[shyams]

shyams, on 2023-September-11, 20:49, said:

Edit: 5th in descending odds right now: 1: Biden (35%), 2: Trump (28%), 3: Newsom (5.5%), 4: DeSantis (5.3%), 5: M. Obama (5.0%)

Two weeks on, the latest betting market predictions for 2024 President:
1. Trump (34.7%)
2. Biden (29.4%)
3. Newsom (8.7%)
4= Michelle Obama (4.5%)
4= R F Kennedy Jr (4.5%)

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2023-September-25, 14:24, said:

Of course, if he weren't rich and white he never would have gotten into the position where he could have committed these offenses in the first place.

When Trump and his disciples rail against these indictments, they claim both "selective, politically-based prosecution" and "if they can come after me, they can come after you." Can it really be both?

Well, yes, but only laughably so. Rephrase it as "If these people can distort the law so grossly that they can even indict a purely innocent person such as myself then no one is safe from their evil intentions". This description is totally out of touch with what is actually happening but the statement is not self-contradictory.

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is often very useful; A guy with presidential power summons his followers to Washington. makes a strongly provocative speech then sits back and watches tv as the events unfold, his followers surging into the capital shouting Kill Pence, and he does nothing. He then claims prosecution is politically based. Let the pundits argue legal and political theory, the correct conclusion is staring us in the face.

[Gilithin]

barmar, on 2023-September-25, 14:24, said:

Of course, if he weren't rich and white he never would have gotten into the position where he could have committed these offenses in the first place.

When Trump and his disciples rail against these indictments, they claim both "selective, politically-based prosecution" and "if they can come after me, they can come after you." Can it really be both?

You don't think that Obama could have used the office of the Presidency to conduct illegal acts if he had wanted to? You don't think that Tim Scott or Vivek Ramaswamy would try to use the position that way if elected? You need to have power over other people, and while that usually equates to being rich, it is not an automatically correlation and there are some notable historical examples of figures inspiring great masses of people who are neither rich nor white. All of the American examples from this category I can think of had significant troubles with law-enforcement, regardless of whether their actions were illegal or not.

As far as the second point goes, I think Ken already nailed it. The argument: "If the wokes can drum up fake charges and come after a rich, white and powerful man, just imagine how easily they can lock you up" is quite a powerful one to a certain category of American. It is of course patently absurd when you get down into the real logic of it but normal people rarely do that. It sounds right on the surface and fits with their world views - that is more than enough.

[barmar]

Gilithin, on 2023-September-27, 06:20, said:

You don't think that Obama could have used the office of the Presidency to conduct illegal acts if he had wanted to?

Obama winning the presidency is an exception, an outlier. High level American politics is still predominently old white men.

[Gilithin]

barmar, on 2023-September-29, 09:27, said:

Obama winning the presidency is an exception, an outlier. High level American politics is still predominantly old white men.

I guess now is a good time for a short lesson on logic. If you say "X is never TRUE", someone only has to show a single case of X being TRUE to disprove your argument. If you want to restate your argument as "X is FALSE most of the time", that would be a different matter but quite a different position from your original response.

[shyams]

https://twitter.com/...826104759705760

Why is the United States administration making such statements on Twitter?

I understand Russia of today is the "bad guy" but that doesn't mean actions of Russia/USSR from decades ago need to be deliberately recast with a negative slant.

[Gilithin]

shyams, on 2023-September-30, 13:32, said:

Why is the United States administration making such statements on Twitter?

The Jewish voting bloc in the US is quite sizeable and one with which Candidate Trump is quite popular I would imagine that the statement is designed to make the Administration more appealing to this group, as well as to mark the 82nd anniversary of the massacre and passively remind people of the Russian desecration of the monument marking the site earlier in the war.

[pilowsky]

shyams, on 2023-September-30, 13:32, said:

I understand Russia of today is the "bad guy" but that doesn't mean actions of Russia/USSR from decades ago need to be deliberately recast with a negative slant.

If you're suggesting that some earlier Russia or the USSR that filled the gap in the 20th century was not anti-semitic throughout then you are mistaken.
Anti-semitism is rife throughout western and eastern europe peaking with the atrocities of WWII.
It didn't appear out of nowhere and magically disappear in 1945.
Remember that Hitler - and Putin's predecessor - Stalin were allies at the start of WWII.
Hitler and (in a 'negative slant') the USSR signed a pact and both invaded Poland at the start of WWII.

[shyams]

pilowsky, on 2023-September-30, 17:37, said:

If you're suggesting that some earlier Russia or the USSR that filled the gap in the 20th century was not anti-semitic throughout then you are mistaken.
Anti-semitism is rife throughout western and eastern europe peaking with the atrocities of WWII.
It didn't appear out of nowhere and magically disappear in 1945.
Remember that Hitler - and Putin's predecessor - Stalin were allies at the start of WWII.
Hitler and (in a 'negative slant') the USSR signed a pact and both invaded Poland at the start of WWII.

The massacre was done by Nazis, who at that time had already invaded the USSR & were at war with them. For Blinken to somehow paint this as a fault of USSR (the nation most responsible for the destruction of the Nazi empire) sounds utterly fake.

I did not claim that anti-semitism was non-existent in the USSR. Everyone had their hands stained with the blood of innocents Jewish people. However, the historical record also is that Jewish people on the Soviet side of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact mostly survived whereas those on the Nazi side were wiped out by the Holocaust.

In my opinion, the US administration's attempt to somehow link together the Nazi actions and the Soviet actions/inactions is abhorrent.

