The News Thread

[zabu of nΩd]

Maybe you haven't realized the trillions already spent by a bi-partisan consensus this year over a meme virus. If there's one thing Congress can get together on, it's spending shittons of money, particularly on things that inflate the kinds of assets that the rich and powerful hold. Trump might go native through his seeming-lameduck remainder, but once he's out of the way and perhaps stocks are allowed to crash for one more big consolidation buy-up, it will be QE as usual, just as it was through Obama's entire presidency (in which Republicans held the Senate 6 out of 8 years).

So why are estimated federal outlays for 2020 up less than 8% versus last year? It's obviously been a weak-ass fiscal response for such an enormous crisis. CARES Act direct payments to households basically covered half a month of expenses for the entire year, and there are still 11 million people who've been out of work at least five months because of this. You can bitch about QE if you want, but Fed money doesn't go directly to households -- that's Congress's job. And of all the years for Congress to be blowing money as usual, this is one year in a generation when it actually matters.

Rioting is almost entirely committed by subversives and felons though as a branch of the Democratic anarcho-tyranny enforcement branch, bailing out Boeing and the airlines for the third(?) time this year and saving a few janitorial jobs won't do anything to calm them. Unemployment is still falling pretty quickly in most non-retarded states afaik.

I was really making a side point about rioting, but the obviousness of the correlation to employment is only confirmed by your going on an irrelevant tangent about "Democratic anarcho-tyranny". And again, 11 million people still out of work, unnecessarily suffering because partisans gonna partisan. If you don't give a fuck about them (which you obviously don't) just say it upfront, don't pretend you have some thoughtful justification for minimizing the issue.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I mean, 8% isn't nothing when we're talking about the entire federal budget, and Trump has been gradually ramping up spending year-on-year regardless. The crisis is overblown and while checks and telling people to shelter in place made sense in April, it doesn't make sense today when we know that wuflu is much less deadly than the regular flu. Unemployment is a problem but it's because of 1) retarded governors keeping everything locked down or 2) tourism-dependent states like Hawaii and Nevada. See here:

https://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment/state-unemployment-update.aspx

Most of the people arrested for rioting have long-standing criminal records and/or neon-colored hair. The correlation between violence and economic hardship is pretty fucking weak anyways; just look at the Great Depression which saw a massive decline in crime relative to violent Roaring 20s, or the 2008 recession which had the actually-mostly-peaceful Occupy protests.

The solution to the unemployment problem is pretty simple. Reopen the economy, create some temporary public sector jobs to manufacture wuflu-related goods and keep people solvent, and give free protections/delivery services for retirement-aged people at risk of being harmed by the virus.

 

[arg]

As long as the senate and supreme court block all the dumbass things the dems try to do, especially on increasing taxes and welcoming illegals/refugees, I can live with it

 

[crimsonfloyd]

Trump supporters doin’ the most.

 

[J.]

As long as the senate and supreme court block all the dumbass things the dems try to do, especially on increasing taxes and welcoming illegals/refugees, I can live with it

Right on. Pretty much where i stand. Make jumblin joe a 1 term pres

 

[CiG]

Trump supporters doin’ the most.

I saw footage last night of Trump voters chanting "shame on FOX" lmao.

 

[dwellerINTHEdark]

I'm digging the direction of this election.

 

[CiG]

Centrist Democrats talk leadership changes after negative election results.

Stung by their party’s dispiriting showing at the polls Tuesday, two moderate House Democrats say they and other centrists are privately discussing a plan that was unthinkable just 24 hours earlier: throwing their support behind a challenger to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“Pelosi needed to hammer Trump but instead she chose to let him slide,” said one former senior Democratic aide. “Last night should have been a bloodbath for Republicans.”

With frustrations bubbling up, Pelosi has become an early target for moderates representing suburban districts worried that their leadership's strategy hurt such members heading into the polls.

“It’s time for Democrats to elevate a new generation of leadership in both the House and the Senate,” one of the Democrats told The Hill. “Americans are clearly afraid of ‘socialism,’ want safe streets and neighborhoods and to vote for people who they believe will help put more money in their pockets.

"While Democratic policies can adequately address those issues," the lawmaker added, "our messaging mechanism clearly cannot.”

 

[crimsonfloyd]

I hear Hakeem Jeffries, who is fucking garbage. Absolutely hates progressives and is to the right of Pelosi.

