2020 Presidential Election 5: Talk About An October Surprise

[SassyPants]

And even if Joe is old and sleepy, at least he’ll be surrounded by a viable, experienced team. On the idea that Trump’s road tour and pace might adversely affect his health and lifespan, maybe that’s his way of getting out of facing the consequences for his past actions. It might be better, at least in his eyes, than prison.

[fraurosena]

44 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

 maybe that’s his way of getting out of facing the consequences for his past actions. It might be better, at least in his eyes, than prison.

Although avoiding prison is certainly one of his driving motivators, I don't think he would ever contemplate hastening his own demise. Going on this non-stop adulation tour is meant to assuage his fragile little ego. 

[Dandruff]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The Mango Moron is so stupid. How stupid is he? He's so stupid he thinks these messages are intelligent:

He should know about going to hell.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is the type of message a real president tweets:

[Workingmom]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm still not a Bernie fan, but I'm glad he's speaking out to his followers:

 

[Cartmann99]

White evangelicals hope to keep changing Texas red for Trump

Quote

PLANO, Texas (AP) — As parishioners at the evangelical church in the Dallas suburbs gathered for Sunday services, they walked past two tables of voter guides and sample ballots in the lobby, with signs reading: “Your vote. Your voice. Your values.”

The message from the pulpit at the 9:30 a.m. service was equally explicit.

"“The future of America is at stake,” said Rev. Jack N. Graham, who had recently returned from Washington, where he attended a White House ceremony introducing Judge Amy Coney Barrett as President Donald Trump's latest Supreme Court nominee. “We are staring down the lies of the enemy.”

Three weeks from Election Day, the largely white congregation at Prestonwood Baptist Church, as well as other white evangelical churches across Texas, are fighting a defensive battle to keep their increasingly diverse state from flipping to support for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. They've stood with Trump throughout his tumultuous tenure, including his uneven handling of the coronavirus pandemic this year, and view the late-in-the-campaign Supreme Court opening as a timely reminder of why.

“These confirmation hearings could not have come at a more opportune time for the Trump campaign,” said the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a leader of another of the Dallas area’s large, politically influential evangelical megachurches. “It’s a wake-up call and reminder especially for evangelicals about why they voted for Trump in the first place.”

White evangelicals hold significant sway in Texas, comprising 24% of the state's voters in 2018, according to an AP VoteCast survey. These voters overwhelmingly backed Republican candidates in congressional races, 87% to 12%.

But Texas is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse as the economy draws more people from out of state who are better educated overall, more urban and suburban, and more Democratic. In a state that hasn't backed a Democrat for president since 1976, polls show a close contest between Biden and Trump. Biden's wife, Jill Biden, will travel to the state Tuesday to encourage early voting.

Collin County, home to much of the Prestonwood Baptist Church's congregation, north of Dallas, is among those that will be closely watched on Election Day for signs of whether the state is tipping. The last Democrat to carry the county in a presidential race was Texas native Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and all five members of its governing board are still Republicans.

Not long ago in Collin County, “you’d go and vote and there was barely even Democrats on the ballot to vote for,” said Lorenzo Sanchez, a 35-year-old former real estate person making his first run for a Texas House seat. Democrats used to enter candidates for as few as two of the county’s roughly 30 races, knowing they’d lose, county Democratic Party chair Mike Rawlins said.

But over the past decade, the affluent county has grown by a quarter-million people, with newcomers — many of them Democratic, and of Black, Hispanic and Asian heritage — drawn by good jobs as Toyota, Raytheon and other corporations settle in the area.

The impact on the county's politics has been striking. Democrat Beto O’Rourke won a surprising 46% of the county’s vote against Ted Cruz for the U.S. Senate in 2018. More Democrats are entering races for local and state offices from the county, helping to draw out Democratic voters.

Now old and new political camps “are fighting it out to see which way” it goes in Collin County, Sanchez said.

He spoke in the parking lot of a pizza place in McKinney, Texas, the county seat. Around him, Democratic Party voters were decorating their vehicles with posters and painted get-out-the-vote messages for Biden and local Democratic candidates.

The Democrats drew drivers of dozens of vehicles for the car rally, heading out in what was long hostile territory of Collin County. It still can be hostile — the first few cars out of the parking lot attracted a passing dark SUV that veered dangerously close. The SUV driver rolled down the window to flip off the Democrats, inches away.

