The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

We have established that it's OK for jocks to openly disrespect the American flag and what it represents to millions of Americans who's lives matter just as much as theirs.  The fans should have no less of a right to register THEIR disapproval.

These NFL jocks have no more right to be received uncritically than anyone else.

Just imagine how fans who have military members or law enforcement members feel at this.  Now you may not care, but your lack of caring does not minimize THEIR right to free expression.  They have shown disregard for their fans; indeed, they have even shown contempt.  That's their right, sanctioned by the NFL.  Let them be the big shots they are and accept the rights of others to return the contempt.

These NFL players have forfeited my respect.

Speaking as someone who actually has family in law enforcement, what the NBA players who took a knee are doing is about as patriotic as it gets.  They’re engaging in civil disobedience in the same spirit as the civil rights movement.  They clearly have more respect our country’s best values than any of the so-called fans booing them in the clip, that’s for sure.  I mean, the whole idea of calling civil disobedience unAmerican suggest a real lack of understanding by the so-called fans regarding what our country stands for.

This next part isn’t necessarily directed at anyone on Atlas, I’d also add that the whole “shut up and dribble business has always had a bit of a racist undertone to it.  Like, the implication seems to be that white fans/team owners own black athletes and somehow have the right to dictate how said athletes use the platform their talent has given them.

Lastly, if we’re gonna call people “jocks” that should be saved for folks like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and “I’m not black; I’m O.J.” Simpson.  These were men who used their platform to cash-in and avoid ruffling any white feathers.  That’s their right; it’s their talent.   Still, to mind at least, that’s what it means when an athlete is just a jock: They don’t aspire to be anything more than an athlete.  Nothing wrong with that, but the folks taking a knee are protesting the fact that even in 2020 the police are murdering innocent people in cold blood because of the color of their skin.  You may disagree with them, but they’re trying to do something meaningful. 

[Big Abraham]

Still other material is misleading. The project criticizes Abraham Lincoln’s views on racial equality but ignores his conviction that the Declaration of Independence proclaimed universal equality, for blacks as well as whites, a view he upheld repeatedly against powerful white supremacists who opposed him. The project also ignores Lincoln’s agreement with Frederick Douglass that the Constitution was, in Douglass’s words, “a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” Instead, the project asserts that the United States was founded on racial slavery, an argument rejected by a majority of abolitionists and proclaimed by champions of slavery like John C. Calhoun.

This is why I call this a left-wing Lost Cause and people need to understand that the core problem at the root of the Lost Cause is the methods, the methods that lead to the distortion not the distortion itself. That is why people take umbrage when I make this comparison "how dare you compare us to those racists, we aren't white supremacists" and yet it is the methods that are dangerous and the methods that are the same.


We have a two front war on the founding, by right wing extremists seeking to drag the founders down with them in an attempt to gain legitimacy and by left-wing extremists seeking to knock them down from above in the name of false conceptualizations of political correctness and flawed historical narratives created on that basis.

Calhoun, Davis and Taney are wrong and they were wrong then and the contention by Lincoln and the Republicans was that they were wrong at the time. The view of the former group was the product of slavery's growth post cotton gin and the evolutionary effect this had the political dynamics as a result. A process I have long described in these discussions. This doesn't give them legitimacy to define the founding, it should illustrate that they are politicians contemporary to their time and corrupted by the politics and economic interests into warping and distorting the founding.

[S019]

I do believe that semi-automatic military style rifles with high capacity magazines should banned. All gun owners should have permit/license to own their firearms and have to fairly regularly renew them (every 3-5 years). However, what's probably even more important is changing America's gun culture.

The gun worshiping that happens in America is honestly crazy & terrifying and is probably a big reason why gun-related homicides are so high in America. Switzerland has a high gun ownership rate per capita but mass shootings NEVER happen there and gun-related homicides are rare. Why? The Swiss have a completely different gun culture - plain & simple. Guns are viewed solely for protection of the country and of the home.

In America, many Americans view guns as essentially a "toy". Some Americans connect the ownership of firearms with their masculinity or femininity. Also, you combine the fact that mental health services in this country are underfunded and in many states it is very easy for a mentally ill person to obtain a firearm, this has obviously lead to major problems & tragedies. There needs to be a sea-change in the way Americans view guns for our gun problem be resolved.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I don't get why "safe, legal, and rare" is considered a moderate position. Do most pro-choicers think that abortion should be common or unsafe?