And these centrists are fucking idiots. The reason they lose isn’t because of AOC and Bernie Sanders and blaming them for THEIR loses is just stupid. It’s because they run as Republican Lite and trap them selves in between two poles and end up standing for nothing.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Wasn't aware Pelosi had any platform at all beyond 'fuck Trump' tbh

I'm digging the direction of this election.

Trump shitting all over the election to the point that cable news won't air it is amazing. This is what his four years were supposed to be made of. Even though I think it's likely (or at least very plausible) that Biden has a legitimate majority in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, etc, our election system is broken as fuck and even if it is legitimate on the inside, it offers nothing to console voters. No election for POTUS should ever be decided because "Whoops, we found an extra 40k ballots in a closet somewhere, our bad". If Trump shakes the foundations enough he just might inspire a change analogous to how post-Watergate there was sudden reform in the intel agencies and the beginning of freedom-of-information requests, which alone would make Trump's presidency valuable beyond my own selfish love for his court-filling.

 

[CiG]

"Whoops, we found an extra 40k ballots in a closet somewhere, our bad".

What's the actual truth on this? I'm seeing it repeated a lot by right-wingers.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

What's the actual truth on this? I'm seeing it repeated a lot by right-wingers.

The closet thing was just a euphemism, but finding massive caches of ballots after election day is extremely normal here, not just for 2020. We just have such a low-tech non-standardized system no one really knows how many ballots have been cast until some days in the future. Scroll up and see the Virginia news report that 15k votes were found on a forgotten USB drive, which helped a losing candidate get the edge and win. It gets pushed by right-wingers because the mystery ballots usually appear in Dem counties, specifically frequently in the ghetto where nothing functions properly. The left's equivalent is when they cry racism when black ballots are rejected at three times the rate of white ones, when the discrepancy is easily explained by a literacy/competency gap (e.g. people writing their birth date wrong, or an illegible signature that does not match the signature on record, etc).

 

[CiG]

Georgia's political profile.

Georgia has long been a Republican stronghold. Voters there haven’t swung for a Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992.

Trump beat Hillary Clinton there by 5 percentage points in 2016. And the state’s government is dominated by the GOP (Grand Old Party).

But the party’s grip has loosened. As older, white, Republican-leaning voters die, they are being replaced by a younger and more racially diverse cast of people, many of whom moved to the booming Atlanta area from other states – and brought their politics with them.

Overall, demographic trends show that the state’s electorate is becoming younger and more diverse each year. Like other metro areas, Atlanta’s suburbs have also moved away from Republicans.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton flipped both Cobb and Gwinnett counties, where Biden is currently leading.

In 2018, Democrat Stacey Abrams galvanised Black voters in her bid to become the country’s first African American woman to lead a state, a campaign she narrowly lost.

Many political analysts say it's not a question of if, but rather when Georgia becomes a swing state.

 

[Einherjar86]

Trump shitting all over the election to the point that cable news won't air it is amazing.

I think the word you’re looking for is “pathetic.”

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Steve Bannon banned by Twitter for calling for Fauci beheading

“Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci … no I actually want to go a step farther but the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man,” Bannon said.

“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put their heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats, you either get with the programme or you’re gone.”

But muh violent Democrats.

 

[crimsonfloyd]

Biden takes the lead in Georgia and Philadelphia. This is all but over, unless Trump pulls something crazy with the Supreme Court.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Yeah Trump looks pretty fucked. GA and PA will probably both trigger recounts, so his only hope is that he actually uncovers some fraud (which is extremely unlikely considering his administration's inability to uncover and prosecute fraud in "Obamagate", emailgate, etc). I've also heard some rumblings about many military ballots not being counted but haven't seen much to substantiate that.

Georgia's political profile.

Georgia was only 50% non-Hispanic white in 2010, and is known to have a large illegal immigrant population. In another decade or two it will be irreversibly blue just like California.

I think the word you’re looking for is “pathetic.”

Not mutually exclusive.

 

[CiG]

Steve Bannon banned by Twitter for calling for Fauci beheading
But muh violent Democrats.

You actually believe this dumb Tweet is a counter-argument against all the Democrats that implicitly or explicitly support AntiFa, rioting, #PunchANazi and the random assaults against people for wearing MAGA merch?

This isn't even as bad as punching a chick because she's wearing a "Make BitCoin Great Again" hat.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

At this point I think Bannon is a pure fraud, but wishing to kill your political opponents is one of the greatest ways you can celebrate being an American.

 

[CiG]

Kathy Griffin is Tweeting about Bannon's quote mere hours after she reTweeted her photo holding the decapitated Trump head lmao. Fucking clownworld.