Trump

[merman]

And they'll probably still re-vote the same people again, which is worse than coronavirus

There is very little in the way of fundamental differences between the US's 2 parties. Republicans, Democrats, they're all tied to the Chicago School of economic theory. It's hilarious watching the trumplings calling ardent free-marketeers "leftists".

The Republican Party are largely to blame for Trump's continued rule, and they will eventually pay one way or another for their maniacal need to hold on to power at all costs (even at the cost of their name, they claim to be republicans; Trump wants to be king). But the Democrats are little better, pushing Joe "I knew Obama, you know" Biden to the fore instead of more capable, and younger, candidates. 2020s choice is between a geriatric playing the tinpot dictator's handbook for all he's worth, and a geriatric - well, at least he was an actual politician when he could breathe unaided.

There is no third, or fourth, or any other, alternative. The American system precludes any other parties having any say. Pick your prty of least dislike, hold your nose, and vote Republican or Democrat, Anything else, you literally might as well stay at home. It's not money that does that, although it certainly helps, but the underlying flaws are absolutely built into the system, far more so than even in the UK.

It is money that does that.
Reform and Green Parties cannot compete at the national level because of how much it costs.
Third party candidates get labelled as fringe or lunatic precisely because the two established parties spend so much lobbying against them.

I thought Bernie had a real chance. Biden needs to pick his VP carefully.

[gilesgoat]

And they'll probably still re-vote the same people again, which is worse than coronavirus

There is very little in the way of fundamental differences between the US's 2 parties. Republicans, Democrats, they're all tied to the Chicago School of economic theory. It's hilarious watching the trumplings calling ardent free-marketeers "leftists".

The Republican Party are largely to blame for Trump's continued rule, and they will eventually pay one way or another for their maniacal need to hold on to power at all costs (even at the cost of their name, they claim to be republicans; Trump wants to be king). But the Democrats are little better, pushing Joe "I knew Obama, you know" Biden to the fore instead of more capable, and younger, candidates. 2020s choice is between a geriatric playing the tinpot dictator's handbook for all he's worth, and a geriatric - well, at least he was an actual politician when he could breathe unaided.

There is no third, or fourth, or any other, alternative. The American system precludes any other parties having any say. Pick your prty of least dislike, hold your nose, and vote Republican or Democrat, Anything else, you literally might as well stay at home. It's not money that does that, although it certainly helps, but the underlying flaws are absolutely built into the system, far more so than even in the UK.

It is money that does that.
Reform and Green Parties cannot compete at the national level because of how much it costs.
Third party candidates get labelled as fringe or lunatic precisely because the two established parties spend so much lobbying against them.

I thought Bernie had a real chance. Biden needs to pick his VP carefully.

But that is "precisely the whole point of ANTI-capitalism" make so a situation where "it should be impartial" does not get totally dominated by an "elite" that could ( and probably is ) be pretty small but have LOT of money to spend.

For example ( I know now you are going to laugh ) in Italy there are very precise laws that in THEORY regulate/defines how much parties can get and how and "everything has to be very transparent" and is regulated, this to avoid precisely a situation that "a party can over dominated the scene" because has a fuckload of money - coming from a restricted number of people, NOT the mayority - to spend on things.

On the other side "you may get to the old Italian situation" where "things were maybe so good in that sense" that "everyone was able to make a party" so instead of having 4 .. 5 ... 6 .. 7 parties to choose/vote for .. I think at some point in the past in Italy we had .. 90 .. 100 .. 110 parties or such ..

Yeah THOSE kind of numbers .. where obviously "no one was reaching any absolute mayority" and fragmentation of ideas/people were "massive" .. still today there's quite a bit : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... s_in_Italy

Even if the "mayor" are still only 6, actually probably more 4 .. there are still "the minor bus still present parties" .. look also at "former mayor parties" .. and you get the idea ..

