USA Politics Thread |OT| Son of a bitch!

[Nintex]

Peter Thiel is a huge get for Trump's political operation
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1490795451972567047

[Pissy F Benny]

Will he bring the Hulkster with him?

[benjipwns]

Top House Democrat and likely Nancy successor:
https://twitter.com/RepJeffries/status/1490913530928795648

 

[benjipwns]

Mask discourse:
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1491083523146625029

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/aseitzwald/status/1490799740799365121
https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1490690404798410758
https://twitter.com/BrianColas7/status/1490463529459228672

[close]

[benjipwns]

Pence vs. Trump:
https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/1491057455077666819

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/EvanDonovan/status/1490747640644083712
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1490827933153255431

[close]

[benjipwns]

JD Vance discourse:
https://twitter.com/politicoalex/status/1490778293607489539
https://twitter.com/woodruffbets/status/1490793837475868683

[Himu]

Siding with Pence

[benjipwns]

Last August, in the midst of a presidential battle that would determine the future of America, an upstart liberal group called MeidasTouch sent its supporters an urgent call to action. “Tonight is a huge night,” MeidasTouch declared on Twitter. “We are giving half of our contributions directly and immediately to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We are proud to have already chipped in 25K to their campaign. RT and chip in here.”

For MeidasTouch, the pro-Biden blitz was part of a rapidly expanding political action committee that turned viral tweets and posts into campaign contributions. Founded by three brothers, the group says it has generated more than a billion views on social media, mocking and humiliating Trump and his enablers. Crowd favorites included “Creepy Trump,” “Bye Ivanka,” and “Bye Don Jr: Love Me, Daddy!” Its podcast has become a popular destination on the anti-Trump circuit, with recent guests including Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell and Ted Lieu, and Mary Trump, the former president’s estranged niece. All this exposure translated into more than $5 million in contributions from #Resistance donors desperate to oust Trump and his Republican collaborators.

The three brothers who founded MeidasTouch sell themselves as the progressive breakout success of the 2020 election cycle, weaving a narrative of a start-from-scratch operation that — thanks to a gift for creating viral anti-Trump videos and a unique understanding of the digital tides — rapidly blossomed into a behemoth of Democratic politics. “We’ve become the most recognizable and impactful brand name in progressive politics in the 30 days since we launched,” Ben Meiselas, the eldest brother, told Adweek in June. They aren’t, per their own telling, just the top brand, they’re also pioneers of a radical transparency model that the notoriously opaque world of Super PACs could stand to learn from. “I knew that PACs in general, political action committees, have a reputation about them,” Meiselas said on a recent MeidasTouch podcast. “And I wanted this to be so different from every other PAC, starting with the fact that me, who works for this every day, doesn’t get paid. But, two, to have the most ridiculous amount of transparency possible.”

But the full story of MeidasTouch is more complicated. The group spent more than $1 million on an advertising strategy that it calls revolutionary but campaign veterans and independent experts say is nonsensical and a more effective tool for fundraising than for helping Democrats win elections. And despite its promised transparency, MeidasTouch’s financial structure makes a dollar-for-dollar accounting of its spending impossible — and, according to a former Federal Election Commission attorney, raises some of the same legal issues that got the Trump campaign into trouble in 2020.

It’s not hard to find examples of how MeidasTouch’s grandiose self-promotion doesn’t match reality. Take, for example, the fundraising plea blasted out last August. The Super PAC, per its own disclosure forms, didn’t donate $25,000 to the Biden campaign — and indeed, a direct donation from MeidasTouch to Biden would have violated campaign-finance laws. Instead, the donations came from people who clicked on an embedded link in Meidas’ tweet and were given the option to split their donation between the Biden campaign and the Super PAC. Donors gave $31,623 to the Biden campaign, and MeidasTouch received nearly $30,000.

“It’s extremely misleading,” says Adav Noti, chief of staff at the Campaign Legal Center and a former associate general counsel at the Federal Election Commission. “It’s not just PACs who do it. The Trump campaign did it ad nauseam. They did it so much it started not working anymore, which is hard to do. It’s obviously misleading.”

