USA - Izbori za predsjednika 2020

[detroit-mercy]

Imam osjecaj da ljudi pitanje izbora i kandidata uzimaju previse licno, kao i ocekivanja od istih .

[bunk]

Kao i sve u zivotu.
Sad naisi na umijecu zivljenja " nema boljeg usisivaca od gorenja" pa ces da vidis

[ultima_palabra]

Imam osjecaj da ljudi pitanje izbora i kandidata uzimaju previse licno, kao i ocekivanja od istih .

Pa ako ne vidis da ce se za jos 4 godine ovoga Amerika pretvoriti u banana drzavu, onda je do tebe.

[madner]

Cuj crnci se bore za svoja prava. Za prava su se vec izborili, sada se bore za resurse.

[detroit-mercy]

Imam osjecaj da ljudi pitanje izbora i kandidata uzimaju previse licno, kao i ocekivanja od istih .

Pa ako ne vidis da ce se za jos 4 godine ovoga Amerika pretvoriti u banana drzavu, onda je do tebe.

Jasta ce

[jeza u ledja]

Evo danas cita govor, ne zna lik izgovorit rijec “fatalities”. Fakat nevjerovatno. Dva puta cita tu rijec i izgovara je pogresno, ko da je prvi put u zivotu cita. Mislim obicna rijec, siguran sam da ovako prica u obicnom razgovory da bi je znao i izgovorio kako treba.
Al ovdje tacno vidis da prvi put vidi kako se rijec pise. Doslovce ko da tu rijec nikad nije vidio napisanu. I ovo nije prvi put, vec je ovo skoro svakodnevno.
Tacno se zapitas je li ovaj ijednu knjigu, ma sta knjigu, clanak, procitao u zivotu, doslovce. Doslovce frajer ne zna da cita.

Edit: Pogresna tema mrsko mi onu drugu trazit.

[CikCikCikPogodi]

Cuj crnci se bore za svoja prava. Za prava su se vec izborili, sada se bore za resurse.

[The 51st State]

Cuj crnci se bore za svoja prava. Za prava su se vec izborili, sada se bore za resurse.

jedva cekam novu sezonu shameless-a da vidim kako ce pokriti ove bedastoce

[CikCikCikPogodi]

Cuj crnci se bore za svoja prava. Za prava su se vec izborili, sada se bore za resurse.

jedva cekam novu sezonu shameless-a da vidim kako ce pokriti ove bedastoce

Ma ovo nije vidjelo lopate u zivotu, a su sumnjam i da znaju šta je kosilica.

[CikCikCikPogodi]

Jesu dosadni sa ovim knjigama, pocet ce i domari pisati da ogrebu koji dolar sa tave.

[madner]

Cuj crnci se bore za svoja prava. Za prava su se vec izborili, sada se bore za resurse.

Cista opresija ove cijene.

[nosara]

Jel' moguce da su ova dvojca spremna da skrckaju 550 miliona dolara na kampanju? 550000000 suncetijebem????

[sinuhe]

Sto ce im tolike pare. Bidenu je korona spasila kampanju. Covjeku u njegovim godinama dovoljno da ne mora putovati.

[bunk]

Jel' moguce da su ova dvojca spremna da skrckaju 550 miliona dolara na kampanju? 550000000 suncetijebem????

Ne znam koliko ce potrositi.Ti kazes 550 miliona,iz konteksta BiH to je strasno ,iz ugla SAD koje su povrsinom planeta za sebe u odnosu na nas i njihovih 340 miliona stanovnika....

[SmokingMan]

Cuj crnci se bore za svoja prava. Za prava su se vec izborili, sada se bore za resurse.

Ovaj što je radio prilog kaže da je spavao samo 10 sati u protekla 3 dana.

Nisam imao predstave nit islutnje da se ovakve stvari dešavaju u Chicagu. Znam da je to grad u kojem vlada možda i najveća netrpeljivost između policije i crnačke populacije.

[CikCikCikPogodi]

Cuj crnci se bore za svoja prava. Za prava su se vec izborili, sada se bore za resurse.

Ovaj što je radio prilog kaže da je spavao samo 10 sati u protekla 3 dana.

Nisam imao predstave nit islutnje da se ovakve stvari dešavaju u Chicagu. Znam da je to grad u kojem vlada možda i najveća netrpeljivost između policije i crnačke populacije.