Rare is a relative term, and one that public figures who describe themselves with that phrase usually prefer to leave ambiguous. That allows them to appeal to the people who believe that 15-25% of pregnancies ending in abortion (i.e. typical rates for US states) is "rare" enough and those who would prefer to see those numbers brought much lower.

State-level abortion rates vary by an order of magnitude, but the numbers rarely seem to enter the conversation except for anti-legalization people quoting raw numbers for shock value or pro-legalization people pointing out that the national rate is at an all-time low. It would take some courage for someone wishing to stake out a moderate position to say that they oppose restrictions on access like those in South Dakota while also saying that states like New York and Maryland where doctors abort closer to one out of three pregnancies have a problem that demands a policy response.

Speaking personally, I am strongly opposed to any criminal penalties for mothers or health care providers (so long as the latter are not coercing women into aborting their pregnancies). But I'm not convinced by the pro-choice consensus that this is only a matter of providing better sex education and welfare support, because that's not what the variation indicates.

It's also unfortunate the increasingly massive racial disparity in the percentage of pregnancies aborted has become a point of trolling, because reducing that disparity is the single greatest remaining opportunity for preventing abortions that take place in the United States.

[Battista Minola 1616]

I don't agree with Trump much but his proposal to acquire Greenland was very interesting. Greenland provides tremendous strategic, military and in the future monetary value as the arctic gets warmer. Ofcourse Trump went the wrong way about it. The reality is Denmark doesn't need to be involved at all. It doesn't matter if they want to sell Greenland or not. According to their constitution Greenland has the right to self determination and can declare independence from Denmark anytime with a referendum voted on by the people of Greenland.

Greenland's population is only ~56,000 people. What if we grease the wheels to get them to declare independence from Denmark and join the US? What if the US offers 1 million dollars to every Greenlander to declare independence from Denmark and pledge to join the US, financially, this will only cost 56 billion, this is basically pocket change for the government and a small investment that will pay huge dividends. Plus we match the yearly subsidy they get from Denmark. Plus each Greenlander gets a US citizenship. Plus they get representation in congress. We can sweeten the pot a bit more if needed by offering various perks like sklll/education training for current greenlanders at US institutions for free and some pledges to develop infrastructure in Greenland.

I cannot see how the people of Greenland could say no that offer. Do you think this approach would work?

Apart from the 1 million per head thing, which isn't happening even if US somehow miraculously manages to convince Greenland to join (haha), Denmark already provides Greenland literally everything you mentioned. You're gonna need to find much better bargaining chips.

This is actually one of the best posts on this forum. Not intentionally; but it's the best encapsulation of the stale, embarassing circus act known as American exceptionalism that I've seen:
— basic social services like free education and infrastructure spending are seen as near-riduculous generosity
— as for the "wow, we'll give you representation in Congress", well duh, Greenland already sends people to Folketing. Not every country is as institutionally sclerotic as the US
— as for the "wow, if you join our country we might even let you have our passports" - well, most countries have grown out of treating random parts of their territory like colonies
— the Manifest Destiny creed that territorial expansion (at any cost) is everything, realities of 21st century foreign relations and basic logic be damned
— uncritical belief that the American way is the best, regardless of whether it actually is or whether the would-be subjects even want it

I'm not really blaming you, OP. You actually sound pretty reasonable, but the fact that a reasonable person is making arguments like this speaks volumes about America's national mentality.

This... is actually one of the best posts on this forum.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Came here to post that.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Part of the Lost Cause pro-Confederate revisionist history involved waging a propaganda war against Lincoln - after all, if you want to argue the Civil War wasn't about slavery, it's a bit inconvenient to acknowledge that the leader of the Union was waging war against slavery with good intentions. And so, a false narrative arose that Lincoln was actually indifferent to slavery and only used it as a political chip, which has been propped up by cherrypicked quotes which are either out of context (ie "if I could preserve the Union without freeing a single slave," where he was obviously lying if you're aware of his audience and actions), reflect views he held from before his presidency, or are outright fabrications (he wanted to deport slaves back to Africa). For some reason, large segments of the woke left have decided to serve as useful idiots for Confederate sympathizers and parrot this badhistory uncritically.

