Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 30,227]

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

34 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Or Farage, Liz Truss, or Russia....

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

How can they be neck and neck ? Harris must be really shit or there's a lot of people voting Trump for a laugh/popcorn time.

Its mental to have the thick cunt for another four years

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

The power of the Zionist lobby ''its anti semitic''

Big Brother removes ITV episode to edit out housemate’s pro-Palestine T-shirt

Contestant Ali Bromley, 38, who is a forensic psychologist, wore a top depicting a map of Israel as a watermelon on the show’s Tuesday, 22 October episode.

The symbol, which is in the colours of the Palestinian flag, has become associated with the pro-Palestine movement amid the ongoing Gaza conflict, which has killed more than 42,000 people.

 

The Big Brother contestant’s outfit choice quickly caused outrage, with The Campaign Against Antisemitism complaining to Ofcom, saying: “How is this becoming the norm?”

It continued: “This graphic has caused significant distress among the British Jewish community, who regard it as a genocidal message

ITV quickly edited the footage to make her T Shirt just plain black

 

 

[Vesper 30,227]

4 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

How can they be neck and neck ? Harris must be really shit or there's a lot of people voting Trump for a laugh/popcorn time.

Its mental to have the thick cunt for another four years

Hundreds of millions of dollars in key swing state RW attack adverts pushing pure lies, scare tactics, fear of 'the other', racial grievances, raw open racism and misogyny, xenophobia, and also focusing on economic anxiety (a huge one, and often employing flat-out false statements about Trump's actual record, such as saying even before Covid tanked the economy he has the lowest inflation rates ever, which is laughable, as they were lower under Obama for years).

Plus the firehoses of falsehoods  and hate spewing from social media and other RW media outlets, aided this time around by AI and millions of bots, plus malign foreign actors joining in on the shitbaggery.

I am a very critical (by nature) person, and yet I really cannot find fault to any sort of significant degree with how Harris has run her campaign. I think she has been superb (shocked me overall TBH).

If she loses there really is not much more of major import and impact she could have done.

[Vesper 30,227]

12 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

The power of the Zionist lobby ''its anti semitic''

Big Brother removes ITV episode to edit out housemate’s pro-Palestine T-shirt

Contestant Ali Bromley, 38, who is a forensic psychologist, wore a top depicting a map of Israel as a watermelon on the show’s Tuesday, 22 October episode.

The symbol, which is in the colours of the Palestinian flag, has become associated with the pro-Palestine movement amid the ongoing Gaza conflict, which has killed more than 42,000 people.

The Big Brother contestant’s outfit choice quickly caused outrage, with The Campaign Against Antisemitism complaining to Ofcom, saying: “How is this becoming the norm?”

It continued: “This graphic has caused significant distress among the British Jewish community, who regard it as a genocidal message

ITV quickly edited the footage to make her T Shirt just plain black

 

[Vesper 30,227]

the creep factor here is infinite

 

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

24 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Hundreds of millions of dollars in key swing state RW attack adverts pushing pure lies, scare tactics, fear of 'the other', racial grievances, raw open racism and misogyny, xenophobia, and also focusing on economic anxiety (a huge one, and often employing flat-out false statements about Trump's actual record, such as saying even before Covid tanked the economy he has the lowest inflation rates ever, which is laughable, as they were lower under Obama for years).

Plus the firehoses of falsehoods  and hate spewing from social media and other RW media outlets, aided this time around by AI and millions of bots, plus malign foreign actors joining in on the shitbaggery.

I am a very critical (by nature) person, and yet I really cannot find fault to any sort of significant degree with how Harris has run her campaign. I think she has been superb (shocked me overall TBH).

If she loses there really is not much more of major import and impact she could have done.

Yes and a large dose of racism and misogyny as well probably

[cosmicway 1,333]

43 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

How can they be neck and neck ? Harris must be really shit or there's a lot of people voting Trump for a laugh/popcorn time.

