1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.c4 a6 4.Nc3 d6 5.d4 cxd4 6.Nxd4 Nf6 7.Be2 Be7 8.O-O O-O 9.Be3 b6 10.Qd2 Bb7 11.f3 Nbd7 12.Rfd1 Qc7 13.Rac1 Rac8 14.a3 Qb8 15.b4 Bd8 16.Nb3 Bc7 17.g3 Rfe8 18.Bf2 Rcd8 19.Qc2 Qa8 20.Na4 Rc8 21.c5 bxc5 22.bxc5 Bc6 23.cxd6 Bxd6 24.Nac5 Bxc5 25.Nxc5 Nxc5 26.Bxc5 Nd7 27.Bd4 Bb5 28.Qb2 Bxe2 29.Qxe2 Rxc1 30.Rxc1 Rc8 31.Qb2 f6 32.Rxc8+ Qxc8 33.h4 Qc6 34.h5 Kf7 35.Kf2 Qc4 36.g4 h6 37.Qc3 Qa4 1/2-1/2>

<The Biden campaign is using Mother's Day to criticize former President Trump in a new campaign video, urging Americans to "Stop Trump."

"Happy Mother's Day. At the Biden campaign, we are asking Americans to do the moms in their lives a favor. Stop Trump," the Biden campaign wrote in a press release.

In the video, the Biden campaign says that "On Mother’s Day, a reminder: Donald Trump stands only for himself and not mothers across America and their families."

"The stakes of this election are high for all Americans, but especially moms across our country who will suffer under a second Trump term," the video states.

Biden said Trump would devastate maternal health and hurt women across the country by working to sabotage and repeal the Affordable Care Act.

"Under Trump, the government will be allowed to monitor their pregnancies, and rip their families apart. Meanwhile President Biden is fighting to bring back his historic expanded Child Tax Credit to give families a little extra breathing room, and ensure paid leave for all Americans," the message from the Biden campaign continued.

The Biden campaign noted several points in explaining why voters need to vote for him over Trump in the upcoming election.

His reasoning included blaming Trump for families being denied access to fertility treatments; allowing states to monitor women's pregnancies; that Trump believes women who have an abortion should face "some form of punishment"; and that Trump "proudly separated mothers from their children."

Biden's other points said Trump would devastate maternal health and hurt women across the country by working tirelessly to sabotage and repeal the Affordable Care Act; Biden's final point said Trump's economic plan would be an "inflation bomb" that would raise costs for mothers and families.

"Families depend on moms – and moms deserve a President they can depend on to protect their rights, work to lower their costs, and fight for them. Donald Trump wasn’t and isn’t that President, but Joe Biden is," Biden's campaign wrote.

In response to the new campaign video, Trump's team fired back at the president, calling his video a disgusting move to make, especially on Mother's Day.

"What a sad, miserable, cowardly existence Crooked Joe Biden and his campaign must have to make such a disgusting ad on such a joyous day. Their lives are obviously filled with anger, hate, and resentment because they clearly suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome," Trump's team told Fox News Digital.

"President Trump continues to live rent-free in their pea-sized brains, even on Mother's Day.">

This jeremiad comes after all those mean-spirited holiday messages.

What a f***ing loser.

<At his campaign rallies, Donald Trump often declares that “crime is rampant and out of control, like never before.” He claims that the nation’s capital is a “nightmare of murder and crime. People from Georgia go down to Washington now and they get shot.” In New York City, “you go right outside and people are being mugged and killed all day long.”

If elected president in 2024, Trump says he will close the border with Mexico, deport millions of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., send the National Guard to clean up crime-ridden cities and withhold federal government grants to municipalities that do not adopt tough law enforcement procedures, even if soft-on-crime Democratic governors and mayors do not approve.

Asked about data indicating a decrease in homicides and other violent crimes, Trump replied, “The FBI fudged the numbers and other people fudged numbers. There is no way crime went down over the last year. There’s no way because you have migrant crime. Are they adding migrant crime? Or do they consider that a different form of crime?”

Unsurprisingly, there is no evidence for these claims. Cynically creating and disseminating “alternative facts” seems to come so naturally to the former president that his tombstone could read, “Here lies Donald Trump … As usual.”

