#The Editorial Board

[contemplatingoutlander]

This is a must read article full of quotes from 91 prominent people, who know Trump well, including many Republicans who worked with him. This is a gift🎁link, so you can read the entire article. Below are some excerpts and quotes.

In any election, it’s hard to know whose word to trust. And in a polarized country, many Americans distrust any information that comes from the other side of the political divide. That’s why the criticism of Donald Trump by those who served with him in the White House and by members of his own party is so striking. Dozens of people who know him well, including the 91 listed here, have raised alarms about his character and fitness for office — his family and friends, world leaders and business associates, his fellow conservatives and his political appointees — even though they had nothing to gain from doing so. Some have even spoken out at the expense of their own careers or political interests. The New York Times editorial board has made its case that Mr. Trump is unfit to lead. But the strongest case against him may come from his own people. For those Americans who are still tempted to return him to the presidency or to not vote in November, it is worth considering the assessment of Mr. Trump by those who have seen him up close. [emphasis added]

These are just 15 of the 91 quotes. You can use the gift link above to see the other 76 quotes, and to see expanded versions of each quote.

[edited]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Dave Whamond]

* * * *

The Associated Press ran a story yesterday underscoring a facet of the presidential election that’s familiar to regular readers of the Editorial Board. While Donald Trump is popular with the Republican base, and while his nomination is all but assured, his weakness is increasingly on display.  

The former president has galvanized support in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Followers are “overwhelmingly white,” over 50 and without college degrees. But this, the AP said, is very different from the US electorate. “He’d have to appeal to a far more diverse group and possibly win over supporters of former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.”

Not only must he expand the base, the base itself has gotten smaller. The AP: “A large portion of Trump’s opposition within the Republican primaries is comprised of voters who abandoned him before this year. … At least 2 in 10 of the voters in South Carolina’s Republican primary and the Iowa caucuses said they won’t back Trump in November, while approximately 3 in 10 in New Hampshire felt that way (my italics).

But the more he accepts Russian aid, the more Russian aid will change the Republican Party, making it unrecognizable to actual principled conservatives and “that female independent suburban voter,” who are now leaving the party and making their way toward the Democrats.

Finally, there are the suburbs, “where the plurality of general election voters live,” the AP said. Voters there were not “particularly welcoming to him in this year’s GOP contests. He split the suburban vote with his opponents in Iowa and New Hampshire and won the suburbs in South Carolina by a smaller margin than in the state as a whole.”

This double trouble – the need for expanding the base even as it’s shrinking – has been understood among Republicans who are good at politics. (Trump is bad at politics.) This is why there’s a “growing chorus” of allies urging him to focus less on “grievances” and more on issues, or “hitting” Biden, to bring back GOP voters who’ve strayed.

But either he isn’t listening or he can’t help himself. (Actually, it’s both). Recently, Trump sat with Fox host Bret Baier, who asked: “What do you say to that female independent suburban voter to win her back?” Trump: “First of all, I won in 2020 by a lot. Let’s get that straight.”

While that clearly works with most Republicans, it doesn’t work with all, because, to these holdouts, it sounds like he’s “talking about being a victim,” as Haley said last week. “At no point has he ever talked about the American people. All he’s doing is talking about himself. And that’s the problem — it’s not about him. It’s about the American people.”

But even if Trump were to stick with campaign issues, like the “crisis at the border,” there’s a problem. He doesn’t care about them strongly enough to remain focused on them. He cares about defeating his enemies, to be sure, especially Joe Biden, whose administration is “victimizing” him. But actual problems? No. He doesn’t care. Problems are for exploiting to gain power to liquidate enemies, not for solving.

Republicans who are good at politics, and who are urging him to “pivot” to the general, also know who their party’s presumptive nominee is. He can’t adjust, won’t adjust. He’s running the same campaign in 2024 that he ran in 2016, only it’s a thousand times more dictatorial. Even when coaxed oh-so-gently into adjusting, Trump reverts to form. During a recent interview involving a question about government secrets found at Mar-a-Lago, Fox’s Sean Hannity suggested that he wouldn’t really commit crimes, would he? In essence, Trump said, ‘Sure, I would.’”