Its mental to have the thick cunt for another four years

She's winning the popular vote.
Trump bookie price for popular vote is 2.87 - outsider.
But the swing states seem to have gone Turmp's way.
US predictions don't change so easily unlike UK. In the UK there have been at least three elections in recent years that have changed hands in the last two days.

[Vesper 30,227]

3 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Yes and a large dose of racism and misogyny as well probably

[Vesper 30,227]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/23/dougan-russian-disinformation-harris/

John Mark Dougan poses for a portrait in a park near Moscow in 2016. (Olga Leonova)

A former deputy Palm Beach County sheriff who fled to Moscow and became one of the Kremlin’s most prolific propagandists is working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, according to Russian documents obtained by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post.

The documents show that John Mark Dougan, who also served in the U.S. Marines and has long claimed to be working independently of the Russian government, was provided funding by an officer from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. Some of the payments were made after fake news sites he created began to have difficulty accessing Western artificial intelligence systems this spring and he needed an AI generator — a tool that can be prompted to create text, photos and video.

Dougan’s liaison at the GRU is a senior figure in Russian military intelligence working under the cover name Yury Khoroshevsky, the documents show. The officer’s real name is Yury Khoroshenky, though he is referred to only as Khoroshevsky in the documents, and he serves in the GRU’s Unit 29155, which oversees sabotage, political interference operations and cyberwarfare targeting the West, according to two European security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

The more than 150 documents — which were shared with The Post to demonstrate the extent of Russian interference through Dougan and focus mostly on the period between March 2021 and August 2024 — for the first time expose some of the inner workings of a network that researchers and intelligence officials say has become the most potent source of fake news emanating from Russia and targeting American voters over the past year.

Disinformation researchers say Dougan’s network was probably behind a recent viral fake video smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, which U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday was created by Russia. It received nearly 5 million views on X in less than 24 hours, Microsoft said.

Since September 2023, posts, articles and videos generated by Dougan and some of the Russians who work with him have garnered 64 million views, said McKenzie Sadeghi, who has closely followed Dougan’s sites and is a researcher at NewsGuard, a company that tracks disinformation online.

“Compared with other Russian disinformation campaigns, Dougan has a clear understanding of what would resonate with Western audiences and the political atmosphere, which I think has made this more effective,” Sadeghi said.

The documents show that Dougan is also subsidized and directed by a Moscow institute founded by Alexander Dugin, a far-right imperialist ideologue sometimes referred to as “Putin’s brain” because of his influence on the revanchist thinking of the Russian president; Dugin’s ideas became a driving force behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. One 2022 document shows that Dugin’s Eurasia movement, which promotes his theories of a Russian empire, “actively cooperates with the Russian Defense Ministry.”

Dougan’s contact at the Moscow institute, the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, is its head, Valery Korovin. According to Korovin’s social media page on the Russian version of Facebook, he was awarded a medal by President Vladimir Putin in 2023 for “services to the Fatherland” for “carrying out special tasks.” Korovin also works closely with Khoroshenky, who under his cover name serves as the institute’s deputy director, the documents show.

The documents show payments directly from Khoroshenky to Dougan’s bank account in Moscow starting in April 2022 and frequent meetings between Khoroshenky, Dougan and Korovin.

“We will not be beaten,” Khoroshenky said in one discussion with Korovin, according to the documents, after a new server was launched this summer allowing Dougan to add to the myriad sites he’d already created and to restart one of the domains that had been blocked.

Dougan is responsible for content on dozens of fake news sites with names such as DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle and Atlanta Observer, according to the documents and disinformation researchers. In the months that followed his reboot with the new GRU-facilitated server and AI generator, the sites and fake news videos spread by Dougan and his associates have produced some of the most viral Russian disinformation targeting Harris, according to Microsoft and NewsGuard, including a deepfake audio in August that purported to show Barack Obama implying that the Democrats had ordered the July assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

Most recently, Dougan was the initial source for a false claim behind the viral fake video that alleged Walz abused a student at the high school where he taught, and NewsGuard believes Dougan’s network may be behind its further dissemination. Eleven days before a video appeared with what NewsGuard says was probably an AI-generated persona claiming to be a former Walz student, Dougan appeared on a podcast making a similar but separate false claim, presenting an anonymous man claiming to be a former exchange student from Kazakhstan.