Jeffress, the leader of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, also sees the changes underway in his state.

“The fact is … I believe Texas is going to turn blue,’’ he said. “But it’s probably not going to by November.”

To keep Democrats at bay in Texas for at least one more election, Republicans are urgently turning to the white evangelicals who have been a bulwark of the party's support.

Despite the United States’ troubles with the pandemic and economic crash, white evangelicals remain among the president’s most loyal supporters. The Trump administration has responded, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who spoke to the congregation at Prestonwood Baptist Church last month — a far higher-ranked political speaker than Baptist churches in the Southwest usually draw.

Graham was invited to attend Trump’s Rose Garden ceremony celebrating Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court. Texas evangelicals expect Barrett, whose confirmation hearings are underway in the U.S. Senate this week, to uphold more limits to abortion.

The Rose Garden event is suspected as a possible superspreader for the virus, after Trump, first lady Melania Trump, several Trump aides and several others attending fell ill.

Dallas news media reported Graham declined to isolate himself after his possible exposure. On Sunday, he stood, appearing hale and fit, through two back-to-back services.

The church parking lot was crowded. Masking was a mixed bag in the congregation, and most of those who wore masks into the church took them off as they settled into the pews.

“Christians have fought the battle of abortion for six decades,” Graham noted Sunday, one of his more explicit political nods at the altar. Backing the service were live onstage brass and string sections and a drummer, floodlights and giant screens that made Graham hover over the stage larger than life.

“And we’re winning,” he said. “We’re winning.”

Worshipper Christine Bush has noted the appeals from Graham and others. She skipped voting in 2016, but says she will cast a ballot this time, motivated partly by what she sees as the country’s growing political divides.

“There’s a lot more at stake right now,” she said, hitting on one of Trump’s campaign warnings. “This country is going to socialism if the Christians don’t get out” to vote.

The pictures and videos of Texans waiting in long lines to vote is not just a big city thing. My local newspaper sent a photographer to the hardware store where my husband and I usually vote, and I've never seen a line like that before.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

White evangelicals hold significant sway in Texas, comprising 24% of the state's voters in 2018, according to an AP VoteCast survey.

So, three quarters of the population is not evangelical...

Why does Texas allow them so much power??

[mamallama]

The other 76% or some large chunk are still conservative just not evangelical.  The gun fans make up a big part

[GreyhoundFan]

Chuck must be going senile if he thinks the mango moron will take any advice:

[GreyhoundFan]

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

So, three quarters of the population is not evangelical...

Why does Texas allow them so much power??

It doesn't matter if you've got more people on your side if your people don't consistently show up at the polls like the Evangelicals do.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

It doesn't matter if you've got more people on your side if your people don't consistently show up at the polls like the Evangelicals do.

Yeah, I get that. What I don’t understand is why the majority doesn’t and thereby allows this minority with such extreme views rule over them.

Of course I know gerrymandering and voter suppression has a lot to do with it, but still... 

[Dandruff]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

What I don’t understand is why the majority doesn’t and thereby allows this minority with such extreme views rule over them.

I think, at least in part, it's because Evangelicals are a cohesive group and feel they're voting as a contribution to their group's interest.  Individuals who don't strongly identify with a voting bloc, or who belong to a less cohesive bloc, will (IMO) lack the same sense of responsibility to that common cause and will, therefore, be less likely to vote and/or be more likely to be swayed by superficial influences.

[Smee]

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Yeah, I get that. What I don’t understand is why the majority doesn’t and thereby allows this minority with such extreme views rule over them.

Of course I know gerrymandering and voter suppression has a lot to do with it, but still... 

Reports today of the insane wait times just for early voting (I can’t imagine what they’ll be like on the day!) probably also has something to do with it. American elections aren’t set up for everyone to vote. Where I live elections are on Saturdays, and if you’re working that day (casual employees included) your boss is legally required to give you a paid break to go vote. I can also go to any polling place in the entire country to vote and get a ballot for my electorate, whereas I hear in the US you’re limited to a handful of places - Mr Smee is currently reading an article about the US election that mentions wait times in black neighbourhoods are on average 29% longer. For the world’s first democracy, it’s very sad to see how the system hasn’t evolved to make it easy and practical for more people to vote. White evangelical land-owning men have always been allowed to vote, the system is set up for their benefit, so it’s not really surprising that their turnout is also able to be much higher. 
 

