Too soon to start thinking about 2024?

[Grifman]

Heather Cox Richardson on how facism comes to the U.S. as business leaders react to Trump in fear:

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... er-25-2024

“The struggle over the Republican Party also seemed evident in yesterday’s decision by the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, biotech tycoon Patrick Soon-Shiong, to kill that paper’s planned endorsement of Harris. Choosing not to make an endorsement in the race, Soon-Shiong said that he thought an endorsement would “add to the division” in the country. Elon Musk praised his decision.

Today the Washington Post also decided not to make an endorsement in the presidential race, despite the fact a piece endorsing Harris was already drafted. Publisher William Lewis said the paper was returning to its roots of not endorsing presidential candidates, although it has endorsed candidates for decades and did so in its early years as well. His statement seemed a weak cover for the evident wish of the Washington Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, to avoid antagonizing Trump.”

[Blackhawk]

Or better yet, don't quote entire articles. Quote enough to give an idea of what it's about, and link the rest.

It’s not that hard to scroll past it. Really, it’s not.

I'm not the one calling for spoiler tags. I'm the one asking people to stop posting paid content on the site for free.

[LordMortis]

Leon's praise would be amusing if this wasn't so serious. Free Speech (for me and money. You shut the fuck up and sit in the corner)

[hepcat]

Choosing not to make an endorsement in the race, Soon-Shiong said that he thought an endorsement would “add to the division” in the country. Elon Musk praised his decision.

Says the social media mogul wearing the MAGA hat.

Elon becomes more and more despicable as the days go by.

[Grifman]

Pardon the Twitter, but here's a good thread confirming that most of the poll movement "towards Trump" is the result of right-leaning pollsters dumping polls into the mix in order to screw with averages. They did the same thing in 2022, when pollsters predicted a "red wave" and the actual results were the opposite.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1848 ... 22306.html

The problem with that is I am seeing polls from more respected polls such as the NYT and the Economist saying the same thing.

[Kurth]

I’m not too upset about newspaper editorial boards not endorsing. Yes, it feels cowardly not to do so in this particular moment, but (1) I don’t think it matters at all in terms of swaying voters, and (2) the practice always seemed a little pompous in the first place.

[Blackhawk]

For me, it's not the decision itself that matters. It's that the decision is the culmination of a pattern of emphasizing and normalizing the behavior of Trump and the Trumpettes for 'clicks.'

[msteelers]

The problem with that is I am seeing polls from more respected polls such as the NYT and the Economist saying the same thing.

Yeah. I’m far from an expert on which polls to trust, but the ones I feel are “high quality” are showing a late trend to Trump.

I forget which story it was, but something I read this morning made me lose all hope. It sure seems ever since the Kennedy endorsement Trump has just steadily made gains. All of the Kennedy voters and disenfranchised Republicans are coming home for Trump. I’ve voted and will hope for the best, but outside of a large polling error in favor of Harris I don’t see this ending well.

[Holman]

I refuse to give into pessimism. If I'm wrong and Trump wins, "preparing for it" won't really have done any good.

Without getting into unskewing the polls or anything, I've come to believe that polls are meaningless so long as they are within the margin of error, as they totally are. They also don't capture voter enthusiasm and issues driving turnout.

Every election since Dobbs has been bluer than the polls predicted. This is first post-Dobbs presidential election, and women are already voting in larger numbers.

[waitingtoconnect]

Muslim community leaders in Michigan have endorsed Donald Trump on stage at a rally. I’d say that pretty much will tip Trump over the edge there.

The tech bros and media barons are backing trump to the hilt.

People are falling in line for fascism.

[gbasden]

Muslim community leaders in Michigan have endorsed Donald Trump on stage at a rally. I’d say that pretty much will tip Trump over the edge there.

People are falling in line for fascism.

Well, the upcoming civil war should be fun.

[waitingtoconnect]

Yeah but the crypto I can’t access due to the power outages will be doing well.

