2024 Presidential Election Thread - Let's keep the party going.

[RDCanecutter 26917]

31 minutes ago, immamac said:

No you wouldn't have. You'd have at least told him to go fuck himself at a minimum. 

I'da talked to him and asked for shit. Ambassadorship to the Zapatistas holed up inside a building at the UNAM. An authentic solid gold Trump statue paperweight. A nice new van with (peel-off) MAGA stickers. Secret lair inside Yellowstone.

Lemons, lemonade.

[cactusflinthead 27628]

4 minutes ago, t_eight said:

Has there been - in the last 50 years - a President or Vice President with a beard or facial hair?

How about 1933?

Charles Curtis was the last mustachioed vice president in 1933 during his time under Herbert Hoover.

The last veep to sport a beard as hefty as Vance’s was Charles Fairbanks, who was Teddy Roosevelt’s second-in-command from 1905 through 1909.

https://nypost.com/2024/07/15/us-news/jd-vance-would-become-first-vp-with-facial-hair-in-nearly-century/#:~:text=Charles Curtis was the last,command from 1905 through 1909.

[David Dennison 19569]

I'd ask him to say the line.

[Bozo_Casanova 26905]

55 minutes ago, Bullneck said:

Biden is handling Lester Holt pretty well.  

If you think that’s impressive, you should see him handle a bowl of soup.

[aggie08 21848]

12 minutes ago, t_eight said:

Has there been - in the last 50 years - a President or Vice President with a beard or facial hair?

Maybe this will finally be the breach of institutional norms that trips them up!

[texasdago 7772]

It's funny that people think switching candidates won't immediately lead to Republican legislatures trying to boot the Republican candidate off of the ballots.  It's so obviously predictable and all y'all are falling for it.  Wasn't one state trying to remove Biden from the ballot because of the timing of the DMC?  If a new candidate is announced, they won't certify shit.

[elguapo 4620]

 

[UTGrad98 2343]

Just now, elguapo said:

 

All 12 of them?

[aggie08 21848]

1 minute ago, elguapo said:

 

[Aqua Buddha 14809]

2 minutes ago, elguapo said:

 

Here comes a strongly worded letter before they end up supporting him.

[aggie08 21848]

12 minutes ago, texasdago said:

It's funny that people think switching candidates won't immediately lead to Republican legislatures trying to boot the Republican candidate off of the ballots.  It's so obviously predictable and all y'all are falling for it.  Wasn't one state trying to remove Biden from the ballot because of the timing of the DMC?  If a new candidate is announced, they won't certify shit.

Cool. Let's fight that battle later with a candidate that has >0.5% chance of winning.

[Old Freak Nasty 821]

There are no "wings" of the GQP.

[aggie08 21848]

I think the Nikki Haley wing is just Nikki Haley.

[6th Street 6693]

Don't worry, GOP leaders told Nikki Haley that "she's one of the good ones."

[Dnaguy 12711]

3 minutes ago, Old Freak Nasty said:

There are no "wings" of the GQP.

You sure about that?……

[Mo Horn 8939]

Local news just showed Trump's introduction of Vance as his running mate. There was no bandage on his ear. But at the convention tonight a big white one. Lol. 

Edited July 16 by Mo Horn

[6th Street 6693]

Maybe he picked at the scab and opened it up? 

[elfenix 34775]

1 hour ago, 4th&Five said:

"Union busting Californian wants you to lose your job"

 

Play it all over the Midwest 

[BehoId, The Underminer! 11669]

1 hour ago, elguapo said:

 

Some fairly sad hopium

[Anastasis 23717]

1 hour ago, elguapo said:

 

JD Vance is anti-israel? Twitter rots brains. 

 

[F250 29204]

1 hour ago, Mo Horn said:

Local news just showed Trump's introduction of Vance as his running mate. There was no bandage on his ear. But at the convention tonight a big white one. Lol. 

Reminds me of the time I sprained my wrist during a football game. It swelled up and hurt like a mother fucker. I was holding it in a way after the game that triggered our linebacker coach.

He made the pussy hand sign and asked me if I knew what it meant, then said it's a pussy. "Quit acting like a pussy looking for sympathy. Be a man."

[YGIFS 19458]

Trump missed a grifting opportunity there. Put a MAGA logo on that ear bandage and sell them for $20.  25mm Americans would buy them by the end of week.  Most would buy one for each ear since they don’t listen well anyway.  

