US Politics

[bustamente]

I wonder how many times Jared Kushner is going to plead the 5th tomorrow in front of the 1/6 committee.

[do or die]

2 minutes ago, bustamente said:

I wonder how many times Jared Kushner is going to plead the 5th tomorrow in front of the 1/6 committee.

Committee member : "Please state your full name"
Jared Kushner:   "5th"

[FrostyWinnipeg]

 

[MOBomberFan]

https://www.axios.com/cawthorn-mccarthy-orgy-cocaine-exaggerated-e801218d-aa88-4f15-8925-204348711ba0.html

I knew HotWheelz was lying when he claimed he got invited to a party

[TrueBlue4ever]

54 minutes ago, MOBomberFan said:

https://www.axios.com/cawthorn-mccarthy-orgy-cocaine-exaggerated-e801218d-aa88-4f15-8925-204348711ba0.html

I knew HotWheelz was lying when he claimed he got invited to a party

This actual quote from Kevin McCarthy, who seems to apply a different standard when it is about supposed election fraud, Democrats, or anything that might taint him personally:

”It's just frustrating. There's no evidence behind his statements. And when I sit down with him ... I told him you can't make statements like that, as a member of Congress, that affects everybody else and the country as a whole." 

[the watcher]

14 minutes ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

This actual quote from Kevin McCarthy, who seems to apply a different standard when it is about supposed election fraud, Democrats, or anything that might taint him personally:

”It's just frustrating. There's no evidence behind his statements. And when I sit down with him ... I told him you can't make statements like that, as a member of Congress, that affects everybody else and the country as a whole." 

Their entire political system is a nonfunctional gong show.Its got nothing to do with trying to govern a country  just  self promotion, power, lining your pockets, and attacking the opposition ( who ever you see as opposition ) with what ever you can make up.  It would be comical if it was a tiny unimportant country that had little real military or financial  importance in the world.

[Tracker]

2 hours ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

This actual quote from Kevin McCarthy, who seems to apply a different standard when it is about supposed election fraud, Democrats, or anything that might taint him personally:

”It's just frustrating. There's no evidence behind his statements. And when I sit down with him ... I told him you can't make statements like that, as a member of Congress, that affects everybody else and the country as a whole." 

And it might reduce the credibility of the Republican party.

[TrueBlue4ever]

18 minutes ago, Tracker said:

And it might reduce the credibility of the Republican party.

If you are looking for credibility, politics may not be the best place to start. Now, hypocrisy, whataboutism, gaslighting, self-interest, well…….

[the watcher]

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans I had an " ah ha " moment and came to believe the US was a failing state. Members of the press were rescuing people while rows of buses sat out side the area of damage while politicians argued durisdiction. No coordination,  no leadership and emergency measures for the country being handled by a racetrack owner (or manager??) . If a country can't deal with a disaster in a limited area it's an ugly sign in my opinion.( think BC last year, Red river floods )

Everything that has followed since, the 2008 economic crisis,  the election of Trump, the riots and counter riots , the utter idiocy of government officials and politicians ...... just reinforce my belief. How long the fall is is the question. Empires have risen and completely disappeared in a person's life time. Rome waxed and waned for hundreds of years. They could rise again to prominence again quickly or never again.

[TrueBlue4ever]

1 minute ago, the watcher said:

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans I had an " ah ha " moment and came to believe the US was a failing state. Members of the press were rescuing people while rows of buses sat out side the area of damage while politicians argued durisdiction. No coordination,  no leadership and emergency measures for the country being handled by a racetrack owner (or manager??) . If a country can't deal with a disaster in a limited area it's an ugly sign in my opinion.( think BC last year, Red river floods )

Everything that has followed since, the 2008 economic crisis,  the election of Trump, the riots and counter riots , the utter idiocy of government officials and politicians ...... just reinforce my belief. How long the fall is is the question. Empires have risen and completely disappeared in a person's life time. Rome waxed and waned for hundreds of years. They could rise again to prominence again quickly or never again.

Funny that the same Russian government whose military is looking quite inept in its Ukraine invasion is the same one that could coordinate a cyber-campaign to de-stabilize the US and influence its elections. Not sure if it says more about the strength of Ukraine or weakness of the US. 

[Mark H.]