All the above is why Trump needs the Russians. His base is shrinking. He’s alienating “that female independent suburban voter.” He can’t adjust, won’t adjust. He doesn’t care about problems enough to solve them. All he can do – the one thing he’s good at – is hold steady while the Russians, in coordination with the Republicans, attack Joe Biden, smear him, wear his people down, “flood the zone with shit,” as advisor Steven Bannon once said, in a nihilistic act of “voter suppression.”

Indeed, as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pointed out recently, 2024 will be the third election cycle in a row in which Vladimir Putin’s saboteurs are once against attacking American sovereignty and interfering with our democratic decision-making, Meanwhile, GOP leaders will either stand by and watch it happen (as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did in 2016) or participate (as the House Republicans are now by pursuing an impeachment inquiry against the president, or as Joe Conason put it, by pursuing “a bogus case invented in Moscow.”)

[John Stoehr]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

The choice for president has seldom been starker. On one side is Donald Trump, a felonious and twice-impeached conman, raring to finish off the job of dismantling American democracy. On the other is Kamala Harris, a capable and experienced leader who stands for traditional democratic principles. Nevertheless – and shockingly – the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have decided to sit this one out. Both major news organizations, each owned by a billionaire, announced this week that their editorial boards would not make a presidential endorsement, despite their decades-long traditions of doing so. There’s no other way to see this other than as an appalling display of cowardice and a dereliction of their public duty. At the Los Angeles Times, the decision rests clearly with Patrick Soon-Shiong, who bought the ailing paper in 2018, raising great hopes of a resurgence there. At the Post (where I was the media columnist from 2016 to 2022), the editorial page editor David Shipley said he owned the decision, but it clearly came from above – specifically from the publisher, Will Lewis, the veteran of Rupert Murdoch’s media properties, hand-picked last year by the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos. Was Bezos himself the author of this abhorrent decision? Maybe not, but it could not have come as a surprise. All of this may look like nonpartisan neutrality, or be intended to, but it’s far from that. For one thing, it’s a shameful smackdown of both papers’ reporting and opinion-writing staffs who have done important work exposing Trump’s dangers for many years. It’s also a strong statement of preference. The papers’ leaders have made it clear that they either want Trump (who is, after all, a boon to large personal fortunes) or that they don’t wish to risk the ex-president’s wrath and retribution if he wins. If the latter was a factor, it’s based on a shortsighted judgment, since Trump has been a hazard to press rights and would only be emboldened in a second term. [...] Some news organizations upheld their duty and remained true to their mission. The New York Times endorsed Harris last month, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president”, and writing that Trump “has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest”. The Guardian, too, strongly endorsed Harris, saying she would “unlock democracy’s potential, not give in to its flaws”, and calling Trump a “transactional and corrupting politician”.

Margaret Sullivan at The Guardian on the cowardly abdication of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times by refusing to endorse a Presidential candidate (10.25.2024).

The egregious and cowardly actions done by both the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times deciding to sit out the Presidential endorsements process this election is craven and cowardly, as both papers were set to endorse Kamala Harris (D). Even the New York Times, for all their faults, got it right by endorsing Kamala Harris.

[gent-illmatic]

Yuh💕

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The real quiet quitting: Boomers nopeing out of the workforce

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/labor-supply-economy-jobs-charts-3285a5b7

[jagodanna]

Damiano David

[honestlyzealouspizza]

[maeamian]

Well the shoot themselves in the dick brigade got what they wanted let's just hope they were right.

