2020 US Election Thread

[Lisnaholic]

Without my old ally, Chula Vista, I try not get too caught up in these Dem vs GOP threads; I don't want to be some shrill, alarmist outsider, but I gotta say that if you compare the US with W European democracies, or with the US in the perhaps the 70s, then it displays some very worrying traits:-

-gun toting lunatics who believe there is a cabal of pedophiles causing forest fires with space lasers

- the GOP who, with regard to Trump, combine all three of the famous monkeys into one political position: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. For example, if I remember that first impeachment correctly, it was "ok, we'll permit a trial, but no witnesses can give evidence." McConnell's second impeachment vote, "He's not innocent, but I'm going to vote as if he were."

-just yesterday, 35 "no" senators won out over 54 "yes" to block a bipartisan investigation into the Jan 6 riot. That 35 senators defeat a vote of 54 is the counter-intuitive consequence of the mysterious filibuster, of course, but the vote is also counter some professed GOP talking points: draining the swamp, backing the boys in blue. Also counter the weeks of negotiating in which all the GOP demands were met. It's a return to Sen Grassley's tactic of bad-faith negotiating.

- commentators describing the onslaught on voters rights as "back to the days of Jim Crow"

- a blatant, hypocritical u-turn from McConnell to load the Supreme Court in favour of conservates for decades to come. Women's hard-won right to make their own decisions about their own bodies now in jeapardy.

- Dems are compared to Nazis and public health recommendations are likened to the Holocaust

- without evidence, 53% of Republicans think that Biden is not the President, despite allegations of election fraud being shot down in about 60 court cases. I wonder to what extent that 53% paused to wonder if they were being duped when fraud-conspiracy ring-leader Guilliani admitted in court that he was not making an accusation of fraud.(Or when S Powell's legal defense was, "No sane person would believe what I say")

A lot of humour doesn't transfer well as it goes from one nationality to another. I suppose that's why I'm rather mystified by these Pelosi jokes, the great "Bernie Sanders likes blue sheets" scandal, or, for that matter by that Fox News outrage over a manufacturer's strange decision to rename Mr. Potato Head: a storm in a toybox to distract and deflect from What's Going On (copyright: Marvin Gaye).