Plus the sense of “my vote won’t count” if your district consistently goes the same way must make it harder to motivate yourself to get out and suffer the wait times and ID laws and registration and whatnot. 

[Cartmann99]

Full picture under the spoiler:

Spoiler

 

[mamallama]

Funny how even in their mocking version he looks so much healthier and more on the ball than dumpy ever does.

[SassyPants]

2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Full picture under the spoiler:

  Hide contents

 

This is fake, right? It’s not an actual tweet, is it?

[Alisamer]

6 hours ago, Smee said:

American elections aren’t set up for everyone to vote. Where I live elections are on Saturdays, and if you’re working that day (casual employees included) your boss is legally required to give you a paid break to go vote. I can also go to any polling place in the entire country to vote and get a ballot for my electorate, whereas I hear in the US you’re limited to a handful of places

This! Luckily North Carolina is actually pretty decent with early voting - I don't have to have a qualifying reason to vote early, and I don't have to go to one specific place, I can go anywhere in my county. On actual voting day, there's one specific place I have to go. Election day is a Tuesday, it's not a holiday, and there is no paid time off to vote unless you work for an especially progressive company. 

I think my sisters and I are going to vote Saturday, probably showing up before they open because I imagine lines will be ridiculous.

9 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Yeah, I get that. What I don’t understand is why the majority doesn’t and thereby allows this minority with such extreme views rule over them.

Of course I know gerrymandering and voter suppression has a lot to do with it, but still... 

Only 24% identify as "evangelical". That doesn't mean that a decent percentage of the rest aren't just as conservative. There are tons and tons and TONS of people throughout the country (and I think especially in Southern states) who have similar values but wouldn't identify as evangelical, they just consider themselves vaguely Christian. 

People who ID as evangelical are generally church-goers, but there are plenty who can't remember the last time they darkened the door of a church other than for a wedding or funeral, but consider themselves Christian. They're largely anti-abortion and pro-gun people who work hard and are under-informed and/or undereducated. Most of them consider "liberal" to be a massive insult, think many college educated people are stuck-up snobby elites who've never done a real day's work in their lives, and don't want taxes to be raised even on the most wealthy because "well, what if I strike it rich one day? I wouldn't want to pay crazy high taxes!" despite the fact that they're more likely to meet an alien in person than actually "strike it rich". They are people who are getting by financially but with struggles sometimes, who have to watch their expenses carefully, and resent anyone else getting help from the government - "pull yourselves up by the bootstraps! Nobody's handing me anything!"

THAT is the core of Trump's supporters. Evangelicals are a part, but not the biggest part IMO. The biggest part is largely the self-described "rednecks" who feel increasingly passed by and ignored - the jobs they are qualified for are largely moving overseas or (they believe) being taken by immigrants willing to work for less, they are unable or unwilling to learn new skills to move with the times, etc. They are behind the curve, and they are angry about it. 

Why these "good ole boys" have latched onto Trump, who is the epitome of everything they hate (yet aspire to), is beyond me. As a person, he's exactly who they despise - born rich, given everything, lazy as hell, never worked (as in physical work) a day in his life, couldn't fix even the most basic of household things if you held a gun to his head. But for some reason, they think he represents them, and they're all up his ass as a consequence.

I see a LOT of pro-Trump signs and flags around here. They're not in wealthy people's yards. They're not common in the newer suburban yards, or the nicer areas of town. They're in front of run-down old ranch houses with gravel driveways, dogs on chains and recliners on the porches. They're in front of single-wide trailers with a 4-wheeler out front and a gun rack on the truck. They're flying from pickup trucks painted camouflage with "truck balls" hanging from the back bumper. Most of these people couldn't tell you the difference between different denominations of Christianity, but they consider themselves Christian whether they attend church regularly or not. (Mostly not, in my experience.) They consider themselves "real Americans" and "patriots" and are wary of people who are "not from around here". They don't necessarily consider themselves racist, but many of them are.

I don't mean to insult these people - that's how I grew up! My dad is a "good ole boy" himself, and it's only with a bit of work we've gotten him to see how terrible Trump is. But I think these people are right in that they've been somewhat underestimated in the past. They came out in droves to vote for Trump, and they THINK they are the majority. It's going to take the real majority coming out in droves to defeat Trump in this election.

Edited October 14, 2020 by Alisamer

[fraurosena]

27 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

This is fake, right? It’s not an actual tweet, is it?

