The All Things Political Topic - Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex

[uuuhhii]

how many amazon warehouse are run by complete a hole

employee will suffer no matter how nice manager want to be

rely on personal virtue of those in power not to used to completely crush body and soul of their inferior is idiotic

[Gfted1]

Turkey clears way for Swedish NATO membership, in abrupt about face - Breaking Defense

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

https://www.texasobserver.org/teachers-strong-armed-to-get-on-board-with-houston-schools-takeover/

Not very good news, burning down public education to float charter schools will be a disaster.

[213374U]

ima just leave this here

Politico - Rust belt on the Rhine

MEFO when?

[Gromnir]

am knowing many posters have an allergic reaction to any fox story or link, but this one is worth your couple minutes of time.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6331366651112

"ok, i knew this was a bad idea."

HA! Good Fun!

 

[Gromnir]

am not a biden fan, or harris for that matter, and am thinking democrats would do better in a general election with almost any other plausible and moderate ticket, but am admitting the following is a clever advert.

HA! Good Fun!

[Keyrock]

Fun fact: The United States of America has had so many accidental mishaps with nuclear weapons that they coined a term for such events: Broken Arrow. Officially, there have been 32 broken arrows (Lord knows how many there are that we don't know about), including the time the US dropped a nuke on Greenland, the time the the US dropped two nukes on North Carolina, and the time the US dropped 4 nukes on Spain. Six US nukes that were lost have never been recovered. Sleep well!

[xzar_monty]

15 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

(Lord knows how many there are that we don't know about), including the time the US dropped a nuke on Greenland

Indeed. A clever ploy, that: to suggest that there's so much we're not being told. For a conspiratorial soul, that suggestion is nearly always there, as there's nearly always the possibility of something not being told.[*] Should we cue the Twilight Zone theme now?

To say that "the US dropped a nuke on Greeland" would imply that the US did it on purpose and what happened was that the bomb was intentionally let go/fly from an airplane or equivalent, which, as you well know but didn't say, was not what happened.

 

[*] I remember when I told an acquaintance of mine that so many of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks had been preserved and that they contain a fair bit of interesting experiments and sort-of scientific speculation. His instant reply: "And just think of all the notebooks that have been destroyed and all the knowledge that has been lost!" My response to that, which I left unsaid, would not have been very kind.

[Keyrock]

33 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Fun fact: The United States of America has had so many accidental mishaps with nuclear weapons that they coined a term for such events: Broken Arrow. Officially, there have been 32 broken arrows (Lord knows how many there are that we don't know about), including the time the US dropped a nuke on Greenland, the time the the US dropped two nukes on North Carolina, and the time the US dropped 4 nukes on Spain. Six US nukes that were lost have never been recovered. Sleep well!

 

10 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

To say that "the US dropped a nuke on Greeland" would imply that the US did it on purpose and what happened was that the bomb was intentionally let go/fly from an airplane or equivalent, which, as you well know but didn't say, was not what happened.

Which part of "accidental mishaps" did you not understand? Let me help you out, the term "accidental" expressly states that it was not done on purpose.

Also, I don't think it's crazy to suggest there may be more we don't know about. Some broken arrows that happened as far back as the 60s weren't officially disclosed until a decade ago. If you honestly think there aren't more broken arrows that haven't been disclosed yet then I have a wonderful offer for you. There's this bridge I own that connects Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights and the price can't be beat!

Edited July 19, 2023 by Keyrock

[Zoraptor]

I'd have a fair bit of sympathy for withholding information on lost nukes since you specifically don't want people other than you going looking for them; though no doubt its used for informational suppression too.

Funny how Broken Arrow just sounds so much cooler than Bent Spear. Don't think it's just an effect of the movie either.

[xzar_monty]

3 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Funny how Broken Arrow just sounds so much cooler than Bent Spear. Don't think it's just an effect of the movie either.

Double trochee. The English language strongly tends to be iambic, so a double trochee is likely to register as somehow significant or different ("so much cooler") even if you can't articulate why. Bent Spear, on the other hand, as a unit, is unbalanced and ends on an awkward diphthong-with-an-r.

