US Elections 2020 (geopolitics, informed debate, no ad hominems)

Biden

14 (66.7%)

Trump

7 (33.3%)

Total Members Voted: 21

Voting closed: November 02, 2020, 06:25:59 pm

[JoeKitchen]

I don't read the tabloids. If you want to rely on them, that is of course your choice.

NY Post is the longest running newspaper in the USA with the 4th highest readership of any in print paper.  Writing it off as a tabloid is a rather uninformed opinion. 

[faberryman]

NY Post is the longest running newspaper in the USA with the 4th highest readership of any in print paper.  Writing it off as a tabloid is a rather uninformed opinion.

Head on over to their webpage, take a look at the stories, and come back and tell me that they are not a tabloid. Do you read the New York Post on a daily basis? Is it your go-to source for news? Do you honestly wade through all that crap every day? I googled up the New York Post and here is the description I found top right:

"The New York Post is a daily tabloid newspaper in New York City. The Post also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com and the entertainment site Decider.com."

This looks like a good story: "Man accused of dumping pal’s severed head in recycling bin".

Oh, and you might want to check your stats on longest running and highest readership:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_States

Are you doing okay?

[Manoli]

Please give us a break on this nonsense.

Quite.

[TechTalk]

NY Post is the longest running newspaper in the USA with the 4th highest readership of any in print paper.  Writing it off as a tabloid is a rather uninformed opinion. 

The ridiculously skewed story that you linked to and even more absurd headline are good examples of why the New York Post is considered a tabloid.

Here are a couple of recent examples of their front page that illustrates their commitment and desire to attract readers that are looking for serious journalism.

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2019/Images/bezos_pecker.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Kim Thong Un and Trump

[John Camp]

NY Post is the longest running newspaper in the USA with the 4th highest readership of any in print paper.  Writing it off as a tabloid is a rather uninformed opinion.

tab·loid
/ˈtabˌloid/
 
noun: tabloid; plural noun: tabloids
a newspaper having pages half the size of those of a standard newspaper, typically popular in style and dominated by headlines, photographs, and sensational stories.
"the tabloid press"

Seems to describe the Post fairly accurately. The Post's most famous headline: “Headless Body in Topless Bar” ran on The Post’s front page on April 15, 1983.

[JoeKitchen]

The ridiculously skewed story that you linked to and even more absurd headline are good examples of why the New York Post is considered a tabloid.

Here are a couple of recent examples of their front page that illustrates their commitment and desire to attract readers that are looking for serious journalism.

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2019/Images/bezos_pecker.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Kim Thong Un and Trump

And yet the NYTs pushed Russia collusion story, which we know was not true, the 1619 project (discredit by all credible historians), and a lot of other false stories.

Spare me your righteous indignation, especially when your side publishes literal shit on shingles after it decided to kill its ethics. 

Journalism is dead on the left, and it is the fault of the left. 

[faberryman]

And yet the NYTs pushed Russia collusion story, which we know was not true, the 1619 project (discredit by all credible historians), and a lot of other false stories.

Spare me your righteous indignation, especially when your side publishes literal shit on shingles after it decided to kill its ethics. 

Journalism is dead on the left, and it is the fault of the left.

Fine. What's the problem? If you think that journalism is dead on the left, don't read the journalism on the left. Read the journalism on the right, or whatever journalism meets whatever criteria you deem appropriate. I don't read the New York Post because I think it publishes, as you put it, "literal shit on shingles". If you think the NYT publishes "literal shit on shingles", don't read it. Seems pretty obvious to me.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Please give us a break on this nonsense.

Quite.

Not long now. Here, at any rate. From both sides' nonsense.

Jeremy

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I am putting my money where my mouth is:

[faberryman]

I am putting my money where my mouth is:

Did you make a big contribution to the Trump campaign or something?

[PeterAit]

NY Post is the longest running newspaper in the USA with the 4th highest readership of any in print paper.  Writing it off as a tabloid is a rather uninformed opinion.

The Post is owned by the wackadoonsky and generally far-right Falun Gong sect.

[faberryman]

The Post is owned by the wackadoonsky and generally far-right Falun Gong sect.