It's real alright.

 

 

[TuringMachine]

I feel lucky to live in a state where mail in voting is the norm. Republicans hate it. It's great. In 2018 Paul Ryan tried to claim foul play since Republicans lost a lot of seats, and our secretary of state replied that ensuring that every vote is counted might be "strange for Speaker Ryan, who comes from Wisconsin,’’  but he's “happy to walk him through the bottom line.”

I do somewhat feel like my vote for president doesn't really matter since there's no way California is voting trump, but we do have some fun local elections to vote on. There are also some difficult election due to California's top two voting laws which sometimes leads to both candidates being democrats. For example the year Harris was elected our senator her opponent was also a democrat.

We also have some only in California propositions like, should Uber and Lyft be allowed to fuck over their drivers?

[Cartmann99]

Rest of the thread under the spoiler:

Spoiler

 

It's ratfucking season, so choose your footwear wisely in case you need to blast something off with the garden hose.

[WiseGirl]

Racism is alive and well in North East USA. 

Racist trolls hijacked a Zoom town hall to hurl slurs at Connecticut’s first Black congresswoman.

“I am tired, completely and utterly tired,” Hayes wrote. “I am not ok that this happened. I am not ok, that this is not the first time this has happened in my life or that I’ve had to explain that this happens.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/14/jahana-hayes-zoom-racial-slurs/%3foutputType=amp

[Cartmann99]

Man Who Reportedly Gave Hunter’s Laptop to Rudy Speaks Out in Bizarre Interview

Quote

On Wednesday morning, the New York Post published a story alleging that Hunter Biden dropped off a laptop at a Delaware computer store for repair and that the device contained nefarious emails and photos.

The item was immediately viewed with suspicion, both for the timing of it—coming less than three weeks before the elections—and the path the laptop supposedly took. The Post said that “before turning over the gear,” the owner of the computer repair shop, “made a copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello.” The story alleged that the Biden son was setting up a meeting between a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm on which he served and his father, who was then the Vice President. The Biden campaign has said no such meeting was scheduled.

On Wednesday afternoon, a group of reporters, among them a journalist for The Daily Beast, spoke with the owner of the shop, a man named John Paul Isaac who lives in Wilmington, Delaware. The audio of that nearly hour-long question and answer session is below.

Click here to listen to the question and answer session.

Isaac appeared nervous throughout. Several times, he said he was scared for his life and for the lives of those he loved. He appeared not to have a grasp on the timeline of the laptop arriving at his shop and its disappearance from it. He also said the impeachment of President Trump was a “sham.” Social media postings indicate that Isaac is an avid Trump supporter, and voted for him in the 2016 election.

Isaac said he had a medical condition that prevented him from actually seeing who dropped off the laptop but that he believed it to be Hunter Biden’s because of a sticker related to the Beau Biden Foundation that was on it. He said that Hunter Biden actually dropped off three laptops for repair, an abundance of hardware that he chalked up to the Biden son being “rich.”

Throughout the entire interview, Isaac switched back and forth from saying he reached out to law enforcement after viewing the files in the laptop to saying that it was actually the Federal Bureau of Investigation that reached out to him. At one point, Isaac claimed that he was emailing someone from the FBI about the laptop. At another point he claimed a special agent from the Baltimore office had contacted him after he alerted the FBI to the device’s existence. At another point, he said the FBI reached out to him for “help accessing his drive.”

Isaac referenced the infamous Seth Rich conspiracy theory—which holds that a DNC staffer who police say was murdered in a botched robbery was actually killed off by Clinton allies because he leaked committee emails—as reason for his paranoia. He said he made a copy of the hard drive for purposes of personal protection.

“They probably knew I had a copy because I was pretty vocal about not wanting to get murdered,” he said, “so I’m going to have a copy.”

Isaac refused to answer specific questions about whether he had been in contact with Rudy Giuliani before the laptop drop-off or at any other time before the Post’s publication. Pressed on his relationship with Giuliani, he replied: “When you’re afraid and you don’t know anything about the depth of the waters that you’re in, you want to find a lifeguard.”

Seeming to realize he’d said too much, he added: “Ah shit.”

So, Rudy was your lifeguard, the reporters asked. “No comment,” he replied.

 

[mamallama]

How in the hell do you go from screaming that Obama spied on your campaign to accepting and promoting breaking into laptops dropped off for repair then hacked by the store owner.