[Holman]

Muslim community leaders in Michigan have endorsed Donald Trump on stage at a rally. I’d say that pretty much will tip Trump over the edge there.

538 still has Harris with a half-point lead in Michigan, and that's even after they've included many crap GOP-slanted polls in their average.

[Kraken]

I refuse to give into pessimism. If I'm wrong and Trump wins, "preparing for it" won't really have done any good.

Without getting into unskewing the polls or anything, I've come to believe that polls are meaningless so long as they are within the margin of error, as they totally are. They also don't capture voter enthusiasm and issues driving turnout.

Every election since Dobbs has been bluer than the polls predicted. This is first post-Dobbs presidential election, and women are already voting in larger numbers.

Can you trust the polls? Prediction fever takes over

"Polling is not predictive. It's a snapshot in time," Republican pollster Robert Blizzard said. "My job isn’t to try and predict a result, my job is to use polling to help my candidate or client’s cause or issue be successful."
...
"People need to get off the poll-er coaster. They need to step back from it because people are gaming it and they're playing in our faces," said Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher, who worked on both of Barack Obama presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

"It is not the job of a poll or pollsters to tell the future, because we can't," he added.

The story contains some good analysis that I don't think will surprise anybody here.

[Kurth]

Muslim community leaders in Michigan have endorsed Donald Trump on stage at a rally. I’d say that pretty much will tip Trump over the edge there.

People are falling in line for fascism.

Well, the upcoming civil war should be fun.

No one’s going to fight. Not on the left. We’ll go quietly for the most part.

[waitingtoconnect]

If the history of o other nations like nazi germany and Putins Russia are anything to go by they’ll fall in line one by one on vague promises and bribes.

As for generals — one interesting thing to note about hitlers generals and trump commenting on how he wanted his generals to be like them. Firstly Hitler bribed his generals to maintain their loyalty and when the war was clearly lost they tried to kill him .

[Kraken]

Muslim community leaders in Michigan have endorsed Donald Trump on stage at a rally. I’d say that pretty much will tip Trump over the edge there.

People are falling in line for fascism.

Well, the upcoming civil war should be fun.

No one’s going to fight. Not on the left. We’ll go quietly for the most part.

If Vance's regime follows through on trump's blueprint, we will resist. An underground railroad for refugees is a foregone conclusion.

Trump can only remain as a figurehead until his dementia embarrasses even the faithful, and he is declining fast. Vance seems to be all-in on christofascism but he’s too young and inexperienced to call the shots. It’s hard to know exactly who will set the GOP's agenda after trump is sidelined. Musk is certainly angling to be one of those powers.

[LordMortis]

Unexpected honesty. TV is on in the background to keep me moving. CNBC reports "87% of undecided voters expect to vote for TFG. 12% expect to vote for Harris." I guess the question then is how many actually vote. "The Market" appears to be very excited about the growing optimism of TFG presidency and I'm seeing Tarriffs and border shutting and public companies getting screwed for private interest billionaires supporting TFG in the name of "efficiency" as the oligarchy sees its opportunities to consolidate. There's not much I can do for my 401k but for my other money, I plan to reduce my market exposure as reasonably as I can.

[El Guapo]

Muslim community leaders in Michigan have endorsed Donald Trump on stage at a rally. I’d say that pretty much will tip Trump over the edge there.

The tech bros and media barons are backing trump to the hilt.

People are falling in line for fascism.

Which ones? It won't surprise you to learn that I am not an expert on the Michigan Islamic Community, but "community leaders" could be anything from the head of the largest Mosque in Dearborn to an angry guy on a street corner screaming at passersby.

[Holman]

Muslim community leaders in Michigan have endorsed Donald Trump on stage at a rally. I’d say that pretty much will tip Trump over the edge there.

The tech bros and media barons are backing trump to the hilt.

People are falling in line for fascism.

Which ones? It won't surprise you to learn that I am not an expert on the Michigan Islamic Community, but "community leaders" could be anything from the head of the largest Mosque in Dearborn to an angry guy on a street corner screaming at passersby.