Inace frajer zaraduje od ovog pare, ode prvi na scenu, covjek slusa frekvenciju svakog distrikta. To mozes i u BiH raditi, totalno je legalno, i prodas slike medijima.

Chicagu samo vlada stotine bandi, ne zanima njih nikakv BLM, niti se BLM zanima njima. Pa zamisli grad u kojem je normalno da bude dijete ubijeno i ranjeno svake sedmice.

Bas sam na njegovom kanalu gledo, majka otisla svojem djetetu kupiti mobitel, van radnje se usijane glave pocele rafalati i pogodi metak majku u glavu.

[SmokingMan]

Ovaj što je radio prilog kaže da je spavao samo 10 sati u protekla 3 dana.

Nisam imao predstave nit islutnje da se ovakve stvari dešavaju u Chicagu. Znam da je to grad u kojem vlada možda i najveća netrpeljivost između policije i crnačke populacije.

Inace frajer zaraduje od ovog pare, ode prvi na scenu, covjek slusa frekvenciju svakog distrikta. To mozes i u BiH raditi, totalno je legalno, i prodas slike medijima.

Chicagu samo vlada stotine bandi, ne zanima njih nikakv BLM, niti se BLM zanima njima. Pa zamisli grad u kojem je normalno da bude dijete ubijeno i ranjeno svake sedmice.

Bas sam na njegovom kanalu gledo, majka otisla svojem djetetu kupiti mobitel, van radnje se usijane glave pocele rafalati i pogodi metak majku u glavu.

Hvala za in fo, pretplatio sam se na channel.

[ultima_palabra]

Sve karte se bacaju na izbornu prevaru.