The three brothers behind MeidasTouch don’t see any gray area around their efforts. With a “numbers-don’t-lie” approach, the Meiselas brothers point to their prodigious online success. MeidasTouch has created more than 500 political videos “for fractions of pennies on the dollar,” which it says have racked up more than 1 billion views across all social media platforms. It touts the hundreds of hashtags it created, such as #DiaperDon, that it says were top U.S. and global Twitter trends. It has legions of devoted followers who call themselves the #MeidasMighty. The brothers host a podcast that one recently called “the top new news podcast in the world.” And when Democrats emerge victorious, Meidas’ founders aren’t shy about claiming credit. “We accomplished exactly what we set out to with Biden’s victory and now control of the Senate with the wins in Georgia,” Brett Meiselas, an Emmy Award-winning digital editor who is the PAC’s creative engine, told Rolling Stone in January. “The Meidas Mighty are one of the most powerful forces in politics!” he tweeted in April.

But experts and fellow political operatives questioned the connection between MeidasTouch’s success and Democrats’ victories, and when Rolling Stone began asking questions about how MeidasTouch spends its money, things got weird.

Given an opportunity to respond to Rolling Stone’s reporting and inquiries, the brothers leveraged their social media muscle to promote a misinformation campaign full of bizarre conspiracy theories and online vitriol. They went after the credibility of the magazine and its reporter more than a week before this story was published online. MeidasTouch publicly threatened to sue Rolling Stone and privately threatened to sue someone who spoke to the magazine for this story — demanding the publication apologize and pay its legal costs.

It turns out, when someone dared to scrutinize these darlings of the anti-Trump movement, they responded a lot like, well, Donald Trump.

“There’s no way any message was getting across with [these buys]. None. Zero. Zip. It’s not possible,” says Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic political consultant who ran both Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and Doug Jones’ 2017 upset Senate win in Alabama. “We already know voters don’t remember anything at 300 points a week. You could buy 300 points a week, day in and day out, for 52 weeks and, at the end of it, no one would know what you’re talking about.”

Meidas argues its ads are special because they’re backed by a massive social media footprint and generated follow-up coverage. But according to David Shor, an influential Democratic data analyst, “The only people who engage with anti-Trump ads are liberals.” Moreover, when Priorities USA, a liberal Super PAC, studied whether Twitter virality could be used to measure how effective an ad would be at persuading swing-state voters, it found it wouldn’t work. “The better the ad did on Twitter, the less it persuaded battleground-state voters,” Nick Ahamed, Priorities’ analytics director, told the Daily Beast in December. “Our takeaway is that we, as political operatives or people online on Twitter a lot, aren’t necessarily a good judge of what is persuasive.”

[D3RANG3D]

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/JanNWolfe/status/1491135618910670851

oof

[Himu]

LOL. Joe's audience, who is frankly massive, doesn't care. And his guests are well aware that the video is a manipulation.

Praying for Allah to smite the liberal, their agenda, and serve them with humble pie because of their evil ideology of control. Liberal citizens are nice, if naive, people. Liberal politicians and interest groups want to maintain only one perspective. They need to be served a humble pie of shit.

[benjipwns]

A top candidate in the Republican primary for Oregon governor has admitted that he and his wife had explored a swinging lifestyle before deciding that swapping partners wasn’t for them, according to a report.

Stan Pulliam, 40, told the Williamett Week that he and his wife of 12 years, MacKensey, had “explored relationships, mutual relationships with other couples, for a brief period of time before ultimately deciding that it wasn’t for us.”

Pulliam, the mayor of his hometown of Sandy, fessed up to the outlet after a 2016 screenshot from a page titled “Swinger Facebook Group PDX” made its rounds across the state’s political circles.

“Hi Everyone! MacKensey and I are excited to be added to your little community. Some of you we have already had the pleasure to meet and we look forward to getting to know the rest of you!” he wrote in the group, which had 536 members at the time, the Williamett Week reported Thursday.

[Himu]

Guys, the benefit of them going after Rogan is that they're exposing themselves for making it so overt. They're doing all this to go after a podcaster. It's a big bet. All these resources on one man. They're really exposing their hand. Time will tell of it works.

[benjipwns]

Broadly, there are more Republican women and Hispanics running for Congress than ever before, according to figures tracked by the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee. So far, more than 253 women and 228 people of color have filed to run as Republicans across the House map, the committee says. In the most important seats, roughly two dozen open and battleground districts, a leading GOP candidate is either a woman or a person of color.