[Jhawkmvp 1514]

2 hours ago, TexasHooch said:

Pence has a beard.

[bolverk 30366]

1 hour ago, Mo Horn said:

Local news just showed Trump's introduction of Vance as his running mate. There was no bandage on his ear. But at the convention tonight a big white one. Lol. 

I'm not a doctor, and I certainly ain't a conspiracist. That said, blowing up the image to 500% and then using the standard MS Snipping Tool, it's hard to tell if there's even a blemish on that ear. Maybe they applied a shit-ton of bronzer to it. But if a bullet passed through or grazed that ear, would you be able to tell it from this photograph?

Of course, I don't doubt that he was shot at. Nor do I doubt that it was maybe nicked, and the bullet got really, really close to his actual cranium. His life was in serious danger, and he could've been murdered if not for his deal-with-the-devil luck, but does anyone see anything in that photo that would indicate that a bullet "pierced the upper part of [his] right ear?" At most, it looks a little bruised, but this blurry photo and my shitty eyes don't see a "piercing."

 

 

One other point. I didn't watch the RNC television show, nor do I know the context in which this photograph was taken. Was Vance standing on something? Because I always got the impression he was a pretty short guy, and Google lists him as 5'7".

[RDCanecutter 26917]

1 hour ago, Mo Horn said:

Local news just showed Trump's introduction of Vance as his running mate. There was no bandage on his ear. But at the convention tonight a big white one. Lol. 

When I was maybe 19 I had some minor surgery around my jaw and sideburn. Naturally, they shaved off that one sideburn, and there were some stitches, but I coulda walked around with it uncovered. But my 19-year-old vanity was stricken, so, on my own, I constructed a gauze covering for it all and taped it over my long-gone sideburn.

It looked stupid. It was stupid. Almost like his ear-patch

[C-Man 27820]

5 hours ago, Rex Kramer said:

Well I hope. I think any civil war would be short lived (intra-term) and Trump’s old age gives me comfort it won’t last long. There’s nobody as charismatic AND crazy as he is in his family or his camp. JD Vance isn’t that guy. He’s an opportunist who is gonna blow his political wad on this dalliance with Trump anyway. 

If Crooks had been successful Saturday, I think it would’ve hastened civil war. But it also would’ve brought us together more quickly. SS incompetence almost hastened this whole thing. Unless the rhetoric calms the fuck down, which with Project ‘25 it won’t, we’re heading there. 

My concern is that Trump is simply the key master that will help the truly evil goons take control of American Democracy. He gets in and SCOTUS will be fucked for the remainder of my life. These guys are not gonna let go once they nab power. It ain’t their style. After the events of the past week, I anticipate Trump living quite a bit longer than we’d all expect (or hope).

[Vegas64 716]

6 hours ago, bolverk said:

Here's a link to his Atlantic piece I mentioned. If it doesn't work, let me know, and I'll copy/paste the full text.

Can you please copy/paste? I only got the first two or three paragraphs and it was getting good...

[C-Man 27820]

2 hours ago, Mo Horn said:

Local news just showed Trump's introduction of Vance as his running mate. There was no bandage on his ear. But at the convention tonight a big white one. Lol. 

Did he actually introduce him on camera and this was a still from that? If not, no telling when that pic was taken. It could also be them Photoshopped together, which explains how 5-7 Vance seems as tall as 6-3 (lol) Trump in his lifts.

[bolverk 30366]

4 minutes ago, C-Man said:

Did he actually introduce him on camera and this was a still from that? If not, no telling when that pic was taken. It could also be them Photoshopped together, which explains how 5-7 Vance seems as tall as 6-3 (lol) Trump in his lifts.

Yeah, I dunno. Maybe he was standing on a milk crate for that shot. Again, I didn't watch the show and only judging by that single photo.

[tx 3 putt 78737]

3 hours ago, TexasHooch said:

Pence has a beard.

[C-Man 27820]

Just now, bolverk said:

Yeah, I dunno. Maybe he was standing on a milk crate for that shot. Again, I didn't watch the show and only judging by that single photo.

Was there any kind of announcement ceremony anyway? It seemed like all of a sudden the news came out early this afternoon. I couldn’t bring myself to even turn on the GOP convention so I have no idea of Vance was on stage tonight.