Plus, almost 60% of the Arab-Americans in Michigan identify as Christian.

[LawBeefaroni]

Muslim community leaders in Michigan have endorsed Donald Trump on stage at a rally. I’d say that pretty much will tip Trump over the edge there.

The tech bros and media barons are backing trump to the hilt.

People are falling in line for fascism.

Which ones? It won't surprise you to learn that I am not an expert on the Michigan Islamic Community, but "community leaders" could be anything from the head of the largest Mosque in Dearborn to an angry guy on a street corner screaming at passersby.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/10/27/ ... ent-trump/

Imam Belal Alzuhairi, one of the leaders who appeared onstage with Trump, expressed strong support for the former president's foreign policy stance. "We, as Muslims, stand with President Trump because he promises peace, not war!" Alzuhairi declared. He further elaborated, "We are supporting Donald Trump because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine. The bloodshed has to stop all over the world, and I think this man can make that happen. I personally believe that God saved his life twice for a reason."

The endorsements included support from Mayor Bill Bazzi, who holds the distinction of being the first Muslim and Arab American elected mayor of Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Following Bazzi's remarks, Trump responded warmly, saying, "What a nice endorsement. These are great people." Adding to the wave of support, Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib publicly endorsed Trump through a Facebook post on October 20. "Though it's looking good, he may or may not win the election and be the 47th president of the United States, but I believe he is the right choice for this critical time," Ghalib wrote in Arabic on his social media platform.

Ghalib's endorsement followed a private 20-minute meeting with Trump in Flint earlier in the week. In an interview with The Detroit News, Ghalib revealed, "We talked about various topics including the debates, the polls updates, the statistics of votes in Michigan and Wayne County, the Arab American concerns, and the Yemeni Americans in particular. We also talked about the situation in Yemen." Michigan's significance as a swing state is underscored by record-breaking early voting numbers, with the Michigan Department of State's dashboard showing over 1.2 million voters having already cast their ballots through early voting and mail-in options, setting a new state record for early ballot returns.

Tangent:

Spoiler:

Note on the source: I found the above article as a top hit and from what looked like the Israeli version of the NY post. It was the most succinct summary I could find and was in line with other various sources. But wanting to know what I was quoting, I dug a bit deeper and found that it is published by Miriam Adelson, recipient of the Medal of Freedom from Trump, and the late Sheldon's wife. So the paper's bias is highly suspect. However, I'll just put it here as an object lesson that nowhere is really safe anymore.

Wikipedia says:

Israel Hayom (Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל הַיּוֹם, lit. 'Israel Today') is an Israeli national Hebrew-language free daily newspaper. Distributed for free around Israel, it is the country's most widely distributed newspaper. Owned by the family of the late Sheldon Adelson, a businessman and political donor, Israel Hayom has been noted for its editorial stance and coverage of Israeli politics, often sparking debate about its political alignment.

[Blackhawk]

Annihilating one faction or simply surrendering are, in fact, paths to peace.

[YellowKing]

I'm sure he has queried Trump on his specific plan to end both wars.

[Zaxxon]

Trump can only remain as a figurehead until his dementia embarrasses even the faithful

Periodic reminder that the faithful are literally unembarrassable.

[LawBeefaroni]

Trump can only remain as a figurehead until his dementia embarrasses even the faithful

Periodic reminder that the faithful are literally unembarrassable.

They'll have succession figured out by then anyway. They're building an entire village of despicable personalities to carry the swastika torch once Trump has his KFC grabber or is pushed aside/out a window.

[raydude]

Trump can only remain as a figurehead until his dementia embarrasses even the faithful

Periodic reminder that the faithful are literally unembarrassable.

Yeah, Trump is pretty much at Jim Jones' level of cult leader status. I'm sure even if the kool aid were literal and laced with cyanide they would definitely drink it.

[Zaxxon]

Smoove will appreciate The Verge's Nilay Patel framing their endorsement of Harris as addressing collective action problems.

