US Politics: Rural Southernification… (thanks Zorral)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

39 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Never thought otherwise, but our Eurocommie friend might not have been, so let's make sure our friend does know!  

And dayem, those rebellions were never punished, like some far closer to our own time.  It just keeps rolling' with the same people and the same outcomes, it seems so much of the time.  Reconstruction, such a time of hope for African Americans, and then -- poof.  The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the 60's and 70's the same.  And again, here we go, poof. 

It’s worse than “not being punished” the leaders of those rebellions were rewarded with high State offices.

[Jaxom 1974]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It’s worse than “not being punished” the leaders of those rebellions were rewarded with high State offices.

"Oh, Abraham, why did they do ye...?"

[Martell Spy]

Where did the $5tn spent on Afghanistan and Iraq go? Here’s where
Linda J Bilmes
Private military contractors outnumbered US troops on the ground during most of both conflicts. And defense industry stocks soared

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/11/us-afghanistan-iraq-defense-spending

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While Washington bickers about what, if anything, has been achieved after 20 years and nearly $5tn spent on “forever wars”, there is one clear winner: the US defense industry.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the American military relied to an unprecedented degree on private contractors for support in virtually all areas of war operations. Contractors supplied trucks, planes, fuel, helicopters, ships, drones, weapons and munitions as well as support services from catering and construction to IT and logistics. The number of contractors on the ground outnumbered US troops most years of the conflicts. By the summer of 2020, the US had 22,562 contractor personnel in Afghanistan – roughly twice the number of American troops.

The gravy train for the defense industry was also fueled by the way the wars were budgeted and paid for. Congress used “emergency” and “contingency” funding that circumvented the normal budget process. For the first decade of the conflict, the US used emergency appropriations, which are typically reserved for one-off crises such as floods and hurricanes. Detailed spending oversight was minimal. And because this type of spending is excluded from budget projections and deficit estimates, it enabled everyone to sustain the pretense that the wars would be over shortly.

The result was what former defense secretary Robert Gates termed a “culture of endless money” inside the Pentagon. The defense department made the operational decisions; managed the bidding process for contractors; awarded the contracts (largely using non-competitive bids); and kept at least 10% of the wartime funding in classified accounts.

Not even the financial crisis of 2008 could interrupt the spending spree.

 

 

[Zorral]

9/11. O. Lord.  Already, with the Afghanistan pull out, the blobmedia has been recycling all the same blahblahblah from back then, just as with Ida it's been recycling all the same blahblahblah since Katrina, which means the periodic resurrection of recognition there is climate change.  By month's end this all will be down the irrelevant-and-forget hole, until the next occasion to resurrect and rewind.  

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"Man who drove from Colo. to D.C. on Jan. 6 pleads guilty to threatening to shoot Pelosi in head on live TV"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/pelosi-threat-guilty-plea/2021/09/10/e43066ae-1262-11ec-bc8a-8d9a5b534194_story.html

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.....At his Southwest Washington hotel near the National Mall on Jan. 7, he texted a relative: “Thinking about heading over to Pelosi . . . speech and putting a bullet in her noggin on Live TV,” followed by a purple devil emoji, Meredith admitted.

Meredith never got near Pelosi, but when the relative alerted Meredith’s mother and she contacted police, they found him at his hotel, and carrying in his trailer a 9mm Glock 19 pistol, a semiautomatic U.S. variant of an Israeli army standard-issue rifle, 2,500 rounds and 10 large-capacity ammunition feeding devices, he admitted....

,,,he described his words as “political hyperbole.”...

So, you know, treat him nice, coz guns that you say are intended to kill people aren't weapons but political hyperbole.  Besides only semi auto not auto, despite large capacity ammo feed devices.  And in the truck.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

43 minutes ago, Zorral said:

