Wednesday 18th of September 2024
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war forever with "peaceful" kamala and the warmongers....

We’ve lived through nearly a quarter century of intense polarization with no clear dominant political party. Unless last night’s presidential debate changes the race as dramatically as June 27’s did, we could see an election as close as 2000’s based on the current polling.

But don’t say political realignments are impossible. Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris completes a major shift within the parties, if not between them.

 

The Real Realignment

The parties have experienced nearly full transformations in foreign policy.

 

BY W. James Antle III

 

It is tempting, and at least partially true, to say that the two least popular and most radical vice presidents of the 21st century have been brought together because of a family beef. It is difficult to imagine Cheney following his daughter in a crusade against the former President Donald Trump if Trump hadn’t engineered Liz Cheney’s 39-point defeat in a Wyoming congressional primary. The elder Cheney was the highest-ranking Bush 43 administration official to endorse Trump in 2016, despite the indignities suffered by Jeb(!).

More significantly, however, Democrats have decided they hate Trump more than they dislike the foreign policy of George W. Bush. Former Republicans who can loosely be described as neoconservatives and their fellow travelers have increasingly left, or been driven from, the party in the Trump era.

The elder Cheney’s first real fight with Trump was when he confronted then Vice President Mike Pence about his boss’s foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute in 2019. That Pence now agrees has much more to do with January 6 than Cheney’s original views do. 

“It seems, at times, as though your administration’s approach has more in common with Obama’s foreign policy than traditional Republican foreign policy,” Cheney was quoted as saying by an event attendee.

In GOP circles, them’s fightin’ words.

Fighting, of course, is what Cheney wanted the military to do in even more countries than the president he served under was willing to tolerate. Bush’s presidency was ruined by the Iraq War, without which there might never have been a Barack Obama administration, at least not with the huge congressional majorities that were barely sufficient to enact Obamacare. (Despite Obama’s antiwar bona fides, there was also a later Iraq-lite adventure in Libya that mostly Republicans opposed, but I digress.)

Trump pointed much of this out during his 2016 presidential campaign. Calling the Iraq War a mistake and a failure on the Republican debate stage in military-heavy South Carolina, where Ron Paul was practically booed off the stage for making similar observations, Trump wound up repealing and replacing the Bush dynasty. It is not an accident that the earliest, and most enduring, Never Trumpers were disproportionately neoconservative.

Now Harris is honored to receive the Cheneys’ endorsement, years after the former vice president, at least, had attained a Trump-level supervillain status among partisan Democrats. Rumors that Dubya himself might be a surprise guest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago seemed plausible enough. Harris even obtained her party’s presidential nomination through something resembling regime change, even if the regime actually remains very much the same. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and a subset of the Libertarian Party are supporting Trump over Harris because they think she is closer to the Cheneys on foreign policy. 

The transformation by the two parties on foreign policy isn’t complete. I wouldn’t go as far as Tucker Carlson and call Harris a neocon. Trump has also so far done more to jumble the political coalitions and complicate partisan rhetoric than change U.S. foreign policy, which has perplexed some of his more consistent allies.

President Joe Biden botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan and in the process risked the progress of foreign-policy restraint in the Middle East. But the withdrawal needed to happen, he saw it through to completion in the face of withering Republican criticism, and it would not have been pretty or cost-free no matter who was president at the time.

Yet few buy Biden’s argument that a relative lack of boots on the ground amid a large U.S. role in proxy wars, including one involving nuclear-armed Russia, is really peace. Progressives have for mainly Trump-centric reasons abandoned any skepticism of the Biden-Harris administration’s policy on Ukraine. And their concerns about the war in Gaza appear to be driven at least as much by identity politics as latent peacenik tendencies.

One now hears in private conversations generic Republican voters talk about the military-industrial complex. The people who roll their eyes at that kind of talk now discard their conservative domestic policy priorities to vote for Democrats. The generic Republicans in turn roll their eyes at them, even (and perhaps especially) when they have the stature of someone like Dick Cheney.

The conservatism of Trump’s new friends is suspect as well. RFK over Ben Carson at the Department of Health and Human Services would be bad news for pro-lifers, for example. There has also been a troubling tendency among intervention skeptics to revert to old, fringier habits while in greater proximity to political power than during the Bush-Cheney years.

This is nevertheless one of the most dramatic political changes of our times and a rare reason for cautious optimism. 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-real-realignment-2/

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

swiftly mad....

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., on Wednesday endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, the latest high-profile Republican endorsement for Democrats.

Cheney's comments took place during an appearance at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy.

 

“Because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris,” Cheney said in a video of remarks posted to X. The university separately provided a clip of Cheney’s remarks to NBC News.

The former congresswoman said in her remarks that it is “crucially important” for people to understand that people do not have “the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states.”

The Harris campaign welcomed Cheney's support.