In 2016, candidate Trump falsely insisted that the murder rate in the U.S. was “the highest in 45 years.” He maintained that the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate of 4.9 percent unemployment was “phony” and the rate was actually 42 percent....>

<....Two months after he took office, Trump boasted about the Bureau’s jobs announcement. The numbers “may have been phony in the past,” he instructed Press Secretary Sean Spicer to tell reporters, “but they’re very real now.”

As with his 2016 lies about unemployment, Trump is now riding an imaginary crime wave and, alas, many voters are buying what he’s selling.

A huge spike in crime, including a whopping 29 percent surge in murders, occurred during the pandemic in 2020 while Trump was president. In that year, eight of the 10 states with the highest murder rates voted for Trump. In 2021, the murder rate increased by an additional 4.3 percent, while violent crime dropped by 1 percent. Serious crime rates, it’s worth noting, have remained well below 1990s levels.

Since then a slew of organizations — including the Council on Criminal Justice, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, local and state government law enforcement agencies and the FBI — have agreed that crime has been going down in urban and rural areas, with a 6 percent nationwide decrease in homicides in 2022 and an additional 13 percent drop in 2023. According to Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, “murder almost certainly declined at one of the fastest rates ever recorded.” The nationwide reduction in violent crimes seems to have continued in the first quarter of 2024.

Progress, not surprisingly, is uneven. Murders were up 9 percent in Los Angeles in 2023, 8 percent in St. Louis and 23 percent in Denver; murders were down 18 percent in New York City and 24 percent in Washington, D.C.

There is no evidence of a migrant crime wave. Moreover, Richard Berk, an emeritus professor of criminology and statistics at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that “You could say [for example] the Philadelphia police department is in cahoots with the Biden Administration’s FBI” to rig the results, “but that’s simply a silly conspiracy theory.”

And it’s misleading to put a partisan spin on spikes in violent crime. Claims that “the crime problem is a blue state, blue city crime problem” are not valid, argues Jim Kessler, executive vice president of the public policy think tank Third Way. After adjusting for demographic and economic differences and the percentage of the population that is urban, the conservative Manhattan Institute concluded “there is no difference between Trump’s share of the electorate and homicide rates at the county or state level.”

Nonetheless, in November 2023, 77 percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters that crime had increased during the past year. Since only 17 percent indicated that crime was a significant problem where they live, it seems likely that fears of a wave have been stoked by political and media narratives. Ahead of the 2022 midterms, one-quarter of Republican attack ads on Democrats focused on crime; in September and October 2022, Fox News aired 141 news segments on crime. And Trump continues to make crime a centerpiece of his campaign to retake the White House.

Whether the subject is a crime wave, a stolen election or a weaponized Justice Department, the truth often fails to refute “alternative facts” that appeal to latent or blatant biases and fears. All the more so when hyperpartisan political allegiances, a lack of trust in experts and siloed sources of news and “information” are entrenched in our political culture.

We need community leaders and ordinary citizens as well as politicians to publicly repudiate a “post-fact” world as a clear and present danger to democracy; ask tough questions about the motives, integrity, veracity and authority of those who spread “alternative facts”; and hold them accountable for betraying voters’ trust.>

<Former President Donald Trump is entering the final stretch in his vice presidential selection process.

There are now less than six months until Election Day. Republican delegates, including Trump's family, will gather in Milwaukee in just over two months to formally hand him his third straight GOP presidential nomination.

Even if he wins in November, Trump will reenter office as a lame duck. It means his apprentice will have the inside track to replace him in 2028 — a fundamentally different reality than the one he faced in 2016.

Trump is no longer a political neophyte. As he recently told Time Magazine, the former president claims he knows what to do differently this time. He no longer needs a running mate to unite his party's base. It's his show. But as recent primary results illustrate, there is still a subsection of the Republican Party that isn't thrilled by their choices.

A rematch between the two most recent men who have held the title of the oldest president in history is also sure to put a focus on their No. 2s.

So with that in mind, here's Business Insider's initial vice presidential power rankings. Like all good predictions, we'll update it as it gets closer to happening to ensure greater accuracy.

If we're wrong, just remember that offseason polls don't matter. (Trust me, I'm a Nebraska fan.)

1. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina:

Scott has been on Trump's shortlist from the beginning. He's a former presidential candidate himself, a fact many recent vice presidential nominees share (though Trump ignored that in 2016). The 58-year-old has also shown a fundraising prowess that could be greatly appreciated given Trump's at-times cash-strapped campaign. It helps that he has a relationship with Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who, according to CNBC, is pushing Scott to get picked.