What’s wrong with the mail
As November nears, the Postal Service is facing a crisis that could interfere with the election.
The United States Postal Service is dealing with crippling backlogs of letters and packages. A postmaster in upstate New York recently told their union that the regular mail was two days behind and, for the first time in their career, Express Priority Mail was not going out on time. Despite a surge in package delivery during the pandemic, postal workers are no longer able to work overtime, and fewer mail trucks are on the road. If your own mail seems delayed or unpredictable, it’s not a one-off problem.
Mail service has been disrupted nationwide in recent weeks due to a series of factors. While the USPS has been suffering financially for years, the coronavirus pandemic has delivered an existential threat to the agency. The self-funded Postal Service has been seeking billions in aid from Congress — an effort that’s been stymied by President Trump, who has long had a contentious relationship with the USPS and has pushed to privatize it. And now, the USPS is adjusting to cost-cutting policies put in place by its new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, who is a top Trump donor and longtime Republican fundraiser.
DeJoy announced a major restructuring of the Postal Service in a memo released on August 7. The plan involves the reassignment of 23 postal executives in an overhaul that, according to the Washington Post, “deemphasizes decades’ worth of institutional postal knowledge” and “centralizes power around DeJoy.” The shift in power stands to further complicate the new postmaster general’s relationship with Democrats in Congress, who want him investigated.
The Postal Service’s problems have continued to batter its reputation, as news emerged August 14 that the agency sent a letter to 46 states and Washington, DC, in late July warning it could not guarantee the on-time delivery of all of their mail-in ballots and calling for states to reconsider their ballot deadlines. Records show that these warnings were planned before the recent cost-cutting measures were implemented, meaning that the present delays could slow down the delivery of ballots even more. Among those measures are the removal of 10 percent of the Postal Service’s high-speed sorting machines. A large number of these machines, which process flat mail like ballots, are being removed from key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida.
All of this means the future of the Postal Service is in jeopardy. It was actually in big trouble months ago, when postal leaders warned that without intervention from Congress, the USPS could run out of cash as soon as September. What’s happening now is even more urgent. Decisions being made by Trump allies are leading to delays that could motivate the Postal Service’s biggest customers to send their packages through competitors like UPS and FedEx. And according to some, the strategy could have devastating consequences.
“It is unimaginable to think of an America without the Postal Service,” said John McHugh, chairman of the Package Coalition, a trade group that counts Amazon and eBay as members. “But if things go toward a worst-case scenario in this instance, which is entirely possible, that’s what would have to occur.”
It gets worse. A more serious and immediate consequence of the Postal Service’s recent problems has led to concern that the delays could interfere with the November election, when a record number of people are expected to vote by mail due to the pandemic. Given the facts and the president’s ongoing public criticism of mail-in voting, some are accusing Trump of intentionally kneecapping the Postal Service in an attempt to sabotage the election, as he trails Joe Biden in the polls. Democrats in Congress are worried enough about the reported delays and their potential effect on democracy that they called the new postmaster general to Capitol Hill in early August to demand he reverse the new policies.
The story of how we got here is complicated, and there is disagreement about what’s really going on. However, according to postal leaders and Democrats, the way to fix the mail in time for the election involves an infusion of cash and an end to the delays. Even then, the Postal Service faces a tough road ahead.
The Postal Service’s controversial new policies, explained
It’s tempting to blame all of the Postal Service’s service problems on the new postmaster general, DeJoy, but it wouldn’t be entirely fair. After years of money problems tied to a decline in certain types of mail and an obligation to prefund its retirement benefits, the USPS suffered a very serious financial blow when the pandemic hit.
Starting in March, the volume of first-class mail began to plummet (though a surge in package delivery has helped make up for that lost revenue). Meanwhile, tens of thousands of postal workers got sick or began quarantining, leading to a labor shortage and the need for more overtime hours. The Postal Service also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on personal protective equipment (PPE) and on retrofitting post offices with more plexiglass and more space for social distancing.
This is why postal leaders asked Congress for $75 billion when the CARES Act was being negotiated in April. (This is not something the USPS likes to do, by the way. It’s been 40 years since the Postal Service took taxpayer dollars.) In response, President Trump called the Postal Service “a joke” and threatened to veto the bill if it included any money for the USPS. Despite the president’s attempts to avoid giving the Postal Service any money at all, the agency ended up making an agreement with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for a $10 billion loan with strict terms.
Postmaster General DeJoy took office in mid-June amid the coronavirus crisis. It’s worth pointing out that DeJoy was not appointed by President Trump. He was appointed by the six members of the Postal Service Board of Governors, all of whom were appointed by Trump. And it was after DeJoy got to work that the mail delays began, according to multiple postal service-related union leaders and trade groups interviewed by Recode.
DeJoy, a former logistics executive with no Postal Service experience, started his new gig by launching a series of pilot programs designed to slash USPS spending. Multiple postal worker unions reported that DeJoy’s policies limited mail transportation, causing mail to be left at the sorting plant for days longer than it normally would. Meanwhile, a crackdown on overtime hours meant that sorting machines are shut down before the day’s work is done. (“If the plants run late, they will keep the mail for the next day,” read one USPS memo obtained by the Washington Post.) As a result, mail is sitting undelivered across the country.
In response to questions about the recent issues, USPS spokesperson David Partenheimer used variations of the word “efficient” six times in explaining how the agency is adjusting its operations. “Of course we acknowledge that temporary service impacts can occur as we redouble our efforts to conform to the current operating plans,” Partenheimer said, “but any such impacts will be monitored and temporary, as the root causes of any issues will be addressed as necessary and corrected as appropriate.”
It’s not entirely clear how temporary the delays will be. In fact, none of the postal workers Recode spoke to were exactly sure what the new policies entailed, since DeJoy and his lieutenants did not communicate the details of the pilot programs to the unions or to individual postmasters.
“In the field, we don’t have the details — only that we can’t approve overtime, only the district manager can,” explained a postmaster who runs a post office in the Northeast and spoke on the condition of anonymity as they’re not authorized to speak to the press. “I’m in a delivery unit, so I can’t speak for delayed mail in a plant. But by cutting the overtime, it would certainly delay a lot of mail.”
Individual managers might be selectively enforcing the new rules, they said, but with such poor communication from DeJoy, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening. The postmaster, who is a 20-year veteran of the USPS, added, “Amazon parcels are given priority over everything at a national level.”
None of this confusion has helped DeJoy win any popularity contests in his short tenure as postmaster general.
Some have called DeJoy “a crony,” and many are scrutinizing his background and political ties. As a former logistics executive, DeJoy ran companies that counted the USPS as a client, and his family has invested $30.1 million to $75.3 million in USPS competitors or contractors, including UPS. DeJoy is also a celebrated Republican party fundraiser who contributed over $1.5 million to Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. His wife, Aldona Wos, served as ambassador to Estonia in the George W. Bush administration and has been nominated by President Trump to be the next ambassador to Canada.
Others want to give DeJoy a chance. After all, he did take on a tough job at a struggling agency in the middle of a pandemic.