It’s a stunning turnaround from the aftermath of the 2018 election, when the number of GOP women in the House dropped to just 13 and there was only one Black Republican in the chamber. When Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) sounded the alarm, she sparred with the NRCC over whether the party ought to intervene in primary contests to fix the disparity. There is no such discord heading into 2022.

McCarthy has thrown his weight into races earlier than in the past, with plans to make diversifying the party a priority by opening up donor pools to star candidates and helping them clear primary fields.

McCarthy "wants to show that our district and myself as a candidate are welcomed into the Republican Party, and they're excited to have a Hispanic, female, Republican, small-business owner bilingual that lives on the border, that shares the conservative values,” said Monica De La Cruz, a McCarthy-backed candidate running in South Texas. “I feel that he has expressed to me that I'm a good voice for the Republican Party.”

In Michigan, McCarthy took special interest in courting James, who lost successive Senate bids in 2018 and 2020, falling by less than 2 points in the last election. McCarthy’s top competition was the Republican Governors Association, which was urging James to make another statewide bid, this time against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Aware that James had seen polling of the governor’s race, CLF strategists decided to commission some surveys of their own. They polled multiple scenarios throughout 2021, trying to prove to James he had a better chance of winning a House seat than a statewide race. The polls included matchups in current districts, potential new districts and head-to-head battles with three possible Democratic incumbents he could have faced: Democratic Reps. Andy Levin, Haley Stevens and Elissa Slotkin.

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/AdamShawNY/status/1491109056790286336

[Himu]

https://twitter.com/AdamShawNY/status/1491109056790286336

MURDERER!!!

[Nintex]

Ninja school 

[benjipwns]

Male economists are freaking out over a NYT profile

A handful of prominent male economists, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, are freaking out — mostly on Twitter — about a weekend New York Times profile of economist Stephanie Kelton, known for her work on Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT.

Why it matters: This Twitter-based econ fight is about more than one economist. It's an argument over a natural economic experiment — the U.S. government spending unprecedented sums to keep the economy from free-falling during COVID.

And the gender dynamics — male economists piling on against a female economist and a female journalist, Times' reporter Jeanna Smialek, in ways distinctive from typical academic arguments — look terrible here.

“I am sorry to see the @nytimes taking MMT seriously as an intellectual movement. It is the equivalent of publicizing fad diets, quack cancer cures or creationist theories,” Summers tweeted.

Summers' tweet was criticized by some for being condescending and dismissive in its equating an economic idea with a quack cancer cure.

Noah Smith, a well-known economist and former Bloomberg columnist, wrote a Substack post calling the article "bad."

Other economists say that the merits of MMT are up for debate, but noted the criticisms of Smialek and Kelton got personal in ways atypical from how men's economic research is criticized.

For example, Smith, who does offer substantive criticisms, also calls the Times profile a "puff piece," noting that Smialek writes about Kelton's outfits

Economics is a predominantly white, male field, and women and people of color often face fierce resistance and hostility.

WARNING: Vicious Sexism Inside

The NYT article on MMT, written by Jeanna Smialek, is mostly a puff piece about Stephanie Kelton, MMT’s most well-known proponent. In glowing tones, it describes Kelton’s clothes, her office, her house, her neighborhood, her blog, her manner of speaking, her personal story, and so on, calling her “the star architect of a movement that is on something of a victory lap”. Very little is written about the background of the macroeconomic policy debate, and what does appear is highly questionable:

In economics, there’s a school of thought sometimes called “freshwater.” It’s the set of ideas that became popular at inland universities in the 1970s, when they began to embrace rational markets and limited government intervention to fight recessions. There’s also “saltwater” thinking, an updated version of Keynesianism that argues that the government occasionally needs to jump-start the economy. It has traditionally been championed in the Ivy League and other top-ranked schools on the coasts.

You might call the school of thought Ms. Kelton is popularizing, from a bay that feeds into the East River, brackish economics.