Other Kremlin-directed efforts to sway the U.S. presidential election have included the Doppelgänger campaign run by Kremlin political strategists that was recently targeted by the Department of Justice for its cloning of legitimate news outlets, including Fox News and The Post — a Russian operation about which The Post had previously reported. The Justice Department has also accused RT, the Russian state media outlet, of funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to American social media influencers to parrot Kremlin talking points.

In a telephone interview with The Post, Dougan denied being behind sites such as DC Weekly, and he said he didn’t know Korovin or Khoroshenky or have any connections with Russian military intelligence or the Russian government.

Dougan insisted he operated independently and said that “no one sends me money for anything.” He later claimed he worked as an IT consultant for an American company and said the documents The Post referred to must have been fabricated.

“I will tell you hypothetically, if they were my sites,” he said, “then I am merely fighting fire with fire because the West is f------ lying about everything that’s happening. They are lying about everything.”

Korovin said he was an academic who was interested only in thoughts, ideas and philosophy, adding that the claims related to the documents appear to represent “a collection of accidentally combined moments of information taken from who knows where, most of which seem absurd and ridiculous” and many of which he said he was “hearing for the first time.

Dugin said, “Any suggestion about our supposed affiliation with the GRU or to any attempts to manipulate foreign journalists or influence the political landscape in the U.S. are completely unjustified.” He said his Eurasian movement did not participate in any official partnerships with Russian government organizations, including the Defense Ministry.

Khoroshenky did not respond to requests for comment.

A portable security tower of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office stands at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on April 1, 2023, in Palm Beach, Florida. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Outlandish claims

Dougan’s use of websites to attack perceived enemies stretches back to his time in law enforcement in the United States. He said he clashed with people in the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office after he complained about abuses by a sergeant in his unit who boasted on Facebook about beating people he arrested.

Dougan had worked at the sheriff’s office in Palm Beach from 2005 to 2008 and faced 11 internal affairs investigations before he left, according to the Palm Beach Post. A jury also awarded a fellow Palm Beach sheriff’s deputy $275,000 after it found that Dougan had pepper-sprayed and arrested the officer without cause. Dougan claimed the internal affairs investigations were a result of his blowing the whistle on the sergeant’s alleged assaults.

After Dougan resigned his post in Palm Beach, he moved to Maine, where he was soon dismissed from a police department over complaints alleging sexual harassment, officials in Maine said.

In the Marine Corps, he also had a checkered career. Dougan served from May 1996 to July 1998, an abbreviated stint; most Marines serve at least four years. He also left as a lance corporal, a rank most Marines attain after just a few months, and he never deployed, according to the Pentagon, which wouldn’t characterize his discharge status, citing privacy concerns. Dougan’s rank as he was discharged and the date at which he became a lance corporal, in April 1998, nearly two years into his time in uniform, are “indicative of the fact that the character of his service was incongruent with the Marine Corps’ expectations and standards,” said Yvonne Carlock, a service spokeswoman.

After returning to Florida from Maine, Dougan created PBSOTalk, a site he said he intended as a place to air complaints by other deputies about the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office but that soon became home to corruption allegations and smears involving his former superiors.

In 2016, Dougan posted confidential data about thousands of police officers, federal agents and judges on PBSOTalk, prompting the FBI and local police to search his home. The next year, he was indicted on 21 state charges of extortion and wiretapping.

By then he had fled to Moscow, a city he said he had visited several times before after establishing an online relationship with a Russian woman. It’s not clear how Dougan first came to the attention of Russia’s propagandists, but some of the skills he honed in Florida are a hallmark of his work in Moscow, researchers say — using an online authentic gloss to make outlandish claims.

As early as June 2019 — more than two years before the invasion of Ukraine — Korovin had proposed in a letter to Russia’s Ministry of Defense that his center organize “an internet war against the U.S. on its territory.”

