US politics: just for you

[Zorral]

I just can't get over that desantis theft of Peaky Blinders's Cillian Murphy for his campaign ad. The Peaky Blinders saga's conclusion was Tommy Shelby's attempts to take down brit fascist Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley who idesantis models himself on -- whether or not he's even heard of him, that is.  Talk about throwing a finger at 'our kind' ....  Let's talk some lefty reconciliation with that, OK?

Edited July 6, 2023 by Zorral

[Luzifer's right hand]

People don't think big enough.

The endgame goal of the Christian fascists is not restoring relatively recent laws but making being homosexual punishable by death(or at least to stop prosecuting hate crimes). We know that because the have been actively supporting such things in Africa.

Killing people lawfully is what being far right is all about in the US.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Luzifer's right hand

[Zorral]

 

If you wish to speak of thinking big: beyond death penalities for women and anyone not a cis white xtian male,  the breakup of the US into their own theocratic fascist states. What else do you all think those yearned for private armies of desantis, abbot, dumpf about?

Which you know what that means -- warlordism, fighting like the drug cartels do over Mexican regions.  And regions fighting with each other.  And it will indeed include the drug cartels from everywhere out of Asia, Africa, Mexico and South America.  Good times ahead us  all.

Hmmmm -- where is DMC to poll - stat us out of that above miserable projection?

Edited July 6, 2023 by Zorral

[Maithanet]

Andy Harris has announced that MTG is no longer a member of the House Freedom Caucus.  Not because of her being both hateful and batshit crazy, but because she is too cozy with the establishment like McCarthy and too vocal in criticizing other HFC members. 

So...that happened. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

27 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Andy Harris has announced that MTG is no longer a member of the House Freedom Caucus.  Not because of her being both hateful and batshit crazy, but because she is too cozy with the establishment like McCarthy and too vocal in criticizing other HFC members. 

So...that happened. 

I hope the “Freedom Caucus” eats itself.  They are (along with “Mom’s for Liberty”) the personification of oxymoronic nomenclature.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

So MTG is too "normal" to be a member of the HFC? 

Cool. They should put that on a T-Shirt.

HFC too crazy for MTG.

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

2 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

So MTG is too "normal" to be a member of the HFC? 

Cool. They should put that on a T-Shirt.

HFC too crazy for MTG.

 

They’re the same level of crazy it’s just they’ve different alliances to other crazies 

[The Anti-Targ]

12 hours ago, Ormond said:

I am a gay man myself and I find the above rather frightening. If Arizona does this about the most recent ruling, doesn't this give right-wing Attorney Generals in other states the "permission" to do the same with the Supreme Court's rulings on same sex marriage and sodomy laws? Personally I would rather have to deal with the religious exemption to public accommodation than have individual states go back to not recognizing same sex marriage and imprisoning people for consensual sexual acts with someone of the same gender. The latter is a much scarier prospect to me. 

I guess I am one of those people...Attorneys General, I believe.

 

[SeanF]

7 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Andy Harris has announced that MTG is no longer a member of the House Freedom Caucus.  Not because of her being both hateful and batshit crazy, but because she is too cozy with the establishment like McCarthy and too vocal in criticizing other HFC members. 

So...that happened. 

So MTG is now a RINO?

[The Anti-Targ]

8 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Andy Harris has announced that MTG is no longer a member of the House Freedom Caucus.  Not because of her being both hateful and batshit crazy, but because she is too cozy with the establishment like McCarthy and too vocal in criticizing other HFC members. 

So...that happened. 

How would that saying be modified to fit this situation? You either leave congress a Republican nutjob or stay long enough to eventually be declared a RINO.

[Gaston de Foix]

6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

How would that saying be modified to fit this situation? You either leave congress a Republican nutjob or stay long enough to eventually be declared a RINO.

The really scary thing is she's not the only one. 

I always think of this profile of Patrick McHenry (https://washingtonmonthly.com/2005/10/01/getting-ahead-in-the-gop/) 17 years ago. 

And now he's the reasonable face of the GOP. 

[Durckad]

Yeah, it's a sad day when the Neo-Con ghouls from the Bush Admin are considered the "reasonable" and "sane" voices in the GOP.

Fucking hell, what a dumpster of a country we (some of us) live in here.

[LongRider]

20 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

So MTG is too "normal" to be a member of the HFC? 

 

I myself don’t see anything normal about MTG.  Yes, I see your scare quotes, so agree then?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

25 minutes ago, LongRider said:

I myself don’t see anything normal about MTG.  Yes, I see your scare quotes, so agree then?

