US US Politics General - Discussion of President Biden and other politicians

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A fight broke out at the opening of a Trump campaign office in Valdosta, police say
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (archive.ph)
By Greg Bluestein
2024-08-05 19:47:49GMT
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A social media post shows the July 29 opening of a Donald Trump campaign office in Valdosta.

An altercation broke out at a recent Donald Trump campaign office opening in Valdosta when a conservative activist confronted a Republican state legislator who sponsored changes to the state’s election laws, according to interviews and a police report.

The scuffle took place near the end of the campaign’s office opening on July 29, an otherwise celebratory event that drew dozens of attendees and several Republican state legislators. No charges were filed, though authorities say the confrontation turned physical.

State Rep. John LaHood, R-Valdosta, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that after he finished speaking he went to mingle with the crowd when activist Sam Carnline of Cairo confronted him with his concerns that a series of election-related measures weren’t strong enough.

Georgia’s election system has come under fire since Trump’s narrow 2020 defeat, and Carnline is among the activists who have pressed for paper ballots over the current voting system. Multiple investigations and recounts have confirmed the results of Trump’s loss, although he has continued to claim he was robbed.

LaHood said he engaged in a “passionate discussion” with Carnline, who wore a T-shirt advocating for paper ballots, until his wife walked up and they both decided to leave. At that point, authorities say the intensity escalated.

According to the Valdosta Police Department report obtained by the AJC, one of the attendees who intervened was Brandon Phillips, a veteran Republican operative who is now the top aide to U.S. Rep. Mike Collins of Jackson.

“Brandon Phillips got in the middle of the conversation because he didn’t like the questions he was asking,” the police wrote of Carnline. “Words were exchanged between he and Brandon, because he was upset that Brandon spit in his face.”

Phillips told authorities he didn’t spit in Carnline’s face and that Carnline pushed him to the ground during the confrontation. LaHood and several other attendees said they saw Carnline punch Phillips at least twice.

“I informed Brandon that he instigated the incident by spitting on Carnline,” the officer wrote in the report. “Both parties agreed to separate and go their separate ways with no further law enforcement action needed.”

Phillips told the AJC he intervened because he didn’t want the fight to escalate.

“They say politics can be a contact sport, and sometimes it is,” Phillips said. “I certainly don’t mind defending any volunteers or officials who are trying to contribute in a positive way toward a Trump victory from outside agitators with the opposite agenda.”

Carnline said in an interview that Phillips got in between him and LaHood and urged him to “quit bothering” the lawmaker. When Carnline refused, he said Phillips started insulting his family.

“I probably pointed at him and told him to get away from me. He immediately spit in my face. And at that point, I pushed him and shoved him as hard as I could,” Carnline said.

“He jumped back up. I cocked my fist back and was intending to hit him, but I might have just glanced his shoulder,” Carnline said. “Then people talked me down. But he deserved it.”

Trump’s campaign didn’t immediately comment on the dispute.

One of the witnesses was Dennis Futch of Moultrie, a veteran Republican activist. He told the AJC that he didn’t see Phillips spit, but that if he did it was inadvertent because they were both shouting. He said he saw Carnline shove or hit Phillips twice.

“I’m proud of Brandon because Brandon didn’t lay one finger on Sam Carnline. It wasn’t a fight. This was Sam trying to be a bully,” Futch said. “There’s no place for violence for either party.”

The fight was broken up by state Rep. Chas Cannon, a Moultrie Republican who is a U.S. Army veteran. He said he didn’t see Phillips spit at anyone but that he saw Carnline repeatedly attempt to shove Phillips.

“It was a heated conversation, and I didn’t think it was appropriate at an event like that. They were arguing with one another, and they went their separate ways,” Cannon said. “Passions run hot, but we need to work out our differences by talking it out.”

LaHood said the incident marred an otherwise upbeat event that drew a large crowd of Trump supporters to Valdosta.

“There were more people there trying to deescalate the fighting than promote it. It was uncomfortably intense, but thankfully it didn’t escalate any further,” he said. “This was just a minor black eye, but it didn’t define the event. Most people there didn’t even know it happened.”
Everything was going Kamala Harris’ way. Then came the market sell-off.
Politico (archive.ph)
By Megan Messerly, Adam Cancryn, and Elena Schneider
2024-08-06 09:00:00GMT
Democrats aren’t ready for the Kamala Harris honeymoon to end. Monday’s stock market plunge is reminding them it can’t last forever.

The global stock market tumbles represented a dramatic reversal from the cooling inflation and steady growth economists had been heralding in recent weeks. It’s also an unnerving reminder to Democrats, on the eve of Harris’ vice presidential pick, that public gloominess over the economy could hurt the campaign.

William Owen, a Democratic National Committee member from Tennessee, called the market slide a “tremendously huge problem” for the Harris campaign. He sent campaign and party officials an email on Friday calling for President Joe Biden or Harris to urge the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, then followed up again after seeing the futures on Monday.