In fairness, this particular protest seems to be spurred by a reaction to Lincoln's indigenous policies, which, while hardly unique, are a much more fair criticism and I'm not going to defend them. So my point isn't super relevant here but it's a rant I've wanted to get off my chest and this was a good excuse to do it.

[Battista Minola 1616]

The following post is actually so long and so high-quality that it probably deserves its own thread, but in the meantime I'll repost it here:

It's a stupid thing said by stupid people who don't understand anything about U.S. history, society, or the legislative process. I was a member of the Democratic Party and now am a member of the Social Democratic Party in Sweden and honestly they're pretty similar once you adjust for the context-specific things.

But let's play this game, but this time let's do it from the other direction: let's list all the ways various left-wing and mainstream conservative parties in Europe have been more right-wing than the U.S. Democratic Party on a multitude economic issues.

Since Sweden is held up as the pinnacle of left-wing utopia, an example of everything the U.S. Democratic Party could be if they'd just stop being a bunch of filthy neolibs, let's go through the ways the Social Democrats and Moderates are so much more right wing than the U.S. Democrats on economics:

- in 1985, it was under Olaf Palm (PBUH), hero of the left-wing, that Sweden radically deregulated its banking sector, which paved the way for the Swedish banking crisis of 1991-1992 which blew a massive hole in the economy and the state budget and consigned Sweden to nearly a decade of economic stagnation and high unemployment.

- in 1989, under the Social Democrats, Sweden passed sweeping supply-side tax cuts including slashing the top tax rate from 72% to 55%. In 2004, the Social Democrats followed up on this by delivering another round of tax cuts for the wealthy by abolishing inheritance taxes, gift taxes, and the wealth tax. And because the hits don't stop coming, this very year the Social Democrats repealed the 5% income tax surcharge on those who make above $75,000 per year.

- Meanwhile, the evil center-right U.S. Democrats had their last two Presidents raise taxes on the wealthy by $500 billion and $1.1 trillion respectively, and their last nominee (y'know, that neoliberal corporate sellout warmongering wh*re) proposed an additional $1.5 trillion tax increase, and the current nominee (neoliberal corporate Democrat with dementia) is proposing over $4 trillion in tax increases on both earned income and investment income as well as raising corporate taxes. The Democrats have pretty much always supported higher inheritance and gift taxes, and some are even muddling a wealth tax now, while no one in Sweden is talking about bringing those three taxes back (no, not even the Left Party, which voted for it). Oh speaking of which, under the Social Democrats, they continued to implement the Moderates' agenda regarding corporate taxes over the past six years by cutting the corporate income tax rate from 24% to 22%, and further to 20.6% from next year. Even evil centrist sellout Bill Clinton was fine with raising corporate taxes in his 1993 budget, what's the SAP's excuse for being more right wing than Bill Clinton?

- it was under Ingvar Karlsson and Göran Persson that Sweden implemented incredibly strict unemployment and sickness benefit restrictions from 1995 to 1998 that have never been reversed, and actually, tightened further since under both Moderate and SAP governments. Meanwhile, the U.S. Democratic Party has actually been debating whether the 1996 reforms went to far, and state-level initiatives have been undertaken to try to expand these benefits. The SAP on the other hand seems just fine to continue embracing further tightening.

- it was under Göran Persson that the "black zero" balanced budget policy was implemented, and the SAP leadership refuses to change this and still clings to it dogmatically. Meanwhile the U.S. Democratic Party has learned to love deficits and massive spending again, and their plans grow with every election cycle.

- In 1994, the Social Democrats lent their votes to the center-right government to privatize the pension system, a proposal they helped shape and actually initiated with their pension reform committee in 1990. None of the Democrats' reforms in the U.S. come anywhere close to this.

- in 2007, the Social Democrats lent their votes again to the center-right parties to almost totally abolish property taxes, which has been one of many contributing factors (along with low interest rates) in the housing crisis from the skyrocketing housing prices over the past 12 years, and the Social Democrats' proposals for housing are pitiful. Meanwhile, the U.S. Democrats over the past 5 years proposed significant increases in housing funding and Biden (right-winger and all) now wants to make Section 8 an entitlement, which would expand affordable housing greatly.