Finally, at the risk of speculating, this seems to be a deflection strategy following the global backlash against the Canadian administration for the Hunka episode. USA is stepping in to "help" the Trudeau govt. & act like the elder brother & protector.

[Gilithin]

shyams, on 2023-September-30, 20:08, said:

The massacre was done by Nazis, who at that time had already invaded the USSR & were at war with them. For Blinken to somehow paint this as a fault of USSR (the nation most responsible for the destruction of the Nazi empire) sounds utterly fake.

It appears you read a different Twitter post to me. I saw a post saying that "Nazis murdered 34,000 Jews", that the USSR covered up that this was primarily a massacre of Jews and that the events are used to this day for propaganda benefit. Could you perhaps point out the part that says that the Communists actually did the killings and tell us why you think these points are inaccurate?

[shyams]

Gilithin, on 2023-September-30, 21:26, said:

It appears you read a different Twitter post to me. I saw a post saying that "Nazis murdered 34,000 Jews", that the USSR covered up that this was primarily a massacre of Jews and that the events are used to this day for propaganda benefit. Could you perhaps point out the part that says that the Communists actually did the killings and tell us why you think these points are inaccurate?

What propaganda, and what benefit?

Also, if one is reading his tweet literally, he seems to have deliberately omitted the part that the Ukrainians of that era played in the massacre. Or is that also propaganda?

[Gilithin]

shyams, on 2023-September-30, 23:41, said:

What propaganda, and what benefit?

There are many sources on the net documenting the systematic removal of Soviet Jews from the narrative of the massacre. I would invite you to read a few of them to expand your range of sources on the subject before getting back to this thread. The recent propaganda has focused on a narrative that Kyiv is glorifying the perpetrators for their killing of Jews. This is tied to the laughable narrative from the start of the war that the "Special Military Operation" was tied to "de-Nazifying" Ukraine. Again, you can go to a number of sites to find out why this narrative is false. You might for example start with this and work out from there.

[shyams]

Gilithin, on 2023-October-01, 07:56, said:

This is tied to the laughable narrative from the start of the war that the "Special Military Operation" was toed to "de-Nazifying" Ukraine.

The Russian invasion was bound to happen, given the numerous factors in play. "De-Nazifying" was akin to "Iraq WMD" used by the USA a couple of decades ago; maybe he was inspired by Dubya's example.

I wouldn't be surprised (but I have no access to Russian media) if the de-Nazification was a powerful sell to his own citizens when the Special Military Operation began. After all, there were hardly any Americans who thought -- in the months preceding and at least a year into "Operation Enduring Freedom" -- that Dubya was making up stories about the WMDs.

[johnu]

Gilithin, on 2023-September-30, 13:57, said:

The Jewish voting bloc in the US is quite sizeable and one with which Candidate Trump is quite popular

All the polls I've seen about Jewish voters in the US say that Biden is favored by 40-50 percentage points over Trump. Since I expected Jewish voters to support Biden by about 80+%, I guess you can say that Trump is much more popular than expected. The orthodox Jews do apparently slightly favor Trump, maybe because of his unconditional support of Netanyahu and his hardline actions against the Palestinians.

[Winstonm]

johnu, on 2023-October-01, 14:20, said:

All the polls I've seen about Jewish voters in the US say that Biden is favored by 40-50 percentage points over Trump. Since I expected Jewish voters to support Biden by about 80+%, I guess you can say that Trump is much more popular than expected. The orthodox Jews do apparently slightly favor Trump, maybe because of his unconditional support of Netanyahu and his hardline actions against the Palestinians.

You find a subset of submissives everywhere, who want to be told how to please. It is no surprise that personality type is drawn to Trump.

[pilowsky]

It's the famous Death Star defence.
Yes, sure, we know that destroying Alderaan and killing thousands of people is terribly wrong, but if we blow up the Death Star thousands of innocent contractors that haven't finished building it will be killed.

The Guardian said:

In their request to halt the trial, Trump's lawyers had said the dissolution would "unquestionably inflict severe and irreparable harm not only to [Trump and other defendants] but to innocent nonparties and employees who depend on the affected entities for their livelihoods".

[shyams]

pilowsky, on 2023-October-06, 17:28, said:

It's the famous Death Star defence.
Yes, sure, we know that destroying Alderaan and killing thousands of people is terribly wrong, but if we blow up the Death Star thousands of innocent contractors that haven't finished building it will be killed.[/font][/color]

Where's your post about the new mobile phone for which you wanted a billion dollar loan? I thought that one was more scathing.

[pilowsky]

shyams, on 2023-October-06, 21:11, said:

Where's your post about the new mobile phone for which you wanted a billion dollar loan? I thought that one was more scathing.

Well, I just bought the new phone so I don't need the loan, but a case and ear buds to go with it are quite expensive so if you still have the $1,000,000,000 that would be great.

[Winstonm]

If the US makes an insurrectionist speaker of the house, what is next, an El Duce in the White House?
Damn, I wish Canada wasn’t so cold.

[pilowsky]

Winstonm, on 2023-October-17, 07:18, said:

If the US makes an insurrectionist speaker of the house, what is next, an El Duce in the White House?
Damn, I wish Canada wasn't so cold.

If Canada's too cold, you could follow Randy Newman's advice:

Political Science said:

Asia's crowded
And Europe's too old
Africa's far too hot
And Canada's too cold
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
There'll be no one left to blame us
We'll save Australia
Don't want to hurt no kangaroo
We'll build an all American amusement park there
They've got surfing, too