You also get the idea "why things never get done in Italy" .. imagine try to "put together things" with such levels of fragmentation.

However is not even good to have something "that money controlled" and too little choice, I think there should be at least 4 parties or such and I THINK that maybe "giving money to a party" should be very limited/controlled, just to give anyone else the same common ground to start with.

[Dio]

It is money that does that.
Reform and Green Parties cannot compete at the national level because of how much it costs.

FPP is a far bigger problem than money. You could dump the combined wealth of Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Musk into the greens and they'd still be a wasted vote.

[gravy]

You’d need the wealth of a large sovereign state, like Russia!

[F-ZeroOne]

Someone has apparently realised that their re-election prospects are not looking so hot right now:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53494766

[Harlequin]

Wonderful!



(More context here).

The test for those who did not check out KlaxonCow's link:

Spoiler: show

Twitter comments include "Oh my God. I give this test regularly.
1. There are 30 not 35 questions.
2. The delayed recall is designed to be about five minutes. Not 20 minutes.
3. You do not get extra points for recalling the items in order.
ALSO: you are not supposed to give feedback during the test so if they were saying “wow how’d you do that that’s amazing!” After each correct answer they were not accurately administering the test.
and it’s NOT a genius test it’s a DEMENTIA TEST"


(Ton Rump has previously stated there were thirty-five questions while, in the piece above, the recall delay he stated somehow grew from ten minutes to twenty-five).

There are, in fact, no points at all for repeating the words the first two times and the words are not obviously linked, unlike the two groups of things within his vision that the DTs employed above. As for the test becoming harder toward the end (he recently said, "I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions. I’ll bet you couldn’t, they get very hard, the last five questions … I guarantee you that Joe Biden could not answer those questions."), the final six questions are about when and where the test is currently taking place.

Another Twitter comment I feel I must repeat because it seems such an unbelievably believable quote: 'And the doctors were amazed, and, with tears in their eyes--and these are tough men, strong men--they said, "Sir, thank you, thank you for giving us this privilege to see your beautiful brain at work." Nobody's ever done anything like it before.'

[KlaxonCow]

(And this campaign ad is from Republicans. The folks who ought to be on his side.)

[KlaxonCow]

1. There are 30 not 35 questions.

As someone else pointed out, if you look at the top of the form, there's "name", "education", "sex", "date of birth" and "date".

Five "questions".

Trump is counting filling out his name, gender and date of birth at the top of the form as being part of the test.

In fairness, seeing as those last five questions, which he reckoned were so "difficult", were asking you to name what day of the week it is, where you are and what city you're in - and these really are part of the "does this person have brain damage / mental problems?" test - then you can see how this might have confused Trump that the mere "admin" at the top of the form is for filing purposes, not assessing the stability of his genius.

Or, possibly, those administering the test told him that they'd give him extra points for filling out his name correctly, just to shut the petulant man-child up as he bragged to them repeatedly that he knows his own name.

"Yes, Mr.President. Very good. You got those other 'difficult' questions mostly right too, so we'll put ticks right next to them and give you more points. Here's a lollipop for being a good boy and sitting down throughout the test".

Seriously, the "leader of the free world" is bragging that he's not brain damaged and can prove it by writing his own name and identifying what an elephant looks like.

(Although, I reckon we should demand to see his test form. Mainly because the "billionaire" that refuses to show his tax returns is also the "stable genius" who refuses to divulge his educational qualifications too - so I just want to see what the hell he actually wrote for the "education" field. Possibly, I'm thinking, he just wrote "yes". Yes, he did go to a school at some point. For apparently no good reason whatsoever, mind you.)

He's such a bona fide moron that he doesn't even comprehend that he's humiliating himself.

[Harlequin]

1. There are 30 not 35 questions.

As someone else pointed out, if you look at the top of the form, there's "name", "education", "sex", "date of birth" and "date".
Five "questions".
Trump is counting filling out his name, gender and date of birth at the top of the form as being part of the test.