“This action is equally as important as who the VP is,” Owen wrote. “We cannot win if people think we’re headed into a recession.”

The stock market, of course, fluctuates under any administration. Shares plummeted much more sharply in December 2018, under President Donald Trump, and that was before even steeper declines during the pandemic.

Still, the drop on Monday could be a reminder of the Biden administration’s struggle to contain inflation, even though the U.S. fared far better than other major economies and unemployment, still at a relatively low 4.3 percent, has been lower under Biden than at any time in decades.

It’s a particular issue in battleground states like Arizona and Nevada, where Democrats acknowledge that many voters are struggling under the combined weight of rising inflation and skyrocketing housing costs and are eager to find someone to blame. Recent polling from Morning Consult found that nearly 4 in 5 voters say the economy is very important in deciding whom they vote for in November, and that while Trump’s lead over Harris on the economy is smaller than it was with Biden, the former president retains an advantage on the issue.

“We, as Democrats, need to be honest. There are still voters out there who are concerned about [the] cost of living,” said Mark Longabaugh, top strategist for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. “Prices are the challenge we’ve faced all year. That hasn’t gone away.”

Longabaugh described the challenge as “surmountable,” but added, “To a large degree, the economic elements are already baked into the feelings of the electorate.”

The risk to the campaign of an economic downturn is significant. The White House has touted its ability to engineer a soft landing for the economy tied to lower inflation, but it remains a delicate balancing act. A sudden spike in unemployment would undermine Harris’ central argument for the administration’s economic success, likely adding to voters’ long-running concerns about the nation’s trajectory.

“There’s some fault lines,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. “The only thing that’s been keeping the labor market together as well as it has has been low layoffs.”

Inside the Biden administration, officials on Monday raced to figure out what was driving the sell-off and whether it threatened to expose some broader weakness in the U.S. economy.

So far, officials and others close to the administration said they have little cause for immediate alarm, concluding that much of the day’s collapse was initially driven by a complex unwinding of investments in Japanese markets tied to currency movements — and not economic conditions closer to home.

“The Nikkei should not have had its worst day since 1987 from one month of U.S. jobs data,” Ernie Tedeschi, a former chief economist for Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, said of speculation that recession fears in the U.S. had sparked turmoil around the world. “This market reaction, if it’s purely based on that, is a wild overreaction.”

The Labor Department, in its U.S. jobs report on Friday, said the unemployment rate had risen more than expected, raising concerns about a slowing economy and even a possible recession.

Trump, who has struggled to refine his lines of attack against Harris and spent much of the last week questioning the vice president’s Black identity, seized on those fears on Monday by branding the market upheaval as the “Kamala crash” and warning of a “great depression of 2024.”

At the same time, Harris has signaled she plans to go on the offense on the economy. At a recent rally in Atlanta, she promised to address price gouging, bring down costs, ban hidden fees and late charges from financial institutions, limit “unfair” rent increases and cap prescription drug costs, policies she said would “lower costs and save many middle-class families thousands of dollars a year.”

“What middle-class families need is steady economic stewardship, not chaotic ranting lies,” said Ammar Moussa, a campaign spokesperson. “Donald Trump had the worst jobs record of any modern president and oversaw some of the worst days in the stock market in history while spending his presidency lining the pockets of his wealthy friends who shipped American jobs overseas.”

Democrats’ position on the economy has coincided with a deepening frustration among some Harris allies inside and outside the White House with the Federal Reserve, which has declined to cut interest rates despite signs the economy is slowing as it seeks to contain inflation.

The Fed declined to begin easing rates during its meeting in July. That means it’s now unlikely to change its policy until September, possibly depriving Harris of any lift she may have gotten from cheaper mortgage rates and auto loans and amplifying worries about a recession.

“It’s clearer than ever that the Fed should have cut in July and that it’s getting behind the curve,” Tedeschi said. “I don’t think things are broken yet, and pretty definitively we’re not in a recession now. But why I’m torn saying that is I don’t want that to give false complacency to policymakers that they don’t have to do more.”

The White House has maintained a blanket policy against commenting on the Fed, and it also declined to comment on Monday’s sell-off.

Democrats concede that a weak jobs report and a stock market crash may contribute to perceptions of economic instability. But they argue that they also provide an opportunity for Harris to highlight her economic agenda.

“Certainly it’s creating some instability now in our understanding of where the economy is going. But I think the American economy is strong and robust and can weather this little bumpy storm,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist. “Democrats should welcome the debate and be able to make the contrast between the strong performance of the economy under Biden and the weak and disastrous economy under Trump.”

Mike Lux, a Democratic strategist who specializes in messaging to working-class voters, argued that Harris, unlike Biden, can try to have it both ways on the economy: As vice president, she can claim credit for the good things the administration has done — like lowering insulin prices and funding infrastructure projects — while distancing herself from the bad.