- all of the above has taken place while the Social Democratic-Green government has presided over increasing strain on county and municipal budgets and more or less ignored this issue, and in the 2018 municipal and regional elections, suffered enormous losses in many of their traditional strongholds to protest parties such as the Healthcare Party in Norbotten County. Last year, the Social Democrats agreed to privatize the Public Employment Agency, one of the most fundamental pillars of the Swedish welfare state and a key part of its active labor market policy. Meanwhile, the U.S. Democrats distributed funds to states and cities as part of the stimulus package in 2009 and at this very moment are trying to get fiscal aid to states and cities who are struggling with the pandemic's effects on their budgets. Furthermore, the stimulus that was shepherded through Congress by Nancy Pelosi (another evil corporate Democrat) was one of the most generous, stimulative, and redistributive in the world; it's main flaw was the rickety state unemployment computer systems which couldn't handle this once-a-century crisis.

- while the top leadership of the Democratic Party has been pro-free trade, the rank and file members of Congress are much more skeptical. Meanwhile, the Social Democrats have been one of the most militantly pro-free trade parties in Europe, and Stefan Löfven was a major cheerleader for the TTIP when even many other SocDem and Green parties around Europe were more skeptical.

- now let's bring the Moderate Party into this, which is considered to be one of the most "centrist" of all the mainstream conservative parties in Europe. You would think these "durrrr the Democrats are a right-wing party in Europe durrrrr" people would think the Democrats and Moderates would basically be identical, right? Well you're dead wrong. The Moderates privatized a great deal of Sweden's primary and secondary education system in 1992, and today over 30% of of Swedish high school students attend private, for-profit schools that are owned by private equity companies. Not a single state in the U.S. comes anywhere near that figure, and even in many deep-red Republican areas, voters have revolted over cuts to education and privatization efforts, whereas it is so accepted in Sweden, not even the Social Democrats want to reverse it. The Moderate Party's current agenda states they wish to privatize public services such as SVT and Svergies Radio; the U.S. Democratic Party does not stand for privatizing and defunding services such as PBS and NPR. The Moderate Party is very right-wing on economics, and wants to continue privatizing just about everything in Sweden and pass massive, regressive tax cuts, whereas the U.S. Democrats do not.

But let's also look outside of Sweden, to other supposedly more progressive countries. The SPD, one of the OG socialist parties, introduced some of the harshest labor market reforms for a left-wing party as part of its Agenda 2010, and created the infamous Euro Jobs designed to humiliate the unemployed and punish them into taking any job at all. The U.S., for all of it's problems with workers' rights and pay, does not have mandatory Dollar Jobs for receiving unemployment benefits. The SPD also went along all gung-ho about privatizations such as Deutsche Bundespost, whereas the U.S. Post  Office is literally enshrined in our national constitution and you can see what a visceral reaction the slowing down of the mail had over the past few months, not just from partisan Democrats. Most countries in Europe don't have gift and inheritance taxes (but to be fair, the greater role of family-owned Mittelstand companies plays a role in this), and those that do are cutting them as fast as they can.

But what of these new rightwing populist parties? Aren't they more left-wing on economics than the U.S. Democrats? Well if you actually look at the actual policies that these populists support, usually the only left-wing policy they espouse is higher pensions, which is very obviously designed to bribe older voters into supporting them. They talk a lot about how immigrants are stealing our welfare, but when you actually look at their proposals and the policies they support when in office, they are pretty universally right-wing on almost every economic issue. The Finns Party supported the massive austerity, privatization, and anti-worker policies under Juha Sipilä's government from 2015 to 2019 in Finland, the Sweden Democrats consistently vote to plunder municipal budgets whenever they get the chance and vote with the Alliance parties quite often, Lega Nord's fiscal federalism would plunge central and southern Italy into abject poverty and third-world status while delivering massive tax cuts to the wealthiest in the North, AfD is also just a more vulgar version of your standard right-wing party, the list goes on and on.

Their "populism" is just bribing older voters with more pensions, while still supporting standard right-wing economic policies, and this is backed up by voter surveys showing these parties tend to get their support primarily from small business owners, the self-employed, white collar workers, and THEN blue collar workers.

The U.S. Democratic Party would fit right in with most mainstream center-left European parties. They might be a bit to the right of those parties on average but that does not make them "center-right" or even "centrist". Social democratic parties in Europe were much more successful in implementing welfare states in the 1945 - 1980 period because the parliamentary system allows just simple majorities, whereas in the U.S. we have far more legislative roadblocks. Furthermore most Europeans, whether on the left or the right, have more communitarian views and are more tied to a sense of nationhood, and they value national solidarity and shared sacrifice for their own kind, whereas the U.S. has always been about the individual believing in The Dream.

