USA Politics Thread |OT| Son of a bitch!

[HaughtyFrank]

according to a newly disclosed assessment, Donald Trump might have been right to call it a “hoax.”

...

But on Thursday, the Biden administration announced that U.S. intelligence only had “low to moderate” confidence in the story after all. Translated from the jargon of spyworld, that means the intelligence agencies have found the story is, at best, unproven—and possibly untrue.

...

There were reasons to doubt the story from the start.

Well... this is awkward. Glenn Greenwald is currently making a meal out of it

[Nintex]

The media wanted it to be true, because Trump being some sort of manchurian candidate for Russia would've been great for their ratings.

Russian bounties on US troops always sounded like a bunch of horse shit.
Mostly because those groups already kill NATO troops for free and such a scheme leaves a trail that could easily be traced back.

In fact that paper trail was a problem the NATO countries ran into when funding and arming 'moderate rebels' in Syria, who later 'joined' ISIS.
And Putin was the one to call them out on it. Asking them in nicer words if they were out of their goddamn minds funding groups like ISIS.

[team filler]

nothing burger deluxe 

[Great Rumbler]

lmao who cares about trump in 2021

[team filler]

a nothingburger is a dish best served cold 

[Great Rumbler]

like trump's post-presidential career

[team filler]

me n my boy nintex tried to tell ya 

[benjipwns]

Trump is ancillary to the whole thing. This was another instance of journalists all "independently confirming" from sources that were only the government. Specifically spooks, who burned them like always. And the journalists are doing the same thing constantly yet nobody cares how often they get burned by this because the original story is all that's wanted in the first place.

That Trump accurately called this one out just shows how bad the story was in this case. Yet people like Maddow and The Daily Beast (playing now in your town), not to mention random journalists on Twitter, all ran with it into the ground.

[chronovore]

I think you can be assured Trump dismissed it as a hoax not because he knew or believed it to be a hoax, but happened to be seemingly right about an out of hand support for Putin.

Even a broken, lying, orange clock is right twice a day.

[Nintex]

It is more likely that in that famous Helsinki meeting Trump and Putin talked more about their shared love for 80's action movies, young girlfriends, annoying journalists than they did about anything political.
To this day I don't know why the media and Democrats thought that Trump, who didn't care about or read the 5 bullet point intelligence briefing unless it had pictures would go and talk geo-politics with Putin.

[Pissy F Benny]

like the q crew they know trump is the ultimate 9d chess master

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/AnaCabrera/status/1384205553270857740

2D Checkers

[Skullfuckers Anonymous]

Free country my ass.

https://mobile.twitter.com/costcope/status/1384219093692141568

 

[Joe Molotov]

The FBI can suck my dick in Apex Legends.

[Nintex]

They will never see the 2024 Roblox revolution and their write in candidate MrLEGOBalls coming.

[team filler]

https://twitter.com/AlexNBCNews/status/1384619869119918083


 

[benjipwns]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/whos-the-president-because-its-apparently-not-joe-biden

Joe Biden may be the president in name, but with the White House directly contradicting his proclamations twice in as many days and his notable absence from greeting Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, one has to ask: Who is actually running the country?

...

All the while, Vice President Kamala Harris, the person Biden claimed to have put in charge of the border crisis, is everywhere but on the border. While Biden is in hiding, Harris has been gallivanting across the country, even greeting Suga in his place.

Biden may be the president, but clearly, the buck does not stop with him. So, who is actually running the country in his stead?

[Pissy F Benny]

Donald Trump

[james]

Free country my ass.

https://mobile.twitter.com/costcope/status/1384219093692141568

 

I would like to request my user name be changed to Joe and my post history here be scrubbed please

[benjipwns]

Pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood said on Monday that he sometimes works up to 20 hours a day as part of his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Wood, a prominent Georgia lawyer who maintains that former President Donald Trump won the November election, was speaking at the Anderson County Republican Party Convention in South Carolina.

He is running for chair of the South Carolina Republican Party but Trump endorsed his opponent, current chairman Drew McKissick, in March.

"Since November the 3rd, 2020, I've spent sometimes 20 hours a day fighting to reverse the election that was stolen from Donald Trump," Wood said. "And I'm not going to quit until the truth comes out and Donald Trump is recognized as president of the United States."

