US politics: Trumpenslammer

[mcbigski]

Look Fat, Hunter had the most perfect call ever to Ukraine.  Big guy wasn't there, had no part of it.  Except maybe extolling his art work because what person that doesn't love his family so damn much wouldn't.

Any way there's going to 95 million plus votes next time to cement Joe's legacy.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

Look Fat, Hunter had the most perfect call ever to Ukraine.  Big guy wasn't there, had no part of it.  Except maybe extolling his art work because what person that doesn't love his family so damn much wouldn't.

Any way there's going to 95 million plus votes next time to cement Joe's legacy.

That's right, nepotist corruption sucks.  I'm glad you picked up on this - was worried you'd given up on shedding light on it after the radio silence around Jared and Ivanka.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

Look Fat, Hunter had the most perfect call ever to Ukraine.  Big guy wasn't there, had no part of it.  Except maybe extolling his art work because what person that doesn't love his family so damn much wouldn't.

Any way there's going to 95 million plus votes next time to cement Joe's legacy.

McBigski… care to comment?  Or will you simply pretend this doesn’t exist?

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

https://twitter.com/RiverTamYDN/status/1684925948141998081

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 minute ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

McBigski… care to comment?  Or will you simply pretend this doesn’t exist?

 

Woke crt gender but her emails

[Varysblackfyre321]

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

20 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

 

I swear we could power the US electrically if we hooked the bodies of his father and uncle to dynamos.

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

So all you have to declare to run for POTUS to be entitled to protection by the secret service?

 

Ty, I've found the best and most amazing way to spend US tax payer money, all you need to do is run for President.

Usually I'd try to unconvincingly talk DMC into running to have at less one not clownish candidate from Florida

Anyway, we can cook up the bestest campaign platform ever. Not the boring shit like medicaid for all. No, Oprah's Book Club membership for all. Renaming every turtle in US zoos to Mitch within the first 100 days per decree. Moving the fourth of July to the sixt of Januray. Mandatory sexual conversion therapies for all NRA members. A wall at the US Florida border. Construction of the Thunderdome in Kansas. You can even throw in a Presidential decree declaring Golf a sport for all I care.

 

[Zorral]

The new conservative arguments for an un-modern America
Books by Patrick Deneen and Sohrab Ahmari further define their ascendant brand of conservatism

Pre-modernity, pre Enlightenment GOOD because only a Christian (Catholic) birthright social order is GOOD.  It all went to (liberal) hell with the Enlightenment. Thus 'democracy' is BAD.
These beliefs are shared by the majority of SCOTUS, as well as Hungary's Oban -- Orban's Hungary, btw is where one of these ilks, Rod Dreher, has expatriated himself.  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2023/07/28/patrick-deneen-regime-change-sohrab-ahmari-tyranny-inc-review/

Quote

 

.... By their lights, one of this bogeyman’s hallmarks is its amnesia. Deneen writes that “the past is largely irrelevant” for liberal elites. But despite his cadre’s ostensible reverence for history, they offer a shamelessly schematic genealogy of our present predicament. The drama of contemporary life has two acts: First came pre-modernity (stretching from the dawn of time to around 1685), which was good; then came modernity (beginning in 1685 and continuing to the present), which was worse. Dreher once wrote: “There were five landmark events over seven centuries that rocked Western civilization and stripped it of its ancestral faith.” It may seem as if seven centuries contained more than five events, but five is too many for Ahmari, who wrote in a previous book, “The Unbroken Thread,” that “the Enlightenment took hold. Three centuries later, most of us take it for granted that liberty means being able to select how we live from the widest possible range of options.”

