The Real timschochet

Mamdani is going to win (he’s ahead by 20+ points) and I suspect he’s going to be a pretty effective mayor. He will have no power to push through most of his socialist proposals which will force him to govern as a moderate Democrat. I watched some clips of him on Fox News. He still has many ideas that I profoundly disagree with but he comes off as likable, very smart, and a good guy. I like him.

Probably. It shows how obsessed these MAGA types are with what happened Saturday. Deep down they KNOW what it meant. So they have to find ways to tear it down.

Per the Washington Post: not only did Trump refuse to give Ukraine the tomahawks, he urged Zelenskyy to give up the entire Donbas region (Putin’s demand) to have peace or face destruction. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/10/20/zelensky-trump-meeting-europe-russia/ I was going to write “unbelievable” but frankly it’s all too believable. We have Nevile Chamberlain in charge.

A little more complicated for Trump, He wants a peace deal, he wants Putin to win, and he wants the American people and the world to love Donald Trump for achieving it.

I believe that Trump, like Biden before him, is wrong here. Giving these missiles to Ukraine will not escalate the war; it will force Putin to get serious about a peace deal. Right now Putin is not serious; in his phone call with Trump last week he once again demanded full control of the same territory he has failed to seize through arms, just as he did three months ago.

Absolutely. Every member of Hamas deserves to be killed and the world would be a better place. But this won’t happen. Like Isis and the Taliban it is very difficult to kill off Hamas because ultimately it’s an idea, like Communism or Nazism. In this case the idea is that conditions are so hopeless for the Palestinian people that the only solution is the mass murder of their enemies. That idea cannot be eradicated unless you have a viable, economically productive land of Palestine. And that’s a long way off.

The fault here is Hamas. The fault is almost always Hamas. Hamas is evil. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be critical of Trump. I wrote last week that no matter what happens now, Donald Trump deserves great credit for getting the remaining hostages out. That remains true, it always will be true. But I also believe there were some real opportunities here for a more lasting peace in the region and rather than take them, Trump did what he always does: spent his time congratulating himself and crowing about his achievements.

No it really wasn’t. You only believe this because you bought into the nonsense that liberal protests are inherently violent. The truth is that, on either side, the only sort of protest that brings about violence is when the protest is because of a specific perceived injustice- the beating of Rodney King and acquittal of the police officers that did it, the murder of George Floyd, MAGA believing that Trump was cheated out of an election. And even in those cases the violence is typically unrelated to the actual organized protestors. Political protests that are organized as a result of longstanding or larger concerns- e.g. the Civil Rights movement, the Tea Party movement, or the No Kings movement- do not result in violence. This has been true in American society ever since Martin Luther King. Jr., following the example of Mahatma Gandhi, set the template for the modern day protest. The fact that there was no violence yesterday was entirely predictable as I wrote prior to the protests.

Rather than argue over the actual numbers, would you agree that yesterday’s peaceful protests were significantly large?

When the Tea Party protests occurred in 2009 a lot of people, myself included, dismissed them as manufactured events paid for by billionaires like Charles Koch which would have no effect on events. We were wrong. The next year, 2010, saw a large Republican wave election led by the Tea Party movement. These current protests are much bigger than the Tea Party ever was and I think conservatives are making the same mistake we did back then.

They’re losers wasting their time on a Saturday. It was all meaningless. They hate law and order, hate America, love Hamas.

It’s bullsh!t It’s a old wives tale you dudes tell yourself because you don’t want to believe that you’re on the wrong side of history on some of these issues. But you are. 7 million people showed up yesterday. The most ever in history. You can try to diminish it for now. After next year’s election you won’t be able to.

Bullsh!t

Portland was peaceful yesterday. Like everywhere else.

Trump’s AI video is not a reason to oppose him (I have plenty of those) but it is really distasteful and demonstrates once again that he is, above everything else, just a mean-spirited classless jerk.

Thanks for the concession.

If that were happening it would be all over Fox News at the very least. Why isn’t it?

A lot of folks that voted for Trump wanted security at the border and inflation controlled. They didn’t want higher prices, or mass deportation, or the tariffs, or all of the authoritarian crap. So now they have buyers remorse. You will see the results.

I don’t need MSNBC. Show me a link from somewhere. Show me a video, anything.

So far as I know there was NO violence today. I can’t find a single report of violent activity, @EternalShinyAndChrome you promised to come in and admit you were wrong if there was no violence. Well?

Hey I read The Water Is Wide. Great great book. I’ve read pretty much everything Conroy wrote.

Entirely predictable

Where is my money?

Seems like, just like everywhere else, the Portland No Kings Rally has been peaceful: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/no-kings-portland-protests-live-updates/283-e9b9788a-07f3-4244-a804-7fad0a5e9a0f Of course @Maximum Overkill seems to have contradictory information. Perhaps he will share it with the rest of us?

Care to share?