Kanye is just very disrespectful. He dropped a new single last week. It was actually his first decent thing in a decade. And he signed a ten year deal with the Gap. Does this presidential announcement sound serious or like desperate promotion from a man about to drop an album called God’s Country?
He needs to sit down.

He's a fucking clown. So basically a perfect US president.

14 days later

I just saw his rally talking about Harriet Tubman never freeing any slaves. Then a couple of minutes later he suffers a breakdown and starts crying screaming and sobbing on stage.

Hes clearly in the middle of a manic episode. Apparently he's been diagnosed with bipolar disorder years ago and refuses to take any medication. The fucking clowns are his wife and his entourage who go along with his horseshit ideas instead of seeing to him getting help.

jones wrote:

I just saw his rally talking about Harriet Tubman never freeing any slaves. Then a couple of minutes later he suffers a breakdown and starts crying screaming and sobbing on stage.

Hes clearly in the middle of a manic episode. Apparently he's been diagnosed with bipolar disorder years ago and refuses to take any medication. The fucking clowns are his wife and his entourage who go along with his horseshit ideas instead of seeing to him getting help.

I've been thinking about that. I think Jay-Z lost contact with him a while ago over his behaviour. I suspect his personal issues are difficult and he pushes away the people who would most be able to help him and advise him. It's painful to watch it play out. It's also annoying that the media chose to cover him when he made the announcement given his history. They had no obligation to and shouldn't aid this car crash 

I'm under the impression based on what I've read that it's very difficult for him to actually run now, procedurally?

The Tubman comments seemed to be about citing the continuation of slavery under other names after abolition throughout the US—a common theme of Black politics, and in the larger scheme of things, a valid point—delivered in a particularly hamfisted and counterfactual way.

Burnwinter wrote:

I'm under the impression based on what I've read that it's very difficult for him to actually run now, procedurally?

The Tubman comments seemed to be about citing the continuation of slavery under other names after abolition throughout the US—a common theme of Black politics, and in the larger scheme of things, a valid point—delivered in a particularly hamfisted and counterfactual way.

I'd be buying that if he didn't have form for this shit. He said slavery was a choice just a year or two ago

Burnwinter is correct about what Kanye was trying to say. Because he did correct himself later in that cluster of a speech.
But as you say, Jones, he gave us slavery was a choice. Beyond the the issues with not caring for his health conditions, the biggest problem with Kanye is likes to believe that he is intellectual, but he doesn't read is very shallow. It's the worst form of ignorance.

I'd say he is an intellectual, but that doesn't make him a coherent political communicator. His public speech is like forum posts. Unfortunately you need discipline and clear delineated arguments and images repeated, true or false, to deliver an idea when campaigning. I don't think he's capable of that, which makes him less capable even than Trump in this arena.

Have a feeling he'll end up killing himself someday

Tweet doesn't work

He just tweeted "everybody knows the movie Get Out is about me"

Never liked the guy since his days at Rocafella but damn he's really disintegrating right now. Who knows if this is him refusing help from his people or something else but he should be committed for his own good

9 days later

Everyone knew this kind of stunt was coming. His numbers have cratered, and he's desperate

Yep it's a desperate ploy to energise his base by giving them something polarising to shout about that isn't COVID-19. The Trump campaign is going to feature a hail Mary pass like this every day in a couple of months if the polls keep showing Biden ten points ahead.

And Biden just stays hidden away in his basement for the next few months, it's like the lunatic clown versus the shadowy ghost.

Gazza M wrote:

Everyone knew this kind of stunt was coming. His numbers have cratered, and he's desperate

The problem with America is that American journalists keep trying to predict this guys moves looking at previous presidents. This guy is a despot. We see Donald all over the developing world. As you say, Gazza, completely predictable. Many people outside America called this. He's still going to do some completely wild shit on their social platforms. And once he wins re-election, political opponents and media beware. Who's going to stop him?

Gazza M wrote:

Everyone knew this kind of stunt was coming. His numbers have cratered, and he's desperate

He’s still gonna win despite current polling imo. 

At the moment the virus is taking the spotlight off Biden, once it’s on him people are going to raise this guy isn’t the same Biden they all saw under Obama. 

It doesn’t matter. This election isn’t about Biden.

Biden is taking the right approach. There is no need to make a lot of noise when Trump is making all the news and creating the election spread all by himself. Biden should just focus on below the line turnout efforts. That is what matters in this election.

It's a referendum on Trump - Biden is non-entity.

JazzG wrote:
Gazza M wrote:

Everyone knew this kind of stunt was coming. His numbers have cratered, and he's desperate

He’s still gonna win despite current polling imo. 

At the moment the virus is taking the spotlight off Biden, once it’s on him people are going to raise this guy isn’t the same Biden they all saw under Obama. 