“The possibilities posed by internet wars really are limitless, and only with their help can we assert complete strategic parity with our geopolitical opponents,” Korovin wrote in the letter, which was part of the trove of documents reviewed by The Post. Dugin, the Russian ideologue who is Korovin’s boss, had earlier called for “geopolitical war with America … to weaken, demoralize, deceive and, in the end, beat our opponent to the maximum,” the documents show.

Dozens of the documents show that Korovin’s center has worked closely with “independent” foreign journalists who have wound up in Moscow, and it paid some of them, including Dougan. In March 2021, Korovin said that he and Dougan were “one team” and that Korovin would provide as much support as possible, one of the documents shows. All the while, Khoroshenky sent instructions to Korovin outlining tasks and directing the coverage of the war for Dougan and the other reporters. In one example, Khoroshenky demanded that the journalists, including Dougan, publish “within one hour” reports stating that Russian troops had killed foreign mercenaries in Ukraine, the documents show. “Then we will give bonuses to everyone,” he said.

Korovin and Khoroshenky ostensibly supported Dougan as he sought to parlay the political asylum he won in Russia in 2017 into Russian citizenship, while pointing out that Dougan had few other options since he was wanted in the United States, the documents show. The process continued until summer 2023, when Dougan finally obtained citizenship; at one point, a frustrated Dougan said he was on the verge of going to the Chinese Embassy to seek Beijing’s support, the documents show.

“The time comes when it’s enough,” Dougan said, according to one document.

By then, Dougan felt he had established his worth. Before the Russian invasion, he had traveled to Ukraine and posted a video on YouTube that the United States was running bioweapons labs there, a false claim that Russia used as one of the pretexts for its war.

As Russian forces foundered in the first weeks of the invasion, Dougan told Korovin he felt he would be of greater assistance using his background in the Marines to train Russian troops. Korovin told him he would achieve more in securing “our victory” by promoting his fake biolabs report, the documents show.

That summer, Dougan traveled to Azovstal, the vast Ukrainian steel plant in Mariupol that was the scene of heavy Russian bombardment. He produced a 30-minute report from the ruins as a foreign correspondent for One America News, the far-right American TV network. In the report, Dougan said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was to blame for the deaths of thousands of innocent people, saying, “He betrayed his country for his U.S. masters.” Dougan suggested the death and destruction in the city was caused entirely by Ukrainian troops, without mentioning the relentless Russian bombing, or even its invasion of Ukraine. OAN ran a headline with his piece saying the Western media was covering up atrocities by Ukrainian troops against civilians.

A spokesperson for One America News said Dougan appeared on the network only once and was not paid for the report, adding that the network has since cut all ties with him.

His co-reporter on the trip was Daria Dugina, Dugin’s daughter, who claimed Ukrainians were “carpet-bombing their own people.” A few months later, Dugina was killed in a car bomb just outside Moscow. Dougan told The Post that Dugina was a “wonderful lady,” and he agreed with many of the points made by her father about the necessity of a multipolar world in which the United States would not “dictate everything to everyone.”

By mid-2023, Dougan was generating material for the DC Weekly site, boasting to Korovin that it was already garnering hundreds of thousands of views every month, the documents show. He explained he was using artificial intelligence to populate the site with Russian news articles translated into English and to emphasize a tone critical of NATO and the U.S. government.

The quality is “superlative,” Dougan said.

In October 2023, he garnered his first viral hit: an article on DC Weekly alleging that Zelensky’s wife, Olena Zelenska, had spent $1.1 million at a Cartier store during an official visit to New York. He bragged to Korovin that the story had wide pickup. The article had cited a fake video interview with an alleged former employee of the Cartier shop, who weeks later was identified as a St. Petersburg student and beauty salon manager. Another early fake article traced to Dougan said Zelensky has used U.S. aid to buy two luxury yachts. The false claim was cited by several senior Republicans as a reason to halt funding for Ukraine.

But Dougan’s success also brought growing scrutiny. Researchers at Clemson University traced DC Weekly’s IP address back to other domains that it said were affiliated with Dougan, while disinformation researchers at Microsoft and NewsGuard were soon highlighting the links, too.

