We keep hoping that some sane Republican will emerge and eclipse The Former Guy. It’s probably a vain hope, but one likely prospect was Nikki Haley, former Governor of South Carolina and Trump’s Ambassador to the UN.
While campaigning in Londonderry, New Hampshire, Haley expressed her negative views about the nation’s public schools. Sadly, she parroted the standard Republican tropes.
She said:
“Stop the gender pronoun classes that are happening in the military,” Haley said, as the crowd cheered in response.
Mirroring the recent culture wars that have unfolded in local school districts like Goffstown, Haley called for “complete transparency in the classroom.”
“No parent should ever wonder what’s being said or taught to their children in the classroom,” Haley said.
Haley implored for the end of “national self-loathing” in schools. “Our kids need to know to love America,” Haley said, claiming that kids are being told America is a racist, rotten country.
“I was elected the first female minority governor in history,” Haley said. “America is not racist, we’re blessed.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
She is a disgrace—curried favor with Moms of Liberty. In a time of reasonable Republicans, she would probably have been a moderate, but she has proven herself to be viciously ambitious and eager to embrace MAGA to win.
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Romney, when he ran for the presidency, threw over all his moderate principles, including his support for HIS OWN PROGRAM–Obamacare, which was INVENTED BY ROMNEY IN MASSACHUSETTS and then adopted by Obama. This, an his about face on women’s reproductive freedom, which he supported when he was governor of Massachusetts, show that Mr. Mormon is just fine with checking his integrity at the starting gate.
Haley, the same. These people all feel that they have to out-troglodyte one another to win the Repugnican primary.
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The GOP belongs to Trump now.
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Nikki Haley is the preferred candidate of the neoliberal corporate class. While she may not be as married to cultural issues as some other GOP candidates, she takes orders from the same billionaires they all serve, and wealthy conservatives have ordered ‘a hit’ on the nation’s public schools. Undermining public education is their long game strategy to ultimately dismantle them and shift public money into private pockets and lower taxes for the billionaire class. If this were to happen it would a massive loss of public assets, democracy and a undermining of the glue the helps bind us together. It is easier to control fragmented people. This has always been the prescription for gentrification in the nation’s cities. It would be a massive loss for the poor and working class and a massive transfer of wealth to the already wealthy.
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Nailed it, RT. She is an alternative, but she is not a “reasonable” one.
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The suggestion that Haley is a minority causes me to question: what minority does she belong to?
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From Wikipedia:
Haley was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa on January 20, 1972, at Bamberg County Hospital in Bamberg, South Carolina,[1][2][9] to immigrant Indian Sikh parents.[10][11] Her father, Ajit Singh Randhawa, and her mother, Raj Kaur Randhawa, immigrated to the United States from Amritsar, Punjab, India.[12] Her father had been a professor at Punjab Agricultural University, and her mother received her law degree from the University of Delhi.[13] Haley has been known by her middle name, Nikki, a Punjabi name meaning “little one”, since her earliest years.[14]
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And then she became a Trump acolyte and so grew Dimarata.
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It seems to me that Haley is a member of the PPB club (People Paid by Billionaires). Seems like there are few who are not on some payroll guaranteed by great wealth.
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I suppose she has to talk silly nonsense to have a chance in the present Republican Party, which is swimming in nonsense. ________________________________
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Thanks. I had assumed her to be related to my wife’s Haley side. I never saw a picture of her or read about anything but her policy ideas,
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In the debates, she and Christie have seemed like the reasonable ones on the stage. But we are talking about degrees of lunacy here.
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Devastating and terrifying (if you’re concerned about Trump winning the 2024 election) NYTimes/Sienna poll put today.
Still, the survey shows how Mr. Biden begins the next year at a deficit even though Mr. Trump has been indicted on criminal charges four times and faces trial in 2024. If the results in the poll were the same next November, Mr. Trump would be poised to win more than 300 Electoral College votes, far above the 270 needed to take the White House.
Another ominous sign for Democrats is that voters across all income levels felt that Mr. Biden’s policies had hurt them personally, while they credited Mr. Trump’s policies for helping them. The results were mirror opposites: Voters gave Mr. Trump a 17-point advantage for having helped them and Mr. Biden a 18-point disadvantage for having hurt them.
For Mr. Biden, who turns 81 later this month, being the oldest president in American history stands out as a glaring liability. An overwhelming 71 percent said he was “too old” to be an effective president — an opinion shared across every demographic and geographic group in the poll, including a remarkable 54 percent of Mr. Biden’s own supporters.