In this group’s telling, only one important thing has really ever happened: Modernity took root. The pre-moderns understood that true freedom resides in “self-rule, self-discipline, and self-government,” as Deneen opines, but liberal modernists catastrophically reimagined it as “liberation from limitations imposed by birthright.” One does not have to squint hard to see a medieval serf, munching gruel and savoring its freeing flavor. Admittedly, this malnourished specimen was sometimes subject to the arbitrary whims of his aristocratic overlords, but he was also cradled in the warm embrace of a tightknit social order. If he was illiterate, he was at least spared the travails of attending a “woke” university with a gender studies department. All in all, he had it better than today’s liberals, who are hedonic, individualistic, relativistic, rootless (and cosmopolitan to boot), vehemently secular, bent on the exploitation of the natural world (after all, they thwart God’s plan by using contraception) and, most important, zealously invested in progress for its own sake.  ....

 

 

This feels more true than ever:

Quote

 

From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.

The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use "social issues" as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats.  -- Philip Agre

 

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by Zorral

[timmett]

17 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I swear we could power the US electrically if we hooked the bodies of his father and uncle to dynamos.

 

Biden should troll Konspiracy Kennedy by pardoning Sirhan Sirhan. Since RFK Jr isn't convinced that's who shot his daddy anyhow.

[Martell Spy]

Houston school district to turn libraries into disciplinary centers
Critics condemn superintendent Mike Miles’s ‘new education system’ that removes students’ access to books

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/29/houston-school-district-libraries-book

Quote

 

The largest school district in Texas announced its libraries will be eliminated and replaced with discipline centers in the new school year.

Houston independent school district announced earlier this summer that librarian and media-specialist positions in 28 schools will be eliminated as part of superintendent Mike Miles’s “new education system” initiative.

Teachers at these schools will soon have the option to send misbehaving students to these discipline centers, or “team centers’” – designated areas where they will continue to learn remotely.

In a press release announcing the schools participating in the “new education system” program, Miles said: “I am overwhelmingly proud that this many HISD school leaders are ready to take bold action to improve outcomes for all students and eradicate the persistent achievement and opportunity gaps in our district.”

Lisa Robinson, a librarian retired from the school district, told local news outlet KPRC2 that her “heart is just broken for these children that are in the [NES] schools that are losing their librarians”.

 

 

[Zorral]

July 29, 2023 (Saturday)
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUL 30, 2023

Biden -- foreign and domestic policies cannot be separate; his more impromptu address Friday at a private home in Maine.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-29-2023-saturday?

Quote

 

.... When he first spoke at the State Department on February 4, 2021, Biden tied foreign policy and domestic policy together, saying: “There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy. Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind. Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class demands urgent focus on our domestic…economic renewal.”

“If we invest in ourselves and our people,” he said back in 2021, “if we fight to ensure that American businesses are positioned to compete and win on the global stage, if the rules of international trade aren’t stacked against us, if our workers and intellectual property are protected, then there’s no country on Earth…that can match us.

“Investing in our diplomacy isn’t something we do just because it’s the right thing to do for the world. We do it in order to live in peace, security, and prosperity. We do it because it’s in our own naked self-interest. When we strengthen our alliances, we amplify our power as well as our ability to disrupt threats before they can reach our shores.”

Yesterday, in a campaign reception at a private home in Freeport, he gave what amounted to a more personal version of that speech, updated after the events of his first two and a half years in office. As he spoke informally to a small audience, he seemed to hit what he sees as the major themes of his presidency so far. The talk included an interesting twist.

Biden talked again about the world being at an inflection point, defining it as an abrupt turn off an established path that means you can never get back on the original path again. The world is changing, he said, and not because of leaders, but because of fundamental changes like global warming and artificial intelligence. “We’re seeing changes… across the world in fundamental ways. And so, we better get going on what we’re going to do about it, both in foreign policy and domestic policy.” 

“Name me a part of the world that you think is going to look like it did 10 years ago 10 years from now,” he said.

But Biden went on to make the case that such fundamental change “presents enormous opportunities.” 