The brief description of freshwater and saltwater economics is fine, but to describe MMT as being “brackish” — i.e., some sort of fusion of freshwater and saltwater, or a middle ground between the two — is absurd. MMT doesn’t take its inspirations from either of those schools of thought — its ideas (to the extent that such exist) are rooted in things like functional finance and Post-Keynesian macroeconomics, which split off from the mainstream long before it divided into freshwater and saltwater. MMT doesn’t even use formalized mathematical models of the economy like freshwater and saltwater econ do (or like Post-Keynesian macro does), so it’s pretty impossible to compare these schools of thought. In terms of policy prescriptions, MMT is far, far more sanguine about government borrowing than either freshwater or saltwater.

The article then demonstrates that it has little notion of what separates MMT from mainstream thinking:

M.M.T. theorists argue that society should feel capable of spending to achieve its goals to the extent that there are resources available to fulfill them. Deficit spending need not be constrained to recessions, even theoretically. Want to build a road? No problem, so long as you have asphalt and construction workers. Want to feed children free lunches? Also not a problem, so long as you have the food and the cafeteria workers.

In fact, this is also a feature of all freshwater and saltwater models of the economy. Those models deal only in real variables — asphalt and construction workers and food and cafeteria workers and so on. In fact, those models’ lack of attention to financial constraints of any kind is exactly why they failed to predict the Great Recession!

These passages — and the lack of any other engagement with non-MMT theories, research, or ideas — make it clear that Smialek’s main source on all of these topics was Kelton herself. She does briefly quote Jason Furman, a Harvard economist and former CEA chair under Obama:

“M.M.T. was already pretty marginal,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist, noting that, in his view, most policymakers and prominent academics ignored it already. Even if policy in the pandemic effectively embraced the idea that you do not have to pay for your spending, that idea, he said, was also Keynesian.

And the M.M.T crowd, while dismissing the Fed’s role, has not come up with a clear and obviously workable idea for how to stem inflation, he argued, adding, “If you were open-minded, this would discredit it still further.”

But even though Furman notes that Kelton did a bad job of characterizing the difference between MMT and Keynesian thinking, the NYT writer doesn’t follow up on this at all; she makes no effort to clarify where MMT actually does differ from other forms of economic thought. Nor does she quote any other macroeconomists.

This is important because any attempt to engage with the actual substance of MMT quickly finds that such substance is curiously lacking. MMT proponents almost always refuse to specify exactly how they think the economy works. They offer a package of policy prescriptions, but these prescriptions can only be learned by consulting the MMT proponents themselves. There is no model here — no set of equations or definite formal statements that a layperson could use to generate their own MMT policy prescriptions without appealing directly to the gurus.

Every economist who has attempted to engage seriously with MMT literature has concluded the same. When Drumetz Françoise and Pfister Christian of the Banque de France read Kelton’s book and tried to comprehend the essence of MMT, they concluded:

Overall, it appears that MMT is based on an outdated approach to economics and that the meaning of MMT is a more that of a political manifesto than of a genuine economic theory…As Hartley (2020) notes, MMT “is not a falsifiable scientific theory: it is rather a political and moral statement by those who believe in the righteousness – and affordability – of unlimited government spending to achieve progressive ends”.

To most people, who correctly recognize that MMT is a set of political memes to push for more deficit spending, this inflation represented a reason to be less enthusiastic about MMT itself — we finally seemed to have reached our limits. Proponents of austerity and/or tighter monetary policy began to use “MMT” as shorthand for the policies the U.S. had already undertaken.

Of course, MMT proponents themselves didn’t see things that way. They did indeed attempt to take a victory lap. But this is always what they were going to do, no matter what! If Covid relief efforts hadn’t been sufficient to produce inflation, they would have also taken a victory lap. If interest rates on U.S. government bonds had risen, causing a contraction in economic activity, they would have taken a victory lap, arguing that the Fed should have used monetary policy to lower those interest rates. Even if the U.S. government had defaulted on its sovereign debt, throwing the economy into chaos, the MMT people would have taken a victory lap, arguing that this was a mistake.

In other words, there was no conceivable state of the Universe in which MMT people would not have taken a victory lap. They always take victory laps, all day long, rain or shine. When you have an unfalsifiable meme complex instead of a concrete and falsifiable theory, it’s easy to claim that your ideas cannot fail, they can only be failed.