By spring of this year, several of Dougan’s fake news sites were experiencing technical difficulties. One domain, the Chicago Chronicle, was blocked, and he had to find a new domain for DC Weekly. Dougan began advocating with Korovin for funding to build a powerful new server that would generate its own AI content, ending dependence on Western technology.

Dougan “is experienced in the technical details of information technology and knows that the more his infrastructure and content is produced in-house, the less likely that he’ll be detected conducting his operations or restricted from using outside services,” said Clint Watts, head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center.

The new server led to an explosion of new output and an increase in the number of sites, while Dougan also began registering some new domains in Iceland to further conceal his fingerprints, NewsGuard’s Sadeghi said. At the same time, audience reach grew dramatically from 37.7 million in May to 64 million by October, Sadeghi said. “The substantial increase in the network’s views and narratives shows that despite being repeatedly exposed and reported on, the falsehoods have continued to reach a large audience,” she said.

For now, Dougan and his associates appear to be focused on smearing Harris. But concerns are growing that they could soon switch to producing deepfakes that question the integrity of the U.S. election.

“If they shift from trying to influence the outcome of the election to interfering in the conduct of the election, this would be very concerning as Election Day nears,” Watts said.

[Vesper 30,227]

Trump Smash Democracy

[Fernando 6,585]

2 hours ago, Vesper said:

Hundreds of millions of dollars in key swing state RW attack adverts pushing pure lies, scare tactics, fear of 'the other', racial grievances, raw open racism and misogyny, xenophobia, and also focusing on economic anxiety (a huge one, and often employing flat-out false statements about Trump's actual record, such as saying even before Covid tanked the economy he has the lowest inflation rates ever, which is laughable, as they were lower under Obama for years).

Plus the firehoses of falsehoods  and hate spewing from social media and other RW media outlets, aided this time around by AI and millions of bots, plus malign foreign actors joining in on the shitbaggery.

I am a very critical (by nature) person, and yet I really cannot find fault to any sort of significant degree with how Harris has run her campaign. I think she has been superb (shocked me overall TBH).

If she loses there really is not much more of major import and impact she could have done.

Well let me ask you how big of an impact Trump will have to the USA and the world? 

Because if I'm not mistaken one time you put him worse then Hitler in regards to his impact and I thought you was exaggerating. 

But I will like to hear your view on what you expect with another trump term. 

I for once continue to hold my posture that if he gets elected someone will kill him halfway....

That being said it's 2024 and the world did not end after his first term. I don't feel anything big will happen as well that will bring us to the end of the world with him. 

In fact I'm surprised about this news:

Kim Jong Un to send Putin 12,000 soldiers, South Korea says; U.S. warns they'll be 'fair game' 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korean-troops-russia-ukraine-fair-game-us-putin-rcna176989

Sending troop from another country is the start of something bigger if anyone decides to do something. Which I don't see it with trump nor anyone else in Europe as they are scare of Russia. 

But likewise let me know what you think a term with Harris will be do to the USA and the world. 

Edited October 24, 2024 by Fernando

[Vesper 30,227]

1 hour ago, Fernando said:

Because if I'm not mistaken one time you put him worse then Hitler in regards to his impact

I would never make an unqualified statement with implied full certainty like that about a future event that is merely a possibility

[Vesper 30,227]

2 hours ago, Fernando said:

But I will like to hear your view on what you expect with another trump term. 

I have spoken on this myself, and have posted a shedload of articles addressing this.

As we get closer to the election (a few days out) I will post a summary of what I think could happen with a 2nd Trump presidency.

A big point that adds to the uncertainty is HOW he gets into for a 2nd term, IF he actually does.

Thre are multiple (mostly all bad other than a straight, clear Electoral College Trump win that occurs with no shenanigans in terms of the individual states' EVs being certified and counted in Congress) scenarios that can turn into real shitshows there.