[knuckle]

going from one c drama to another where they use like English nobility ranks and they're all translated differently whether a 侯 viscount or a marquis or an earl is entirely the same rank or not also seeing gongzhu 公主 translated as palace mistress and kunning palace was translating 王子 as lord like they were calling a high imperial prince a random lord 😭 someone needs to actually pay people a living and professional wage

[x-heesy]

Mood Board

𝙷𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢 𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚞

🖥 𝑫����𝒈𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍 𝑨𝒓𝒕

🇨🇳 𝚂𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚑𝚊𝚒

𝚠𝚠𝚠.𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚛𝚢𝚕𝚒𝚕.𝚌𝚘𝚖

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Hey

Are you there?

Can you feel?

Are?

Integrate

Pressure, pressure

Promess, can you promess?

You

Hold me thight

When i cry

You

Can you promess?

I know

Nothing lasts forever in this life.

Don't you know?

Don't you know?

Eaters

So fragile

So, don't promess

Don't promess

Because i

Want you

Close

To me

I know does

Who care

It's fire

Fire

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Fire

I can feel fire.

Soundtrack: fire by Nina kraViz

[contemplatingoutlander]

That the Editorial Board of the premier U.S. newspaper of record is finally warning about Donald Trump is significant. As such, this is a gift 🎁 link so that those who want to read the entire editorial can do so, even if they don't subscribe to The New York Times. Below are some excerpts:

As president, [Trump] wielded power carelessly and often cruelly and put his ego and his personal needs above the interests of his country. Now, as he campaigns again, his worst impulses remain as strong as ever — encouraging violence and lawlessness, exploiting fear and hate for political gain, undermining the rule of law and the Constitution, applauding dictators — and are escalating as he tries to regain power. He plots retribution, intent on eluding the institutional, legal and bureaucratic restraints that put limits on him in his first term. Our purpose at the start of the new year, therefore, is to sound a warning. Mr. Trump does not offer voters anything resembling a normal option of Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, big government or small. He confronts America with a far more fateful choice: between the continuance of the United States as a nation dedicated to “the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” and a man who has proudly shown open disdain for the law and the protections and ideals of the Constitution. [...] It is instructive in the aftermath of that administration to listen to the judgments of some of these officials on the president they served. John Kelly, a chief of staff to Mr. Trump, called him the “most flawed person I’ve ever met,” someone who could not understand why Americans admired those who sacrificed their lives in combat. Bill Barr, who served as attorney general, and Mark Esper, a former defense secretary, both said Mr. Trump repeatedly put his own interests over those of the country. Even the most loyal and conservative of them all, Vice President Mike Pence, who made the stand that helped provoke Mr. Trump and his followers to insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, saw through the man: “On that day, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution,” he said.

[See more under the cut.]

There will not be people like these in the White House should Mr. Trump be re-elected. The former president has no interest in being restrained, and he has surrounded himself with people who want to institutionalize the MAGA doctrine. According to reporting by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan, Mr. Trump and his ideological allies have been planning for a second Trump term for many months already. Under the name Project 2025, one coalition of right-wing organizations has produced a thick handbook and recruited thousands of potential appointees in preparation for an all-out assault on the structures of American government and the democratic institutions that acted as checks on Mr. Trump’s power. [...] Mr. Trump has made clear his conviction that only “losers” accept legal, institutional or even constitutional constraints. He has promised vengeance against his political opponents, whom he has called “vermin” and threatened with execution. This is particularly disturbing at a time of heightened concern about political violence, with threats increasing against elected officials of both parties. He has repeatedly demonstrated a deep disdain for the First Amendment and the basic principles of democracy, chief among them the right to freely express peaceful dissent from those in power without fear of retaliation, and he has made no secret of his readiness to expand the powers of the presidency, including the deployment of the military and the Justice Department, to have his way. [...] Re-electing Mr. Trump would present serious dangers to our Republic and to the world. This is a time not to sit out but instead to re-engage. We appeal to Americans to set aside their political differences, grievances and party affiliations and to contemplate — as families, as parishes, as councils and clubs and as individuals — the real magnitude of the choice they will make in November.