But to the rest of the world, inflation gave a reason to be skeptical of MMT’s constant advocacy of yet more deficit spending. So their star began to dim. This NYT puff piece represents the MMT gang’s efforts to jump-start a revival of their falling fortunes. The attempt seems likely to fail. As Jason Furman notes in a recent thread, MMT’s failure to persuade even the leftiest U.S. politicians to accede to its tenets should tell us something about its future prospects:

https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1490479534461923336

So ultimately, neither puff pieces in major newspapers nor fierce Twitter battles will have much of an effect on actual policy. MMT people will continue to find new starry-eyed advocates to dazzle with words that sort of sound like economic theory, and this will lead to brief outbursts of social media rage, followed by frenzied and bitter assaults from MMT’s small but highly active social media army. And then eventually most of the new enthusiasts will realize that there’s no “there” there — that the problems they had thought were mere asterisks were actually the whole thing — and they’ll quietly drift away.

[close]

[team filler]

A top candidate in the Republican primary for Oregon governor has admitted that he and his wife had explored a swinging lifestyle before deciding that swapping partners wasn’t for them, according to a report.

Stan Pulliam, 40, told the Williamett Week that he and his wife of 12 years, MacKensey, had “explored relationships, mutual relationships with other couples, for a brief period of time before ultimately deciding that it wasn’t for us.”

Pulliam, the mayor of his hometown of Sandy, fessed up to the outlet after a 2016 screenshot from a page titled “Swinger Facebook Group PDX” made its rounds across the state’s political circles.

“Hi Everyone! MacKensey and I are excited to be added to your little community. Some of you we have already had the pleasure to meet and we look forward to getting to know the rest of you!” he wrote in the group, which had 536 members at the time, the Williamett Week reported Thursday.

how many BBC bulls destroyed his wife before he figured out it wasn't for them? 

[D3RANG3D]

[Rufus]

He picked the perfect thumbnail for his descent into madness.

[Joe Molotov]

A top candidate in the Republican primary for Oregon governor has admitted that he and his wife had explored a swinging lifestyle before deciding that swapping partners wasn’t for them, according to a report.

Stan Pulliam, 40, told the Williamett Week that he and his wife of 12 years, MacKensey, had “explored relationships, mutual relationships with other couples, for a brief period of time before ultimately deciding that it wasn’t for us.”

Pulliam, the mayor of his hometown of Sandy, fessed up to the outlet after a 2016 screenshot from a page titled “Swinger Facebook Group PDX” made its rounds across the state’s political circles.

“Hi Everyone! MacKensey and I are excited to be added to your little community. Some of you we have already had the pleasure to meet and we look forward to getting to know the rest of you!” he wrote in the group, which had 536 members at the time, the Williamett Week reported Thursday.

how many BBC bulls destroyed his wife before he figured out it wasn't for them? 

536

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1491441851748204546

 

[Joe Molotov]

And 100% were American. 

[Nintex]

He picked the perfect thumbnail for his descent into madness.

Thanks to the attack on Joe Rogan and the corruption Russell describes the streams of the wank dads, culture war and US politics have now completely crossed.
One could argue there is no longer a difference.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

The clock is ticking for Trump to go on the Joe Rogan Experience so Eddie Bravo can ask him about the UFO's and then all hell breaks loose.

I don't see anything the mainstream media can do to stop this train at this point short of faking contact between Biden and Martians. The "Corporate Lobby -> Media -> Policy" cycle could finally be broken.
I would argue that if the media was distrusted like this in 2003 the US wouldn't have been able to start a war in Iraq.

[benjipwns]

Claim
In early 2022, the Biden administration endeavored to advance racial equity by distributing crack pipes to drug users.

Rating
Mostly False

What's True
In 2022, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services substance abuse harm reduction grant did require recipients to provide safer smoking kits to existing drug users. In distributing grants, priority would be given to applicants serving historically underserved communities. However...

What's False
This was just one of around 20 components of the grant program and far from its most prominent or important one, despite being the primary focus of outraged news reports. The purpose of the program was to reduce harm and the risk of infection among drug users, not to advance racial equity, although that was a secondary consideration.

[Nintex]

Now that they can no longer sell crack pipes to the Afghani's they do need to offload the merchandise somewhere

[Occam]

Goodbye American democracy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/opinion/supreme-court-voting-rights.html

What started with Bush v. Gore in 2000 (or, depending on how you look at it, with Nixon's SC appointments) is now complete. It's over.