In contrast, only 19 percent of supporters of Mr. Trump, who is 77, viewed him as too old, and 39 percent of the electorate overall.
Concerns about the president’s advancing age and mental acuity — 62 percent also said Mr. Biden does not have the “mental sharpness” to be effective — are just the start of a sweeping set of Biden weaknesses in the survey results.
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I’ve decided that I live in an insane country. Jabba the Trump, the idiot criminal conman? What Happens in the Gym stays in the Gym Jordan? Thick as a Brick Tuberville? Party Hearty Gaetz? Space Laser Greene? Rhymes with Ooze Cruz? A-butt? Rhonda Santis, aka Platform Shoes A Go-Go? Vivek Ramaswampy? The list goes on and on. What a freak show.
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I saw a poll today that said 39% of Americans believe we’re living in end times.
That said, even when you factor in the mass stupidity and the algorithmic tunnels that we increasingly live in, perceptions of Biden’s age clearly remains and will remain a huge factor.
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I ran across a book a few years ago (sadly, I’ve forgotten the title and author) that was an annotated list of 3,000+ End Times predictions by religious leaders over the past 2,000 years. Hilarious stuff. I wish I had ordered a copy. The stories of those predictions by religious madmen (and a few women) are always fascinating. What a bunch of kooks, but no kookier, I suppose, than is the run-of-the-mill belief in virgin births and magic wafers and special goggles for reading Reformed Hieroglyphics and other stuff from mainstream nuttiness.
Robert Frost wrote a wonderful letter to The Amherst Student dated march 25, 1935. In it, he says,
“[Y]ou will often hear it said that the age of the world we live in is particularly bad. I am impatient of such talk. We have no way of knowing that this age is one of the worst in the world’s history. Arnold claimed the honor for the age before this. Wordsworth claimed it for the last but one. And so on back through literature. I say they claimed the honor for their ages. They claimed it rather for themselves. It is immodest of a man to think of himself as going down before the worst forces ever mobilized by God.”
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Trump’s verbal gaffes should raise questions about his mental fitness. Apparently he thinks he defeated Obama in 2016. He is counting on blister, insults, and bullying to make his case. He is a hateful man. I expect most of his Cabinet would denounce him.
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It would be hilarious if some talk show assembled “A Meeting of Trump’s Cabinet” made up of all the former cabinet members who despise the man and speak of him as a brainless fool, as mentally incompetent, as a toddler.
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Bob,
In reference to a comment thread for a different post-
“9 Toxic phrases gaslighters use-…
just joking.”
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?
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I was thinking of posting these poll numbers, too.
I read a great deal on why this is happening. Still can’t make great sense of it. I think it’s just a lot of resentment from a privileged group of people who feel like their privilege is disappearing.
Additionally, globalization has been great for cities / suburbs but not good for rural areas. (This by the way is a global trend.) However, this has entirely enriched the 1% who Trump happily rewarded with the 2017 tax cut.
When I talk to Trumpers, I get a variety of reasons but mostly, it’s a visceral emotional response that they can’t quite seem to clarify. Even when presented with information that Trump didn’t really do much in his term, they seem reluctant to budge. (For example, when presented with Trump’s massive government stimulus / national debt raising policies that kept an economy going, they then immediately complain about out of control government spending. Now.)
SO, our remarkably spoiled country is determined to elect a man who cares nothing for them, only for himself, and they are sowing the seeds of the destruction of their democracy. Which they claim to love. Bot , not really.
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It’s too early to be moved by poll numbers. The election is a year away.
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I live in Flor-uh-duh. A lot of the Trumpers (and Help, Help Me, Rhon-duh-ettes) here are not privileged people who are losing priviliges. They are poor white folks who just hate people of color and are happy to listen to Fox or the Repugnicans tell them that the reason why they are 45 living in a trailer on a dirt road with two old cars on blocks out front is black and brown people. And Liberals. Inbred hillbillies without the hills.
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If Traitor Trump is elected to a second term in 2024, I think the United States will explode into a civil war that will eclipse the first one. That 2nd civil war might not happen the same day, but it will in weeks, months or even a year or so as solid blue states fight back supporting the U.S. Constitution against a fascist dictator until the only choice is to start shooting.
Just like the 1st Civil War, the military will split. Some will go to fight for the dictator. The majority (probably a slim one) will join what’s left of democratic states fighting for the U.S. Constitution.
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