So, I guess I am a yahoo or something because I didn't know anything about the Falun Gong sect, and as I have just about deluded myself into believing that I am naturally curious about stuff, I went over to Wikipedia to read up on them, because reading a Wikipedia article doesn't require that much intellectual ability, and is usually mercifully short. Turns out I was wrong. I think I may have mentioned before that I frequently am. It turns out that the article wasn't mercifully short. If you printed it out, it would be sort of like a CVS receipt. But I read it anyway, more or less, and I thought I would share a couple of paragraphs that caught my fancy.

"Both Shen Yun and Epoch Times are funded and operated by members of Falun Gong, a controversial spiritual group that was banned by China's government in 1999. [...] Falun Gong melds traditional Taoist principles with occasionally bizarre pronouncements from its Chinese-born founder and leader, Li Hongzhi. Among other pronouncements, Li has claimed that aliens started invading human minds in the beginning of the 20th century, leading to mass corruption and the invention of computers. He has also denounced feminism and homosexuality and claimed he can walk through walls and levitate. But the central tenet of the group’s wide-ranging belief system is its fierce opposition to communism...."

"Despite its conservative agenda, Epoch Times took pains until recently to avoid wading into partisan U.S. politics. That all changed in June 2015 after Donald Trump descended on a golden escalator to announce his presidential candidacy, proclaiming that he "beat China all the time." In Trump, Falun Gong saw more than just an ally—it saw a savior. As a former Epoch Times editor told NBC News, the group's leaders "believe that Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the communist party."

If you like the part about walking through walls, there was this really interesting episode of Superman broadcast on TV in the 1950's called "The Mysterious Cube". I would link to it but you would have to pay $1.99 to watch it. Basically Superman vibrates the molecules in his body so everything lines up and he can sort of melt his way through a concrete wall to catch the crook hiding inside.  Most of the time he just goes crashing through like this:

https://youtu.be/1Z8KLHQy8aY

There was also a little bit in the article about the Chinese government killing Falun Gong members to harvest their organs, but I won't waste valuable bandwidth posting a quote. If you would like to read about that, and Falun Gong in general, here's the link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong

I am no media expert, but I think the New York Post would be better off posting stories about Superman than posting stories about David Pecker and making pecker jokes, but I guess pecker jokes sell papers. The next thing you know the New York Post will run a story about Hunter Biden's pecker. Apparently they have a photo of it. Rudy Giuliani gave it to them. Tucker Carlson almost lost his copy of the photo of Hunter Biden's pecker, but fortunately UPS found it. Stormy Daniels has already told us all about Donald Trump's pecker, so that's old news. I have been thinking about just how far we have come as a society in the past 25 years. Back then we knew that Bill Clinton was getting blow jobs in the Oval Office, but we really didn't know that much about his pecker. These days we know a lot about our president's pecker, and not just because he bragged about it in the debates last time around. Now we have an eye witness. Per aspera ad astra.

[faberryman]

On Fox and Friends this morning, Trump said he wouldn't play games when announcing victory.  I don't believe him, but that is neither here nor there. Here is the statement from our ever articulate president:

“When there’s victory. If there’s victory,” Trump responded. “I think we’ll have victory. I think the polls are, you know, suppression polls. And I think we’ll have victory. But only when there’s victory. I mean, you know, there’s no reason to play games. And I think we’ll have victory.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/03/trump-says-he-wont-declare-victory-prematurely-433915

That short passage was so erudite, I ran it though the Flesch-Kincaid reading level analyzer and it came up with a grade level of 2.93. I'll give Trump the benefit of the doubt and round the score up to third grade. Sounds about right.

[LesPalenik]

“When there’s victory. If there’s victory,” Trump responded. “I think we’ll have victory. I think the polls are, you know, suppression polls. And I think we’ll have victory. But only when there’s victory. I mean, you know, there’s no reason to play games. And I think we’ll have victory.”

Looks like he is just rounding the corner.

[TechTalk]

As we leave politics behind us, I'd like to share what is among the most famous and effective responses to a false political charge during a campaign. This was decades ago, so forget the politics and enjoy the humor of it.