And now back to the regularly scheduled debate of inconsequential twitter brainfarts.

[Propagandhim]

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1491441851748204546

 

This guy has an engineering degree from MIT.  It's not like he doesn't know how to isolate limiting factors - He knows what he's doing. 

[Rufus]

So he's just an evil asshole, got it.

[benjipwns]

I think he's just asking the kinds of questions they don't want you to even think about.

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1491490647890608142

 

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1491525010997096449
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1491532845453656064

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/nathanwpyle/status/967842192537673728

[close]

[Beezy]

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1491540990544519170

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/ComfortablySmug/status/1491547402486099968

[Potato]

Joe Biden: "Look kids, if you're going to smoke the crack, then make sure you use a healthy pipe. Wouldn't want you to catch any infections while you're smoking the crack."

*Creepy Joe places his hand creepily on the crack kid's shoulder*


 

[Nintex]

They're trying to convince Larry Kudlow and Mike Lindell to change sides 

[benjipwns]

It's not a bad policy on a broad view, safer drug use efforts work quite well, the problem is first describing it as a form of racial equity because that's apparently the only reason we can do anything anymore and then, when somebody noticed this, denying it was happening at all while admitting it was seemingly true. Now they're assuring everyone that there just won't be any literal crack pipes involved:

Today, on the heels of organizations applying for grant money for harm reduction efforts, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and the Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Dr. Rahul Gupta released the following statement:

“HHS and ONDCP are focused on using our resources smartly to reduce harm and save lives. Accordingly, no federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits. The goal of harm reduction is to save lives. The Administration is focused on a comprehensive strategy to stop the spread of drugs and curb addiction, including prioritizing the use of proven harm reduction strategies like providing naloxone, fentanyl test strips, and clean syringes, as well as taking decisive actions to go after violent criminals who are trafficking illicit drugs like fentanyl across our borders and into our communities. We will continue working to address the addiction and overdose epidemic and ensure that our resources are used in the smartest and most efficient manner.”

Snopes has since changed their rating from "Mostly False" while describing how it's actually true to:

Rating
Outdated

Context
After a wave of grossly misleading news coverage in February 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stipulated that federal funding would not be used to include pipes in safe smoking kits, as part of a substance abuse harm reduction grant program. This newly-stipulated detail was not originally available, meaning the assertions made in a first wave of coverage had become outdated.

Origin
[Editor’s note: This article has been updated after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stipulated that federal funding would not be used to include pipes in the safe smoking kits to be distributed as part of a substance abuse harm reduction program. As a result of that newly-stipulated detail, Snopes has changed its rating from “Mostly False” to “Outdated.”]

Facebook was also blocking articles and redirecting people to a "fact check" about how the crack pipe claim was true yet false. No idea what they're doing now.

At no point in time have I seen anyone of importance explain why this is actually a good thing rather than attack someone else in the media or debate whether or not crack pipes are literally involved. Snopes now edited article is basically about what is in these kits usually and whether or not the programs help racial equity.

Great work all around everybody.

edit:
https://twitter.com/PhilipWegmann/status/1491574951765229573

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1489449639048888320

 

[Himu]

fucking hell. Fuck you Nancy

[Propagandhim]

https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1491498922757533699


Warren BASED again?

[Cauliflower Of Love]

missed the boat

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/nytmike/status/1491578161825525760


 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The walls are closing in...

[close]

[chronovore]

https://twitter.com/nytmike/status/1491578161825525760
(Image removed from quote.)

 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The walls are closing in...

[close]

It won't happen, but he should be in jail.
Should have been censured by congress for emoluments.
Should have been rejected by the American people for the egregious nepotism flagrantly on display throughout his time.
Should have been forced to adhere to safety procedures.

I feel so goddamned naïve for thinking Bush Jr. was the worst president we'd ever have. Yes, The Shrub led us into an unjust war. Trump has frittered away the bulk of soft power the USA has enjoyed since WW II, essentially committing us to reintroducing War just to show our intent and will.

[Propagandhim]

Absolutely nothing will happen to him

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Executive Privilege

[Nintex]

I feel so goddamned naïve for thinking Bush Jr. was the worst president we'd ever have. Yes, The Shrub led us into an unjust war. Trump has frittered away the bulk of soft power the USA has enjoyed since WW II, essentially committing us to reintroducing War just to show our intent and will.