The Democratic Party, going back to its classical liberal roots, also prefer to enact its redistributive agenda via the tax code, rather than sweeping government policies and agencies. The tax system in Europe is progressive, yes, but it is also extremely regressive, with the heaviest tax burdens falling on the middle and working classes through heavy income and consumption taxes. The Democrats prefer to utilize things like the EITC to stimulate work and redistribute income, and this again relates back to the American ideal of individualism: if you are poor and you get a check in the mail from the government, people will say, "Oh look, you're a taker", but if you get that same amount of money back as part of your tax refund after submitting your tax return in the spring, people will say, "The government is giving me back MY hard-earned money!".

But those same social democratic parties in Europe who were so successful since 1980 have also been some of the biggest perpetrators of rollbacks of these very welfare states they helped create in the first place.

The U.S. never had a landed aristocracy, a reactionary monarchy, a ethno-religious identity. We never faced the overpopulation that led to mass famine, poverty, and associated revolutions and uprisings. We never had religious wars that influenced society and government to the extent of Europe. We never had a multi-party system that allows cleaner ideological parties; instead the big tent two-party system forces people who don't fit either of the parties perfectly to make tough choices about which to join. Look at how many conservative minorities end up in the Democratic Party simply because of the GOP's antagonistic, nativist identity politics. Europe lacks the history of modern slavery and having a large population of former slaves like much of the New World, which adds an entirely new host of issues, like racial resentment and having a f-ing civil war over the issue. We were never Catholic enough to have Christian democratic parties, but rather remained dominated by Western European Protestants as well as people who sought freedom from religion, which is why you see both extremes regarding religion here.

We have a totally different history and accordingly our political parties operate in entirely different contexts. If anything, it's not that the Democrats are a center-right party, it's that the Republican Party would be a very right-wing party in Europe. We never had one-nation conservatism or the sort of welfare state-embracing conservatives who also embrace a sort of "soft" nationalism the way you see parties like the CDU and ÖVP. If the Republican Party genuinely had a One Nation phase ala the UK Conservatives, we probably would have gotten this done back in the 1945-1960 period as well; but that's not the fault of the Democratic Party!

The Democratic party never stood for 100% healthcare coverage (whether that's single-payer or a dual system), really cheap or free higher education (like in most of Europe), 5 weeks off, 6+ month maternity leave or most other things people here, left or right, take for granted.

So, yeah, they most likely will never achieve the things the old Social Dems achieved here.

This is simply not true. Since 1947 the Democrats have tried to implement some kind of national healthcare system, and in the early 1970s it was widely expected that the U.S. would achieve that, whether it was the Democrats proposing a sort of single-payer system after the successes of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 or the "Nixoncare" proposals of 1971 and 1973 that got derailed due to Watergate and the stagflation of the 1970s. Higher education has been in Democratic platforms since the 1940s as well, even Bill Clinton increased funding to universities in his 1993 budget after campaigning on affordability in 1992, while H. Clinton in 2016 proposed making public universities tuition-free for everyone making less than $125k per year. Furthermore it was a key plank of the 2016 campaign to introduce 12 weeks paid family and medical leave, and from what I remember, the proposals this year are even more ambitious.

Just because they haven't been as successful as implementing these policies over the past 75 years doesn't mean they don't support them. It's not as simple as getting a 50+1 majority in the U.S. Congress, unfortunately.

[brucejoel99]

Say what you will about trolls, but a lot of quality was put into this effort:

I think Trump will end up winning. Other than polls, which aren’t even all bad for Trump, there is zero enthusiasm for Joe Biden. He has crowds of maybe 12 people while Trump blocks traffic for miles and has 20,000 screaming fans at every single city he stops in. I was watching CNN and Jim Acosta is having to scream over the Trump crowd in Florida of tens and tens of thousands of people to report “What trouble Trump is in!” What trouble?

Other than polling, would anyone ever believe Biden is winning this race? I wouldn’t. Not with tens of thousands in Trump crowds and a sea of Trump signs everywhere you look across the country. Where’s the record low number of gun sales and record high viewers for the Black Lives Matter-filled NBA finals games? We don’t see any. We see the opposite. A sea of Trump signs. Everything Trump from crowd size to Internet memes to candidate colored soda bottles. Record high gun sales, record low NBA viewership, record low Academy Award viewers (pre-virus). Absolutely nothing culturally suggests a Biden victory, let alone a colossal landslide of epic proportions.

