Trump is not the hero Jesus we deserve, but the hero Jesus we need.
Reuters: Israel team, U.S. Vice President Vance booed at Milan Games opening ceremony
MILAN, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Israel’s Olympic team walked into the stadium during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics opening ceremony on Friday to a smattering of boos, while U.S. Vice President JD Vance received a similar reception at what had otherwise been an upbeat and festive celebration of the global winter sports extravaganza.
Cheers for the large U.S. team quickly turned to boos when Vance was shown on the stadium’s big screen.
(Inner quote from Reuters)
“No, they’re saying Vooonce” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
“Boo-S-A! Boo-S-A!”
I think there is an underestimation of the effect of polarization and exaggeration of the positions of the opposition.
If one sees the policies and positions of the opposing party as fundamentally wrong-headed if not outright evil, then one is justified in “holding your nose to vote for your own party’s candidate”.
Consider if Mao on the left was running against Adam Kitzinger on the right. There would be a significant portion of the left who would vote for Mao because “overall his positions are closer and we can moderate the implementation”, whereas Kitzinger “has fundamentally flawed conservative positions that we just can’t allow”.
That could be perceived as voting by team, or it could be a process of saying “the conservative agenda is so bad it would be better for the country to have an extremist on the left side since he will never be able to implement the harshest of his positions”.
Same way a lot of conservatives said “Trump is a dick, but we couldn’t possibly let that communist Harris take over.”
Except it’s not the same. Harris is not a communist
And voting for a Republican is a sin.
This. They are about as blatantly evil as it’s possible for human being to be. “Both sides” isn’t an argument that works when one side is acting like badly written cartoon supervillains.
Of course not; OTOH, the right-wing media was very effective in painting her as an extremist/Communist/Socialist/etc., and getting their audience to believe it.
And the average magatrash numbskull has all the critical thinking skills of a bollard. They can get their audience to buy whatever they care to sell.
What’s the most valuable commodity on earth? Gold? Diamonds? Some rare mineral? Nah, it’s the maga mailing list. Those fuckers will buy anything.
Yeah. The Right believes that critical thinking is evil and that people should operate on faith and complete belief in whatever their designated leaders tell them to believe. Which among other things makes them extremely easy to scam, over and over.
Only Evil Leftists learn from experience or care about facts, you know. They don’t believe.
Today in Louisiana there was a special election for a vacant seat in the state legislature, in a district Trump won by 17 points in 2024.
The Democratic candidate won by 24 points.
Republican heads will be exploding. Even moreso than for that district in Fort Worth.
Of course not. It’s the extremification of the opponent. Decades of lies shaping perception of the other side. It’s equivocating anything left of Liz Cheney as the same thing as socialism or communism.
Adam Kitzinger is much more like a traditional conservative candidate. His policies would be conservative, but not batshit crazy, fascist, praise our enemies and threaten allies, etc.
Yet a portion of the liberals would vote for a Mao Zedung if he were the Dem candidate, not because “I’m a Democrat and he’s our candidate,” so much as “our party’s values are positive and Kitzinger’s are negative; I could never support those values.”
If it’s Trump vs Mao, we’re doomed either way. If it’s Harris vs. Kitzinger, pick by party values.
If it’s crazy vs. sane, pick sane even if that means supporting someone who’s policies are against your values.
I was hoping there would be a little Schadenfreude in this thread. 
I’m going to take back this remark. This wasn’t flipping a seat; the senator who resigned to take another office was a Democrat. The district is unusual in that it votes D locally and R nationally. So Republicans will either ignore it or conclude that that’s the way it is there.
Well, there goes the Schadenfreude. 
Rep. Thomas Massie (R but not Trump) KY are into it. Demento Don is pouring resources into defeating Massie in the upcoming primary. Mr. Potato Head is backing a guy who has promised to kiss ass and eat shoe leather.
I posted about the Louisiana ‘upset’ somewhere - sooo much evil.
Massie was one of the guys pushing to get the Epstein Files legislation passed.
I live in Kentucky. I’m inundated with ads both for and against Massie all day.
I have a grudging respect for him because of the Epstein situation. But he almost blows it with his campaign ads. He accuses his opponent, Ed Gallrein (who has received Trump’s endorsement), of being one of those people who would institute the “Harris woke, transgender surgery for school kids, DEI agenda.”
Maybe it’s just my liberal worldview, but my campaign would be hammering my involvement in getting the Epstein files released and getting justice for the victims.
But since Kentucky is pretty red outside of Louisville and Lexington, that’s probably why I wouldn’t be elected.