I'm not sure if Trump had anything to do with it to be honest. The reason the US 'lost' power is because China is the first worthy rival to US power in decades.
When Sadddam promised the mother of all tank battles and had his Cold War era tank army demolished by high-tech cruise missiles the US and by extension NATO were at the 'height' of their power.

People have mistaken the reluctance of the Russian Federation to intervene up until the mid 2000's with 'acceptance' of the current security situation.
The Russians simply couldn't do anything to stop the US from attacking Serbia because they had a mostly obsolete army like Saddam.
Once they had modernized their armed forces and were able to strike back and win (in places like Georgia and Syria), they started doing so.
Meanwhile the US policy was that the 'cold war' was over (Obama famously told Romney this in a debate) and the Russians and Chinese were 'partners' on the global stage even though there was no commitment from their side.

That's the reason US power waned, there's no longer a clear technological advantage and the loss in Afghanistan has confirmed the view that the US can no longer dictate their will without an army in place.
The other reason is the US barked up the wrong tree with Iraq. All those resources could've been spend on containing China (and even Russia) and propping up China's asian neighbours.
Condoleezza Rice I believe actually admitted this to Bush, making the case that the US should've invaded to free North Korea instead of Iraq.

At the same time Europe has realized after 2 'lost decades' that their foreign policy of just following the US and leaning on their army is not the best way to go about things.

It seems to me that short of waging more wars with millions of dead (i.e. what Trump didn't want to do in Afghanistan) to keep their enemies at bay there is little the US could've done to prevent losing their soft power which was based on a short lived military, economical and technological advantage.

In the end it was Obama who told the world the US would 'lead from behind' essentially doing nothing to protect US puppet rulers in Egypt and elsewhere while at the same time supporting a coup in Russia's backyard that the EU was very uncomfortable with.
And George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton squandered the opportunities to pull Russia into NATO and Europe and instead let it spin out of control which soured Russians once yearning for freedom on the ideals of Democracy.

[james]

Its like being back in 1930s Germany



Inflation surges 7.5% on an annual basis, even more than expected and highest since 1982

The consumer price index for all items rose 0.6% in January, driving up annual inflation by 7.5%.

That marked the biggest gain since February 1982 and was even higher than the Wall Street estimate.

Core inflation rose 6%, which also was a notch above expectations.

Real earnings for workers increased just 0.1% on the month when accounting for inflation.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/10/january-2022-cpi-inflation-rises-7point5percent-over-the-past-year-even-more-than-expected.html

[Nintex]

Its like being back in 1930s Germany

FACT CHECK

In 1930's Germany they actually maintained the roads and bridges

[james]

Its like being back in 1930s Germany

FACT CHECK

In 1930's Germany they actually maintained the roads and bridges

"gotta hand it to the Nazis... " - Nintex

[team filler]

Its like being back in 1930s Germany

FACT CHECK

In 1930's Germany they actually maintained the roads and bridges

they also had an amazing state funded pest control 

[chronovore]

I feel so goddamned naïve for thinking Bush Jr. was the worst president we'd ever have. Yes, The Shrub led us into an unjust war. Trump has frittered away the bulk of soft power the USA has enjoyed since WW II, essentially committing us to reintroducing War just to show our intent and will.

I'm not sure if Trump had anything to do with it to be honest. The reason the US 'lost' power is because China is the first worthy rival to US power in decades.
When Sadddam promised the mother of all tank battles and had his Cold War era tank army demolished by high-tech cruise missiles the US and by extension NATO were at the 'height' of their power.

People have mistaken the reluctance of the Russian Federation to intervene up until the mid 2000's with 'acceptance' of the current security situation.
The Russians simply couldn't do anything to stop the US from attacking Serbia because they had a mostly obsolete army like Saddam.
Once they had modernized their armed forces and were able to strike back and win (in places like Georgia and Syria), they started doing so.
Meanwhile the US policy was that the 'cold war' was over (Obama famously told Romney this in a debate) and the Russians and Chinese were 'partners' on the global stage even though there was no commitment from their side.