"She is a patriot who loves this country and puts our democracy and our Constitution first," Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement Wednesday night. "Vice President Harris will be a president for all Americans, regardless of political party. For any American who is looking to reject the chaos and division of Donald Trump, turn the page, and pursue a new way forward that protects our freedoms and defends the American values we all believe in, there is a place for you in the Harris-Walz coalition, and we will continue working to earn your support.”

Cheney previously served in Republican caucus leadership before being ousted for her criticism of former President Donald Trump. Cheney has also said that Trump would attempt to stay in power beyond four years if he was elected to a second term. In the same interview on NBC’s “TODAY” show with host Savannah Guthrie, Cheney said that she would "never vote for Donald Trump, and I will do whatever it takes to make sure that Donald Trump is defeated in 2024."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/liz-cheney-endorses-kamala-harris-president-rcna169654

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Pop megastar Taylor Swift has publicly endorsed Kamala Harris just minutes after the US presidential debate between the current vice-president and Donald Trump.

In a rare foray into public politics, the highest-profile musician on the planet said she would be voting for Harris, weeks after the Trump campaign posted fake, AI-generated videos falsely showing her endorsing the Republican candidate.

"I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election," Swift said in an Instagram post to her 283 million followers.

https://www.9news.com.au/world/us-presidential-election-taylor-swift-endorses-kamala-harris/8c24456e-6328-4805-a32e-bb7ab78451fc

 

 

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Tech mogul Elon Musk has offered to father a child with Taylor Swift and protect her cats, after the songstress announced her endorsement in the US presidential race.

In a post to her 280 million Instagram followers, the 34-year-old pop star backed Democrat Kamala Harris, used a photo of herself holding a cat, and signed it “Childless Cat Lady.”

That appeared to be a dig at a statement by J.D. Vance, Republican candidate Donald Trump’s running mate, who once said the Democrats are run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies.”

“Fine Taylor… you win… I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life,” Musk posted on X on Wednesday.

 https://www.rt.com/pop-culture/603866-elon-musk-taylor-swift-baby-cat/  ---------------------- 

The aggressive policy of the administration of US President Joe Biden towards Russia and its continued attempts to inflict a defeat on Moscow in Ukraine could result in a nuclear conflict, former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said.

The comments were made following a debate between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, which took place in Philadelphia on Tuesday night. During a discussion of the Ukraine conflict, Trump noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has got a thing that other people do not have. He has got nuclear weapons. They do not ever talk about that. And eventually maybe he will use them. Maybe he has not been that threatening. But he does have that.”

Kennedy took to X to say, “Trump makes a point that I hope everyone hears: Russia has nuclear weapons.”

“The Biden administration’s policy of maximum confrontation, seeking Russia’s humiliating defeat and regime change, is a recipe for nuclear immolation,” he warned.

https://www.rt.com/news/603836-kennedy-trump-nuclear-ukraine/

 

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The US presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris lacked substance and was largely irrelevant considering that their country is going full speed ahead towards disaster, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has argued.

Speaking on Radio Sputnik on Wednesday, she said she did not consider it a high-profile event. It mattered as much as the outcome of a hypothetical wrestling match on board the ill-fated Titanic during its trip across the Atlantic Ocean, she claimed.

”Who do you think won? Why would that matter? The iceberg is 15 minutes away,” she said.

Extending the metaphor, she said neither Trump nor Harris intended to get to the wheel to change the course of the ship. America is on its way to a “total, global disaster” and the rest of the world is trying to prepare for it, she suggested.

https://www.rt.com/russia/603832-trump-harris-debate-titanic/

 

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Former US President Donald Trump has claimed that President Joe Biden’s Ukraine policy – now fully adopted by his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris – is dragging the country into a third world war. He reiterated that he would settle the conflict “in 24 hours” if reelected this November, even before being sworn in.

During a debate with Harris on Tuesday, Trump said the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would never have happened had he still been in the White House in 2022. When asked if he wants Kiev to win, the Republican replied that he wants “the war to stop.”

“I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being wasted… People are being killed by the millions… It’s so much worse than the numbers you’re getting, which are fake,” he claimed, without clarifying the source of the estimates.

https://www.rt.com/news/603819-trump-harris-ukraine-russia/

 

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Former President Donald Trump would “do a better job” as the next US leader than current Vice President Kamala Harris, according to tech billionaire Elon Musk. The businessman’s comments follow a contentious first debate between the two candidates on Tuesday night, hosted by US outlet ABC.

In a post on X, Musk said that while Harris “exceeded most people’s expectations” in the face-off with Trump, she still lacks his ability to produce real results.

“When it comes to getting things done, not just saying nice-sounding words, I strongly believe that Trump will do a far better job,” Musk stated.

He said that if Harris had the ability to “do great things,” she would have demonstrated it during her tenure as President Joe Biden’s right hand, as “Biden rarely shows up for work, so she’s basically in charge already.” In a separate post, he explained that the US needs significant government reforms to move forward and “allow great things to be done,” which he said would not come from Harris.

https://www.rt.com/news/603842-musk-harris-trump-mars/

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.