[RedSparrows]

One of the numerous ironies of Trumpism is Trump is a camp ass motherfucker. He loves musicals, he dances to YMCA, he's a city boy through and through: dirty glitz and cheap luxury at your fingertips. He's a germophobe, I've read, a grotesque dandy, with the same love of the superficial as any Hollywood marketer.

Marry that to his grifting, his selfishness, his corruption, his infidelity, his aggression, his incoherence and his privilege and it makes the macho-man Republican Evangelical bootstraps frontiersman adoption even more freakishly bizarre and revoltingly cynical. Or, looked at another way, expressive of a deeper commonality in the US psyche: performance, symbol and power.

[The Weeping Angel]

That is without a doubt one of the most pathetic things I've heard a journalist say.

[RedSparrows]

Some voters don't care, so we should all lower ourselves to their standards. Fucking miserable.

[Crabcakes]

I’m not going to post the headline of this article here to spoil the ‘surprise’, but I’ll just say this - astonishingly, this isn’t a spoof. It’s a genuine article in a major US newspaper in the year 2024.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/opin ... p-win.html

[RedSparrows]

Do I want to log in to read that, based on the abstract and headline?

Fuck no, NYT, no I do not.

The bend and contortion the body politic has had to endure because it cannot handle a man-child is astonishing. This and the article TWA linked above show how utterly vacuous and inept the institutions can be. Which, in a cruelly ironic way, shows Trump is right about something. Just in all the wrong ways.

[satnav]

The Mail ran a headline last night suggesting that Mormons could be key to Trump winning the election. The headline would make a lot more sense if it said 'morons'.

[Philip Marlow]

I wouldn’t insist on anyone actually looking at the photographs. They’re upsetting. But it’s worth remembering that absolutely nobody involved went to prison.

[MisterMuncher]

I only found out recently that RFK’s missus is the actor Cheryl Hines, known for playing Larry David’s partner in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

You might have formed the impression from that that here was a very intelligent, attractive woman with a progressive outlook (I did), and wondered why the buggering fuck she actually married an anti-vaxxer crank like Kennedy. I still do.

If you have the time to spare, Behind The Bastards have just finished a four part series on RFKJR, and from that I learned the real mystery might be why she's still with him

FAO @Abernathy , the video version is now on YouTube if that's your thing. The presentation is very much love it or hate it, but Evans' research and facts tend to be pretty much spot on

[Abernathy]

I’m not going to post the headline of this article here to spoil the ‘surprise’, but I’ll just say this - astonishingly, this isn’t a spoof. It’s a genuine article in a major US newspaper in the year 2024.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/opin ... p-win.html

WTF? Trump is literally the worst human being on the fucking planet.

[Youngian]

Trump has a NASDAQ* listed company, who the fuck bought shares in it?

* The stock exchange created for frontier tech firms for savvy investors.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I’m not going to post the headline of this article here to spoil the ‘surprise’, but I’ll just say this - astonishingly, this isn’t a spoof. It’s a genuine article in a major US newspaper in the year 2024.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/26/opin ... p-win.html

There seems to be more of tradition of running OpEds by "the other side" in the US "liberal" press than here.. By all means run some conservative to argue something like social security investing more in the private sector, as the late Paul O'Neill did competently. There are 50 states, and some of the Red ones are doing well economically, so there's probably a fair bit that some conservatives are doing right. Ought to be no shortage of stuff the NY Times could look at, constructively.

But getting Rich Lowry of the National Review to write about Trump's superior character is pushing it. And it's apparently really bad.

[MisterMuncher]

Trump has a NASDAQ* listed company, who the fuck bought shares in it?

* The stock exchange created for frontier tech firms for savvy investors.

This was when he had to divest or disengage from Truth Social. IIRC, it got a certain amount of focus from the GameStop Short Squeeze types* who believed it would be a good target for their decentralized pump and dump/ EcOnOmIc JuStIcE!!! routine. That and Trumpists buying in pumped it's value pretty high early on, but I'd imagine the invisible hand is busily making wanker signs to them now. Trump himself had his holdings frozen for six months after going public so he couldn't sell. That moratorium expires in a week or two, so I'd imagine the remains of the arse are about to fall out of it.