19 minutes ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

Funny that the same Russian government whose military is looking quite inept in its Ukraine invasion is the same one that could coordinate a cyber-campaign to de-stabilize the US and influence its elections. Not sure if it says more about the strength of Ukraine or weakness of the US. 

Keyboard wars vs. real life and real people fighting for their lives.  

Influencing an election only requires buy in from a few capable, tech savvy people.  There are more than enough voters who'll believe the disinformation

Winning a war requires buy in from an entire army. They clearly don't have that. If they did, it would be over by now

 

[Tracker]

2 hours ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

If you are looking for credibility, politics may not be the best place to start. Now, hypocrisy, whataboutism, gaslighting, self-interest, well…….

Hard to reduce from zero.

[Tracker]

DC Police Find 5 Fetuses In Home Of Anti-Abortion Activist Lauren Handy

Lauren Handy, 28, has been charged with federal crimes for allegedly blockading a reproductive health clinic. D.C. police also found five fetuses in her home.
Lauren Handy, 28, has been charged with federal crimes for allegedly blockading a reproductive health clinic. D.C. police also found five fetuses in her home.
Washington, D.C., police found five fetuses in the home of an anti-abortion activist on Wednesday.

The activist, Lauren Handy, sat outside her home as officers brought out coolers containing the fetuses, WUSA9 first reported. Handy declined to tell a reporter outside her home what was inside the coolers, but said, “People will freak out when they hear.”

The Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to HuffPost on Thursday that it had found the five fetuses after being sent to investigate a tip.

“Upon further investigation, MPD located five fetuses inside a residence at the location,” a police statement said. “The fetuses were collected by the DC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. This is currently a pending investigation.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dc-police-fetuses-anti-abortion-activist-lauren-handy_n_6245e9a5e4b068157f749d7f

[bustamente]

With this DOJ nothing is going to happen but when the Republicans take control the Democrats are going to running for their lives

 

[Tracker]

16 minutes ago, bustamente said:

With this DOJ nothing is going to happen but when the Republicans take control the Democrats are going to running for their lives

 

More scary than sad. It has been said that we get the government we deserve, so if the GOP gains power once again, America will be unrecognizable in a few months, and America will deserve it.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Tracker

[Tracker]

Disney hysteria and litter boxes: Republicans' deeply odd war on LGBTQ people escalates. The new Republican war on LGBTQ right is a full-blown "Satanic panic"-style frenzy of urban legends — and violence

The GOP's choice to make QAnon-style hysterics the centerpiece of their 2022 midterm strategy is most heavily hurting LGBTQ Americans.

From Fox News to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republicans are embracing rhetoric that insinuates — and sometimes outright declares — that there's a widespread conspiracy of Democrats, school teachers, liberal judges and Disney employees to "groom" children for sexual abuse. The primary victims of these lies are LGBTQ people, who are facing a renewed effort to roll back hard-won rights, all under the guise of "saving" children from imaginary "predators."  Across the country, Republican state legislatures are passing bills and using executive orders to make life hell for LGBTQ kids by denying them medical care, forcing them to remain closeted at school, excluding them from extracurricular activities, and even taking them away from loving parents. All of this damage is done in the name of "saving" children. 

One of the surest signs that this is a Satanic panic-style frenzy is how downright weird the situation is getting, with right-wingers whipping themselves up with urban legends and lurid fantasies.

Have you heard that schools are putting litter boxes in the bathrooms to indulge students who "identify" as cats? If not, well, if you're on Facebook, you will soon enough. Earlier this week, Nebraska state Sen. Bruce Bostelman went off during a recent legislative session about how kids "meow and they bark " and "now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools."

 

[HardCoreBlue]

19 hours ago, Tracker said:

More scary than sad. It has been said that we get the government we deserve, so if the GOP gains power once again, America will be unrecognizable in a few months, and America will deserve it.

All while wingnuts here on our soil taking notes on what to do to get the same results ffs.

[TrueBlue4ever]

19 hours ago, Tracker said:

More scary than sad. It has been said that we get the government we deserve, so if the GOP gains power once again, America will be unrecognizable in a few months, and America will deserve it.

Which would be worth a shrug if they didn’t carry such world influence and military power, and even more so be our next door neighbours. 

Robin Williams once described Canada as “that really nice couple in an apartment directly over a meth lab”. Which is more awkward than anything but not constantly intrusive, until the meth lab causes an explosion in which case your apartment also burns to the ground. So as much as America may deserve it, it will be hard to gloat and feel morally superior if they burn us to the ground too. 

