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76  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: November 04, 2020, 12:40:37 AM
Looking good for Trump in Florida, he has done very well in Miami area

I know Democrats were concerned last week at the very low early voting turnout in Miami-Dade, which they didn't really understand. It was specific to there, ie other high-population counties were okay. They were hoping to whip more in, but I'm not sure what happened since - looks like they didn't manage it. If the Dems do badly in Miami, their goose is probably cooked for the State, as they need to do well in those Southern counties, where all the North-East retirees live, to offset the Hispanics in the Northern counties.
77  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: November 04, 2020, 12:27:35 AM
Not that it changes our life that much (unless The Don presses the red button lol), but does anyone actually want trump to win?

Ok I'll rephrase that, there will be people on here who do want trump to win, but is there anyone willing to admit that publicly? 

I don't think that having Trump as President would be as bad as we imagine. A number of his positions are to the left of mainstream Republicans and would be more socially responsible to our eyes. In areas where he didn't have a developed view, he has simply adopted the mainstream GOP position, so would be no better or worse than a traditional Republican President. On his headline policies, he'd get the irrelevant wall, but the more extreme ones would get tied up in Congress and never happen. The main tension would be around his isolationism, both anti-trade protectionism and non-intervention in world affairs, though it's hard to know to what extent either would come to pass.

I'm actually surprised, though, that you're not on the Trump train. I would have thought he was right up your and arbboy's street.

Wanted to see what page this diary was at on election day last time (page 73 or so) and came across this post.

On reflection, MT, would you revise the opinion in the first line :-)

Are you staying up all night, any plans to post any updates through the night ?

Wow, just summarise the last four years. Leaving 2020 out, I don't think the first three years were as bad as they could have been. The organisation in the White House was chaotic, especially in the first year. There have been so many senior staff comings and goings that it's a wonder anything got done. Most of his closest associates are no longer with him, and an embarrassing number of them are in prison. I remember during the mayhem of the first two years, we used to say "Thank God there hasn't been a crisis - imagine what they'll be like if there is one."

Many of the failures are obvious. He couldn't get much done on healthcare. America's image is in the gutter round the world and the country is more openly divided, with controversial groups more apparent. Already-existing environmental policies have taken a battering, topped by withdrawing from the Climate Agreement. Some Cabinet picks were installed to damage their Departments, which they did, though they would call it removing bureaucracy and red tape. Tillerson, in particular, decimated the State Department and destroyed decades of built-up knowledge.

Foreign Affairs has been horrible. Trump generally messed up everything with Europe, Russia, China, North Korea and anyone else you can think of. He caused mayhem in the Middle East by withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, combined with a series of questionable decisions on Syria and Afghanistan. On the other hand, he kept the US out of wars and didn't dabble in other countries' affairs too much, as he said he would.

There have been successes, prison reform being the one that comes to mind first, which was mainly thanks to Kushner. They inherited a boom with plummeting unemployment and pretended it was their doing, but at least didn't destroy it. Several of the Cabinet were decent picks who kept things going. They would also point to other achievements, which we would view as negatives, such as Court appointments and tax reform.

Has it been as bad as we imagined? Or about what we thought it would be? I would say that, overall, it's been horrific, both in their intent, and the incompetence with which they've gone about it, but it could have been worse.

Steve Hilton presents a decent defence of Trump's Presidency, emphasising promises kept, in the first 4½ minutes of this (warning - he dissembles about jobs, taxes, energy, North Korea, the Middle East, etc). I wouldn't bother with the rest of it.
 


And yes, I'll be staying up, and I'm sure I won't be able to resist posting thoughts as the news starts rolls in.
78  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: November 03, 2020, 07:00:23 PM
First result of the election was a sweep for Biden at Dixville Notch, the first time it's happened since 1960.



Note the vote-splitting, usually a sign of a sophisticated electorate, with most of the votes for Governor going to Republican Chris Sununu (son of John Sununu, NH Governor in the Eighties and GB Snr's Chief of Staff), while Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Annie Kuster both picked up four out of five in their re-election races for Senate and House.

Biden did a funny about the result: "Based on Trump's notion, I'm going to declare victory right now."



 Click to see full-size image.
79  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: November 03, 2020, 05:20:20 PM
Lol, Donald has tweeted himself dancing to YMCA, and pinned it.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1323534663453913093
80  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: November 03, 2020, 11:07:18 AM
Democrats have never been more scared. Though polls have narrowed a bit almost everywhere, their man is still comfortably ahead by around 5-6% in most Swing States, but they are jumpy as hell that Trump's voters are under-represented, for a number of reasons. One Iowa poll in particular gave them the yips on Saturday by reporting a seven point lead for Trump, when previous ones have shown the State neck-and-neck. This poll is so significant because exactly the same thing happened with this very poll in 2016, and it was the first indication that the situation wasn't as everyone thought. All the other polls have shown no major change. The major exception is Trafalgar, which has consistently predicted a Trump win, as has the Sunday Express.

Although there are many possible outcomes, it's quite simple really. Biden seems to have safely retaken Wisconsin and Michigan. If he holds all of Hillary's States, he just needs to win one out of Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia or Pennsylvania, and he's ahead in all of them. Florida or Ohio would also do the job, but Florida is even and he's behind in Ohio. The only Hillary States that might be threatened are Minnesota and Nevada, especially Nevada, where there are a lot of working-class Hispanics. This demographic has moved to Trump in significant numbers since 2016, and they are clustered in a few States, including Florida and Nevada. If Trump wins, it will probably be thanks to them (specifically the Cuban and Venezuelan elements).