Below is a little over two-minute clip of the FDR "Fala speech" from 1944. Many of you have probably heard it before. As an interesting side note, the Fala speech originated from an ad libbed joke about the Fala charge that Orson Welles told FDR. FDR liked Orson's joke enough that he had it incorporated into his speech.

https://www.youtube.com/FDR's Fala Speech Restored

[JoeKitchen]

On Fox and Friends this morning, Trump said he wouldn't play games when announcing victory.  I don't believe him, but that is neither here nor there. Here is the statement from our ever articulate president:

“When there’s victory. If there’s victory,” Trump responded. “I think we’ll have victory. I think the polls are, you know, suppression polls. And I think we’ll have victory. But only when there’s victory. I mean, you know, there’s no reason to play games. And I think we’ll have victory.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/03/trump-says-he-wont-declare-victory-prematurely-433915

That short passage was so erudite, I ran it though the Flesch-Kincaid reading level analyzer and it came up with a grade level of 2.93. I'll give Trump the benefit of the doubt and round the score up to 3rd grade. Sounds about right.

LOL  If this was Obama vs Trump, sure these critiques would be honest.  But Biden?  C'mon man! 

"... badakathcare?!?" 

But anyway, Biden was at +5 in PA last week, and today, the polls show them dead even with +2 for Trump in a couple of them.  I voted already around noon, no lines.  My wife just voted and again, no lines.  I live in Philly, not exactly Trump country, and PA has not had the returns on mail in ballots the Dems were hoping for.  So if Dems are really serious about voting out Trump, I dont see it. 

If only I did not have a shoot tomorrow and could stay up sipping on this fine unopened bottle of Nativo 20 Year while enjoying a Cohiba Talisman.  Hey, maybe it is a good thing, I could be wasting a great cigar on a losing election. 

Well anyway, see you on the flip side. 

[faberryman]

But anyway, Biden was at +5 in PA last week, and today, the polls show them dead even with +2 for Trump in a couple of them.  I voted already around noon, no lines.  My wife just voted and again, no lines.  I live in Philly, not exactly Trump country, and PA has not had the returns on mail in ballots the Dems were hoping for.  So if Dems are really serious about voting out Trump, I dont see it. 

Interesting how everyone looks at the world and sees different things. I thought the general thinking was that Democrats would be voting by mail and Republicans would be voting in person. If that were the case, no lines on election day might auger that Republicans decided to stay home. I guess we'll just have to see how things turn out. My recollection is that in Pennsylvania mail-in ballots postmarked by election day and received up to three days later will be counted, so it might be a few days before results will be announced.

[TechTalk]

The 538 polling average has dropped Biden's lead in Pennsylvania from +5.3 a week ago to +4.7 today.

The 538 Pennsylvania polling average for 2016 had Clinton at +3.7 going into the election. Trump won Pennsylvania by +0.7. The 538 average polling error for Pennsylvania was 4.4% in 2016, so anything is possible in 2020.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/pennsylvania/

Politico - November 3, 2020

Democrats return nearly three times as many mail-in ballots as Republicans in Pennsylvania

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/03/Democrats return nearly three times as many mail-in ballots as Republicans in Pennsylvania

"Pennsylvania has received more than 2.5 million mail-in and absentee ballots so far, according to new data from election officials here.

That means that 81 percent of state voters who were sent those ballots have returned them. To break it down, more than 1.6 million of those ballots were from registered Democrats, 586,000 were from Republicans, and 278,000 were from independents or third-party voters.

This isn’t surprising or necessarily revealing: Political insiders have expected for months that Democrats would vote disproportionately by mail, while Republicans would vote disproportionately in person.

One stat that is interesting, though, is that 84 percent of registered Democrats who have been sent mail-in or absentee ballots have returned them, compared with 74 percent of Republicans.

When all is said and done, Kathy Boockvar, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Commonwealth, said she expects to receive as many as 2.6 million mail-in and absentee ballots. A Philadelphia election official estimated that 400,000 such votes would come from the city."

[faberryman]

I am pretty sure all of you have been waiting breathlessly on the edge of your seats to find out who Kanye voted for. Well, the suspense is over. He voted for himself as a write-in candidate. It was the first time he had ever voted. I guess he didn't realize he could have been voting for himself as a write-in candidate all these years.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/kanye-west-votes-for-himself-election

[JoeKitchen]

I am pretty sure all of you have been waiting breathlessly on the edge of your seats to find out who Kanye voted for. Well, the suspense is over. He voted for himself as a write-in candidate. It was the first time he had ever voted. I guess he didn't realize he could have voted for himself as a write-in candidate all these years.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/kanye-west-votes-for-himself-election

Did see the video posted of his birthday present to Kim? 

If not, he had a hologram made of her dead father talking to her ending with him congratulating her on marrying such a great man.  His narcissism knows no bounds; regular run of the mill narcissists must have looked at that with awe.