russiagate.

I'm crying "bullshit" about the virtue signalling relating to Black Lives Matter. Nothing significant will come from the past few months. If anything, those events will make matters worse. I know they increased gun sales.

I am already certain that Trump will be reelected. Even if he isn't, the Democratic candidate isn't onside.

So, what was the point of it all?

I prefer substance to Bullshit, but the bullshit is piling up like the trash on the streets of Philadelphia and NYC.