The small crowd clapped and cheered Wood's comments and some rose to their feet.

Wood used his speech to offer some criticism of McKissick and suggested there could be issues with the way the state party was conducting the chair election, scheduled to take place in May.

McKissick told Newsweek in a statement on Tuesday: "Lin Wood is a carpetbagging RINO who's been in South Carolina for two months. Any suggestion or accusation of cheating or not being a true Republican is just a strategy out of the slick trial lawyer's handbook—a trial lawyer who donated to Obama twice and supported candidates endorsed by Planned Parenthood. Trump endorsed my re-election campaign and that speaks for itself."

McKissick told AP on April 7 that Trump had spoken to him over the phone and said the former president "was like, 'Who's this attorney guy who is running against you? Does he even live in South Carolina?'"

https://twitter.com/patriottakes/status/1384371556919382016

[BIONIC]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/whos-the-president-because-its-apparently-not-joe-biden

He has risen.

[chronovore]

Please clap.

[benjipwns]

 

[james]

Thats funny, I also work 20 hours a day, in Minecraft

[Potato]

https://twitter.com/AlexNBCNews/status/1384619869119918083


 

She seriously said that? Thanked the dude for dying?
 

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/charliespiering/status/1384645991966642181

[team filler]

still a sloppy drunk 

[benjipwns]

Free country my ass.

 

https://mobile.twitter.com/sergiombneves/status/1384247232799526914

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1384637677102841857

[Tasty]

Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo boy. Lot to unpack in that one tweet.

[benjipwns]

You mean the "s" on "domestic terrorist" right?

[Joe Molotov]

Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo boy. Lot to unpack in that one tweet.

Let's just leave it all packed up.

[Rufus]

And throw it in a lake.

[chronovore]

Except transgendered youths will have a more effective transition if they’re able to start before their default hormones make their usual changes. Disallowing them the personal choice of starting when they like damages their ability to pass. It’s also disregarding the concept of gender reassignment surgery as “health care,” just as laws against same sex intercourse deligitimize LGBTQA rights.

Gender dysphoria was declassified as a disorder - and correspondingly being automatically covered by things like health insurance, or having diagnostic criteria - as a result of activists fighting in favour of self certification and equating it to an attempt at relitigating homosexuality as a psychological disorder, and labelling those who consider it a primarily medical condition with a known treatment "truscum".

I would suggest the underlying issue here is semantic; someone with severe gender dysphoria should not be denied treatment, but they are also not in the same position as a 40 year old man with a wife and kids who just 'realised' they're actually trans now and want to opt into being a member of a protected class based on self identification as such, and having no symptoms (or even desire) for any treatment or alteration.

Who cares what consenting adults want to do? "It's for the freakin' children" doesn't mean much when it's adults wanting to stunt the growth of and inflict permanent wounds on children.

If they want to still do it when they become of age, who gives a shit, have fun. You can't do it to kids on the whim of adults though. The "actual underlying issue" is a fundamental disagreement as to whether or not it helps the children to do any of this to them when they're still young.

For the record further, social transitioning is not made illegal by the bill, only medical barbarism.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/04/4th-grader-shamed-texas-republicans-attacking-rights-now-getting-death-threats/

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/04/least-four-teens-attempted-suicide-arkansas-bans-trans-youth-getting-healthcare/

[Tasty]

DC might become a state

Puerto Rico next

[team filler]

 

[james]

More like state of war amirite

[Great Rumbler]

DC might become a state

Puerto Rico next

LET'S FREAKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[zomgee]

Manchin will say no because

[Joe Molotov]

DC might become a state

Puerto Rico next

First revoke Commiefornia's statehood.

[team filler]

why would manchin willingly give up control of the senate 

[Lonewulfeus]

why would manchin willingly give up control of the senate 

Cause the senate could very likely get Ted Kennedy’d

[Skullfuckers Anonymous]

Puerto Rico statehood is a trap, they’re just going to elect republicans. 

[Cauliflower Of Love]

manchin: I'll give you a  think on the statehood count, if you bring down corporate tax to a negative.

biden:   

[Tasty]

Puerto Rico statehood is a trap, they’re just going to elect republicans. 