Well, she has two legs and two arms, and two eyes, one nose and ten fingers afaik. 

[Zorral]

Has anyone read the newest Unmitigated Pedantry entry, up today?  Meditations on the US's global power, what it means and why it still has it.  Though barely -- the dumpf years shook the whole coalition patterns to their cores, which destabilized all of them.

The Status Quo Coalition
 Bret Devereaux  Collections  July 7, 2023 31 Minutes

Quote

 

This week we’re going to take a look at an aspect of contemporary international relations, rather than ancient ones. As has become somewhat customary, I am going to use the the week of July 4th to talk about the United States, or more correctly for this July 4th, the informal coalition (with formal components) of countries the United States inhabits and leads.

In some ways this is following up on a thread left hanging a couple of years ago when I commented briefly that I didn’t think the term ’empire’ effectively described the US position in the international order. And so this post will focus on what I do think is the US position in the international order, although the focus here is going to be somewhat less on the United States’ role within what I am going to call the ‘status quo coalition’ than it is on the coalition itself. Because the existence and breadth of this coalition is really unusual and thus remarkable; indeed it may be indicative of broader shifts in how interstate relationships work in an industrial/post-industrial world where institutions and cultural attitudes are beginning, slowly, to catch up to the new realities our technology has created.

 

https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coalition/

Quote

 

.... For the United States leading the coalition, the mistake is to assume that the members of the coalition are bound by American power (hard or soft), rather than by their own interests. That isn’t to say that US ‘soft power’ doesn’t matter. I think it matters quite a lot and is part of why the coincidence of values in the coalition is so strong. But when it comes to getting countries to act, interests are often much stronger. And the key interest at play here is a commitment to the status quo.

What that means is that United States leadership in the coalition (and consequently, US global leadership) is tied to the perception that the United States is, on net, a reliable guarantor of the status quo. What is going to shake the coalition is not outside pressure (which is, as we’ll see, a weak lever), but the United States as ‘team captain’ acting in ways that destabilize the status quo. This, I’d argue, is why the Iraq War seemed to shake the coalition so badly – it reflected an attempt to revise the status quo by expanding the coalition by force. It’s also why the Trump presidency’s promises of substantial revision to the United States’ place in the international system prompted concerns from the coalition as well. ....

 

 

[Here's Looking At You, Kid]

Have you considered looking into Robert Kennedy Jr?  He has the right message.  I don't mean right as in conservative but ethical and moral. 

[Zorral]

He's another crazy extremist nut case.

Are you kidding? Moral?  He murdered a young woman.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-killed-martha-moxley/

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by Zorral

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

17 minutes ago, Here's Looking At You, Kid said:

Have you considered looking into Robert Kennedy Jr?  He has the right message.  I don't mean right as in conservative but ethical and moral. 

RFKjr. is a crazyman.  He’s allied with Trumpanistas to attempt to act as a spoiler 

[Fragile Bird]

Anyone have any thoughts about the US giving Ukraine cluster bombs to use against the Russians? It has been pointed out that the Russians are using cluster bombs against the Ukrainians, and the American cluster bombs are not as damaging to the environment as the Russian bombs (I kid you not).

More than 100 countries have banned the use of the bombs, including Canada.

[Mindwalker]

On 7/5/2023 at 9:52 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Link please.

Apparently it hasn't been decided yet.

https://www.salon.com/2023/06/27/delaware-tees-up-bill-to-allow-corporations-to-vote_partner/

The Delaware House has teed up a vote on a bill that would give businesses a vote in the town of Seaford, Delaware — a proposal with frightening implications for elections in a time when lawmakers are increasingly targeting voting rights.

The bill allows Seaford — a town of roughly 8,500 people — to amend its charter to allow non-resident business owners to cast a vote in local elections, meaning that corporate entities and businesses would enjoy the same voting rights as actual citizens in the town. Rather than the democratic principle of "one person, one vote," the bill codifies the principle of "one person/entity/one vote," as the bill text reads.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/seaford-delaware-corporate-voting-llc-trust-elections/

The state of Delaware is famously business-friendly. With more than 1.8 million entities registered in the First State, companies outnumber its human residents by nearly two-to-one. ...

Seaford, a town of about 8,000 on the Nanticoke River, amended its charter in April to allow businesses — including LLCs, corporations, trusts or partnerships — the right to vote in local elections. The law would go into effect once both houses of Delaware's state legislature approve it.