He began by outlining the economic successes of his administration: more than 13.2 million new jobs—including 810,000 jobs in manufacturing—inflation coming down, and so on. He attributed that success to his administration’s embrace of the country’s older vision of investing in workers and the middle class rather than concentrating wealth at the top of the economy in hopes that the wealthy would invest efficiently. The administration focused on infrastructure and manufacturing, using measures like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act to jump-start private investment in new industries in the U.S. 

Then he turned to foreign affairs. “Does anybody think that the post-war eras still exist, the rules of the road from the end of World War Two?” he asked. The Atlantic Charter of August 1941 that defined a post–World War II order based that world on territorial integrity, national self-determination, economic growth, and alliances to protect those values. It was the basis for most of the postwar international institutions that have protected a rules-based order ever since.

But the world has changed, Biden said. In recognition of the new era, in June 2021, Biden and then–U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson signed a “New Atlantic Charter” to update the original. The new charter renews the U.S. commitment to the old one, then resolves “to defend the principles, values, and institutions of democracy and open societies,” and to “strengthen the institutions, laws, and norms that sustain international co-operation to adapt them to meet the new challenges of the 21st century, and guard against those that would undermine them.”  

Yesterday, Biden noted that his administration has shored up alliances around the world, just as he called for at the State Department back in February 2021 and in the New Atlantic Charter of June 2021. It helped to pull Europe together to support Ukraine against Russia’s 2022 invasion, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) “is stronger today than it’s ever been in its existence.”

The Indo-Pacific world is changing, with new alliances coming together to hold firm on the idea of a rules-based international order. Biden has supported “the Quad”—India, Japan, Australia, and the United States—to stop China from changing that order, and other countries are taking note, shifting toward support for that order themselves. Did “anybody ever think Japan would increase its military budget over its domestic budget and help a European war on the side of the West?” Biden asked. “That’s what it’s doing. It’s changing the dynamic significantly.”

“The world is changing in a big way,” Biden said. “And we want to promote democracies…. [T]here is so much going on that we can make the world…a lot safer and better and more secure.”

“So…if you think about what’s happening, there is a confluence, if we get this right, of both domestic economic policy and foreign policy. [It] can make [us] safer and more secure than we’ve been [for] a long, long time.”

For all that his talk was a heartfelt recap of his presidency, he emphasized that the key to those successes has been democratic institutions. Referring to President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s reference to the United States as “the essential nation,” he attributed the leadership of the United States in world affairs not to its military might or economic power, but rather to its ability to create and defend alliances and, crucially, institutions that aspire to a rules-based world that works for, rather than against, ordinary people.

“Who could possibly bring the world together?” Biden asked. “Not me. But the President of the United States of America. Who could do it unless the President of the United States does it?  Who? What nation could do it?” His vision was not the triumphalism of recent presidents; it reached back to the 1940s, to the postwar institutions that helped to rebuild Europe and create lasting alliances, and expanded that vision for the twenty-first century. 

He recognized that U.S. policies have caused damage in the past, and that the country must fix things it has broken. “We’re the ones who polluted the world,” he said, for example. “We made a lot of money,” and now the bill has come due. 

And while the nation’s postwar vision was centered on majority-white countries, he emphasized that the modern world must include everyone. “[T]here’s a whole lot at stake, he said, “And I think we have an opportunity. And one of the ways we make life better for us is make life better for the rest of the world. That’s why I pushed so hard for the Build Back Better initiative to build the infrastructure in Africa…and in Latin America and South America.” 

Biden noted that the strength of the U.S. is in its diversity. “I said when I got elected I was going to have an administration that looked like America.” He noted that there are a higher percentage of women in his Cabinet than ever before—more than the number of men—and that he had appointed more Black appellate court judges to the federal courts “than every other president in America combined.” He did this for a simple reason, he said: “Our strength is our diversity. It’s about time we begin to use it.” 

“[T]he whole world is changing,” Biden said, “But if we grab hold,” he continued, “[t]here’s nothing beyond our capacity.” 