[bolverk 30366]

14 minutes ago, Vegas64 said:

Can you please copy/paste? I only got the first two or three paragraphs and it was getting good...

I might've given you the wrong link with several tabs open.

Here's the original piece. It's not nearly as long as I had remembered it, but I assume it gives a good flavor of his central thesis before he revealed himself to be a complete cynical fraud regarding folks working in or growing up in economically depressed towns.

I grew up in a small town in the Permian Basin during the Oil Bust of the '80s, so when I first read this, it resonated with me even though I'm far more on the Left as I'd seen families and lives fall apart during that regional economic depression.

Essay in spoiler:

Spoiler

Opioid of the Masses
To many, Donald Trump feels good, but he can’t fix America’s growing social and cultural crisis, and the eventual comedown will be harsh.
By J.D. Vance

A few Saturdays ago, my wife and I spent the morning volunteering at a community garden in our San Francisco neighborhood. After a few hours of casual labor, we and the other volunteers dispersed to our respective destinations: tasty brunches, day trips to wine country, art-gallery tours. It was a perfectly normal day, by San Francisco standards.

That very same Saturday, in the small Ohio town where I grew up, four people overdosed on heroin. A local police lieutenant coolly summarized the banality of it all: “It’s not all that unusual for a 24-hour period here.” He was right: in Middletown, Ohio, that too is a perfectly normal day.

Folks back home speak of heroin like an apocalyptic invader, something that assailed the town mysteriously and without warning. Yet the truth is that heroin crept slowly into Middletown’s families and communities—not by invasion but by invitation.

Very few Americans are strangers to addiction. Shortly before I graduated from law school, I learned that my own mother lay comatose in a hospital, the consequence of an apparent heroin overdose. Yet heroin was only her latest drug of choice. Prescription opioids—“hillbilly heroin” some call it, to highlight its special appeal among white working-class folks like us—had already landed Mom in the hospital and cost our family dearly in the decade before her first taste of actual heroin. And before her own father gave up the bottle in middle age, he was a notoriously violent drunk. In our community, there has long been a large appetite to dull the pain; heroin is just the newest vehicle.

Of course, the pain itself has increased in recent years, and it comes from many places. Some of it is economic, as the factories that provided many U.S. towns and cities material security have downsized or altogether ceased to exist. Some of it is aesthetic, as the storefronts that once made American towns beautiful and vibrant gave way to cash-for-gold stores and payday lenders. Some of it is domestic, as rising divorce rates reveal home lives as dependable as steel-mill jobs. Some of it is political, as Americans watch from afar while a government machine that rarely tries to speak to them, and acts in their interests even less, sputters along. And some of it is cultural, from the legitimate humiliation of losing wars fought by the nation’s children to the illegitimate sense that some fall behind only because others jump ahead.

During this election season, it appears that many Americans have reached for a new pain reliever. It too, promises a quick escape from life’s cares, an easy solution to the mounting social problems of U.S. communities and culture. It demands nothing and requires little more than a modest presence and maybe a few enablers. It enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump.

Last Sunday, the day before Memorial Day, I met a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War at a local coffee shop. “I was lucky,” he told me. “At least I came home. A lot of my buddies didn’t. The thing is, the media still talks about us like we lost that war! I like to think my dead friends accomplished something.” Imagine, for that man, the vengeful joy of a Trump rally. That brief feeling of power, of defiance, of sending a message to the very political and media establishment that, for 45 years, has refused to listen. Trump brings power to those who hate their lack of it, and his message is tonic to communities that have felt nothing but decline for decades.

In some ways, Trump’s large, national coalition defies easy characterization. He draws from a broad base of good people: kind folks who open their homes and hearts to people of all colors and creeds, married couples with happy homes and families who live nearby, public servants who put their lives on the line to fight fires in their communities. Not all Trump voters spend their days searching for an analgesic.

Yet a common thread among Trump’s faithful, even among those whose individual circumstances remain unspoiled, is that they hail from broken communities. These are places where good jobs are impossible to come by. Where people have lost their faith and abandoned the churches of their parents and grandparents. Where the death rates of poor white people go up even as the death rates of all other groups go down. Where too many young people spend their days stoned instead of working and learning.

