pothead wrote:
> On 2024-08-15, Skeeter <skeeterweed@photonmail.com> wrote:
>> In article <67tsbjlfmqh5i8m1amlst3muc13a1evgvt@4ax.com>,
>> joelcrump@gmail.com says...
>>>
>>> Governor Swill <governor.swill@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, 15 Aug 2024 09:05:27 -0500, "X, formerly known as \"!Jones\"" <x@y.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-has-become-what-he-campaigned-
>>>>>> against/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Trump Has Become What He Campaigned Against
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> By Dan McLaughlin
>>>>>> August 13, 2024 3:46 PM
>>>>>> Observers of Donald Trump?s rallies over the past month ? such as the NR
>>>>>> Editors panel on Friday ? have noticed two related problems with Trump?s
>>>>>> rhetorical approach to taking on Kamala Harris (even aside from his ill-
>>>>>> considered attacks, as happened when he went after Brian Kemp in Georgia).
>>>>>> One is that Trump often goes into spin-the-oldies mode, describing his
>>>>>> various favorite themes and grievances in a shorthand that will be familiar
>>>>>> to his fans but is nearly incomprehensible to undecided voters who aren?t
>>>>>> consumers of MAGA media. The other is that Trump is offering generalized
>>>>>> swipes at Harris and Tim Walz for their records and positions but not
>>>>>> boring into the specific things they?ve done and said that show them to be
>>>>>> extremists.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Back during the primaries, I warned that the flexibility and freshness that
>>>>>> characterized Trump?s campaign in 2016 was eroding because, by now, he has
>>>>>> been in a lot of political fights and has a record, so his style sounds
>>>>>> stale, his jabs are predictable, and he is loath to change course in ways
>>>>>> that would amount to admissions of mistakes or failure in the past. What
>>>>>> we?re seeing now is another side of that, and an ironic one: Trump turning
>>>>>> into what he campaigned against in Republican politics.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What, after all, characterized the conservative and right-wing
>>>>>> commentariat?s two big frustrations with John McCain in 2008 and Mitt
>>>>>> Romney in 2012 and, more broadly, with establishment Republican politicians
>>>>>> that Trump was supposed to cure? Some of the frustration was ideological
>>>>>> (e.g., McCain?s views on immigration), and some was broken promises, but in
>>>>>> terms of communications, there were two persistent grievances. One was that
>>>>>> McCain and Romney were unwilling or unable to deliver the best attacks that
>>>>>> people on their side thought they should make. Trump, by contrast, would go
>>>>>> there. He?d never leave a weapon unused. He was attack politics
>>>>>> personified. But now the pundit and talker class is back to fuming that
>>>>>> Trump isn?t using the best stuff because he?s so vague and blathery that he
>>>>>> isn?t communicating the attacks.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Trump Will Get His Clock Cleaned by Kamala Harris in the Debate If He
>>>>>> Doesn?t Improve
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The other thing Trump was supposed to represent was a fresh voice in how to
>>>>>> deliver Republican arguments to voters who were not already committed
>>>>>> Goldwaterite conservatives. Romney, in particular, always seemed to believe
>>>>>> that he had to go around telling rather than showing people that he was
>>>>>> ?severely conservative? and Reaganite and stood for all the stuff you?d
>>>>>> find in a Heritage Foundation white paper or a back issue of National
>>>>>> Review. Some of Trump?s 2016 rivals did a bit too much of the same. This
>>>>>> contrasted with Reagan himself, who had folksy ways of delivering arguments
>>>>>> that were conservative in substance but he would present simply as common
>>>>>> sense.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Trump never did communicate like Reagan, but knowing nothing of the
>>>>>> language of Republican discourse, he threw out the playbook and found his
>>>>>> own ways to say things that reached some new people. We can argue about the
>>>>>> pros and cons of this, but the point is that it was new and distinct and it
>>>>>> didn?t take for granted that his audience already knew and agreed with all
>>>>>> the conservative arguments.
>>>>>> Trump?s not doing that anymore. The old shibboleths are dead; long live the
>>>>>> new shibboleths. Everything is now in Trump shorthand instead of movement-
>>>>>> conservative shorthand. But it?s indecipherable to anybody who doesn?t know
>>>>>> the lyrics by heart.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> All of this, of course, is why it?s a bad idea to run a 78-year-old third-
>>>>>> time candidate instead of somebody fresher.
>>>>>
>>>>> Well written article!
>>>>>
>>>>> I left the GOP in '08 after voting Republican for nearly 50 years...
>>>>> OK, *mostly* voted Republican. I was a right-leaning moderate.
>>>>>
>>>>> The worst part of the GOP's platform is Trump. I don't know why his
>>>>> campaign didn't see the switcheroo; I had been expecting it for a
>>>>> couple of years... and the Donald is still whining about a big nothing
>>>>> burger that caught him flat-footed. The GOP campaign managers need to
>>>>> jerk his leash sharply and bring him on topic!
>>>>>
>>>>> *I* will vote for Kamala this round; however, our country needs at
>>>>> least two healthy parties... and the GOP's health is failing with the
>>>>> Donald.
>>>>
>>>> A split is a possibility. The hard right, the racists and fascists, having flexed some
>>>> power, will try again under their own banner.
>>>>
>>>> The Libs and Cons will unite to shut them out.
>>>
>>>
>>> This is why Kamala's gonna make Trump defeated again, we just can't
>>> have four more years of DJT (or a dictatorship, beyond four years).
>>
>> Explain this dictatorship. I bet you can't. When you can get arrested
>> for not using the proper "pronoun" is not freedom.
>
> I'd like to see how Trump was/is going to be a dictator.
> The Biden/Harris/democrat administration sure appear to be dictators though.
> Examples:
>
> 1. War on fossil fuels and ICE vehicles with the goal of forcing people to EV.
> 2. War on gas stoves forcing people to move to electric or in the case of professional restaurants
> requiring them to purchase expensive filtering systems.
> 3. War on gasoline powered lawn, gardening tools such as mowers.
> 4. Biden's justice department targeting conservative groups like the Catholic Church.
> 5. Biden's justice system calling and targeting parents who speak up against radical left topics
> being taught in schools domestic terrorists.
> 6. Biden ignoring SCOTUS decisions regarding paying off student loans.
> 7. Biden hamstringing exploration of fossil fuels.
> 8. Biden attempting to mandate masks for air travel. That one got shot down.

> The list is endless.

That's just 8 different ways of saying, "I support fossil fuels and they
do not."

Look at it this way, we've got 6 billion years before any existential
crisis. We're going about things burning up fossil fuels way too fast.
It's a grievous waste. How many oil wells have been dried up to date?
We're in talks to drill for oil in Alaska. Saudis have us by the balls
over our fossil fuel use. There will be plenty of electrical vehicles
crawling all over the Earth. Progress will still get done. And in my
opinion, it's not going to take 6 billions yrs to do what we need to but
more like 300. Say it doubles that time to 600 yrs. That's still close
to 2 millionths of the time humanity has with Earth. Meanwhile we're
storing crude oil in millions of barrels for the future of humanity in
emergencies.

I am shocked by the rapidity with which we are burning through fossil
fuels. Renewable energy has such promise. Call it Ghetto Fusion.