Donald Trump is a dangerous maniac who can barely complete a sentence, and it is lunacy to believe he can even recognize the existentially threatening collective action problems facing our nation, let alone actually solve them.

Collective action problem is the term political scientists use to describe any situation where a large group of people would do better for themselves if they worked together, but it’s easier for everyone to pursue their own interests. The essential work of every government is making laws that balance the tradeoffs between shared benefits and acceptable restrictions on individual or corporate freedoms to solve this dilemma, and the reason people hate the government is that not being able to do whatever you want all the time is a huge bummer. Speed limits help make our neighborhoods safer, but they also mean you aren’t supposed to put the hammer down and peel out at every stoplight, which isn’t any fun at all.

Every Verge reader is intimately familiar with collective action problems because they’re everywhere in tech. We cover them all the time: making everything charge via USB-C was a collective action problem that took European regulation to finally resolve, just as getting EV makers to adopt the NACS charging standard took regulatory effort from the Biden administration. Content moderation on social networks is a collective action problem; so are the regular fights over encryption. The single greatest webcomic in tech history describes a collective action problem.

The problem is that getting people to set aside their own selfishness and work together is generally impossible even if the benefits are obvious, a political reality so universal it’s a famous Tumblr meme.

Highly recommend this piece.

[Isgrimnur]

The single greatest webcomic in tech history describes a collective action problem.

[Smoove_B]

Smoove will appreciate The Verge's Nilay Patel framing their endorsement of Harris as addressing collective action problems.

It is most excellent - thanks for boosting!

[Victoria Raverna]

Either a very stupid man or Trump bought him.

[hepcat]

He’s angry and spiteful. There’s nothing else to it. When people are angry and spiteful, they don’t think things through. They just lash out. And that’s how you get a Trump.

[GreenGoo]

What kind of world do you want to live in, and who is more likely to move the world in that direction vs away from it. It's pretty simple.

[Hyena]

What kind of world do you want to live in, and who is more likely to move the world in that direction vs away from it. It's pretty simple.

Unfortunately there's a lot of asshats in the country that will choose the wrong direction because they've been promised a pouch full of 30 silver coins. What they don't know is those are copper coins painted silver...

[Isgrimnur]

Delivered be Ea-nāṣir

[Kraken]

What kind of world do you want to live in, and who is more likely to move the world in that direction vs away from it. It's pretty simple.

I want to live in a white Christian world free of invading rapists and dog-eating murderers. Duh.

[GreenGoo]

What kind of world do you want to live in, and who is more likely to move the world in that direction vs away from it. It's pretty simple.

I want to live in a white Christian world free of invading rapists and dog-eating murderers. Duh.

Well my comment was directed specifically at the Muslim in the video voting for Drumpf, but if he wants a white Christian world, have at it, I guess.

[Kraken]

What kind of world do you want to live in, and who is more likely to move the world in that direction vs away from it. It's pretty simple.

I want to live in a white Christian world free of invading rapists and dog-eating murderers. Duh.

Well my comment was directed specifically at the Muslim in the video voting for Drumpf, but if he wants a white Christian world, have at it, I guess.

I missed that context, so carry on.

[GreenGoo]

There was no indication of that context, so it's not like you could have missed it. I wrote what I wrote shortly after having skimmed the video.

It's like watching a person who's partner has provided everything for them, house, food, support, children, cars etc decide to sleep with the partner's slimy boss because the partner had to work late on their anniversary.

I mean, sure, you've been wronged, but it's a minor transgression after years of support, and the reason your partner was late is because of the very person you're sleeping with.

That'll teach your partner a lesson. Critical thinking and decision might not be the person's strong suit.

[milo]

He’s angry and spiteful. There’s nothing else to it. When people are angry and spiteful, they don’t think things through. They just lash out. And that’s how you get a Trump.

(NSFW)

[stimpy]

I just want to wish you all a quiet, relaxing weekend.
Enjoy the calm before the storm.