The Frankish Reich

Thank you. Our friend has no idea what he's talking about. He spends most of his time criticizing Democrats for using standard the standard Keynesian demand pumps (not that he knows these terms) to drive spending and economic growth, only to pay the price with increased inflation in due course. But he says the Trumpists will focus on the demand side.

I just find it astonishing that people are so gullible as to believe that Trump is the adversary of the Deep State, or somehow the friend of those who would reveal all of this information about the powers who rule the world. Friends with Jeffrey Epstein, groveler at the feet of Peter Thiel and his money, schmoozer of anyone with wealth and power. Yeah, he's gonna take them on.

So who is JD Vance's sensei and leading benefactor? A little background: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/style/alex-karp-palantir.html Mr. Thiel thought he could figure out how to find terrorists by using some of the paradigms developed at PayPal, which he helped found, to uncover patterns of fraud. “I was just always super annoyed when, every time you go to the airport, you had to take off a shoe or you had to go through all this security theater, which was both somewhat taxing but probably had very little to do with actual security,” Mr. Thiel said. They brought in some software engineers. “It was two and a half years after 9/11, and you’re starting a software company with people who know nothing about the C.I.A. or any of these organizations,” Mr. Thiel recalled. It was all very cloak-and-dagger, in an Inspector Clouseau way. They decided to seek out John Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who was dubbed the godfather of modern surveillance; Admiral Poindexter had been forced to resign as President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser after the Iran-Contra scandal broke. After 9/11, he worked at the Pentagon on a surveillance program called Total Information Awareness. *** In 2011, the hacker group Anonymous showed that Palantir employees were involved in a proposed misinformation campaign to discredit WikiLeaks and smear some of its supporters, including the journalist Glenn Greenwald. (Mr. Karp apologized to Mr. Greenwald.) Then, at least one Palantir employee helped Cambridge Analytica collect the Facebook data that the Trump campaign used ahead of the 2016 election. Total Information Awareness with Bush 43 and Rumsfeld's favorite theorist, John Poindexter. Smearing Julian Assange/WikiLeaks and taking Latter-Day Trumpie Glenn Greenwald along for the ride. Taking the Surveillance Society up a notch or ten. And then propping up JD Vance by buying him a Senate seat in Ohio, where he was ripe for the Trump picking ... so Peter Thiel himself, gay man of many wacko libertarian opinions and hence no future himself in the Republican Party can be just one heartbeat away from a surrogate presidency. There's your Deep State, you damn fools, or at least the closest personification of it you'll ever find.

Best line of the convention season.

Party politics has never been about "democracy." Trump was nominated in 2016 despite getting well under the majority of Republican primary votes. He was elected President with well under the majority of general election votes. Well, well, well, look who's citing Maureen Dowd now. What, Jack Posobiec didn't say it better?

Those damn Democrats continue to stubbornly refuse to do what Trump tells them to do! It's almost as if they want to win.

Correct. And I really don't think there's serious room for speculation. All those congressional candidates talked to their own pollsters, etc., and were convinced that the House and Senate would flip if Biden remained the candidate. He saw the writing on the wall. Lose the election and watch the party go down in flames, or withdraw and give at least the congressional candidates a fighting chance. What no one really anticipated is how quickly Kamala would be able to consolidate the base, and exactly how eager most Americans were for a candidate who is not an old fossil.

I think you're right. And that's a good argument for voting for the Bernie/AOC wing of the Democratic Party. But in a classic binary choice between the Centrist Wing of the Democratic Party and Trump's New Republicans, how does this lead you to Trump? His plan is to further cut corporate taxes. You know what we used to call that? Trickle down. His plan is also for less robust antitrust enforcement. In other words, in favor of more monopolies. It doesn't add up. The Bernie or Trump thing dissolves into a temper tantrum against the status quo, ignoring the fact that the two parties propose very different agendas for America. If you're a Democratic Socialist, just admit it and stop falling for the trap the Capitalist Class set for you, in which everyone other than the Capitalists is dismissed as a commie.

Probably. But that was his mistake. Lots of people thought the Dems were trotting out Joe for an early debate to see if he'd flame out in time for them to sub in a new candidate. Trump apparently didn't take that seriously. Mr. Art of the Deal, it's all on you. It went about as well as his bluffs with Little Rocket Man.

You guys are going nuts. Thought you had this election in the bag. Then the tables were turned. Highly unusual, but not "unfair" except in a We Thought The Bills Would Get to Play Cleveland in the Divisional Round and Now All of a Sudden It's KC" way. And because of that, you're not even coming close to making sense anymore. The Democrats are keeping our rabid pro-Palestinian protesters, which means either that (1) they secretly really support them; or (2) they're undemocratic because they really should support unpopular causes to give us a better chance to win. Really. That's what we're getting now. Unhinged.

Because Fox is a joke of a network. I'm sure undecided voters will be glued to Sean Hannity's in-depth interview of Trump.

Oh. I see. The Palestinian supporters are angered that Biden, Netanyahu's #1 supporter, was deposed. That makes sense.

You know what? A lot of them were Bernie bros. Yes, they actually wanted to vote a for true red commie-adjacent "Democratic socialist" before they started insulting them. They're like Joe Rogan (one of their new media heroes for some unexplained reason; I think they're intimidated by commenters smarter then them?) - he was a Bernie voter before he became a Trumpie. The horseshoe theory. See what I mean? When has a Republican ever talked like this?

Yeah, that convention hall was filled with angry Bidenites storming the stage to reinstate him as their nominee. I suspect you'll see a mutiny when they roll call the votes. Face facts: the ONLY people crushed by the on-the-fly substitution are Trump supporters who banked on beating Biden on the age/mental capacity thing. Now the only old unstable candidate is their own.

Of course they don't care. They're winning, or at least think they're winning. What did I just tell you about Americans loving a winner and not tolerating a loser?

Well at least you cleaned up the grammar. As for cleaning up the thought behind the grammar? Not so much.

In which Guy With Hair From a Spray Can lectures us on authenticity.

You need to take a couple hours here to sober up.

That's right. If it weren't for Trump, Biden would've allowed Putin to have all of Ukraine. Where you find support for that stupid contention is beyond me.

^ Is this in some unfamiliar dialect? Because in ordinary English it really doesn't make sense.

Cognitive decline? Well what else explains saying something as stupid as "Congressional Medal of Honor Not as Good as Presidential Medal of Freedom Because Medal of Honor Recipients Are Injured or Dead." We all know Trump has thought these things for many years. In fact, this latest comment convinces me once and for all that "suckers and losers" is accurate. But he had some tiny degree of self-censorship in the past. Now he's just blurting out every idiotic and offensive thing that pops into what's left of his brain.

I like how one of the mods started a thread on the main board, something like "Random Talking Head Says Something About the Bills." A nice resting place for all the Did You Hear What Chris Simms Said About Josh" or "Colin Cowherd Says the Bills' Window is Closing" threads. We need that on PPP. May I suggest: "Random Black Person No One Has Ever Heard Of Expresses Support for Trump"

They drilled, baby, drilled! Until they had too much and had to slow down. https://www.wsj.com/finance/commodities-futures/a-natural-gas-glut-is-forcing-drillers-to-dial-backagain-ff2e56a1?mod=hp_lead_pos11 Another stupid Trump talking point shot to sh!t

I will choose my words carefully. No comment on religion or the appropriateness of religious statuary. Just one comment from the purely art criticism perspective: was the artist trying to make the statue look like Cornelius?