Political Thread in memory of David Reid. (R.I.P.)

[sinkov]

MAGA is done. Over. Kaput. Game over.

I think maybe you need to re-assess mon ami, Spencer Pratt second to Bass in the LA Mayor race and Steve Hilton, a real life Tory FFS, leads the race for California Governor. When Republicans are kicking Dems arses in California of all places, it doesn't look like MAGA is done to me.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

I am reading that up in the Bay area Democrat Xavier Becerra is topping most polls while fellow Democrat Tom Steyer is running second, but who cares as long as Trump dies soon.

[sinkov]

Latest figures I can find mon ami,

Hilton, 1,386,083
Becerra, 1,266,483
Steyer, 978,645

Steve fecking Hilton, posh boy Cameron's Director of Strategy, Stewart Pearson in 'The Thick of It'. Kicking Dems arses in The Golden State, you couldn't make it up. What a star !!

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Latest figures I can find mon ami,

Hilton, 1,386,083
Becerra, 1,266,483
Steyer, 978,645

Steve fecking Hilton, posh boy Cameron's Director of Strategy, Stewart Pearson in 'The Thick of It'. Kicking Dems arses in The Golden State, you couldn't make it up. What a star !!

We'll see. Depends how many votes Trump can pilfer.

[sinkov]

I had to laugh when Spencer Pratt was asked how he was going to persuade Democrats to vote for him, 'No problem', he said, 'Everyone voting for me now is a Democrat, there are no Republicans in California'.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

My favourite new catchphrase "toponymic narcissism" is all about a leader who plaster images of himself everywhere. Gold statues of himself at golf clubs, his mush on a 250 dollar bill and even renaming Penn Station _ Trump Central. Can someone please put this eejit out of his misery?

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/5743779-renaming-dulles-penn-station-trump/

[The Bedlington Terrier]

I had to laugh when Spencer Pratt was asked how he was going to persuade Democrats to vote for him, 'No problem', he said, 'Everyone voting for me now is a Democrat, there are no Republicans in California'.

These dudes all seem to focus on regional affairs rather than supporting and paying for the military destruction of Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Whoever wins will not support the Evil Orange Emperor's destructive endeavours.

[sinkov]

Everywhere else is done and dusted, votes counted, results declared, but not in California where they were flying in boxes full of mail in votes by helicopter to the counting centre last night. You don't get to see the count, it takes place behind closed doors, and as Pratt pointed out, there are no Republicans in California, so the Dems are doing the 'counting'.

Mark my words, this does not bode well for Hilton or Pratt. They might be doing well now, but let's see where they are when the Dems have finished their 'counting'.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

An ode to the Orange whack job...