It's still the right thing to do. It's not about how they'll vote (for me anyways.)

700,000+ US citizens in DC with no say in their government. Doesn't seem right to me.

[Tasty]

[Tripon]

All the territories the U.S. controls should become states or independent nations. I don't care about size, we let freaking Rhode Island be its own state despite being a small ass area.

----
https://twitter.com/business/status/1385286568752070660

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Getting billionaires to scramble and move their money around through taxation scare is a way to get the economy moving too.

[Nintex]

"If it ain't broke don't fix it"

[team filler]

 

[benjipwns]

I don't care about size, we let freaking Rhode Island be its own state despite being a small ass area.

Rhode Island and Providence Plantations has the 2nd highest population density in the country. Only New Jersey is more dense.

And we don't "let" Rhode Island and Providence Plantations be anything. It was the fourth State to agree to the Union. (And was the first independent state to form from the Colonies.)

It's still the right thing to do. [Puerto Rico]

What if they don't want to be a State? 2020 was the first time they ever indicated they've wanted to become a State, traditionally the population has refused the burdens of Statehood to stay a unique Commonwealth. I think that Congress should deliberately ask them, but if they reject it again, Congress should not force them into it.

All the territories the U.S. controls should become states or independent nations.

They should probably not be forced to become States or independent nations if they do not wish it. Certain territories would collapse if forced into statehood of either type, they subsist entirely on federal funds. Making them independent nations and sending them federal aid is not a solution considering how those funds are traditionally sent. We'd be overnight occupying even more countries.

[Tasty]

Hawaii didn't really want to be a state either and look how that turned out.

[benjipwns]

Hawai'i voted 94% to become a State in the referendum. And its government had actually petitioned to be one.

Puerto Rico has a sweet deal, Hawai'i (and Alaska) never had the commonwealth deal that PR gets.

edit: Thinking about a solution, I would probably have Congress pass legislation that automatically asks DC, PR and the territories at every Presidential election to also vote on Statehood, independence or maintaining the existing relationship. (Except DC, which only gets the Statehood question.) And if it gets a majority consider it a petition for [whatever]. If it gets a supermajority then consider it a binding referendum on Congress to act within the next session. (Obviously, this can't be enforced as a Congress cannot bind another Congress, but it would at least require them to actively reject a supermajority in a territory voting for Statehood/independence.)

[benjipwns]

He also freely admitted he did not vote for either incumbent Republican President Donald Trump — of whom he has been only obliquely critical, and never by name — or Democrat Joe Biden in the November election.

Instead, Bush wrote in Condoleezza Rice, who served as his secretary of state from 2005 to 2009.

He told her he did, too.

"She knows it," says Bush, 74, adding wryly: "But she told me she would refuse to accept the office."

[Cauliflower Of Love]

repubs counter offer on infrastructure

The new Republican proposal is about a quarter of the size of President Joe Biden's more than $2 trillion proposal — and also smaller than former President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan from three years ago. It’s also significantly narrower than either of those other plans, focused primarily on transportation infrastructure along with items like broadband and water projects.

The GOP plan is still vague on one of the most important questions: how to pay for the spending. It leans on unspecified user fees; "financing tools" and enticing the private sector to open its pocketbook; and unused money from prior Covid relief bills.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the lead Senate Republican working on the counteroffer, emphasized Thursday that it's important that the package "not be so large as to fail to launch, which means sticking to actual infrastructure. That's why our framework works. It serves as a realistic, thoughtful approach that addresses the core areas of infrastructure that we all agree upon."

[Tasty]

$0 for schools is a real kick in the teeth.

[Tasty]

I'm pleasantly surprised both parties finally seem to recognize the importance of investing in broadband/internet access, though.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Republican "investment" in broadband is giving grants to comcast for 6G probably.

[Nintex]

The Republicans seem to have learned their lesson.
They've actually made a counter offer.

Unless Trump comes out and says something like: "Do not give Joe this money or it'll end up in Hunter's nose and Nancy's fridge" you'll probably get a good old fashioned compromise.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Democrats should just meet the two sections, bringing up the total.