Octopus Overlords

LordMortis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 23, 2024 12:34 pm

El Guapo wrote: ↑Tue Jan 23, 2024 12:26 pm

If the tweeter thinks that makes the panel dude an insignificant Michigan Arab/Muslim minority with this opinion and discredits his concern, then I guess I don't know what to say. Hillary Clinton dismissal chapter 2, maybe? Again, I don't have a solution but dismissal is definitely not it.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Tue Jan 23, 2024 12:44 pm The tweet made it sound (to me) like he was chosen not to be representative of a demographic but that he was stand alone with an axe to grind. I guess I am misreading the context. It's the praise of Hamas part that throws me off, I guess.

malchior wrote: ↑Tue Jan 23, 2024 4:29 pm I think this very possibly overstates the relationship though. He appears to be an adviser for the *Michigan* chapter of CAIR according to his bio. There are CAIR chapters in 50+ cities and tens of thousands of members. The comments that led to the break with the White House were by leadership of the whole organization and they are in dispute. Though in the available context look quite bad.

This seems to be more like comparing the views of a local ACLU chapter community organizer with the same brush as the President of the ACLU. That's disparate to say the least. We have no way of knowing if he has an axe to grind or whether he truly is representative of the community but it definitely would have been better to have someone unattached to any political/advocacy group all the same.

Side note: Searching on his name reveals many posts across different platforms with the exact same text. In other words, there is a possible misinformation campaign under way pushing this potentially misleading narrative - with labels such as "adviser", "senior leadership", and "board member" attached to his name which certainly doesn't line up with his bio. Maybe people know more but I'd be careful here.

President Biden has approved a shake-up of the leadership of his campaign, and will dispatch two top White House aides to take over functional control of his re-election effort just as former President Donald J. Trump appears to be seizing control of the Republican primary contest to oppose him.

Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who was the campaign manager for Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign and has served as a deputy chief of staff in the White House since he became president, will move to the Biden 2024 headquarters in Wilmington, Del., and direct the campaign’s efforts, according to five people familiar with the discussions.

Mike Donilon, a senior adviser who has worked for Mr. Biden for decades, will also move to Wilmington and become the campaign’s chief strategist.

...

Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the campaign’s manager since shortly after it began in April, is expected to retain that title.

The moves formalize a setup in which Ms. O’Malley Dillon has for months overseen the campaign’s direction from Washington and Mr. Donilon has helped shape its strategy.

When the Biden campaign held a December retreat for staff members at its headquarters, it was Ms. O’Malley Dillon who led the proceedings — not Ms. Chávez Rodríguez, according to two people who attended the session but were not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Donors, operatives, elected officials and other Democrats supportive of Mr. Biden have been increasingly worried about a campaign structure that had major and even minor decisions being made by White House aides and carried out by campaign personnel in Delaware.

In recent months, former President Barack Obama met with Mr. Biden at the White House and raised concerns about the bifurcated arrangement, according to an account of their discussion reported by The Washington Post.

Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee and a key figure in getting bills passed through Congress, says she will not endorse former President Trump, even if he becomes the Republican Party’s nominee for president.

Asked if she could see herself endorsing Trump if he wins the nomination, Collins replied: “I do not at this point.”

“I’m glad to hear last night that Nikki Haley is determined to stay in [the race.] I think the more people see of her, particularly since she appears to be the only alternative to Donald Trump right now, the more impressed they will be,” she said.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) is reviewing a draft resolution that, if approved, would declare Donald Trump the party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee even as Nikki Haley continues to wage a vigorous campaign against the former president and frontrunner.

The draft resolution, obtained by The Dispatch Thursday morning, was proposed by David Bossie, an RNC committeeman from Maryland and close Trump ally.

...

“RESOLVED that the Republican National Committee hereby declares President Trump as our presumptive 2024 nominee for the office of President of the United States and from this moment forward moves into full general election mode welcoming supporters of all candidates as valued members of Team Trump 2024,” reads a key portion of the draft resolution.

Under current RNC rules, Trump still has to win the requisite number of nominating convention delegates—1,215—to become the party’s unchallenged presumptive nominee. After the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Trump leads Haley in the race for delegates 32 to 17.

But passage of this resolution, possibly next week at the RNC winter meeting in Las Vegas, could begin a preemptive process of the national party working with the former president as if he had already done so. And under RNC rules, that is permissible. This resolution, even in draft form, also functions as another sign that the GOP establishment is anxious to coalesce behind Trump and put an end to a presidential primary that, after his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former president looks poised to win.

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 3:53 pm I'm not sure I'd use the word "interesting" to describe what's happening.

We already knew this was happening but it's still gross to read.

Much of the Swift paranoia has lurked on the MAGA fringes, with people like Ms. Loomer, the conspiracy theorist from Florida who declared in December that “2024 will be MAGA vs Swifties” and Mr. Kirk, who declared in November that Ms. Swift would “come out for the presidential election” after Democrats had another strong showing in an election that demonstrated the issue of abortion motivated voters to the polls.

“All the Swifties want is swift abortion,” he said.

Then Swift-bashing reached Fox News in mid-January. The host Jesse Watters suggested the superstar was a Defense Department asset engaging in psychological warfare. He tied Ms. Swift’s political voice with her boyfriend’s Pfizer endorsement to the remarkable success of her Eras tour, which bolstered local economies and landed her on the cover of Time.

“Have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?” Mr. Watters wondered on air. “Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting.”

hepcat wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 11:19 am But she's white!?!?

...I had posted about this weird belief on Fox News that Taylor Swift is part of some Psyop initiative a while back. It's like Qanon...but with less adrenachrome.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:16 pm They're scared to death of Taylor Swift, as well they should be. As the father of a die-hard Swiftie, they are a group you do NOT want to piss off.

in terms of pure sales, tallied 46.6 million in the United States

Her tenth original studio album, Midnights (2022), was her fifth to sell over a million US first-week copies.[21] It broke records including the largest streaming week for a US female album and the most single-day and single-week streams on Spotify.[22]

Trump has also privately claimed that he is “more popular” than Swift is and that he has more committed fans than she does, a person close to Trump and another source with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone.

Zarathud wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 5:33 pm TFG is so insecure, he won’t be able to control the impulse to belittle Swift.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 12:16 pm They're scared to death of Taylor Swift, as well they should be. As the father of a die-hard Swiftie, they are a group you do NOT want to piss off.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2024 7:12 pm So MAGA are going to be rooting for the San Francisco 49ers?

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2024 9:02 am I have to wonder: if Trump loses, will we just see him back at it in 2028? Does he have THAT much power?

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2024 12:02 pm Except we've already (apparently) established that running for office (Presidential in particular) makes him immune from prosecution - or at least, delays and confuses the legal process. So if he ends up losing, I'd fully expect him to declare he's running again 0.1 seconds after the winner is confirmed. Even if he's in a bed and unable to travel, he's running.