[Vesper 30,227]

Sanewashing Trump (by multiple sides, including far too many in the mainstream media) is one of the most disheartening things I have observed, as well as faulty attempts to try and minimise the potential dangers he presents.

The first Trump term had some 'adults in the room' (Joint Chiefs of Staff, some in his cabinet, sub cabinet level carreer and non career officials, etc etc) who blocked most of his truly unhinged attempted actions. Those types will NOT be there in a 2nd Trump term.

[robsblubot 3,595]

2 hours ago, Fernando said:

Well let me ask you how big of an impact Trump will have to the USA and the world? 

 

Jan 6 did happen and it was not a standalone incident, so I don't quite understand what more proof people need regarding the impact that Trump will have in the US government given that it is (still) a democracy.

Ukraine will insta-lose the war, for example. Trump will call a win, of course, but it will be a loss to Ukraine.

Just read what *most* of his former aides say about Trump in the office. The fact that Fox News does not report on this does not mean it's not there. There are so many unprecedented things happening with Trump that I have a hard time understanding why it is so hard to spot any of the "red flags" around him.

[Vesper 30,227]

MSNBC live streams (obviously the shows all about the election)

https://livenewschat.eu/politics/

https://streamfare.com/msnbc

https://www.livenewsmag.com/msnbc-news-live-stream/

Edited October 24, 2024 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,227]

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/why-young-male-voters-are-being-maga-fied

Charlie Kirk with students at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia.Photograph by Mark McKinnon.

The last place I expected to see a bobbing red sea of MAGA hats was on a college campus. But these are strange times. And a red tide is exactly what I witnessed this week at the University of Georgia.

If Donald Trump wins the presidency again, a big part of the coalition and the story will likely be the support he attracted, or failed to attract, among Gen Z voters, especially young men.

It’s conventional wisdom, and one firmly rooted in historical precedent, that college campuses tend to be hotbeds of liberalism. In the past few months, however, I have been encountering more and more evidence that something new is afoot within the cohort of young men, something that runs counter to the narrative. So I decided to go to a key swing state and check it out for myself. (I am currently producing a documentary about the impact of Gen Z on the 2024 election.)

On Tuesday, I attended a campus rally at the University of Georgia in Athens, sponsored by Turning Point USA and featuring its charismatic and controversial leader, Charlie Kirk, who, since he founded the organization in 2012, has been the tip of the spear when it comes to mobilizing young voters to the conservative cause.

On this occasion, his “You’re Being Brainwashed Tour” invited students to a plaza where he simply sat at a table and answered questions.

Notably, Kirk not only gladly answered hostile questions, but encouraged them, often asking Trump supporters to get out of the line so that unfriendlies could grill him. And he went nonstop for two hours. The plaza was so crowded, I had trouble moving through it. And he signed and tossed out red MAGA hats until he quickly ran out of the 2,500 that his team had brought along to distribute.

Kirk was, for the most part, firm but cordial. He expressed his points of view with a rapid-fire intensity, conviction, and clarity. And while he’s a partisan Trump advocate, he doesn’t succumb to hyperbole or convey false confidence. He also yields to obvious truths that might otherwise ruffle Trump surrogates. He acknowledges, for instance, that Trump is not going to win the Gen Z vote.

“It’s going to be hard for Trump to win on these campuses and get a majority,” Kirk concedes. “But I can say, confidently, we’re going to lose by less.”

Rally organizers with caps supporting Donald Trump. YASUYOSHI CHIBA/Getty Images.

What makes him so sure that things had shifted? “There is something profoundly interesting happening on these campuses,” he says. “I’ve been doing this for 12 years. This is not normal. The energy is off the charts. You have a younger generation, Gen Z, who experienced a lot of—they would say—lies and deceit during COVID, and a lot of their life being altered. There is this pent up ‘rebellion energy’ that has never come out.”

“Young men,” insists Kirk, who is 31, “are profoundly more conservative than people would have expected and, in fact, are the most conservative generation of young men in 50 years. They want to be part of a political movement that doesn’t hate them. Those are their words, not mine. The cultural blob of all left-wing influence has definitely had an undertone that if you’re a straight, white, Christian male, that there’s something wrong with you. Or you must apologize. Or you’re a colonizer.”

