Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

Eric, probably.

I grew up in a home where religion was discussed more than politics. My parents (Missouri Synod Lutheran) cared more about Billy Graham than whoever was president. Imagine my surprise, given how the GOP has completely kowtowed to the religious right, to find that my parents have never voted Republican. They’re 91, loathe Trump, and their views on gay marriage, abortion, and racial issues are quite progressive.

bring it

Fulton county prosecutors prepare racketeering charges in Trump inquiry

Re: Dan

I, who hail from a family that despises organized religion, stupidly attended a (now shuttered!) Missouri-Synod Lutheran middle school, which was my first exposure EVER to people who don’t accept evolutionary biology. I have to say that they weren’t *quite* as antisemitic as the Baptists I later encountered, but goodness do they think that Catholics are all bound for hell

Re: Trump I am reasonably pleased about charges and indictments and lawsuits and such. But it would be really nice to see some muthaflippin _consequences_ falling on his weirdly orange head. I am not impressed by the idea of him being "in legal peril"; as far as I can tell he has been "in legal peril" for half of my life. It keeps not turning into imprisonment and disgrace. It's just more cloudy murk of motions and depositions and procedural decisions and such.

I sometimes wish I could just go to bed for a few months and have someone wake me when Trump is actually, visibly, undeniably suffering.

lol yes re: Catholics!

xp

the fighting between the different Protestant denominations in the 70s/80s Midwest always took a back seat to the claim there are Christians and there are Catholics and those are two distinctly different groups

there are still outliers who haven’t died off but what a different time

My Unitarian grandparents were livid when my father married my mom, a Polish Catholic immigrant, in 1978. Still boggles my mind that people cared about such bullshit.

Wow, I thought all Unitarians were real woo-woo "not all who wander are lost" polyglot types.

Table/Boring: It's complicated! In the 16th century, Unitarianism was a Christian sect with a decently solid base in central and eastern Europe, particularly Translyvania (insert vampire joke here). "Unitarian" mostly meant opposition to the idea of the trinity. In the 18th century this anti-trinitarian theology got some traction in New England. Universalism was a slightly different American Christian sect from the 18th century. But close enough for comfort.

Current Unitarian Universalism dates from 1961 and is famously creedless and "chosen" (as opposed to "imposed"). Yes, there is a strong smell of woo-woo, as Boring notes. A lot of hippies who have lost their birth faith but still like going to church. Expect to see a lot of vegetarian Democrats who wear chunky sweaters and have a wooden canoe and donate to NPR.

But there is still wide variance. Every UU congregation is its own thing. Some are high church, with choirs and God. Others are like a frickin geodesic dome where everybody's an atheist and they only want to talk about Einstein and Emma Goldman.

This is the only religious tradition that fails to completely piss me off 100% of time. Nowadays it only pisses me off 97% if the time. (see above, NPR and canoes)

Wow, I thought all Unitarians were real woo-woo "not all who wander are lost" polyglot types.

p.s. Interestingly, my childhood Unitarian church was the one T.S. Eliot went to (founded by his grandfather; there is still a big mural of his face there). As soon as Eliot (the poet) could, he went for more restriction rather than less. Monarchist, Anglo-Catholic, conservative.

He wrote some good lines but... if I could get that stodgy prick into a time machine, I would take him to his childhood church and rub his nose in the pride flags and the Black Lives Matter signs. Dude needed to loosen up.

we might disagree there, but ymmv

hang on was someone suggesting upthread the white house coke was junior's?

If it was found in the White House I think that makes it the People's Coke.

Don Jr. has been loudly denying that he does coke. Which is a bit odd.

I mean if a cokehead were to deny they do coke I guess they would do it loudly

and sweatily

"Never change your name in the middle of a campaign"

NEW: Potential charges in Trump-Georgia probe, per ppl familiar
— solicitation to commit election fraud
— conspiracy to commit election fraud
— solicitation of a public officer to fail to perform duties
— solicitation to destroy ballots@guardian exclusive https://t.co/8qPQ7usAgU

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) July 25, 2023

Pew research found that 63% of Americans of all political affiliations have an unfavorable opinion of Trump – an increase from 60% last year.

of course, both Biden & Harris are polling pretty low as well.. so he might get the nomination, but it seems like even a reasonably well-behaved sea lion could beat him in the general

the problem with dismissing Trump's chances based on a number that aggregates all voters into one national lump is the fucking electoral college, which has been the perennial problem with electing presidents for the past several decades. he's wildly popular in all the extremely rural states with outsized effects in the general election.

If/when a GOP candidate wins the popular and loses the electoral, only then will it be an issue

No other country in the world does this shit, no state, no county, nowhere

American exceptionalism iirc

Yeah well think of the feelings of the electoral collegians for once why doncha

idk 63% unfavorable is really really bad for a presidential candidate, IIRC he was at something like 57% in 2020 and still lost pretty badly. can't imagine new sets of criminal charges and having this guy constantly back on TV again is gonna make anyone like him *more*

Andy, the GW Bush campaign was expecting to win the popular vote but lose in the EC, they had a legal strategy lined up already to challenge the results, and had a PR strategy to discredit the EC.

what's really going to doom DeSantis now is that, like Trump, he was faring well in head to head election polls with Biden, but his numbers have slipped significantly, with three of the last five polls having Biden with a margin of 4 points or better.

Trump himself has slid in the same head to head polls, though not quite as much, and considering the lack of enthusiasm for DeSantis, you'd look to some other factor to make his case.

Most of the poll shifting seems to be undecideds deciding, and obviously polls this far out with the Republican party not having an official nominee are meant to be taken with a grain of salt, but the negativity amongst both candidates seems to have a tangible impact now.

Polls this far out are gross indicators at best.

Trump is pretty gross

Here we go again

BREAKING: Two sources with direct knowledge of the situation tells NBC News that Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and John Lauro are meeting with prosecutors in the Special Counsel's office in Washington and have been told to expect an indictment against Donald Trump. @MSNBC

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 27, 2023

Here's why it looks bad for President Biden.

lol Alfred

lol xp

guy is piling up a lot of charges

a double header?

Barricades erected outside the Fulton County courthouse now. Looks like preparation for some big legal news… pic.twitter.com/3QOccQOMnf

— Charles Bethea (@charlesbethea) July 27, 2023

Build the wall! Build the wall!

It's just a shame that a full two years after Jan 6, we only have 1,734 indictments.

we need hundreds of millions of indictments

I could have sworn I heard am interview with prosecutors that said, after a very brief lull several months ago, that there could be another thousand on the way.

I wonder if anyone from a small town will come to Atlanta to Try That

It would be cool if a small town indicted Trump too.

I was indicted in a small town

son take a good look around

Met an N.Y. Don and brought him to this small town
Now he's small town just like me

just a small town girl
livin' in a racist world

I guess the long-term play for DeSantis right now is to hope that all this stuff does make Trump look less and less electable, so that if the Trump fever ever breaks Dr. Ron is right there. It's just so hard to imagine that really happening.

And of course DeSantis can't be too brazen about trying to capitalize on any of it. Like, you would think that your opponent facing multiple criminal indictments in multiple jurisdictions would be the most obvious attack point. But apart from Asa Hutchison none of them want to do that. What an insane time.

BREAKING: A superseding indictment has been filed with new charges against Donald Trump.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 27, 2023

Justice Department: The superseding indictment also charges Trump, De Oliveira and Nauta with two new obstruction counts based on allegations that the defendants attempted to delete surveillance video footage at The Mar-a-Lago Club in summer 2022.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 27, 2023

are we led to believe that they tried and failed to delete the footage