“Just to be honest, we’re very suspicious of this new postmaster general. We have a healthy bit of skepticism,” said Jim Sauber, chief of staff for the National Association of Letter Carriers. “But I know my boss and officers are not going to level charges that we can’t substantiate, and we’re not gonna jump to a conclusion until we can get a better fix on this.”
Democratic leaders in Congress seem less accommodating with regard to what DeJoy has done so far. After the new postmaster general confirmed the details of the operational changes to the Postal Service in their early August meeting, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded that DeJoy reverse the new policies. The Democrats said this and preserving funds for the Postal Service are essential for a deal on a new coronavirus relief package.
Still, even if the Postal Service does get an infusion of cash — you might call it a bailout — the agency’s future remains uncertain. Whatever damage to the reputation of the USPS that’s being done now stands to affect the broader perception of the agency under the new postmaster general. We might be hearing more about privatizing the Postal Service in the future, whether we like it or not.
Trump’s campaign against voting by mail
Considering DeJoy’s connections to Trump and the Republican Party and the reports of worsening mail delays with the election approaching, many are afraid that the president is plotting to rig the election in November by casting doubt on the dependability of mail-in voting.
“The Trump administration’s ongoing campaign to sabotage the US Postal Service is a direct attack on our democracy,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, which oversees the USPS, told Recode. “Rural and urban, Democrat, Republican, or independent, every American has come to rely on the Postal Service, and our election is increasingly dependent on it. Congress must with one voice and clear action ensure service standards are not allowed to falter.”
Delays and political connections aside, we don’t have much hard evidence of a Trump-led plot to overthrow the Postal Service. It does look bad that the USPS appears to be facing an existential crisis just weeks after a Trump donor took over as postmaster general. It looks worse that the president has spent months attacking the broader use of mail-in voting, even threatening executive action to stop it. But these things don’t quite add up to proof of a conspiracy against the Postal Service.
“The notion that the postmaster general makes decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the president is wholly misplaced and off-base,” Partenheimer, the USPS spokesperson, told Recode. “With regard to election mail, the Postal Service remains fully committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process when public policymakers choose to utilize the mail as a part of their election system, and to delivering election mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards.”
Still, Trump seems to be doing everything he can to undermine American voters’ confidence in mail-in voting. There are so many tweets:
And that might be all he needs to discourage people from voting by mail.
Different states have different laws about how mail-in ballots work. Currently, 34 states — including swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — require ballots to be received by election authorities by Election Day, so any delay in the mail could lead to untold numbers of votes going uncounted. Rules about when states count the mail-in ballots also vary, so results are bound to be delayed in states like New York, where ballots can only be counted after the polls close. It’s especially discouraging for voters that postal leaders felt the need to warn states that delays around Election Day could be so bad that voters could be disenfranchised.
The Postal Service and postal unions are quick to point out that they take mail-in voting very seriously, and the process for delivering ballots is tried and tested.
“The Postal Service has always given special attention to mail ballots,” said Sauber. “In general, in most places in the country, during election time, if the Postal Service has mail ballots, they move heaven and earth to make sure it’s delivered. They give top priority to the ballots.”
“We’ve been doing mail ballots as postal workers for generations,” said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. “It’s been increasing in popularity. In the last election, 31 million people voted by mail. There’s virtually no fraud.”
Individual states can update their laws governing mail-in voting before November. Aware of this fact, the Trump campaign has sued state and local governments across the country over mail-in ballot rules. One suit, in Pennsylvania, argues that mail-in ballot drop boxes — which are designed to handle ballots, look like mailboxes, and are monitored closely — are unconstitutional and should be removed. Another lawsuit from the Trump campaign and other Republicans seeks to overturn a new law in Nevada that would require the state to mail everyone a ballot.
Still, assuming all laws remain as they are, disrupting the Postal Service is an obvious way to hinder the mail-in ballot process. If slowing down the mail isn’t enough on its own, even creating a perception of problems with the mail could be enough to discourage some Americans from mail-in voting. And it looks like Trump is being effective at doing this — perhaps too effective. A June-July poll suggested that some voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan have become so distrustful of mail-in voting that they might rather not vote at all than rely on mail-in ballots. Not long after this poll was published, Trump assured voters in Florida that mail-in voting was safe there.
“We’ll be able to deliver. There won’t be a problem with vote-by-mail,” said Ronnie Stutts, president of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. “I think even President Trump is starting to see that. I think he’s lightened up a little bit.”
The most anxiety-inducing part of all this is that there seems to be little for the average American to do. The Postal Service is an independent agency, and there’s only so much Congress can do to shape its policies. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), chair of the House government oversight committee, has called DeJoy to Capitol Hill to testify. If he doesn’t show up, there’s a possibility Maloney would subpoena him, though it’s terribly clear at this point that members of the Trump administration don’t necessarily care about subpoenas or showing up in Congress when asked.
But again, the Postal Service’s problems extend well beyond Trump’s war on vote-by-mail. The election will come and go, and there’s a decent chance the USPS will still be in trouble. Depending on how negotiations go around the new coronavirus stimulus package, these recent delays could continue. Growing backlogs mean the mail delays could actually get worse in the weeks and months to come. Ongoing delays could chase big package senders like Amazon and eBay away from the USPS, and without that revenue, the Postal Service would be in even more serious trouble. After all, these customers have long been concerned about whether it might be better for their business to go through UPS or FedEx.
What the Postal Service needs right now — both to deliver mail and to keep existing — is money. What it needs in the long term, some say, is a bit of restructuring.
“If you think of the analogy of a house, it needs to be remodeled,” said Arthur B. Sackler, manager of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, whose members include not only Amazon and eBay but also catalog and greeting card companies. “And, at the same time, this house you’re remodeling, the roof is on fire. So you’ve got to put the fire out first before you can remodel.”
The vast majority of Americans do not want to let the house burn down, by the way. Americans don’t just rely on the Postal Service. They love it.
For years, the USPS has been the most popular government agency in the United States. According to a Pew Research Center study released in April, 91 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Postal Service, and roughly the same percentage of Americans want to bail out the agency. Similarly, countless companies that do business with the Postal Service are fans. Online retailers, including Amazon, even spent millions of dollars on an ad campaign begging lawmakers to save the Postal Service.
These facts leave us with a very curious situation. The Postal Service is seriously struggling, but it’s never been more important. It’s critical to get prescriptions to the homes of people during a pandemic and to deliver ballots to state election boards. It’s even prized by huge corporations like Amazon, who could easily give their money to a competing private company but would rather work with the Postal Service. At the same time, President Trump seems to disdain the agency, and the new postmaster general seems to be doing more harm than good.
The upshot of it all is that the USPS has survived difficult moments in the past. The agency can trace its roots back to the days of the American Revolution. Two and a half centuries later, mail service has never been more essential. If anything, a crisis like this could serve to remind the country how much it needs the Postal Service, despite what a handful of powerful people might believe.