Everyone knows it's not the same biden. The election is purely a referendum on drumpf

The spooky part is the 3 months after he loses  the presidency. Who knows what he'll do

6 days later
jones wrote:

you'd wake up sweating from that dream 

Did they not do a poll that showed Kanye would take more votes from Trump than Biden?

The US accusing anyone of disinformation 😆

The current atmosphere between the US, Russia and China feels like Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania from 1984, but repeated even more farcically.

I feel like there's a hit piece about Russia or China published in US media almost every day that's basically saying "what we do is dystopian / authoritarian / totalitarian when Russia / China does it"

Niall Ferguson's spittle-flecked youth-hating diatribe about the dangers of TikTok is a good example:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-09/tiktok-is-the-superweapon-in-china-s-cultural-warfare

Quite a few reports emerging of massive slowdowns with USPS. Seems trump and the republican parties master plan is to gut USPS in order to undermine mail in voting come november

jones wrote:

The US accusing anyone of disinformation 😆

It’s so funny to open CNN and see the headline “Russia disinformation against Biden, China against Trump”. And to think that the cast majority of the disinformation in this election cycle will come from Trump, Republican and conservative media and they’re not being held to account. Amazing.

Equally amazing. I was watching a Hillary documentary yesterday and thinking just how incredibly accomplished she is, yet she has been vilified from when she was in her 20s while in Arkansas. It’s followed her her entire career. But I don’t think it’s a Hillary thing. It’s a successful woman in politics issue in America. What surprises me is the lack of preparation that Democrats are taking to shield whoever is nominated as VP because they will be portrayed as the devil.

Gazza M wrote:

Quite a few reports emerging of massive slowdowns with USPS. Seems trump and the republican parties master plan is to gut USPS in order to undermine mail in voting come november

Claudius wrote:
jones wrote:

The US accusing anyone of disinformation 😆

It’s so funny to open CNN and see the headline “Russia disinformation against Biden, China against Trump”. And to think that the cast majority of the disinformation in this election cycle will come from Trump, Republican and conservative media and they’re not being held to account. Amazing.

Equally amazing. I was watching a Hillary documentary yesterday and thinking just how incredibly accomplished she is, yet she has been vilified from when she was in her 20s while in Arkansas. It’s followed her her entire career.  But I don’t think it’s a Hillary thing. It’s a successful woman in politics issue in America. What surprises me is the lack of preparation that Democrats are taking to shield whoever is nominated as VP because they will be portrayed as the devil.

Is this parody?

Qwiss! wrote:
Gazza M wrote:

Quite a few reports emerging of massive slowdowns with USPS. Seems trump and the republican parties master plan is to gut USPS in order to undermine mail in voting come november

Not sure it’s a Republican plan. It’s a Trump thing. Need to separate the two.
He’s throwing a million different things at trying to undermine the vote. I don’t see him as any different to any developing country despot. If he sees the opportunity on election night and he has any kind of delegate lead, he will call the election and declare himself winner. Any votes that arrive thereafter will be deemed fraudulent. He’s keeping his solution space open.

Claudius wrote:
Qwiss! wrote:

Not sure it’s a Republican plan. It’s a Trump thing. Need to separate the two.
He’s throwing a million different things at trying to undermine the vote. I don’t see him as any different to any developing country despot. If he sees the opportunity on election night and he has any kind of delegate lead, he will call the election and declare himself winner. Any votes that arrive thereafter will be deemed fraudulent. He’s keeping his solution space open.

I think most of that is likely but I don't think he is slowing the USPS right now. Thats the sort of conspiracy you'd find very hard to contain.

Either way this next election is going to be an absolute clusterfuck. I can see Trump rejecting any loss and I can see people taking to the streets if he wins.

It’s probably less about active measures to slow it down. The postal service is a cluster as it.
What any normal country would do is say they’ve just gone through disastrous primaries. A lot of investment should go into the postal service to ensure the general election is smooth. And then you’d do other things like set early mail in deadlines, and have a two-day in-person election etc (to ease pressure for social distancing and sanitizing). Stuff like that would have happened already if you were interested in protecting the integrity of your election.

I think Trump assumes anything that limits access probably hurts poor and younger voters and therefore hurts Democrats. Also he’s seeing Democrats lean into social distancing, so not investing in postal services is to his advantage. He’s encouraging his people to proceed as normal, so he’d expect polls to be filled with republicans.

I don't think you can protect electoral integrity with a postal vote anyway, not to anyone's satisfaction anyway. No matter how well protected you say it is Trump will complain if he loses and if he wins all the Dems will scream foul play too. For instance if he invested in the USPS now I could see people claiming he was buying them off or rigging parts of it, maybe claiming he was investing in the areas that suited him best, etc

a lot of states have been doing all mail in vote for decades. Oregon has been doing all-mail-in voting since the 90s and they've had about a dozen total fraudulent votes in that time. Trump is stoking fears with misinformation as usual. and then, as Jones say, people are foolishly focused on China and Russia