Many years ago, our neighbor (and my grandma’s old friend) in Middletown moved out and rented his house on a Section 8 voucher—a federal program that offers housing subsidies to low-income people. One of the first folks to move in called her landlord to report a leaky roof. By the time the landlord arrived, he discovered the woman naked on her couch. After calling him, she had started the water for a bath, gotten high, and passed out. Forget about the original leak, now much of the upstairs—including her and her children’s possessions—was completely destroyed. Not every Trump voter lives like this woman, but nearly every Trump voter knows someone who does.

Though the details differ, men and women like my neighbor represent, in the aggregate, a social crisis of historic proportions. There is no group of people hurtling more quickly to social decay. No group of people fears the future more, dies with such frequency from heroin, and exposes its children to such significant domestic chaos. Not long ago, a teacher who works with at-risk youth in my hometown told me, “We’re expected to be shepherds to these children, but they’re all raised by wolves.” And those wolves are here—not coming in from Mexico, not prowling the halls of power in Washington or Wall Street—but here in ordinary American communities and families and homes.

What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission. As he told a New Hampshire crowd—folks all too familiar with the opioid scourge—he can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.

The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action—from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals. Yet so long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning. There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.

I’m not sure when or how that realization arrives: maybe in a few months, when Trump loses the election; maybe in a few years, when his supporters realize that even with a President Trump, their homes and families are still domestic war zones, their newspapers’ obituaries continue to fill with the names of people who died too soon, and their faith in the American Dream continues to falter. But it will come, and when it does, I hope Americans cast their gaze to those with the most power to address so many of these problems: each other. And then, perhaps the nation will trade the quick high of “Make America Great Again” for real medicine.

 

[bolverk 30366]

12 minutes ago, C-Man said:

Was there any kind of announcement ceremony anyway? It seemed like all of a sudden the news came out early this afternoon. I couldn’t bring myself to even turn on the GOP convention so I have no idea of Vance was on stage tonight.

I'm in the same boat since I didn't watch a bit of it. I was just going off of the photo that I quoted. I just knew Vance was a little short (NOT THAT SHORT!!!) but when I saw that he appeared taller than Trump in that photo, it felt way off.

[tx 3 putt 78737]

 

[tx 3 putt 78737]

 

[tx 3 putt 78737]

Great job Joe Biden ….

 

[tx 3 putt 78737]

😂😂😂

 

[tx 3 putt 78737]

If this goes to the Supreme Court, this country is coooooooooked !

 

[Victor Lazlo 1814]

5 hours ago, Mo Horn said:

Local news just showed Trump's introduction of Vance as his running mate. There was no bandage on his ear. But at the convention tonight a big white one. Lol. 

Don’t get trolled by trolls. That photo was from a campaign event in Dayton, Ohio, November 7, 2022.

https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/11/07/at-election-eve-rally-with-ohio-republicans-trump-sets-nov-15-for-very-big-announcement/

[WhatTheBuck 28940]

7 hours ago, Old Freak Nasty said:

There are no "wings" of the GQP.

Well, sort of.

 

[bolverk 30366]

5 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

Huh. If I were to tell you that linking or posting commentary from a particular website enables, emboldens, or enriches its owner with whom you fundamentally disagree, would you stop? I mean, driving traffic to a site owned by a South African white supremacist certainly is a choice.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13742]

10 hours ago, elguapo said:

 

Haley must have a lobbying customer who wants something from the trump campaign. She hems and haws, the trump campaign gives her something and she makes money from the person sponsoring her. 

[Pancho 46370]

JD Vance is a DEI hire

 

 

[Pancho 46370]

 

[linux 1787]

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-no-poll-boost-after-assassination-attempt-us-election-1925680

[immamac 44414]

3 minutes ago, linux said:

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-no-poll-boost-after-assassination-attempt-us-election-1925680

Just like the headlines post debate of no Biden dip after the debate. 

People are so fucking checked out it's unreal. One of the candidates had an assassination attempt and the unengaged are still like yeah fuck that I'm not voting I don't want to get shot. 

[texasdago 7772]

10 minutes ago, Pancho said:

 

So 25% undecided... allegedly... seems like worthless data.

[elfenix 34775]

6 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

when like the 3 votes out of 150 million are cast illegally (usually by republicans registered in multiple places) the right cries VOTE DILUTION! but there's never any cries of speech dilution, even though we're all drowning in it. 

[Zonahorn 8079]

 

[Chuckie Finster 23095]

12 minutes ago, linux said:

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-no-poll-boost-after-assassination-attempt-us-election-1925680

We really gonna do this again?