Scott would also be a historic choice. He's already the first Black Republican elected from the South since Reconstruction. Some Trump aides have urged the former president to balance out his 2024 ticket by picking a person of color.

Polls during Scott's brief run show that GOP voters like him. He receives a similarly warm reception on Capitol Hill, though his bipartisan push for sweeping policing reform failed. He voted to certify the 2020 election, a fact he shares with the overwhelming majority of GOP senators, but recently was cagey when asked if he would accept the results this November.

That all being said, we've talked up Scott before. And he dropped out before the Iowa caucuses.

2. Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota

Burgum's biggest moment in his brief presidential run was arguably when he injured his leg before a primary debate. Despite that inauspicious moment and a forgettable primary effort, he's receiving serious consideration. Burgum's momentum has surprised even his fellow home-state politicians. Sen. Kevin Cramer told Politico his governor deserved the spotlight but also summed up Burgum's biggest drawbacks by pointing out he's a "white male from a state with three electoral votes that haven't gone to a Democrat since LBJ does not seem to bring a lot of electoral value to the ticket."

Trump tried a Midwestern governor straight out of central casting who was supposed to outshine him. Unlike Pence, Burgum blazed a path in business before getting into politics. The North Dakotan sold his software company to Microsoft for over $1 billion in 2001. As CNBC pointed out, Burgum could write a massive check to Trump's campaign....>

<....3. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida Rubio would be the most obvious choice for a Trump pick poised to carry the former president's legacy forward in 2028. After all, the Floridian was once proclaimed the future of the Republican Party. He did vote to certify the 2020 election results but found ways other ways work with his former 2016 primary rival while in office. Rubio has also shown he'll shift his views, most notably he was one of the main architects of the bipartisan, sweeping 2013 immigration legislation that would have offered undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship. Like many 2016 foes, Rubio is also on record hammering Trump — including his cringey mocking of the future president's hand size (Rubio later apologized for that).

The biggest hurdle for Rubio isn't likely anything in his past. Instead, he faces very real concerns about residing in the same state as Trump.

As Politifact explained, the Constitution has been interpreted not to allow electors from the same state to vote for a president and vice president who also reside in that state. That means a Trump-Rubio ticket could lose out on Florida's 30 electoral votes, even if they won the state.

According to the Bulwark, Rubio would be willing to move but he might have to make his mind soon.

4. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York
Stefanik has clearly staked her ground as a Trump ally. She was the first member of House leadership to have endorsed Trump for his 2024 run. She endeared herself to his political base for her defense of the president during his first impeachment trial. Stefanik garnered national attention recently for grilling college presidents over their handling of antisemitism. She was once more liberal than Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, but her rise in the GOP has coincided with a reinvention as a Trump-aligned Republican.

Stefanik hails from a state that is never going to back Trump. But scores of studies show that the home-state boosts for vice presidents isn't all it's cracked up to be. Perhaps it's not surprising then that none of the top-tier names on Trump's list hail from a current swing state. Still, Stefanik's selection would be historic. She would be only the fourth woman to share a major party's ticket. Republicans, especially Trump, have struggled with suburban women, but it's not clear that tapping a woman would automatically cure that problem.

Biden may also delight in the selection of a House GOP leader. The president has repeatedly called attention to the drama that has gripped the lower chamber. Voters are likely to care more about the economy than Speaker Mike Johnson's job status, but the level of in-fighting in the GOP is so bad that multiple sitting lawmakers have quit their jobs early.

5. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio
Vance has used his powerful perch to push the GOP more in Trump's direction. He serves in a chamber that, unlike the House, is more likely to defy the former president. Despite just joining the Senate last year, the 39-year-old has been repeatedly mentioned as a potential running mate.

As a former venture capitalist, Vance has ties to the more conservative Silicon Valley leaders who could help buck up Trump's fundraising. Like many on this list, Vance has questioned the results of the 2020 election. He's gone even further recently by suggesting that former Vice President Mike Pence has overplayed the extent to which his life was under threat during the Capitol riot....>

<....The rest of the pack

6. Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida: Donalds has risen rapidly in the eyes of many of his House GOP colleagues. He has close relationships with the House conservatives that forced former Speaker Kevin McCarthy's historic ouster and have frustrated Speaker Mike Johnson, but he hasn't participated in either effort to challenge the men directly.

7. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy: Ramaswamy staked out the most pro-Trump territory of any GOP presidential hopeful. So much so that it got him noticed. Ramaswamy shares Trump's love of sparing with the media. He also tried to act like the former president on the debate stage, though his fellow candidates' patience grew thin as time wore on. Having never held elected office, the Roivant Sciences founder would have one of the least conventional resumes of any recent major party vice presidential nominee. He would also be a historic pick.

8. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii: Gabbard has reinvented herself since briefly running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Gabbard made a major show of leaving her party over "wokeness." Trump's interest is serious enough that she reportedly brushed off RFK. Jr's entreaties to become his vice presidential nominee. Still, there's already one former Democrat on any Trump ticket. Is there really room for another one?

9. Former HUD Secretary Ben Carson: Trump still has close feelings for his former Cabinet official. Carson also hails from the key state of Michigan. He's also still an avowed supporter of a national abortion ban, a topic Trump has tried everything in his power to avoid.

10. A wild card like Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia: Youngkin skipped out on a late 2024 run to focus on state legislative elections. The Republican was supposed to show how the GOP can talk about abortion in competitive areas. It didn't work out. Still, he has the personal wealth and connections to seriously help a Trump campaign. Plus, per CNBC, Rupert Murdoch likes him.

11. Anyone else.

12. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem: Noem could have been a contender. But when your top Google results are about dog killing, it's safe to say your chances are pretty much over. The prediction markets seem to think so, too.>

<antichrist....

old ✅

fat ✅

lonely ✅

successful ❌>

Tosspot: check

Compulsive liar: check

Whinearse: check

Unremittingly evil: check

Decent human being: never

Failure in life: always

Verily, you tick all but the one of import.

One big difference between us is that you will have much more time to reflect on your utter failure--at everything.

Them there tanks rumbling through the streets yet, <tosspot>?

Verily, you tick all boxes but the one of import--being a good human being is well beyond your capability.

<What happens if he loses?

The mainstream press has finally turned its focus to what a second Donald Trump administration will look like should he win the White House in 2024. Salon has been covering this since Trump first flew off to Mar-a-Lago in 2021 and it was obvious that unless something happened to his health, Trump would be the 2024 nominee and the rest of the GOP would be developing a multi-faceted program to grant themselves unlimited power. None of this was anything but predictable once we saw what they were capable of during the post-election period of 2020 and the events of January 6, 2021.

The mainstream media has caught up and over the past few months has produced in-depth features and front page articles on the new MAGAfied Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, Schedule F, Agenda 47 and the details within all of those and other plans which reveal an authoritarian, anti-democratic crackdown on Americans' rights and a full rollback of safety regulations and vital programs. The proposals for foreign policy and national security are even more horrifying. Trump is as narcissistic as ever and his motives remain purely personal but he's got a full crew of authoritarian lackeys ready to take the wheel who are prepared to serve him well as they transform the United States into a full-blown autocracy for their own purposes. So kudos to the media for doing what they need to do. Informing the public of Trump's plans should he win is job one. But we should probably also prepare ourselves for what they will do if he loses.

I think we all know that he will not gracefully concede and quietly retire to play golf and cash in his political chits. In fact, he recently told Time magazine, "If we don't win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election" and elaborated in a later interview, “If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results…If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.” Does anyone doubt that he believes there is no such thing as a fair election that he loses?

It's important to remember that he won't be the incumbent president as he was in 2020 and will not have the same tools at his disposal. He cannot try to deploy the Justice Department to illegally interfere in the process on his behalf and while his henchmen could theoretically plan another fake elector scheme, as long as Vice President Kamala Harris performs the constitutional duty of counting the electoral college votes they wouldn't get anywhere with it. He also won't be able to draw up plans to seize voting machines or declare martial law and his bully pulpit will be limited to sore loser press conferences carried live on Fox News and Newsmax.

However, Trump also has some advantages he didn't have the last time, the first being that virtually the entire Republican establishment has bought into the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and is clearly ready to back Trump's claims that it will have been stolen in 2024:

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance told CNN that he'll accept the results if they're "fair and free" and previously said that if he were Trump's vice president he'd tell states to send in alternate electors, apparently so that he could personally pick and choose which ones to accept as legitimate.