Something isn’t adding up. Where are the Biden boat parades? Where are the 10,000 people in crowds? Virus or not, the fundamentals of this race aren’t adding up. You don’t win elections by 15 pts nationwide and have news reporters in Arizona and Ohio report that “Joe Biden is here, but you wouldn’t know it because there is no crowd.” Not to mention the entire culture of America is tuning out woke NBA games on TV, buying record numbers of firearms, just acting way more like a Trump country, not a country about to boot him out. I don’t see any outward signs or antidotal signs that Biden is even close.

Here in Pennsylvania it’s nothing but a sea of Trump signs and we keep hearing the same thing. My guess is he is ahead in Florida, Ohio and North Carolina. If he wins those three, that doesn’t get him there but it is such a narrow path for Biden at that point. I believe we are about to see a huge popular and electoral vote discrepancy.

I could be wrong, but I think the eagerness on this forum to be so confident of a Biden presidency is setting people up for disappointment and heartache. It’s not just possible but quite probable that by January, we are still dealing with Nancy, Mitch and Donald.

[Battista Minola 1616]

So this is not necessarily particularly meaningful but the following post is definitely a quality effort.

Question was: "describe a Hitler 1932 / Trump 2016 / Biden 2020 voter"

Disillusioned young Social Democrat from a Lutheran working-class background in Hamburg who voted for Hitler in 1932. Ended up conscripted into the Wehrmacht and endured horrific combat experiences on the Ostfront, leading him to revert to his social democratic views and reject Hitler by the end of the war. Immigrated to the United States in the late Forties and became a unionized blue-collar worker, as well as a reliable Democratic voter. Had some culturally conservative and anticommunist views, so voted for Republicans on occasion such as in 1972 for Nixon and in 1984 for Reagan. Retired by the early 80s but his industry being hard hit led him to vote for Perot in 1992 and be sympathetic to protectionist rhetoric in general. This led him to vote for Trump in 2016 but he was distressed by Trump's betrayal of his populist promises and alarmed by the rise of far-right forces. These factors plus Covid disproportionately affecting seniors, led him to vote for Biden in 2020.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Porn is basically 'victory gin' - an inferior substitute that has a similar look and taste to what it mimics, but lacking in substance and quality.

That being said, I think young people aren't having sex as much due to stagnating economics rather than porn addiction. Our grandfathers and grandmothers enjoyed unrivalled prosperity in the fifties and sixties; we are left holding an increasingly empty bag.

What 20-year old would want to start a family right now? You have no money to pay for childcare, housing, and healthcare, let alone the more direct expenses that come with having a family. If you're not trying for a baby, you're also going to have a lot less sex.

Another thing to consider ism millions more people are moving away from their hometowns today. When that happens, people cut ties with a good number of friends and lovers. Then they have to start from scratch in their new home.

It's not easy to build close, intimate relationships when you've just arrived in a new town.

[MATTROSE94]

Best post of all time!

I am an election judge

[GeorgiaModerate]

WASHINGTON—United States President Donald J. Trump is widely expected to lose next month's national elections and recent comments indicate he may be intending to go into exile at the expiry of his term in January 2021. At a rally in Georgia Province, a bastion of regime support, Trump told supporters of his plans. "Maybe I'll have to leave the country, I don't know," the 74 year-old president said.

Regime officials have been trying increasingly desperate measures to shore up support for the ruling Republican Party (GOP), including restrictions on mail-in ballots and cutting hours at polling places at a time when many Americans fear the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 200,000 lives.
 
While international observers do not believe the regime has the means to rig the election for Mr. Trump outright, they concede restrictions may have marginal impacts that could generate outsized results due to the arcane, byzantine nature of American's presidential election system, which has changed very little from when the former British colony first became independent.

Given the government's Russian backing, a post-presidency in Moscow is possible. Other options being watched by regional experts include Saudi Arabia, Israel, Brazil and India. A major sticking point will likely be Mr. Trump's ability to move his assets abroad. The dissident newspaper The New York Times recently published details of the president's tax returns, showing little tax paid, high debts and opaque sources of income and loans. If the Democratic Party candidate Joseph R. Biden, Jr. is elected, his government may move quickly to freeze or even seize his predecessor's assets. Many Democratic Party supporters have called for retribution against Mr. Trump, including prison or house arrest.