That's how I see it anyway -- and I fully agree that Broken Arrow sounds an awful lot better. (This is the kind of stuff that headline writers, of whom I am not one, spend their working hours doing.)

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

To say that "the US dropped a nuke on Greeland" would imply that the US did it on purpose and what happened was that the bomb was intentionally let go/fly from an airplane or equivalent, which, as you well know but didn't say, was not what happened.

am doubting an accident by key. the vernacular o' "drop the bomb" in the context of nukes is ingrained idiom at this point. 

however, and admitted tangential related, we will note a 1980(ish) senate report (hart and goldwater?) identified numerous near catastrophes involving false/mistaken reports of impending nuclear attack. a couple dozen. am not being hyperbolic neither. multiple situations in which somebody were literal a call away from joint chiefs of staff or the President in advising a soviet attack were imminent. eventual actual causes o' the false reports included such stuff as geese and the moon.  compared to incidents regarding "lost" nuclear weapons which nevertheless had almost no chance o' immediate starting a global thermal nuclear war, the not insignificant nuclear close calls identified in the bipartisan senate report and numerous academic historical sources in recent years might be enough to cause individuals to pause and reflect on the wisdom o' nuclear deterrence... recognizing it is too late to force the genie back in the bottle.

different but similar, am recalling a false missile attack report from a station in hawaii as recent as 2018 which made news.

again, the hawaii situation is so not like the almost ww3 moments, but the cause o' the panic were predictable and also the most common source o' the near holocausts o' the cold war: human error.

regardless, the reality o' so many near apocalypses during the cold war were hardly shocking for people who grew up during the height o' the MAD madness, an insanity we have never genuine left behind. as such, the fact trump and kennedy advocate a return to a national defense strategy dependent on MAD is genuine unfortunate. 

edit: am knowing the conspiracy folks love a great it can't be disproven bit, but am thinking is good to keep in mind just how many people would need be in on the secret o' lost nuclear weapons. if is a b52 then likely you got at minimum the five flight crew and am not sure how many ground crew who is gonna notice missing nukes on return o' the aircraft, plus whomever is gonna be in the air traffic control room at the time the no doubt emergency messages were incoming, plus the officers going up the chain o' command and the white house and... 

is possible to keep secrets in the US military, but for unexpected events in which the circle o' people with knowledge is more than a small handful, am suspicious o' the capacity to maintain a secrecy for long, much less many decades. maybe the usaf or navy keeps a few details unknown indefinite, maybe. 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited July 19, 2023 by Gromnir

[Keyrock]

For eight years, from 1960 to 1968 the US government thought it was both a good expenditure of taxpayer dollars and a wise decision to fly a bunch of B-52 bombers loaded with nukes around North America (and to other points, but mainly North America) continuously. We're talking mid-air refueling so that they don't have to land continuously. What could possibly go wrong?

The program ended with the aforementioned accidental dropping of a nuke onto Greenland. The nuke didn't detonate but the conventional explosive did and the nuke ruptured and a bunch of radioactive material went into the soil. As you can imagine, the Danish government wasn't exactly pleased about this. By the way, the program to have nuclear armed B-52s continuously flying was called Operation Chrome Dome. You can't make this $#!+ up.

As an aside, the 2 nukes that fell on North Carolina both had all their fail-saves, save one, triggered. It was a different fail-safe in each case. These bombs were an order of magnitude more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were 1 fail-safe away from the US accidentally killing millions of its own people.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Keyrock

[HoonDing]

I don't know what's scarier, losing a nuclear weapon or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it.

[Gromnir]

is also kinda scary that people in 2023 are only just now learning about MAD. kennedy increased the SAC commitment from one third aircraft to half and 'course the shortest air routes to the borders o' the soviet union from US air bases in north america would be to fly over north america, even with kanadian air space verboten... so, duh. takes time to get a b52 fueled armed and off the ground. takes prohibitive amounts of time to get squadrons o' b52 off the ground. if most bombers are on the ground during a first strike scenario, then not only are those aircraft useless, but 'ccording to the rational and reasonable insanity o' MAD, the vulnerability o' those b52s on the ground makes a first strike more likely. admitted the policies o' mutual assured destruction were implemented before the term were coined, but the MAD label were embraced for multiple reasons, not least o' which were the paradoxical efforts to implement an insane plan to prevent an insane outcome.

in any event, this is all so 1980s. what is being taught in schools these days?