[omar little]

to iz the atlantic clanak?

[ultima_palabra]

to iz the atlantic clanak?

Vox.

[omar little]

to iz the atlantic clanak?

Vox.

ima i u atlanticu clanak o posti i izborima, zato pitam.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... on/615271/

[ultima_palabra]

Hvala.

[omar little]

The Convention Has Finally Become What It Always Was
For decades, political conventions have adapted to every indignity that progress and technology could throw at them.

Watching the first session of the world’s first live-streamed political convention last night, my mind kept returning to the late American historian Daniel Boorstin, and then to the equally late Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan. (My mind has a broom closet where it keeps mid-20th-century public intellectuals.) Almost 60 years have passed since Boorstin coined the term pseudo-event, and nearly as long since McLuhan popped out with his own coinage, “The medium is the message.” Both phrases grew shopworn in the ensuing decades, but as the Democrats may show with their experiment in virtual conventioneering, some clichés endure because of their resiliency and usefulness.

Any modern political convention is a pseudo-event. Boorstin coined the word to describe an artificial happening—a press conference, an awards ceremony—manufactured expressly for the purpose of getting the press to cover it, as though it qualified as genuine news, arising naturally from the clash of circumstance rather than the grasping imagination of PR flacks. Historically, of course, political conventions made news by the bucketful. They served several functions—preeminently, the selection from a field of candidates of a presidential nominee to represent the party in the fall election. They also featured the picking of party officials, the ratification of a party platform, the choice of a vice-presidential candidate, and other decisions that were the stuff of authentic news.