[iHeart]

another day another loser in the US with a gun

https://people.com/crime/sacramento-mass-shooting-6-dead-shooter-at-large/?utm_campaign=peoplemagazine&utm_content=new&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=6249d99c77636d0001dcd497&fbclid=IwAR2Fr5Df6H6rd7kRp7iU0tXRMJUnPEuuRte_Si9BVtoM7kz8wS-VSeaVshY

[Tracker]

Trump supporters put faith in "Space Force" to overturn 2020 election

Supporters of Donald Trump are voicing insane conspiracy theories ahead of his Saturday rally in Michigan.

The "opening prayer" for the rally was delivered by a conspiracy theorist who falsely claimed Trump is the "current" president of the United States.

One Trump supporter interviewed by Right Side Broadcasting Network said that the Space Force is part of efforts to return Trump to power in a bizarre QAnon rant caught on camera.

"The election, I believe, was stolen," said a woman with an America flag draped over her shoulders.

"But we know that, Space Force has it all, Trump has all the information, it's going to be overturned," the woman claimed.

"What do you think Space Force has?" the interviewer asked.

"Space Force is a military branch, you know, just like the Army, you know, all the military. And they literally...the night of the election they literally watched the election be stolen. They watermarked the ballots, they know exactly what happened with every ballot," she said. "They know what countries were involved, they followed the money, they know what every every politician that's been paid off."

"There was 260,00 — 269,000 sealed indictments, but I think it might even be up to 500,000 sealed indictments. And I believe that we're going to have an emergency broadcast and the military is going to come in with martial law and we're going to be shown, 8-hours on, 8-hours off, of videos for seven days — the world. And they're going to be showing us taped tribunals, taped confessions, and the world is going to be awakened to what's really going on with the deep state," she claimed.

https://www.salon.com/2022/04/03/supporter-puts-faith-in-space-force-to-overturn-2020_partner/

[TrueBlue4ever]

God, they’re even beginning to talk in broken syntax like Trump. 

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

Good lord, I weep for the USA sometimes...

useful idiots, the lot of them are.

 

 

Edited April 3, 2022 by wanna-b-fanboy

[Tracker]

A Blueprint For The Next American Civil War

 

In the CIA's manual on insurgencies there are three stages. The United States is in the second stage. The CIA calls it the "incipient conflict stage," and it is marked by discrete acts of violence. Timothy McVeigh's attack in Oklahoma City was probably the very earliest instance. Here is what the CIA manual says, almost verbatim: "The insurgents' goal is to broadcast their mission to the world, build support and provoke a government overreaction to their violence so that more moderate citizens become radicalized and join the movement."

The second stage is when the government becomes aware of the groups behind these attacks, but according to the CIA, the violence is often dismissed as the work of bandits, criminals or terrorists. What is so dangerous about the second stage is that citizens, politicians and law enforcement usually miss it. They don't connect the dots, they don't see that the movement is growing and that this is a precursor to open insurgency. Instead, these attacks are dismissed as idiosyncratic or the result of crazy people who have no connection to a larger movement. That's exactly where we are today.

When you and other experts use the term "civil war," how is it defined?

Experts use it as a type of umbrella term. Underneath that umbrella are all sorts of different forms of violence that can happen within a country. Civil wars mean violence that's fought by a domestic group within a country that targets the government for political purposes. It becomes a civil war or a major civil war if it kills a thousand people during the course of the war.

Civil war can take different forms. There are social revolutions, such as the Russian Revolution or Mao's revolution in China. Social revolution is the most destructive type of civil war. It's a civil war where the rebels want complete political, economic and social change. There can also be a violent coup that kills a thousand people and is contained to a capital city. There is everything in between.

What we tend to see frequently in countries with powerful militaries are insurgencies. These tend to be more decentralized and usually fought by multiple militias and paramilitary groups. These militias have political goals, but their methods are very different. They don't want to engage the military directly for the most part, don't want to target soldiers, because if they engage the U.S. military, for example, they're going to lose. They instead use unconventional methods, like guerrilla warfare, hit-and-run attacks, domestic terrorism, where they're targeting the soft underbelly of a society, such as civilian infrastructure. In the United States we are not going to see a civil war like we saw in the 1860s.