@HoonDing 

quoting an all-time bad movie without adding the quotation marks is 2x bad form.

HA! Good Fun!

 

Edited July 19, 2023 by Gromnir

[Keyrock]

Regardless of what you think of RFK, the assault on free speech, not just in Murica but in many countries around the globe, over the past few years should be alarming. It's an attack on democracy itself because without free speech you cannot have democracy.

Here's the whole hearing:

 

Edited July 22, 2023 by Keyrock

[Gromnir]

lordy.

improbable, but as far as we could tell, there were not a single example of government censorship offered after more than 3.5 hours. we watched the whole thing yesterday. First Amendment applies to government limits. doesn't apply to private publishers or platforms in part 'cause those publishers also have free speech rights. furthermore, the government isn't required to provide a platform to a guy just 'cause his name happens to be kennedy. whiney nepo baby. rfk jr mentions First Amendment, but there were no First Amendment issue found.

we also learned that rfk thinks that disagreement with his opinions, by means o' "targeted propaganda"  (rfk jr. thinks the use o' direct quotes and uncomfortable facts is targeted propaganda) or labels with which he dislikes equals censorship.

at ~4:00 o' rfk jr. opening statement he marvels that he has been called an anti-vaxxer.

*gasp*

moving on...

we also discovered rfk jr has a fundamental misunderstanding o' more english words than "censorship," 'cause he also believes recommendation= mandate. 

however, am gonna observe we were shocked it took rfk jr more than two minutes (but less than 2:30) to mention his father and jfk. uncharacteristic restraint. rare does it take rfk jr so long to mention bobby or jack.

...

washington dc is the one place on earth where clown shows elicit almost no laughs and regular last more than three hours.

edit: most o' rfk jr bs "facts" regarding covid and vaccines is stuff he has repeated before. here is a few months remote video for anybody who is curious 'bout a quick fact checking o' claims, many which were repeated during the hearing. rfk jr. knows he is spewing bad data 'cause he has been corrected numerous times but he continues to do so.

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Edited July 22, 2023 by Gromnir

[BruceVC]

On 7/22/2023 at 2:48 AM, Keyrock said:

Regardless of what you think of RFK, the assault on free speech, not just in Murica but in many countries around the globe, over the past few years should be alarming. It's an attack on democracy itself because without free speech you cannot have democracy.

Here's the whole hearing:

 

What are some examples in the US where you believe freedom of speech doesnt  exsit or is being eroded, I want to understand what you mean with specific examples?

 

[Keyrock]

4 hours ago, BruceVC said:

What are some examples in the US where you believe freedom of speech doesnt  exsit or is being eroded, I want to understand what you mean with specific examples?

 

We've seen from the Twitter Files and a recent interview with Mark Zuckerberg that US government agencies were putting pressure on social media companies to remove content that in Zuck's own words turned out to be worthy of debate or true. Many individuals that proposed the lab leak theory for the origin of the Covid pandemic were slandered, demonized, and in some cases deplatformed (hence why there is currently a lawsuit, Missouri vs Biden, against a slew of government agencies). The lab leak theory since has not only gained traction, it's considered to be the most likely scenario by many, including the FBI. There is currently a bill proposed in legislation called the RESTRICT Act that's been dubbed the Patriot Act 2.0. In its current iteration it would give the Secretary of Commerce the power to block or withhold finances of any tech product that's even partially owned by a "foreign adversary". Given the multinational nature of tech companies these days, that could be almost any company (it's up to them who's a "foreign adversary"). In theory, the bill does include exclusions that are meant to keep free information flowing, but it would be a dangerous step down a slippery slope.