If I were writing a history of the Biden administration 150 years from now, I would call out this informal talk as an articulation of a vision of American leadership, based not in economic expansion, military might, or personalities, or even in policies, but in the strength of the institutions of democracy, preserved through global alliances. 

So I guess I got to write about history today, after all.

—

Notes:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/02/04/remarks-by-president-biden-on-americas-place-in-the-world/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/07/29/remarks-by-president-biden-at-a-campaign-reception-freeport-me/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Charter#/media/File:Atlantic_Charter_(color).jpg

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/10/the-new-atlantic-charter/

 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

Quote

If I were writing a history of the Biden administration 150 years from now, I would call out this informal talk as an articulation of a vision of American leadership, based not in economic expansion, military might, or personalities, or even in policies, but in the strength of the institutions of democracy, preserved through global alliances. 

How someone can write that with a straight face is beyond me.  

[Zorral]

Politicians can say anything with a straight face, unless a George Santos, who can't stop smirking,.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

35 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Politicians can say anything with a straight face, unless a George Santos, who can't stop smirking,.

Isn't that half the fun with him? Jimmy Fallon built an empire on this crap. 

[karaddin]

On 7/29/2023 at 11:43 AM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

 

Obligatory explanation for anyone blissfully unaware of neo Nazi signalling:

"14" is a reference to a 14 word slogan that neo Nazis use a statement of goals, feel free to Google the Nazi 14 words if you want to see what they are.

"88" H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, this is a stand in for "heil Hitler". 

Yes this sounds incredibly juvenile and stupid when you type it out, but that's because neo Nazis are incredibly juvenile and stupid. They get a bizarre delight out of inserting this weird numerology all over the place, sometimes slightly more subtle like making every sentence 14 words long or something like that, but the way RFK Jr has done it here is pretty bog standard. The 14 days is a plausible period, but saying "88 days" instead of "3 months" like a normal person is not.

He's an anti vaxxer that's been hanging with far right dipshits online. He's using this to broadcast to neo Nazis that he's one of them, and everyone should listen to that and believe him.

[Spockydog]

Speaking of Nazis...

DeSantis’ Donors Want More Than a Reboot. They Want Him to ‘Clean House’

Quote

 

DURING A “REBOOT” that Ron DeSantis’ allies had hoped would prove his terminally online campaign could change its ways, the governor has pivoted to more of the same — and key allies and donors are threatening to jump ship.

Various big DeSantis donors have been furious that the campaign seemed to take its cues from internet culture wars over niche issues. But despite a large-scale shedding of staff, some of the most online staffers remain on board. Indeed, some have grown more vocal: The early days of the reboot have featured a DeSantis staffer publicly feuding on social media with a Black Republican lawmaker. And despite pleas from allies to refocus away from the culture war, DeSantis has picked one fight with Bud Light and another over the teaching of Black history.

The “out-with-the-old, back-in-with-old” nature of the reboot has some donors asking if the problem isn’t the campaign, but the candidate.

 

 

[Martell Spy]

‘I can’t believe we’re having this conversation’: the states pushing for 14-year-olds to serve alcohol

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/jul/31/republicans-child-labor-bars-alcohol-service-age-wisconsin

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Clancy, the Milwaukee state representative, sees the bills as a “weird game of one-upmanship in terms of how horrific the state Republicans can be”. But they also represent missed opportunities to do the things that could actually fix the labor shortage’s root causes.

“We could talk daycare; we could talk paid parental leave; we could talk about encouraging employers in a myriad of ways to hire folks that were recently incarcerated; we could stop incarcerating so many people,” he says. “Yet in 2023, they’re bringing back child labor. It is just maddening.”

 

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Anybody else waiting for news to break about a 14 yo barmaid having to fend off a bunch of drunk middle aged men?

Don't blame the horse, we didn't vote for any of this. This merely making a prediction where this is going.

[Fragile Bird]

What’s next, conscription for 14 - 18 year olds?