What do we know about the public mood and emotion in a society that is about to experience a civil war or other mass violence?

The groups that tend to start these civil wars and insurgencies are driven by resentment. As such, the groups who decide that violence is a justifiable means to try to create political and social change are those that are losing status and have a deep sense of resentment towards other groups who are perceived as rising or doing better. These are the "sons of the soil" groups.

RELATED: America in 2021: From the end of empire to the prospect of a new civil war

It is that resentment that motivates their leaders. Average citizens are motivated by a different emotion to follow such leaders. That emotion is fear, which is an incredible motivator for average citizens to pick up a gun and start fighting. Ethnic entrepreneurs, violence entrepreneurs — those individuals who want to start a civil war to catapult themselves to power —  understand the power of fear. What they do is create propaganda and circulate it among average citizens. They tell them that their lives are under threat. 

In a given society, and most certainly here in the United States, most members of the general public, white Americans and privileged people in particular, are fence-sitters. They may know that something is deeply wrong in the country, but they will do nothing about it. What does that oft-discussed "silent majority" actually do when a society starts to fall apart and people are killing each other?

Such people are going to hold on to hope as long as they can. They're going to plug their ears and cover their eyes and engage in wishful thinking as long as they can. And then, when something happens and they're forced to choose sides, their base instinct is to survive and to do whatever they need to do to survive.

If there is a paramilitary group that is putting up roadblocks on their street, if there's a group of people wearing all black with no insignias controlling a roadblock in a neighborhood with machine guns, the average person is going to do whatever those people want them to do. Survival drives behavior. Those fence-sitters are going to hope they're not going to become the targets of the violence.

RELATED: How white supremacy fuels the Republican love affair with Vladimir Putin

Not all the far-right groups are white supremacists, but many of them are. What they want is for the United States to become a white "ethnostate," or at the very least for certain states like Michigan to become white ethnostates. These white supremacists understand that if they don't shoot at white people, then many white people are probably just going to keep their heads down and not do anything. It's exactly what happened in places like Germany, where if you see that the Germans are targeting Jews, you do everything possible to make sure that you aren't identified as a Jew. I believe that the average human who is trying to survive will do a whole lot of ugly things to keep themselves alive.

How do we prepare the American people for this civil war or insurgency or other such right-wing violence? Will it be a series of escalating events? Isolated acts of violence? Something spectacular, like 9/11?

Their ideal scenario is to coordinate, so that on a given day there would be multiple attacks. As I see it, it would almost feel like 9/11, where you wake up in the morning and you're watching TV and you know that something has happened and everything seems chaotic. You're not really sure who's in charge or what type of threat this is and what you should do about it.

I see a scenario where there are bombings in multiple state capitals, or a series of assassinations, or maybe both at the same time. Suddenly the federal government is facing a leaderless resistance. The country's leaders are trying to figure out how to respond. In the meantime, the American people are watching this all happen and wondering: What the hell's going on, who's in charge, and what should we do?

Some of these right-wing militias are going to want to capture territory in certain parts of the country and hold it. Some of them are going to pursue their own agendas. For example, I could imagine militias in Michigan saying, "We're never going to gain control of the federal government, but Michigan could be a white state — we just have to convince all the nonwhites to leave. We do that by bombing their churches and targeting their stores with attacks. Eventually, the nonwhites will be forced to move south and we'll ultimately get what we want."

If the right-wing extremists are not able to coordinate their attacks, then we are just going to see a series of consistent attacks every few weeks. There will be a feeling that the country is under siege. Northern Ireland is a great example of this. The British military, as strong as it was, could not get rid of the IRA. The IRA continued to operate until the British government eventually negotiated with them.

https://www.salon.com/2022/03/28/a-new-civil-war-maybe-so--but-it-wont-look-anything-like-the-first-one/

 

[bustamente]

Well there you have it get Biden out and put back that bad ass Trump back in the WH, I suggest maybe giving him a loaded gun so he can pose with it hopefully he shoots himself in the head

 

[HardCoreBlue]

9 minutes ago, bustamente said:

Well there you have it get Biden out and put back that bad ass Trump back in the WH, I suggest maybe giving him a loaded gun so he can pose with it hopefully he shoots himself in the head

 

Like thirsty rabid dogs lapping water from a bowl. Easy targets.