That's the reason US power waned, there's no longer a clear technological advantage and the loss in Afghanistan has confirmed the view that the US can no longer dictate their will without an army in place.
The other reason is the US barked up the wrong tree with Iraq. All those resources could've been spend on containing China (and even Russia) and propping up China's asian neighbours.
Condoleezza Rice I believe actually admitted this to Bush, making the case that the US should've invaded to free North Korea instead of Iraq.

At the same time Europe has realized after 2 'lost decades' that their foreign policy of just following the US and leaning on their army is not the best way to go about things.

It seems to me that short of waging more wars with millions of dead (i.e. what Trump didn't want to do in Afghanistan) to keep their enemies at bay there is little the US could've done to prevent losing their soft power which was based on a short lived military, economical and technological advantage.

In the end it was Obama who told the world the US would 'lead from behind' essentially doing nothing to protect US puppet rulers in Egypt and elsewhere while at the same time supporting a coup in Russia's backyard that the EU was very uncomfortable with.
And George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton squandered the opportunities to pull Russia into NATO and Europe and instead let it spin out of control which soured Russians once yearning for freedom on the ideals of Democracy.

Thanks for the lucid, well considered response.

I disagree with Condoleeza, invading NK would have had a lasting negative effect on US/China relations, let alone the fact that we’ve previously retreated from that peninsula once before without a clear victory.

[Potato]

Its like being back in 1930s Germany

FACT CHECK

In 1930's Germany they actually maintained the roads and bridges

they also had an amazing state funded pest control 

[OnlyRegret]

I feel so goddamned naïve for thinking Bush Jr. was the worst president we'd ever have. Yes, The Shrub led us into an unjust war. Trump has frittered away the bulk of soft power the USA has enjoyed since WW II, essentially committing us to reintroducing War just to show our intent and will.

I'm not sure if Trump had anything to do with it to be honest. The reason the US 'lost' power is because China is the first worthy rival to US power in decades.
When Sadddam promised the mother of all tank battles and had his Cold War era tank army demolished by high-tech cruise missiles the US and by extension NATO were at the 'height' of their power.

People have mistaken the reluctance of the Russian Federation to intervene up until the mid 2000's with 'acceptance' of the current security situation.
The Russians simply couldn't do anything to stop the US from attacking Serbia because they had a mostly obsolete army like Saddam.
Once they had modernized their armed forces and were able to strike back and win (in places like Georgia and Syria), they started doing so.
Meanwhile the US policy was that the 'cold war' was over (Obama famously told Romney this in a debate) and the Russians and Chinese were 'partners' on the global stage even though there was no commitment from their side.

That's the reason US power waned, there's no longer a clear technological advantage and the loss in Afghanistan has confirmed the view that the US can no longer dictate their will without an army in place.
The other reason is the US barked up the wrong tree with Iraq. All those resources could've been spend on containing China (and even Russia) and propping up China's asian neighbours.
Condoleezza Rice I believe actually admitted this to Bush, making the case that the US should've invaded to free North Korea instead of Iraq.

At the same time Europe has realized after 2 'lost decades' that their foreign policy of just following the US and leaning on their army is not the best way to go about things.

It seems to me that short of waging more wars with millions of dead (i.e. what Trump didn't want to do in Afghanistan) to keep their enemies at bay there is little the US could've done to prevent losing their soft power which was based on a short lived military, economical and technological advantage.

In the end it was Obama who told the world the US would 'lead from behind' essentially doing nothing to protect US puppet rulers in Egypt and elsewhere while at the same time supporting a coup in Russia's backyard that the EU was very uncomfortable with.
And George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton squandered the opportunities to pull Russia into NATO and Europe and instead let it spin out of control which soured Russians once yearning for freedom on the ideals of Democracy.

Thanks for the lucid, well considered response.

nintex praise 

[team filler]

 

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/AnnieAndrewsMD/status/1491814813785374724

[benjipwns]

 

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/mikeallen/status/1491728441187737601
https://twitter.com/NewDay/status/1491753874306342913

 

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1491764637775323142

 

[Propagandhim]

https://twitter.com/mikeallen/status/1491728441187737601
https://twitter.com/NewDay/status/1491753874306342913

 

I didn't watch the video, but if the implication is that he was flushing something important...why are they telling us this now or check to see what he was flushing?