Steve Schmidt’s wrote this opinion piece which just about nails Trump.
=========
“Donald Trump tried to put his name on the Kennedy Centre.
Pause for a moment and contemplate the obscenity of that sentence.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy represented youth, sacrifice, intellect, courage and service to country. He was a war hero whose PT boat was cut in half in the black waters of the Pacific Ocean by a Japanese destroyer during a world war fought against fascism and tyranny.
Donald Trump is a draft-dodging vulgarian who insults dead American soldiers, mocks prisoners of war, sneers at Gold Star families, and turns every sacred institution he touches into a cheap casino covered in gold paint and self-worship.
Of course, he wanted to rename the Kennedy Centre after himself.
There’s no limit to the narcissism of a man who believes the American presidency is a vehicle for personal glorification instead of constitutional duty.
The Kennedy Centre isn’t merely a building. It’s a memorial to a vision of America that understood that culture and democracy are intertwined.
John Kennedy believed the arts mattered because civilization mattered.
He understood something Trump never will: that great nations aren’t measured only by military power or economic output, but by the depth of their culture, the *****ity of their imagination, and the confidence they place in free expression.
Kennedy admired poets. Trump admires sycophants.
Kennedy invited Pablo Casals to perform at the White House after the great cellist had refused to play there for presidents he believed tolerated fascism in Spain. Kennedy understood the symbolism of art in a democracy.
You can listen to the magnificent performance here:
Trump stages UFC fights on the South Lawn.
Kennedy spoke about Robert Frost as a national treasure, and declared at Amherst College shortly before his death:
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence.
Meditate on that sentence for a moment.
“When power leads man toward arrogance…”
Could there be a more precise description of Donald Trump?
Kennedy understood that artists, writers, musicians and poets weren’t decorative figures orbiting power. They were essential critics of it. They were guardians against the corruption of the soul.
Trump sees culture differently.
He sees it as branding.
As loyalty theatre.
As spectacle.
As another surface upon which to stamp his name.
Everything in his life is transactional because he lacks the capacity to feel reverence. There’s no awe in him. No humility. No sense of inheritance. No understanding that some things belong to history, and not to him.
This is the central truth about Donald Trump: he can’t distinguish between the United States of America and himself.
That’s the essence of authoritarianism.
The dictator, the strongman, the king — they all arrive at the same conclusion eventually: “I am the state.”
Trump’s desecration of the White House grounds with his vulgar ballroom project isn’t enough. His conversion of the South Lawn into a UFC spectacle isn’t enough. His endless monetization of the presidency isn’t enough because, in Trump’s mind, nothing in America can remain outside his shadow.
Not the military.
Not the courts.
Not the universities.
Not the Department of Justice.
Not the arts.
Not even the memory of John F. Kennedy.
What happened next, however, matters enormously.
A federal judge stopped him.
For one fleeting moment, the Constitution still functioned.
A judge somewhere in America looked at this absurd act of vanity and effectively said: “No. You aren’t king. You don’t own the country. You don’t inherit the monuments of dead presidents like a feudal lord seizing castles.”
The humiliation enraged him because humiliation is intolerable to weak men who survive on domination and spectacle.
Trump then threatened to abandon the Kennedy Centre entirely.
That’s why authoritarians always attack artists eventually.
The Nazis called modern art “degenerate.”
The Soviets demanded “socialist realism.”
Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution against intellectuals and artists.
Every authoritarian movement fears independent culture because culture teaches people how to think, how to question, and how to imagine a different world.
Trump doesn’t understand art because art requires empathy. It requires curiosity about other people. It requires emotional depth and introspection. These are alien concepts to a man whose inner life appears to consist entirely of appetite, grievance and ego maintenance.
He’s America’s most celebrated hollow man.
A void wrapped in makeup, hairspray and malignant narcissism.
And yet the greater scandal may not be Trump’s behaviour.
It’s the silence.
Where are the Republicans who claim to revere Kennedy’s anti-communism, patriotism and love of country?
Where are the conservatives who once claimed to defend culture, history and American institutions?
Where are the elected officials willing to say the obvious — that this is grotesque, embarrassing, and un-American?
The answer, of course, is that they’re afraid.
They’re afraid of the mob they created.
Afraid of the base they radicalized.
Afraid of the social media lynching.
Afraid of the next primary.
Afraid of the man.
So, they say nothing, while Trump marches through American history with a can of gasoline and a blowtorch.
Every institution becomes smaller after he touches it.
More degraded.
More vulgar.
More cynical.
More broken.
That’s his legacy.
Donald Trump isn’t building anything lasting in America. He’s consuming it.
Like all arsonists, he mistakes destruction for strength.
But the American story doesn’t belong to Donald Trump.
The White House doesn’t belong to Donald Trump.
The Kennedy Centre doesn’t belong to Donald Trump.
The country doesn’t belong to Donald Trump.
And one day, long after this bloated and corrupt old man is gone, the shame of this era will linger over everyone who watched this spectacle and decided silence was safer than courage.
History is recording names now.
Every one of them.”

[sinkov]

Does this Steve Schmidt actually exist ? Looks very much like AI to me.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Does this Steve Schmidt actually exist ? Looks very much like AI to me.

The sentiments are bang on however it was generated. Here's one from me...

For as far back as I can remember football has always brought communities and countries together, we can’t let Trump hijack the World Cup like he did the World Club Championship to feed his fascist narcissism and overblown ego. Football must stand united against fascism and racism. (Before anyone asks, I also still think Gareth Crooks is a first class to$$er!")

Did everyone know on this forum know or care that as the start of the World Cup looms there are over 1000 people still illegally detained in a holding pen at the Delaney Hall Detention Centre in New Jersey?

[sinkov]

Did everyone know on this forum know or care that as the start of the World Cup looms there are over 1000 people still illegally detained in a holding pen at the Delaney Hall Detention Centre in New Jersey?

If you check the dates mon ami, you'll find that Delaney Hall has been operating under a Democrat administration for far longer than it has been operating under a Republican one. How many people on this forum know that ? How many people know that Harold Wilson closed far, far more pits than St Margaret ever did ? Keep that one under your hat mon ami.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

If you check the dates mon ami, you'll find that Delaney Hall has been operating under a Democrat administration for far longer than it has been operating under a Republican one. How many people on this forum know that ? How many people know that Harold Wilson closed far, far more pits than St Margaret ever did ? Keep that one under your hat mon ami.

The Democrats do not insist on filling Delaney Hall with women and kids though mon ami before the poor buggers get deported without trial.

How on earth did UK pits get involved in your ICE support manifesto?

[The Bedlington Terrier]

A friend of a friend lives in Toronto, FIFA are asking locals to stump up nearly six hundred quid a ticket to attend the Canada v Bosnia game, apparently he is more concerned about that than Trump insisting his country becoming the US 51st State.

It's a mad world.

[The Bedlington Terrier]

Does this Steve Schmidt actually exist ? Looks very much like AI to me.

Wikipedia: Stephen Edward Schmidt (born September 28, 1970) is an American political and corporate strategist. He co-founded the Lincoln Project in 2019, in opposition to Donald Trump and his leadership of the Republican Party. He left it in 2021 and has co-founded the Save America Movement, a PAC organized to oppose the actions of the Republican Party under Trump.