Boorstin published his book, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America, two years after the 1960 Democratic convention, the last national gathering of Democrats to open with the identity of their presidential candidate in any doubt. Following a day or two of backstage politicking, the nomination went to John F. Kennedy. Thereafter, 30 national conventions, Democratic and Republican, have commenced with nearly all of the party’s business already accomplished, including the informal designation of its presidential nominee. (The only modern exception is the 1976 Republican convention in Kansas City, Missouri, where Ronald Reagan made one final lunge for the nomination before Gerald Ford pocketed it.) During most presidential-election years, usually a few weeks into primary season, journalists and politicos try to rescue themselves from boredom by contemplating the possibility that their fondest dream will at last come true: a “brokered convention” complete with dark horses, front-runners, and favorite sons and daughters, competing through multiple roll-call votes until a surprise victor emerges from the rubble.

Drama! Uncertainty! Real-world events to write about! It never happens. Pseudo-events don’t work that way.

The unhappy decline of the political convention, from meaningful event to pseudo-event, is closely tied to the advent of electronic media, particularly television. As McLuhan knew, and expressed in his famous formula, the means (the medium) by which information (the message) is disseminated can alter the nature of the information. This is especially true when there’s not a lot of information to begin with. Television first featured at the conventions in a big way in 1952. That summer, broadcast networks aired the first nationwide gavel-to-gavel convention coverage, 60 hours’ worth each week. According to a definitive monograph by the scholar Zachary Karabell, an astonishing 80 percent of U.S. TV-owning households spent an average of 10 to 13 hours a week watching the conventions that year.

Four years later, ratings dipped—and they dipped again four years after that. Network executives worried that the conventions were not, after all, good TV. Convention planners, panicked that this bounty of free advertising would vanish, responded as time went on by trimming the proceedings to fit the shrinking attention span of television viewers. Speeches were shortened and schedules tightened. More celebrities were recruited to strut upon the stage, and podium designs bristled with colors to delight those Americans lucky enough to own a color TV. There were occasional failures in the pursuit of made-for-TV conventions, some of them spectacular; in 1972, in a symptom of the general chaos afflicting his party, the Democratic nominee, George McGovern, didn’t deliver his televised acceptance speech until 3 a.m. EST.

Such mishaps only heightened the resolve of party professionals to tailor their proceedings to television’s demands. They succeeded too well. By the early 1990s, the network programmers who had complained of windy speeches and endless longueurs were cutting their already stripped-down broadcasts on the grounds that the conventions were—can you guess?—too scripted, insufficiently surprising and spontaneous. Evidently a pseudo-event fails if it looks too much like a pseudo-event.

It was at this point, 24 years ago, that the cable-news channels came to the rescue, providing an infinite supply of airtime and a bottomless appetite for gasbaggery. They relieved the major networks of whatever remained of their news divisions’ idealistic obligation to air party conventions as a public service. ABC, NBC, and CBS shrunk their coverage to next to nothing—usually an hour a night—while the cable channels treated the conventions less as a source of news and more as a grand quadrennial event in which journalists and politicians and activists combined into a giant, indistinguishable mass worthy of round-the-clock attention.

Indeed, in the past three or four presidential elections, it’s become a commonplace to note that the political convention has, amoebalike, split in two. The usual convention goes on as before, with roughly 4,000 delegates and party operatives pretending to do something functional. Meanwhile they are surrounded and observed by a much larger gathering of 15,000 or more journalists, using the convention as an excuse to have a convention of their own, in which work and pleasure shamelessly commingle. The second convention of journalists could never allow the first convention of pols to perish, lest it perish too, and all the fun (and work) be lost. The parasite takes care to keep the host alive, even as it consumes it, like those poor colonists hanging from the wall in Aliens.