“Gen Z could impact this entire election,” Kirk asserts. “And it has received disproportionately little attention, considering [that fact].”

Well, yes and no. Lately, reams have been written about the inroads Trump has made when it comes to garnering expansive support among the young male electorate; Vanity Fair’s own Dan Adler recently reported on Trump’s influence over the Joe Rogan audience and the overall bro podcast set.

But Kirk’s point is that a rash of young male would-be voters—some disaffected, some adopting Trump’s macho posturing, some just awakening to how politics affects their day-to-day—are helping Trump cut into what former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel has warned is Kamala Harris’s sizable lead within the Gen Z community. Kirk puts it all on the table, weighing both sides.

“I think it’s going to be way closer than people think,” he maintains. “I think all this overly bullish stuff on the Trump side is mistaken. I think the abortion vote animates more people than they realize. I think there’s more Republican ‘bleed’”—meaning drop-off among GOP voters to the Harris camp—“than people will admit, especially in my home state of Arizona. I think the female vote is troublesome because women turn out more than men. And, finally, I think Democrats have a very good ground game. Their ground game is exemplary. That doesn’t mean I think Harris is going to win. I just think those things can chip away one point, two points, three points on the margins.”

In 2020, about one in 10 eligible voters were Gen Z. In this election, at least one in six will be. In early June, Joe Biden was winning this cohort by two points. Data released Tuesday by CNBC/Generation Lab shows Harris improving that advantage to 20 points, which is in line with Biden’s performance in 2020.

A leading polling authority on Gen Z voters, John Della Volpe, points out that if history is any guide, Democrats win when they garner 60% of the youth vote. Barack Obama won over this group by 66% in 2008 and 60% in 2012. Biden also drew 60% in 2020. In contrast, Hillary Clinton only managed to attract 55%; John Kerry 55%; and Al Gore 48%. The numbers speak for themselves.

Yet, while polls suggest that Harris leads the Gen Z contest overall—and is winning young women by 67% to 28%—Trump is winning Gen Z men by a factor of 58% to 37%. And that means that this is still a pretty even horse race. Getting to that magical 60% certainly isn’t in the bag.

You would think Harris (age 60), given her relative youth compared to Biden (81) and Trump (78), would enjoy a far greater advantage among all younger voters. But if Trump does manage to pull this one out, defying predictions from people like yours truly who believe that women will create a margin of victory for Harris, it may very well be because Trump—aided by young supporters like Kirk and company—received an unprecedented level of support among young men.

We will know soon enough. Which side will get a more decisive wave of young people to show up at the polls in the key swing states?

Perhaps President Obama said it best when addressing Gen Z voters head on. In a Tuesday interview with the NBA podcast The Young Man and the Three, he spoke about how he and Michelle advised their daughters about the importance of playing their part in a representative democracy. And he spoke directly, as he phrased it, to “particularly young men and young men of color. ”

The former president put it this way: “So, let me get this straight. You’re not gonna vote, which means you’re gonna let a bunch of old people decide your future. You wouldn’t do that about your music. You wouldn’t do that about your clothes. But you’re going to let them decide what your future, your potential careers, what the environment’s gonna look like? You’re gonna let them decide that? You’re just gonna opt out? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s not that hard to vote. Shoot, people vote for All-Star weekend…you can vote to decide who’s gonna represent you and our country.”

[cosmicway 1,333]

All the demagogues promise something false, never happens.
The people believe.

Lenin promised the streets will be lined with gold, everybody happy.
Hitler promised to expand Germany to Los Angeles - San Francisco - moon.
Mussolini - imperio mediterraneo.
Tsipras promised the international markets will dance to his drum.
Farage-Boris "they need us more than we need them".

People like it easy so they believed:

you don't need a Rolls to impress the beach goddesses at Saint Tropez - you can go with a mini bike

Who does n't like to hear that ?
Easy money.

It lasts for a while.