I encourage people to use the above gift link and read the entire article.

[edited]

[agraphicf1shermanscatch]

just 'another' observation, that's all . . .

[arcticdementor]

There are lots of ways of defining the liberal elite — assistant deans, network anchors, public health officials and, yes, legacy newspaper journalists — but there can be no question that Tuesday night saw a wholesale rejection of their dominant value system. America didn’t just elect a craven candidate whom the highly educated had deemed unacceptably dictatorial, fascistic even, but the nation did so in such a way that President-elect Donald J. Trump’s agenda now will largely be unfettered, thanks to Republican majorities in the Senate and, quite possibly as we write, the House. And, adding insult to injury for Democrats, it’s likely that the result of the election also will deliver Trump from his myriad legal challenges. The party that had been saying democracy was on the ballot found that democracy had risen like an orange tiger to bite it in the neck.

…

As a bleary America awoke Wednesday to a new political reality, armchair quarterbacking as to why Harris and Tim Walz lost was already underway. We have our theories too. Harris, as we noted here many times, failed to answer, in a clear and direct way, questions about what she would do as president, an essential thing to do if you want voters to be able see you in the job. The problem to our minds was not just that her handlers kept her removed from tough questions, but also that her answers were inadequately coherent when she finally emerged from the shadows. Trump, palpable flaws and all, was known; Harris remained unknown. The gauzy biographical movies from the Democratic National Convention were not enough.

…

Then there’s the matter of whether Democrats should have treated Trump as if he were a Nazi dictator. Harris explicitly told CNN host Anderson Cooper she was running against a fascist, thus inevitably implying that his supporters either were sheep-like fools or fascists themselves. That meant left-leaning commentators had to turn themselves into pretzels Wednesday trying to explain the logic of how Harris should now quietly concede to a man she had called, and presumably believed, was a fascist. Whenever Democrats used terms such as “normalizing” and “sane-washing,” evidence suggests they mostly served to embolden the opposition because Trump supporters saw the terms as being applied to themselves. And they hardly were wrong. Half of America sees the other half as fools.

…

The Republican Party has become a party not of business and nonprofit leaders, now mostly Democratic Party members, but of the working class and the lower middle class. Elites throughout history have found to their cost that there are very many of those folks, even if we don’t hear from them all that much. By effectively abandoning the working class, especially men, by deeming so much of what they felt unacceptable, Democrats got themselves on the wrong side of the numbers game. A plethora of Americans saw Trump, who survived two assassination attempts during the campaign, as their protector and not as the disruptor the elites saw. And regular folks tend to vote what they perceive to be in their economic or cultural interest, regardless of race. This is a tough lesson for Democrats to learn because they tend to have been taught otherwise, but it explains, especially, the pivotal defection of some Black men to Trump just as it makes the point that many U.S. citizens of Latino origin or descent don’t necessarily approve of a border that is easy to cross without authorization. And they voted accordingly. Take, for example, the decision by many voters of Puerto Rican descent to ignore the insults hurled their way by the appalling comedian at Trump’s New York rally. Democrats had pushed the narrative that those aggrieved voters would move the needle, especially in crucial Allentown, Pennsylvania, because they thought racial identity would trump all. But they failed to see the condescension inherent in the belief that those voters would care more about a comic than their own economic worries when it came to paying their bills and helping their children find jobs. Now, thanks to the toughest of nights, Democrats better understand.

[radioprune]

writing an article and it's my leastttttt favorite task of all time so i literally write one sentence then scroll for 15 minutes as a reward

[themassespress]

Glory to the Resistance: One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood

By the Editorial Board of The Masses On Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian resistance movement unleashed a storm upon the Zionist occupation which shook the entire imperialist order to its core. Contrary to the lies of capitalist-imperialist and Zionist media, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was initiated by the heroic acts of the Qassam brigade but it was not the work of Hamas alone, rather it became the…

[jagodanna]