9/11. O. Lord.  Already, with the Afghanistan pull out, the blobmedia has been recycling all the same blahblahblah from back then, just as with Ida it's been recycling all the same blahblahblah since Katrina, which means the periodic resurrection of recognition there is climate change.  By month's end this all will be down the irrelevant-and-forget hole, until the next occasion to resurrect and rewind.  

~~~~~~~~~~

"Man who drove from Colo. to D.C. on Jan. 6 pleads guilty to threatening to shoot Pelosi in head on live TV"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/pelosi-threat-guilty-plea/2021/09/10/e43066ae-1262-11ec-bc8a-8d9a5b534194_story.html

So, you know, treat him nice, coz guns that you say are intended to kill people aren't weapons but political hyperbole.  Besides only semi auto not auto, despite large capacity ammo feed devices.  And in the truck.

I have no sympathy for the people claiming their violent rhetoric is “political hyperbole”.  That’s stretching free speech out of any reasonable proportion.

[Mindwalker]

Did a U.S. Drone Strike in Afghanistan Kill the Wrong Person? | Visual Investigations

[Mindwalker]

Complete with a clip from The West Wing:

 

[Zorral]

My rant. Thank you for your patience. 

     . . . . I can't hear you because don't do media beyond radio and newspapers and I shut off the radio, and I stopped reading the newspapers too until next week, when perhaps somebody will have unearthed some useful information about covid-19, treatments, numbers, whatever.

 . . . .  Twenty-one years later, here we are again.

All the same blobmediaidiots blathering the same things TheyBlathered after 9/11, Afghanistan, Iran/Iraq, terrorism, immigrants, and with Hurricane Ida and New Orleans, all the same blobmediaidiots blathering the same They Blathered after Katrina and oil in the Gulf and and and and, which brings us the periodic resurrection of recognition there is climate change, by golly, and it is here, it really is here! as with Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy and NYC, Ida and New York. All discovered, like Madonna's virgin, for the very first time.  

Does anyone remember the blobmediaidiots blathering climate change and rising ocean levels after Venice's flooding, o way back in 2019?

By month's end this all will be down the irrelevant-and-forget hole, until the next occasion for the Same blobmediaidiots to resurrect and rewind. 

The same politiciansidiotblobblather also.  Who in hell thinks bushwa qualified to say anything in 2021 about 9/11, terrorism and Afghanistan?

This time with Ida, somehow the same blobmediaidiots missed their blather about loooooooooooooooooooooooooooters!  Could it be that some of them heard from people who weren't able to escape to their second homes in the country what real looters are like?  O wait they saw it on NYC tv, they didn't need to hear.  Maybe they got their looter fix back last summer.  Funny how that event immediately got shoved down the irrelevant-and-forget hole. Will it return, ya think, around mayoral election time?

Do not confuse the criminal looting that we lived through here with the ongoing BLM protests, at which there was no rioting, no cruelty, etc. etc. etc.  Except from cops.  The same cops who just stood there and did nothing when the actual looters, organized and equipped by professional criminals, did the deeds for two nights.

The idiots are never more idiotic than times such as these, except the covidiots who are having Glory Times non-stop.

When we'll learn all over again it's all Biden's fault, every single every bit. Or it's the fault of AOC.  Or Obama. Or Clinton. All of them But somehow never Bushwa's 1 & 2, Brownie's or the orange shoggoth's or Bolton's or Cheney's or Gingrich's or or or or ....

O give it up.  We know all of it whatever it is is the fault of Others, not ourselves. Most certainly never the fault of faux noose and big tech and white supremacists, bigots, haters of all kinds. Who must be respected and catered to by blobmediaidiots at all times because reality and facts hurt their feelings and make them mad at us and then the advertisers go away and They send death threats.

In the meantime one cannot walk on the sidewalks or get through the streets from about 6th Ave and West 4th, down into our neighborhood below Bleecker because all firemen, all very very very drunk, without masks, smoking cigars.

And us, in the meantime?  The 9/11 trauma for us manifested into a phobia, a deep reluctance to be anywhere from whence we couldn't make it home on foot.  Fear of leaving the neighborhood, fear of leaving home. This lasted nearly a year. It returns again with every Something that takes place that affects us, even if we aren't presently there on the ground.  But never to the extent of 9/11.  Until pandemic. We really don't want to leave our familiar haunts, our comfort zone.  So much reluctance. Even though we're all overrun by those who leave their own haunts with greatest enthusiasm.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Biden should threaten to turn the DOJ loose on Manchin’s daughter if Manchin doesn’t change his mind about the reconciliation bill.

Be honest, is this how you want the government to work?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I think corruption should have consequences. I think that Joe Manchin and his daughter have been using a broken government to enrich themselves at everyone else’s expense, and I think that people who exploit a broken system to enrich themselves while literally causing people to die because of that corruption should generally be stopped.

Imagine if I applied the same logic moments after hearing Jane Sanders was accused of potentially corrupt behavior. That because of it he should just take Manchin's worst offer? Come on now, you don't want things to actually work this way.
 

Quote

I don’t want any kind of government, so I don’t propose that governments should work in any kind of way. The reality of things forces me to acknowledge that some types of government are marginally more successful than other kinds, but that’s not the same as saying that any of them are good.

Huh?