*probably too much to go into at this juncture, but essentially a bunch of idiots over on Reddit high on bullshit fumes decided they'd get into high finance to try and fuck over hedge funds/make big money. The entire thing is by turns hilarious and terrifying. There's a great video by Dan Olson/Folding Ideas on youtube explaining the whole affair, but it's two hours long

[RandomElement]

probably too much to go into at this juncture, but essentially a bunch of idiots over on Reddit high on bullshit fumes decided they'd get into high finance to try and fuck over hedge funds/make big money. The entire thing is by turns hilarious and terrifying. There's a great video by Dan Olson/Folding Ideas on youtube explaining the whole affair, but it's two hours long
[/quote]

I've watched the Dan Olson video, and it's well worth watching. He has also produced videos on NFTs, with an introductory section on the 2008 crash that summarises what happened well. Then, there is a video about Decentraland, which was intended to be the Metaverse but turned into a bunch of tech bros infighting. The video forms an excellent narrative around the tech bro mindset.

[MisterMuncher]

"Line Goes Up" is one of the best documentaries of the last decade and it's a shame it'll never get that recognition because it's "just a YouTube video"

[Crabcakes]

Saw a post today that is entirely conjecture, but made me think: Trump is doing so badly in terms of his performances, speeches and the like, is his backup plan if he can’t win outright or cheat by jury that he’s laying the grounds for commuted sentences on the basis of illness? And - to make sure the hero/martyr factor is baked in and avoid any accusations of cowardice or weakness - that the shooter event will be used as the root issue for PTSD.

Or - more sinister - his GOP/tech bro handlers are letting him do this so in the event of a win *they* can push him out using the same reasoning and install Vance.

[Andy McDandy]

Not that clever and not that stupid.

I think it's as simple as this - he thought it'd be bellicose old man vs confused old man, and that volume would win out. He's now completely thrown, and doesn't really know what to do. Furthermore, people are laughing at him, and seem immune to his rather tired insults.

If he avoids jail, I think he'll go into the election as planned and fall on his face. He'll do his usual whinges, but we won't see another January 6th, because he doesn't have that base of power and communications he had in 2021. He'll end up like another Strom Thurmond or Harold Stassen* - a perennial election year joke.

*Senators who could be relied on to launch campaigns for the GOP ticket, only to invariably be dumped at the first hurdle.

[mattomac]

Notice how much of the praise of Trump is the 2016 election.

The two Trump books by Carol Leonnig and Phillip Rucker are well worth a read, he effectively stops listening to a wide range of people in 2020 and it all goes to pot.

His base is even smaller than then, I do feel he can still win but at this moment it does feel like he needs something and while Biden offered everything possible, the democrats and the way Harris has been taken on there seems so very little.

If she becomes President, I expect she will do well, her biography feels like someone who had to fight to be recognised at every turn, glad to see it seems to have been republished.

It certainty seems to have energised the Democrats, you won’t get a Jan 6 anyhow because he has no control over those main areas of office. In fact you will probably see them turn on him.

It’s somewhat surprised me that the Conservatives haven’t yet gone swinging for Sunak over here, still time mind.

[davidjay]

Saw a post today that is entirely conjecture, but made me think: Trump is doing so badly in terms of his performances, speeches and the like, is his backup plan if he can’t win outright or cheat by jury that he’s laying the grounds for commuted sentences on the basis of illness? And - to make sure the hero/martyr factor is baked in and avoid any accusations of cowardice or weakness - that the shooter event will be used as the root issue for PTSD.

Or - more sinister - his GOP/tech bro handlers are letting him do this so in the event of a win *they* can push him out using the same reasoning and install Vance.

I'm not sure about the latter, because he's like Johnson in appealing to voters who would Accept No Substitute. The idea that it's his get out of jail card bears thinking about, though.

[satnav]

Trump is standing in the election for two reasons firstly he wants to win to make up for the fact that he lost the last election and secondly he needs to pardon himself. I'm not sure he really wants to be president for a full years because by year 3 he will be a lame duck president. His chances of achieving some kind of lasting legacy are very slim.

[Andy McDandy]

He's hinted he'll aim to repeal the 2 terms amendment. Or just declare himself president for life, with his kids following. Seems he got some ideas from little rocket man.