[MATTROSE94]

Go Dr Gross, McGrath is no longer tied with McConnell she is down 48-41


Dr Gross and Dr Bollier are needed in this Pandemic

[MATTROSE94]

"Leprachauns"are real with dwarfism in the Human race

[Santander]

"Leprachauns"are real with dwarfism in the Human race

lol the green text

[Battista Minola 1616]

@MATTROSE94

This thread is for actual quality efforts.
If you want to memorialize your favourite OC posts the appropriate thread is this: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=368396.0

[MATTROSE94]

@MATTROSE94

This thread is for actual quality efforts.
If you want to memorialize your favourite OC posts the appropriate thread is this: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=368396.0

I didn’t know that thread existed. These posts are probably the weirdest ones I ever read on the site.

[MATTROSE94]

The NY Post is worse than trash.

[DC Al Fine]

@MATTROSE94

This thread is for actual quality efforts.
If you want to memorialize your favourite OC posts the appropriate thread is this: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=368396.0

Ahem

[MATTROSE94]

D's probably get 8 seats AZ, CO, 1 GA, IA, ME, NC and SC and pronly 1 more from AK, KS or MT that's the max we got in 2008, but in 2006, 2008, 2014 a word of caution only 5 incumbents got defeated, 8 seats this time will be well over 5 incumbents and that rarely happens in history, since the 1990s

Dems should expect not a 60 seat Senate but a 51/55 seat majority, Jones, McGrath, Espy and HEGAR are done, making 60 seats impossible

[MATTROSE94]

Best post thread of all time!

BRTD, TexasGurl, and other old posters, was OC always like this?

Yes. Though his posting style has evolved a bit. It's still off the wall and nonsensical as he's always been granted.

And Solid's goofy maps that have Sununu,  Parsons losing and Dems winning IN gov are sensible? He doesnt even post on a regular basis, and tell us why his maps are goofy. He just posts NUT maps all over the place and never responds. Because he is Authoritarian 

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Hell has officially frozen over; I am actually putting a General MacArthur post in here:

I don't see why that's so far-fetched? If they wanted them back home, they wouldn't have sent them on a trek to another country in the first place, possibly paying somebody to transport them. They might think they are doing the kids a favor by sending them to another country, depending on their home circumstances, and if they come home, the whole effort was wasted.

They brought them into the country because they wanted to live, together with their children, in America.

Their children were ripped away from them when they were deported back to Mexico.  There was no purpose for this, it was just the Trump administration's policy to be as cruel as possible to scare people away.

Now the parents are in Mexico, and the children are in ICE detention camps in America.  And the children literally did nothing wrong.  But we keep them there because we can't find their parents.

It's really shocking to me how flippant conservatives are being about this.  Imagine a child, lying on the cold concrete floor of an ICE detention center, flourescent light flickering overhead, insufficient food, water or medical care.  Just counting the days until it's over.  And the one glimmer of hope that keeps them going is the idea that one day they'll be re-united with their mother and father.

Then an ICE goon comes into the cell and says "by the way, we can't find your mother or father.  I don't know if you'll ever see them again."

The child cries, and wails, and screams, as the goon walks away down the dark hallway.  Where is my mother!?  Where is my father!?

If you saw this happening to a child in your community.  To your son, or your daughter.  To your neighbor's children.  To children from your local school.  How would that make you feel?  Would you feel shocked, horrified, brought to tears by the cruelty and inhumanity?

Does it really make a difference if the child is crying Donde está mi madre!?  Donde está mi padre!?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I actually have MATTROSE94 on ignore because I got sick of reading his "ironic" posts of bad analysis written seriously and deadpan which is not and never has been funny but does result in threads being derailed with unironic replies to it (really wish others would quit taking the bait though because I can still read their posts and it's insufferable.)

[Battista Minola 1616]

I actually have MATTROSE94 on ignore because I got sick of reading his "ironic" posts of bad analysis written seriously and deadpan which is not and never has been funny but does result in threads being derailed with unironic replies to it (really wish others would quit taking the bait though because I can still read their posts and it's insufferable.)

The fact is, I am pretty sure MATTROSE94 is not ironic at all when he makes his completely deranged takes. I agree people should stop taking the bait. Arguing with him is kind of useless.