12 Comments
Oct 20Liked by The Opinionated Ogre

Good point about skewing the polls now in order to claim fraud later.

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Oct 21Liked by The Opinionated Ogre

Listened to your podcast raptly here in Sorrento, Italy, since we can’t get much coverage of the election here. I do agree that Dump somehow knows he’s losing in just three weeks and must resort to louder and more intense racism in order to appeal to his frightened and stupid base! If he sensed he was winning, he’d actually just play more golf, I believe, but he’s campaigning all over the place now, even in solidly “blue” states like New York and elsewhere. There is definitely a press double standard when it comes to reporting on both Dump and Biden. I strongly agree that Dump’s last Pennsylvania rally should have been the point when journalists should have urged his exit from the race, but they didn’t! His behavior up on stage was not only bizarre, it was pathetic, and we all knee that if Biden did this at any point before leaving office, the Fourth Estate would have been asking for blood!

I was very engaged with your theory as to why the press dislikes Biden so much: That he’s very purposeful, gets things done, and is just basically boring. However, the press loved Dump immensely during his one disastrous term because he was anything but boring! There was a scandal every day of his administration and papers and whatnot were sold on the basis of that! The press would ignore psychosis in Dump all for the mighty dollar! How unfortunate and dispiriting!

It’s up to us, the American public, now to recognize who the better candidate is on November 5 and let’s pray we do!

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author

TY for listening!! I swear to god, I will get the audio right next week! It's a steep learning curve...

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Oct 20Liked by The Opinionated Ogre

Justin: “Trump can’t shift gears when things change.”

Trump: “But Brawndo has what plants crave!”

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A few other points -- A.) NO media this week picked up Rachel Maddow's mid-week exclusive that Trump THIS WEEK, FOR THE SECOND TIME, tried bribing Stormy Daniels into silence. Not one outlet. Except SNL. And only Heather Cox Richardson shares my concern that this whole charade is a trojan horse to install Vance as president to skillfully deploy Project 2025. Trump will take the oath, pardon himself and all the Jan 6ers, carry out some vendettas, and showboat on the world stage having world leaders kiss the ring. He'll exit us from NATO and give Russia carte blanche to do what they please. Like all that, in about 6 weeks. Then Trump will be put out to pasture and Vance will run the show from there, creating the Christian Oligarch Dictatorship of his dreams -- only that, he won't be in power, the billionaries that hold his strings will.

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I’m seeing your bait and switch widely discussed on Substack, albeit not on your swift timeframe.

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Even Republicans being Republicans, they cannot help be notice Trump is batshit.

They are wishing&hoping for a Trump win to install JD&project 2025

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Oct 20·edited Oct 20

Justin: “It’s not just about money… It’s a matter of power now“.

From one of the great movies of all time, “Chinatown”:

Jake Gittes: “Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can’t already afford?”

Noah Cross: “The future, Mr. Gitts, the future! Now where’s the girl?”

🤔😉😊

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Oct 20·edited Oct 20

The open question I’d like to ask is, what can we — meaning us — do about the “Oh, it’s Trump. Shrug. What else is happening?“ effect. As long as significant support for him is reflected in the polls, the media has to pay attention. But as Bill Maher pointed out on Friday, there isn’t anything that Trump could do that would produce anything more than a shrug. I hope to live long enough to see the first really analytical books about this hit the shelves.🤔😉😊

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Connecting one dot because I think you pretty much nailed it. I feel the market makers behind election betting are trying to win no matter what. Get the herd to place their cash on Trump and the house cashes in when all the suckers lose. This strategy aligns to the rest of your point -- it closes the gap and gives MAGA lawyers "reasonable cause" to file lawsuits.

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Oct 20·edited Oct 20

I don’t think the political commentariat “hates“ Biden and Harris; it would take too much effort, that’s too active a verb.

I think it’s more like “disregard”; more boring than anything else. Sort of the flipside of the “Trump shrug“ effect that I discuss above/below. Tough to get a Pulitzer on a “yawn”.

🤔😉😊

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