Are all those to be filled out by the patient and not the person administrating the test? The date is part of the final proper test questions.

(Although, I reckon we should demand to see his test form. Mainly because the "billionaire" that refuses to show his tax returns is also the "stable genius" who refuses to divulge his educational qualifications too - so I just want to see what the hell he actually wrote for the "education" field. …)

That seems fair. He did, after all, demand to see his predecessor's birth certificate.

[KlaxonCow]

Are all those to be filled out by the patient and not the person administrating the test? The date is part of the final proper test questions.

Ordinarily, yes. It would be the person administrating the test that would fill out the "admin".

But this was, we hope, a contrived situation, where Trump asked a staffer to get him a test, so he could prove his "stable genius" over Joe Biden.

And said staffer looked for the most "low ball" test they could find - to ensure that even this idiot of a President stood a chance of "acing" it - which was broadly in the right category for taking a pop at Biden's supposed "dementia", not realising that the President would humiliate himself by acting as if a test to detect cognitive problems was a Mensa IQ test.

I say "we hope" because the alternative is that Trump's doctors genuinely thought he might have dementia and actually gave him the test for real, to try to differentiate between actual cognitive problems and being so stupid that it's hard to tell.

And Trump's so monumentally stupid that he's announcing to the world that he's so unbelievably stupid that even some of the best doctors in the world - as no expense is spared for the President of the United States, of course - honestly couldn't tell if they were looking at just "really, really stupid" or actual Alzheimer's / dementia for real, that they wanted to formally run a diagnostic test on him to be sure.

But, yeah, presuming this was a contrived situation, where Trump asked for a test, just to brag - as he's doing - that he's sound of mind in a way he claims Biden isn't, then they just got the PDF off the Internet, like I did, and printed it out for Trump. And it wasn't conducted in the proper formal manner.

I mean, we kind of know - from Trump's boasting - that this test wasn't conducted properly, if those administering it were genuinely saying "wow, Mr.President, you're getting all these answers right" as they went along, to stroke his ego, and further invented "extra points" to satisfy the petulant man-child that he's the greatest genius ever... because they know how to work this chronic narcissist for all he's worth to keep their jobs.

p.s. even those who genuinely have dementia have been known to pass the test. It's just a diagnostic to help detect problems, but is not definitive proof of anything. Even those with genuine senility can still often tell you correctly what city they're in and what day of the week it is - such conditions do have their "lucid moments" (my own grandmother started losing it in her 90s, after suffering a stroke - misidentifying people for those long since dead from her youth, no idea what year it was, etc. - but she could also, on occasion, be perfectly on the ball with no issues at all, as these things, in practice, come and go). It's more a case of "if someone is getting these questions horribly wrong, in great number, then we have a problem that needs further investigation" - getting them right is just "normal", to be expected, and tells you nothing useful.

[(o)(o)]

So... civil war anyone?

Nearly there..

Martial law during an "election" looks like a thing that could happen!

This fucker gets a lot of laughs for his immaturity, daft appearance* and basic uselessness aside from inheriting a fortune. But it's no so funny for sure..

Could start a war!

Launch a nuke.





* This seems to be a trend among brutal dictators.

[Harlequin]

He may be emotionally immature and impatient with cognitive deterioration and comorbid antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders, but I do not accept that he is an idiot. Inciting a civil war might well be useful for holding onto power.

[(o)(o)]

A person who considers inciting a civil war to hold onto power IS an idiot by my definition!

[Harlequin]

A person who considers inciting a civil war to hold onto power IS an idiot by my definition!

Ah. That is a different kind of idiocy. Ton Rump has the smarts of a short con artist; not of someone who considers consequences beyond immediate goals.

[F-ZeroOne]

Lots of caveats and doubt over whether this will actually be effective or just head-line grabbing, but Trump has signed Executive Orders designed to cut prescription drug prices in the US:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53534950