“She’s a fresh face,” Lux said. “And she’s not getting the same blame on inflation as Biden was.”
 
But they allow white sex tourist & passport bros to effectively take their women, some cases young children?
yes.

I had a cambodian man explain that cambodian arent gay, even when they sell their buttholes to sex tourists.

the unnatural evil that is surrogacy rubs those cultures the wrong way, sure they will traffic the bodies of their people and children but using it to make a baby is not gonna work
 
The money for journalists is in turning their negative eye toward one candidate any time the other is in the lead. Biden being pushed to resign was a very unusual, very special circumstance in which the press had knives out for the already-losing candidate. Now that Kamala has been installed, it was important to pump her numbers up with extremely fawning press coverage for her combined with intense scrutiny of Vance (usually without any actual reference to any campaign activities, policy, etc.).

People only pay attention to close elections.

The moment someone has a 10-point lead and is running away with the thing, everyone stops biting their nails and refreshing the news websites and uses their time some other, more productive way.

The problem with that in this scenario is that Kamala is at a natural disadvantage in charisma and true supporters. This means we may see the Pollyanna media encouraging her like a toddler for significantly longer. Walz may inject some ideas for feel-good policies, which should give her an extra two or three weeks of coverage material, but it's going to run thin.
 
The MSM and their shills have been astroturfing the "Republicans for Harris" keyword for a few hours now on Twitter/X, though the "official" account appears to have been created in 2020.
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"Maybe if we shill hard enough, we can flip some voters!"
Republicans do not work this way. This would only work if the general sentiment were already 'I'm voting for Harris'. If you're trying to convince people who don't want to vote for her by saying "well I am" you'll just get them to rebel.

This has to be the dumbest shit I've read all day, and I just finished off a thread about shooting fat women into space.

The main economic engines of the rust belt, were built on the backs of ex-slaves who came up from the south seeking economic opportunity. Chicago and Detroit are black cities. The middle/upper class whites watched their industries get built by working class blacks, stayed for the money, then left when there was none left to leech.

Edit:completely wrong
You'd be forgiven for thinking everyone was talkin out their back engine, though. KF is like nega-twitter. It's always the fault of those damn non-whites and women.
Cruz is a Trump enemy turned ally over the last few years. Unsure if he is genuinely a fan of where the GOP is now or is it just an opportunist biting his tongue for political reasons.
Remember that Cruz is the ONLY senator to object to a vote in the election. He was cut off by the protest and retracted it after, but nobody else even tried. He's been zealous and proactive. If he's fake, at least he knows to pander to his constituents even when it's not election year. He gets my vote as long as he does so.
Buttigieg is a massively creepy dude. He's one of those gay guys that pays a surrogate to rent a womb and then has weird fantasy maternity photosets in the hospital with the newborns.

Naturally the babies were also engineered to be both boys.

There's a non zero chance Buttigieg is part of a suspected pedophile ring that is using the surrogate and adoption system to traffic male children. @Larry David's Opera Cape has been documenting this.
it gets real sus when you ensure your baby is the gender you're sexually attracted to, I must say.
Again, why is there a base in Iraq? The war is over.
Strategic advantage. Do you want to deal with the logistics of flying to China from the US, or do you want to be able to make pit stops along the way? Even better if you can just launch from Iraq. We have strategic bases set up all over the world so that no matter what, we have a good place to strike from.
If the man can stage a cycling accident with a dead bear in central park, surely rigging a national election would be easy.
Wouldn't be the first time a Kennedy got into the presidency under a dubious election
Kennedy had more political capital then. If there's a G20 or something pulling the strings, I wouldn't be surprised if Kennedys can't be president anymore after JFK.
 
Also don't forget that the only think stopping Iraq from becoming a puppet of Iran is America. The last twenty or so years the Iranians have spent solidifying power in Iraq via the majority Shia population. America pulls out and Iran walks on in.
That would be because we killed the guy who fucking hated Iran's guts and tried to replace him with drug dealing warlords everyone hated.
 
California’s actually pretty based when it comes to self-defense. We have castle doctrine and no duty to retreat. They will take your gun away though, but as long as you don’t say anything retarded to the police you’ll be fine and you’ll get the gun back when all is said and done.
In California, if you are away and come back to your home to find squatters there, considering you are now both the homeowner and intruder, are you legally obligated to shoot yourself?
 
The equivalent would be Kamala chatting with Hasan Piker, maybe someone who hasn't said as much dumb shit as Hasan but he's the only popular lefty streamer she could feasibly chat with. I mean I'd love to see her do and interview with Destiny or Vaush but the Dems can't be that dumb.
Hassan has said that the US deserved 9/11 on video, interacting with him is the third rail.
 
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