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[Trekkin]

Here's the thing, I kind of want him to run because Trump will not be able to criticize him in any way other than to make fun of his name. It would derail the entire Trump campaign. Every campaign stop would be just Trump repeating his opponent's last name and making an idiot of himself.

You're thinking about it like a liberal. "Gay" is all the slur he needs for  his base, and finding new ways to call homosexual men weak-willed and effeminate is an old and euphemism-rich art -- one into which the incel/far-right/Proud Boy/manosphere toxic masculinity hydra has breathed new life.

Sure it's stupid. That's the point. It's not about making a coherent argument or articulating a vision for the future; it's about putting on a show in which the Trumpians can believe that the world that left them behind as inadequate really is as hollow and joyless and broken as they are, a world in which the President is an insane shitgibbon and everyone who looks like they might know what's going on can be dismissed out of hand. Thus the fake news, thus the vulgarity, and thus the incessant focus on punking the libs; it's the political version of depression shitposting, because doing anything but laughing at the people trying to change things might mean daring to hope and there's insecurities there.

So yes, there's not much Trump could articulate about Buttigieg that would be both substantive and appealing to his base. But that's not necessary when your campaign slogan is "Fuck Hope."

[PTTG??]

Trump supporters are a lost cause. To attempt to woo them would be like Lincoln counting on getting those South Carolina electoral votes for his re-election campaign.

[Trekkin]

Trump supporters are a lost cause. To attempt to woo them would be like Lincoln counting on getting those South Carolina electoral votes for his re-election campaign.

Well, yeah, but they're lost in Trump's favor. He woos them because it's how he won, and the differences between now and 2016 won't get inside his information bubble.

[Craftsdwarf boi]

Should political parties even exist?

[wierd]

in as much as they theoretically represent blocks of voters with aligned interests, yes. There is a reason for a unified and workable front with which to construct a viable political platform.

In as much as they inevitably deteriorate, in much the same way that unions do, and become rife with corruption and internal petty squabbles for power... No.


Sadly, humans are the way they are, and there is no way to have the former without the latter. Not unless you like dictatorships anyway.

[smjjames]

Should political parties even exist?

That's what the founders wanted (or maybe just Hamilton or Adams or a few), perhaps naively, and political factions formed almost immediately regardless of what they wanted.

re Trump and Buttigeig and yadda yadda: He's been focusing almost solely on Biden since he sees Biden as the biggest threat. Whether Biden can actually win against Trump is certainly up for debate, but there is definetly fear behind Trumps targeting.

[ChairmanPoo]

One hitler shall henceforth be a unit of measurement equal to 6.0*106 human deaths.

Standard SI prefixes apply. Thus Harold Shipman's achievements amount to 36 microhitlers.

[Madman198237]

I think your Hitler unit is half or less of an actual Hitler, assuming we're counting all deaths attributed to the Holocaust/his genocidal policies but not any other deaths that could be construed as being caused by Hitler.

[Rolan7]

That's because you have to consider both sides.  Some say Hitler is responsible for twice as many deaths, some say he did nothing wrong.  It's called compromise

[Trekkin]

Our very smart president is now the best at aircraft carrier design, having determined that the Navy's EMALS is a waste of time and money because our troops are in his estimation too stupid to use it and demanding that we return to steam catapults, including on ships already under construction.

So, translating from Trumpese, he's now too demented to comprehend electromagnetism.

[Dunamisdeos]

Ah, no, he understands it perfectly, he just has an investment somewhere in steam catapults.

[Trekkin]

Ah, no, he understands it perfectly, he just has an investment somewhere in steam catapults.

The man thinks the F-35 is literally invisible. I'm inclined to chalk this one up to stupidity rather than (just) malice.

[sluissa]

While the idea is sound, the execution of the EMALS has been horribly flawed from the start. That said, there's just no way to go about changing it back to steam at this point. At best you MIGHT consider finding another company to fix the EMALS for you... but even that likely has serious roadblocks. But steam simply won't work on the ones under construction.

I wouldn't mind this sort of aggressiveness towards wasteful projects if the projects were actually able to be changed in a significant way without wasting even more money. But unfortunately the people wasting the money are literally pros at it. They know what to promise up front, what sort of milestones they have to make under the original agreement, and then when they can start having things go wrong with time and cost over-runs. I'm not going to go so far as to say it's entirely planned out. But there's definitely some amount of foreknowledge that "we'll be making more off of this than the proposal states" going on.

And hey, things do go wrong... and it makes sense to pay a little more to get something running than to scrap a whole project over minor setbacks... but that seems to be the way of doing business now rather than just an incidental risk of the business.

[PTTG??]

I'm pretty sure this is trump, or one of his operators, attempting to manufacture a distraction. The president can't order troops to go into battle with muskets, and he can't order radar shut down.

[sluissa]

I'm pretty sure this is trump, or one of his operators, attempting to manufacture a distraction. The president can't order troops to go into battle with muskets, and he can't order radar shut down.

Honestly? I think that's giving him too much credit. I think something just grabbed his attention, he started yelling, in this case something he's yelled at before and some reporter picked up on it.

Distraction? Maybe... but it's a pretty crap distraction. It's pretty crap from just about any perspective. It really just seems like incoherant yelling. Old man yells at a lack of clouds (of steam).