South Carolina senator and top contender for Trump's running mate Tim Scott famously evaded the question on "Meet the Press," saying that he wouldn't answer hypothetical questions.

The Republican National Committee, now run by Trump's family and personal henchmen, will not hire anyone who doesn't avow that Trump actually won the 2020 election. I think it's indisputable that if Trump loses, they will all rise up to declare once again that it was stolen. You can't have a democracy if one party is unwilling to accept that they lost.

The Washington Post reports that the Trump campaign is planning a "leaner" and "more efficient" operation this time out because Trump has "told them to not worry about getting out the vote since he could do it himself. He told them to 'focus on the cheating.'"

To that end, it appears that Trump and the party are preparing to turn the election itself into a chaotic mess. Starting last December, Trump began employing a phrase used by his disgraced former National Security Adviser and QAnon adherent Michael Flynn: "Guard the vote." He told his supporters to “go into” cities including Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta to “watch those votes when they come in.” This tactic was tried in the 2022 election when armed citizens staked out lock boxes, intimidating voters as they attempted to drop off their ballots. We can expect more of that driven by outside groups and Trump's exhortations at his rallies....>

<....The new chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), Lara Trump, announced that the party is building a massive "election integrity" unit with a program to send 100,000 poll watchers all over the country who will be able to “protect the vote and ensure a big win.” She said, “We now have the ability at the RNC not just to have poll watchers, people standing in polling locations, but people who can physically handle the ballots." (Actually, they cannot.) In other words, the party is doubling and tripling down on voter suppression to win. Unfortunately, that's unlikely to have the effect that it used to have back in the old days when the GOP had to be put under a consent decree after it was successfully sued for intimidating racial minorities at the polls. Today we have early voting and vote by mail (and Trump has trained his flock to mistrust those methods.) That's why they have also concentrated on intimidating election workers and plan to do more of it during the counting process.

If all that doesn't work to ensure him a win, he will obviously challenge the vote count. They plan to have lawyers stationed in every swing state to prepare the charges of voter fraud in the event he does come up short. He won't be relying on the likes of Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell this time. Now that the whole GOP establishment has been completely absorbed into the MAGA universe, they'll have higher-quality legal minds working on overturning the results. It's a good career move.

And then if all else fails, they will have their violent mob ready to explode and that possibility will be hovering over every other tactic they deploy. Trump said recently, "If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s gonna be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country" and "If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country.” These are very thinly veiled threats in a climate where his followers are being brainwashed by his lies into believing that he has a massive, unbeatable lead in the polls which is entirely untrue. And according to WIRED, the militia movement is on the rise again. One recent Facebook post shows where their thoughts are leading:

“When the government tries to steal the election again and they think we’ll just sit and take it … It won’t be like the last time … Just remember, they started it … We just wanted to be left alone … We prefer ballots over bullets … But …”

The sad reality is that the worst of all possible worlds is that Trump wins the election in November. But Trump won't go quietly into this good night if he loses and neither will his followers. Either way, the election itself is just the beginning.>

Guess what, twin axes of evil: you do not control content here--<I> do.

<[Event "New England vs Quebec"] [Site "?"]
[Date "1967.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Bolton, James Michael"]
[Black "Coudari, Camille"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B22"]

<[Event "Fitchburg"]
[Site "Fitchburg Mass"]
[Date "1969.??.??"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Corwin, Robert"]
[Black "Coudari, Camille"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B09"]

Furthermore, it's another case of a game that pud would have completely ignored (meaning he did not care one iota) had I not commented. Once again, my original post says more than his hindassight.>

Even after being granted frequent vacations due to his incendiary posts, he comes back, ever ready to slag, the more so having been proven wrong, thus exposed nekkid as a jaybird.

Or could it be just another deliberately disparaging BIG MOUTH LIE from our <perpetual cyberbully mythomaniac perfidious>??>

You blew the grammar, only you're too obtuse to grasp that ineluctable fact. No lie here, contrary to your incessant string of prevarications.

Oh, you want some lies? Guess what, <boy>:

<Ted? Ted Bundy seems more your type, being born of an unwed mother in Vermont and all those similarities.>

<....It's called the World Open for a reason. Perf prefers Vermont where the going is a wee bit easier.>

Yeah, they were deleted, but you don't get to escape responsibility for your evil that easily.

QED