When will we know which way it's going? The first significant results will probably be from some parts of Ohio, which should give an idea of which way the wind is blowing. Georgia, North Carolina and Florida will close around 7-8pm, and will start producing results quite quickly. Wisconsin and Michigan will be late, as they start counting later. If Trump holds AZ, NC, GA, FL and OH, it'll come down to Pennsylvania, which will take for ever. State laws prohibit pre-processing of mail-ins (opening and smoothing), so it could take days to know which way it's going.
81  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: November 03, 2020, 01:19:28 AM
Voter suppression is rampant in this election. It has long been an issue in US elections but a lot of people were shocked at how blatantly it occurred in the Georgia Governor election in 2018, when Brian Kemp stole the election from Stacey Abrams. There have been steps taken to reduce it over the years, and more since 2018, but the GOP is ingenious at coming up with new methods of excluding voters.

 Click to see full-size image.


It’s hard to conceive of people having meetings where they discuss how they can delegitimise proper votes, but that must be what they do. Both sides have taken to the courts in Swing States to try to have each others's actions annulled. Republicans are trying to get certain votes disqualified, and Democrats to have restrictions cancelled.

Take Texas. Drop boxes have been a fantastic way of reducing the third-world lines of voters waiting for hours, so the Governor of Texas decreed that there can only be one drop-box per County. This mainly affects Harris County, which can take an hour to drive across and has one drop-box for a population of 4.7m (half of them living in the left-leaning city of Houston). There is no reason for this rule, other than to make it harder to vote. In response, Harris County introduced drive-through voting at 10 locations, so the GOP took a case to the State Supreme Court claiming that the County didn't have the authority to introduce new methods of voting. The case was thrown out today, and was appealed immediately to the Federal Court of Appeal.

In Florida, a law was brought in to prevent ex-prisoners from voting unless they had paid all fines and penalties, while it was made extremely difficult to find out how much you owed. Michael Bloomberg spent a few million paying off fines, which enabled a few thousand ex-cons to vote.
82  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: COVID19 on: November 02, 2020, 02:29:16 PM
Slovakia testing the whole population - half of them done in one day.

It’s ‘voluntary’, but you get the10 days compulsory isolation anyway if you don’t take part, and a fine of €1,650 if you’re caught breaking it.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32261-3/fulltext

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/01/half-slovakia-population-covid-tested-covid-one-day

UK is so much bigger let say we can do it in 14 days, by the time the last people have been tested the first people tested could of picked up the virus and passed it on


So we would have proportionately more testers. There may be reasons not to do it, but that shouldn't be the reason.
83  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: COVID19 on: November 02, 2020, 12:13:21 PM
Slovakia testing the whole population - half of them done in one day.

It’s ‘voluntary’, but you get the10 days compulsory isolation anyway if you don’t take part, and a fine of €1,650 if you’re caught breaking it.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32261-3/fulltext

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/01/half-slovakia-population-covid-tested-covid-one-day
84  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: October 30, 2020, 09:21:26 PM
How to misrepresent statistics.

Donald has been celebrating an increase of 33.1% in Quarterly GDP in Q3, the biggest increase on record - all thanks to his management of the economy.

However, this follows a retraction of 31.4% in Q2.



So that gets Q3 back to where Q1 was? Nope. Q2 was only 68.6% of Q1, so the Q3 increase is 33.1% of 68.6%, ie it only equals 22.7% of Q1. And Q1 was down on 2019 Q4. In other words, this ain't no recovery.

 Click to see full-size image.


It looks like a step in the right direction, but it has been forced by abandoning many of the health considerations in place in previous months, with all the health and economic repercussions of that still to come, possibly even worsened by being too bullish now. Not that that will stop Trump and the Republicans from representing it as an economic miracle.
85  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: October 30, 2020, 07:26:31 PM
Trump's email: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

He was tweeting until 3am DC time last night, firing off ten tweets in the 45 minutes up til then, and was back on the tweet at 8.15am, shooting off another seven between then and 9.30. Some people prefer a President who sleeps at 3am.

Well he doesn't go to the taskforce meetings anymore, so can have a sleep-in, in the mornings Smiley

It was Jim Acosta who highlighted it, but there were actually five hours between tweets, which is probably plenty for his age.
86  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: October 30, 2020, 04:07:21 PM
Trump's email: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

He was tweeting until 3am DC time last night, firing off ten tweets in the 45 minutes up til then, and was back on the tweet at 8.15am, shooting off another seven between then and 9.30. Some people prefer a President who sleeps at 3am.
87  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: October 30, 2020, 03:49:28 PM
Was this a mistake? Marco Rubio tweeted a photo of Biden with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro this morning https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1322143091487289344. In response, he has been deluged with pics of Trump with Kim Jong-Un, Xi Jinping, Putin, bin Salman, Erdogan, Duterte, Epstein etc, and with Rubio himself, as well as all the insults he and Trump flung at each other in 2016. It looks like a backfire but I'm not sure - Marco would have known what the reaction would be. The tweet would have been aimed at Venezuelans and Cubans in Florida, and they'll still see it.

 Click to see full-size image.


88  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: October 29, 2020, 09:35:50 PM
Kayleigh McEnany is a White House employee and is supposed to distance herself from the campaign. Things seemed to have a bit blurred lately.

 Click to see full-size image.
89  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: October 29, 2020, 05:57:13 PM
 Click to see full-size image.
90  Community Forums / The Lounge / Re: The Next President of the United States on: October 29, 2020, 05:56:57 PM
Highlight of the SoMe hearing was Ted Cruz' interrogation of just-out-of-bed Jack Dorsey.

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