But now even this reason for the continued existence of political conventions has been overcome. Those of us reporters who as recently as this spring thrilled to the prospect of an expense-account week in Milwaukee (with the Democrats) or Charlotte (with the Republicans) are reduced to sitting at home like everyone else. We face two hours a night of two-minute speeches and other forms of propaganda live-streaming from the nowhere of cyberspace, while our only hope of surprise lies in the prospect of a technological disaster: Max Headroom hiccups from Bill Clinton or pixilated dissolves of Gavin Newsom’s hair. For decades, political conventions adapted to every indignity that progress and technology could throw at them, surviving as a pseudo-event about a pseudo-event, a goofy and essentially unnecessary anachronism. It may take a pandemic to do them in once and for all.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... nt/615346/

[Hame_]

n1



Tokom druge večeri virtuelne Konvencije Demokratske partije SAD-a podršku kandidatu za predsjednik Joeu Bidenu podršku su dali bivši predsjednici Jimmy Carter i Bill Clinton, ali i bivši državni sekretari Republikanac Colin Powell i Demokrata John Kerry. Kerry koji je s Bidenom sarađivao u američkom Senatu, ali i u vrijeme administracije Obama-Biden tokom govora kojim je podržao Bidena se osvrnuo i na njegov rad u Senatu gdje se dotakao i Balkana. Karryev govor prenosimo u cjelosti.


"Zdravo, ja sam John Kerry. Kroz osam godina Obama-Biden administracije mi smo vodili primjerom. Eliminisali smo prijetnju od iranskog nuklearnog oružja. Izgradili smo koaliciju 68 zemalja protiv tzv. Islamske države. Napravili smo dogovor o klimatskim promjenama koji je podržalo 195 zemalja. Zaustavili smo ebolu da ne postane pandemija.

Donald Trump je naslijedio rastuću ekonomiju i mnogo mirniji svijet i kao i sve ostalo što je naslijedio to je bankrotiralo. Kada ovaj predsjednik otputuje u insotranstvo to nije mirovna misija, to je pogrešan potez. On uništava naša savezništva i piše ljubavna pisma diktatorima.

Amerika zaslužuje predsjednika kojeg će se poštovati, a ne kojem se smiju. Donald Trump se pretvara da Rusija nije ugrozila naše izbore. Nije uradio ništa protiv Rusije koja ucjenjuje glave naših vojnika. On ne brani našu zemlju. On ne zna kako odbraniti naše trupe. Jedina osoba koju želi braniti je on sam. Krajnja linija je: naši interesi, naši ideali, naši hrabri muškarci i žene u uniformi ne mogu sebi priuštiti još četiri godine Donalda Trumpa. Naše trupe se ne mogu izvući iz prijetnje dok se on krije u bunkeru Bijele kuće. Oni trebaju predsjednika koji će se zauzeti za njih.

Predsjednik Biden hoće. Joeov moralni kompas je uvijek pokazivao u pravom smjeru od borbe za uništenje aparthejda do borbe da probudi svijet po pitanju genocida na Balkanu. Joe razumije da nijedno od ovih pitanja u današnjem svijetu ni nuklearno oružje, ni izazov izgradnje boljeg poslije COVID-a, ni terorizam, i posebno ne klimatske promjene ne mogu biti riješeni bez ujedinjavanja nacije. Joe razumije da naše vrijeme ne limitiraju našu moć nego je uvećavaju. On zna da ne možemo širiti demokratiju u svijetu ako je ne praktikujemo kod kuće. On zna da čak i SAD trebaju prijatelje na planeti.

Prije Donalda Trumpa smo govorili o američkoj posebnosti. Jedina posebna stvar o vanjskoj politici Donalda Trumpa je da smo danas više izolirani nego ikada prije. Joe Biden zna da nismo posebni zato što se time dičimo nego da smo posebni jer radimo izuzetne stvari. 6. juna 1944. mladi Amerikanci su dali svoje živote na plažama Normandije da oslobodimo svijet od tiranije. Iz pepela rata napravili smo mir i izgradili svijet. To je ono što je i što ostaje posebno. To je suprotno od svega za šta se zalaže Donald Trump.

Ovo je trenutak da se izborimo za sigurnost SAD-a i svijeta“, kazao je milionima Amerikanaca, ali i gledaocima širom svijeta bivši državni sekretar John Kerry.

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Donald Trump je naslijedio rastuću ekonomiju i mnogo mirniji svijet i kao i sve ostalo što je naslijedio to je bankrotiralo. Kada ovaj predsjednik otputuje u insotranstvo to nije mirovna misija, to je pogrešan potez. On uništava naša savezništva i piše ljubavna pisma diktatorima.