A thread for Democrats Only
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UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Quote:The War on Truth Reaches Its Climax. Trump is telling two big lies, and a third will come soon.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Immediately stopped reading after that lie.
I began writing a column for The Times way back in 2000. My beat was supposed to be economics and business. But I couldn’t help noticing that one of that year’s contenders for the presidency was systematically making false claims about his policy proposals. George W. Bush kept insisting that his tax cuts were targeted on the middle class, and his plan to privatize Social Security just wished away the system’s obligations to older Americans.
At the time, however, my editors told me that it wasn’t acceptable to use the word “lie” when writing about presidential candidates.
By now, though, most informed observers have, I think, finally decided that it’s OK to report the fact that Donald Trump lies constantly.
Many of the lies are trivial, often bizarrely so, like Trump’s repeated claims to have received an award that doesn’t even exist. But the president has closed out this year’s campaign with two huge, dangerous lies — and there’s every reason to fear that this week he will roll out a third big lie, perhaps even more dangerous than the first two.
1) The first big lie is the claim that America is being menaced by hordes of “rioters, looters, arsonists, gun-grabbers, flag-burners, Marxists.”
Anyone who walks around the “anarchist jurisdictions” of New York or Seattle can see with their own eyes that nothing like this is happening. And the data bear out the obvious. One systematic study found that the summer’s Black Lives Matter protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, and that “most of the violence that did take place was, in fact, directed against the B.L.M. protesters.”
Oh, and Trump keeps claiming that Joe Biden won’t condemn the small amount of violence that has actually happened — when Biden has, in fact, done exactly that.
So Trump wants Americans to be terrified of a menace that exists only in his imagination. At the same time, he wants us to ignore the very real menace of Covid-19.
Over the past few months Trump has effectively abandoned any effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus. In fact, he has been actively promoting that spread. One credible Stanford study estimated that Trump rallies, which involve large numbers of shouting people packed closely together, most unmasked, have caused around 30,000 infections and 700 deaths.
2) But Trump wants Americans to believe that the pandemic — which killed more Americans last month than are murdered in a typical year — is fake news. We’re “rounding the corner,” he insists, even as infections and hospitalizations are rising at a terrifying rate. The news media is going on about “Covid, Covid, Covid” only because it’s out to get him. Doctors are inflating the reported death toll because they want to make more money.
These big lies are immensely destructive, and not just because they lead to bad policies. Like it or not, presidential rhetoric affects how millions of Americans behave.
Trump’s lies about an anarchist threat have given encouragement to white supremacists, including domestic terrorists. His dismissal of the pandemic threat, his mocking of precautionary measures like mask-wearing, have done a lot to help the coronavirus spread.
But the worst may be yet to come.
It’s possible — barely — that Trump will legitimately win re-election, although this would require that the polls be much further off than they were in 2016. If that doesn’t happen, however, it’s a near-certainty that he will refuse to accept defeat quietly.
Unless he loses in an overwhelming landslide, he has indicated he will try to steal the election by blocking the counting of Biden votes, with the aid of partisan judges. I don’t think he’ll succeed, but I wish I was sure of that.
What if he doesn’t manage to hang on to office?
3) We all know what’s likely to come next: claims that he was robbed. He’ll claim that millions of people voted illegally — af
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Yup. Trump is very likely to lose, like he has so many times before, accumulating over $1 billion in debt to Russia, but will insist he didn't.
His mindless sheep will engage in the terrorism he openly encourages. The typical American fascist doesn't even know what the word means.
They just think that their opinions, based on lies, are actually facts, and that might makes right.
The Trumptard terrorists thread will explode, along with a few mosques and synagogues.
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Do not lose sight of the fact that all of this is absolutely insane. We are a broken society with a broken political system, made all the more worse by a broken-brained president.
Maybe the polls are right, and Joe Biden is on course for a dominant seven- or eight-point win over Donald Trump. He could pick up a couple of decisive swing states that are supposed to finish counting votes on Tuesday night—North Carolina and Arizona, for instance—and short-circuit the president’s plan to first claim victory, then sue his way to a second term. There’s a chance that Democrats will eke out a Senate majority, too, so that they can actually govern come January, and deal properly with the deadly plague that’s reshaped our lives and crippled the economy. Perhaps there won’t be any violence at voting places, and people will be able to cast their ballots without getting hurt. Knock on wood.
But even if this election does bring an orderly end to Trump era, do not for a second forget that absolutely everything about it, and the year that has led us to this point, has been utterly, incalculably insane, a 50-car pileup of reminders that we are a broken society with a broken political system that seems ever-more untenable, whether or not we are doomed to spend four more years with our addled president.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20201103134709/https://slate.com/business/
2020/11/the-election-was-insane.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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lol
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
That seems rather homophobic, dunnit?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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While we wait around for election results, David Cay Johnston provides us with a tidbit about how the rich are faring under Donald Trump:
Let’s start with IRS audits of the 23,400 richest American households, average income $30 million each. In 2018 the Trump administration audited seven. You read that right—seven. That’s an audit rate of 0.03%.
This is a dramatic shift from the recent past. Under Obama in 2015, America’s richest households were 270 times more likely to be audited than under Trump, my analysis of IRS Data Book tables data shows. That year 8.16% of these households had their tax returns audited, not 0.03%.
If American police detected murders at the 0.03% rate it would mean that they would become aware of just five of the 16,214 reported homicides in 2018. Of course, not everyone is a tax cheat, but audits are about detecting taxes due, whether through error or intent.
The President Who Blocks IRS Enforcement of Tax Laws
www.dcreport.org/2020/10/30/trump-income-taxes-how-he-gets-away-withou
t-paying/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:No.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by reaverfan:
That seems rather homophobic, dunnit?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Gay trumptards do it on the downlow. Ask Miss Lindsey.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
While we wait around for election results, David Cay Johnston provides us with a tidbit about how the rich are faring under Donald Trump:
Let’s start with IRS audits of the 23,400 richest American households, average income $30 million each. In 2018 the Trump administration audited seven. You read that right—seven. That’s an audit rate of 0.03%.
This is a dramatic shift from the recent past. Under Obama in 2015, America’s richest households were 270 times more likely to be audited than under Trump, my analysis of IRS Data Book tables data shows. That year 8.16% of these households had their tax returns audited, not 0.03%.
If American police detected murders at the 0.03% rate it would mean that they would become aware of just five of the 16,214 reported homicides in 2018. Of course, not everyone is a tax cheat, but audits are about detecting taxes due, whether through error or intent.
The President Who Blocks IRS Enforcement of Tax Laws
www.dcreport.org/2020/10/30/trump-income-taxes-how-he-gets-away-withou
t-paying/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
You can stop now, bruh.
Just sit back and enjoy the ride.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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