... to be over the moon that Trump has been found GUILTY on all 34 charges?

MAGA faithful call for riots and lynchings after Trump’s guilty verdict:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-guilty-riots-violence-b2554889.html

Trump on Truth Social, egging the mob on. You cannot reason with such collective psychosis.

He's done it again today, saying his followers won't be able to take anymore. He is being very careful to incite his maga loonies and intends to stand back and watch the fireworks

To the Proud Boys, ‘Stand back and stand by.’

speyside · Yesterday 14:35

I repeat he never called to arms it was taken by the degenerates as they wished don't blame Trump for what they decided to do.

You can repeat it as often as you like and you'll still be wrong every time.

What on Earth do you think he did when he said “We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.” ?

https://www.justsecurity.org/91904/dissecting-trumps-peacefully-and-patriotically-defense-of-the-january-6th-attack/

Oh, I am under no illusion. But they did it in the UK too. I was impressed that this was one of the few cases of the whole kit and caboodle being shipped over. Usually with US imports, we get the bits the bosses like and somehow the good bits for the workers fall off over the Atlantic.

Amazon being a key example. Followed closely by all the parasitical outfits like Deliveroo, Uber, AirBnB and so on.

There are sound financial reasons for employers to fund employee healthcare in country where there is no provision of socialised healthcare. It's not an act of charitable largesse.

And flat taxes hugely benefit the wealthiest by redistributing the burden of taxation onto the middle classes.

Ross Perot founded EDS who used to pay employees and their families healthcare.

Ross Perot and his flat tax

@baffld I remember Ross Perot and his flat task.

Yes, there are 2 million people in the USA behind bars, and I think 1/3rd have a criminal record. There are several states doing ‘clean slate’ laws for minor crimes as they affect one’s ability to get employement etc. Others are doing automatic expungement for instance for minor marijuana charges. Some of this was the legacy of ‘law and order’ governments in the past 20-30 years. Many people are in jail in the States for minor drug charges.

He was very much against Washington, its bloat and the way it granted greater freedoms to insiders than it did to ordinary Americans. Here, thirty years ago he was railing against the wealthiest being indulged at the expense of US workers:

Despite being up against George Bush Sr- who was weak and facing Bill Clinton who was at the peak of his powers of persuasion, he gained about a fifth of the national vote. I watched some of the old debates to find a good shortish clip - the quality of western politicians has dropped depressingly.

You have to have many millions at your disposal to run for president

So true, @verdibird, and as said earlier I suspect the things they have to do to get it is one reason so many decent folk will go nowhere near politics

However hard it is I still think the Democrats are mad to have clung to Biden as their canidate though, since practically anyone else may have beaten Trump hollow and saved us all this farce

"He was similar to Trump in that he loathed government waste"

Is this code for 'he loved small government'?

You know - like the people behind the 2025 project who have plans to massively cut social security spending in order to fund enormous tax cuts for wealthy Americans?

@verdibird H Ross Perot spent a lot of money and (I thought looking from the UK) made a very good pitch for the job. He was similar to Trump in that he loathed government waste - which in turn made him distrustful of the military and the alphabet agencies.
Something I hadn't considered before the verdict is that in the US, a criminal record limits personal freedoms after a sentence is spent, probably half of the US electorate are close to someone in that situation. Many now identify strongly with Trump - they may not lend him their vote (if allowed to vote in their state) but they do understand the impact of passing through the US court system.

@Nanaof1

"I condemn it from anyone. You don't have to like a candidate and heck, can even hate a candidate, but when you make threats, as has become commonplace over here, you need to be stopped before some nut job decides to get attention by fulfilling the threat."

But Trump's insistence that any election that goes against him is fixed, and that any court that rules against him is corrupt and illegitimate - saying it over and over again to his supporters, some of whom are right wing extremists and many of whom have been encouraged by believe in outrageous conspiracy theories about democrats. So, so dangerous.

Not so easy. You have to have many millions at your disposal to run for president. Election reform would probably lead to a wider field of candidates, but there doesn’t seem to be the impetus for it. I remember when I was a kid in the States, being President was seen as the ultimate ambition…now, not so much. That’s an interesting development.

We may have to get used to it.

I really don't understand how anyone convicted of electoral fraud can be allowed to stand for election to public office in any jurisdiction.

Interesting commentary. Giving air to the UKs wargaming a second Trump term and how it will reduce Americas power around the world.

I condemn it from anyone. You don't have to like a candidate and heck, can even hate a candidate, but when you make threats, as has become commonplace over here, you need to be stopped before some nut job decides to get attention by fulfilling the threat.

Celebrities, politicians and entertainers need to be especially careful, as we have seen what happens when someone decides to grab the attention of a celebrity/star. They need to all STFU with the threats. Opinion, sure! Threats, no way!

I'm generally pretty hesitant on how much stock to put in polls, especially ones this far out, but this is interesting.

https://www.axios.com/2024/06/01/poll-trump-conviction-election-independent-voters

@Bululu
Stop repeating the same bollocks to try to shut people up.

On the contrary, I'm encouraging you to say something intelligent.

You missed my point, Watson.

I did not say 'We all know the election was rigged' I said "For all we know" - its a saying !! dont misquote me. Read it correctly.

and also don't negate my opinions because they are different to yours !

It's offensive to say anyone is taken in by propaganda when you have no idea about the individual.

Freedom of speech is the message

Biden is on the way out. He has undelivered to the electorate

Whether he is/has or not, it occurs to me that much of this could have been avoided if the Democrats had selected a broadly acceptable candidate instead of one who even many of their members won't consider - something I'd have thought they'd have learned after what happened with Hillary, but apparently not

With a Democratic candidate perceived to be half way decent it should have been easy to wipe the floor with Trump, but sadly that's not who they've picked and here we are

It doesn’t seem Biden did not ‘deliver’. Here are some articles from Bloomberg and the BBC. I tried to get some more moderate sites than the Cato Institute.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-opinion-biden-accomplishment-data/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51682000

Donald Trump is a convicted felon. He engaged in inflammatory tweets before an insurrection where the Vice President could have been killed. He is the centre of a personality cult with Fox News and social media as his mouthpiece , and personality cults don’t end well. At this moment on Truth Social, his supporters are calling for the jurors in his case to be doxxed. He is supported by the Proud Boys, a neofascist organisation. He is supported by Nigel Farage. There is no evidence that the last presidential election was rigged. It has been investigated to death.

And, if you are curious, the apple does not fall far from the tree.
His father Fred’s real estate empire was based on tax dodges. Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was arrested twice: in 1927 during a Ku Klux Klan riot (he was at a KKK rally), and in 1976 over severe code violations at a building he owned in Maryland.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/04/04/fred-trump-arrests/

People speak about Biden’s age. Trump is not exactly a spring chicken either.

Twitter is furious. Lots of people seem to think this has given him better odds of winning