 

[Gromnir]

twitter files? what were revealed in the twitter files hearings were that the proclaimed bias against conservatives didn't actual exist, the reporter who broke the story didn't actual investigate anything, and the only real pressure from government against twitter came from the trump white house.

vijaya gadde, james baker, yoel roth, the twitter folks who were grilled at the twitter files hearings, all said there were no pressure from the fbi regarding the laptop story or any other o' the scary lib stories jim jordan and others claimed were censored. however, while it were an embarrassing reveal, we did learn there was pressure from the trump administration which resulted in a change o' twitter policy, which is arguable censorship but so is not what the twitter files and taibbi were trying to sell the conspiracy minded audience.

https://www.axios.com/2023/02/08/twitter-executives-house-hearing-hunter-biden-laptop

"I am aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation," said Jim Baker, Twitter's former deputy general counsel and a former FBI lawyer, during his testimony Wednesday."

every gop censorship boogeyman were dispatched with similar alacrity. serious, just as with the rfk jr hearing link which am doubting 99% o' boardies bothered to watch, the twitter files hearing were a near complete bust for republicans.

yeah, the fbi's monitoring o' tweets and making some admitted hairball kinda recommendations at times should be addressed, but the weaponization committee didn't delve into those issues and they didn't even try to get witnesses or experts to make suggestions as to how the FBI should change behaviors. 

no, the fbi didn't "demand" or "coerce" or "shut down" in regards to the undertaker parody, but am thinking is ridiculous this is the kinda thing somebody at the fbi is monitoring and issuing warnings regarding. even so, the twitter file hearings were useful in showing how as often as not, twitter rejected fbi recommendations. more than 60% o' fbi warnings were rejected by twitter. hard to show coercion when the emails from twitter folks show 'em using eye-roll emojis when internal discussing and dismissing fbi input. 

and speaking o' taibbi, he routine left out important details such as how when the bidens reached out to twitter to ask for the removal o' tweets, it weren't 'bout the laptop or hunter's burisma connections but rather were limited to the nude photos which clear violated twitter's own terms o' service. taibbi also didn't bother to do anything other than summarize his conclusions regarding the emails 'cause he never even tried to get comments from the twitter folks who were s'posed being bludgeoned into suppression o' speech.

the following is a painful to watch taibbi response to twitter files criticisms:

as to missouri v. biden, it looks like political theatre as a couple o' state ag is trying to create a cause o' action from an unsupported conspiracy theory, which is why the judge in the case has taken more than a little heat so far. HOWEVER, with the almost zero evidence offered so far, is difficult to say the case is a dud or real. IF the plaintiffs is able to prove government interference on a scale they claim, then their efforts is warranted, but so far this looks a bit similar to the idiotic election fraud cases gop state ag put forward to impress voters knowing there were no chance o' success. at this point the plaintiffs need not prove anything so the fact they hasn't is hardly crippling, but we woulda' expected something for a judge to be granting a preliminary injunction. again, has been no ruling on the merits, and have not seen any real evidence offered thus far, but is too early to be complete dismissive o' missouri and louisiana efforts. as is our habit, we suggest a wait and see approach w/o drawing conclusions from simple fact the case is in the court system.

the restrict act is so not what key suggests, but it is vague to the point o' almost certain being an unconstitutional auto fail, even with the current Court. "dubbed the Patriot Act 2.0"? is like trump's "many people say."  the act applies to "any foreign government or foreign nongovernment person engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States or security and safety of United States persons."  also, those foreign adversaries need be engaged in activities which "pose undue or unacceptable risk." for the act to be triggered. what constitutes undue or unacceptable risk?  "The RESTRICT Act only has the power to mitigate extremely high-risk actions – like sabotaging U.S. tech, catastrophically impacting infrastructure, or interfering in our federal elections." restrict doesn't give the secretary the power to censor just any chinese, north korean, cuban, iranian or venezuelan content. is also no private citizen criminalization function so making the comparison to Patriot Act is based on either ignorance or willful misrepresentation. choose.

next.

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

[uuuhhii]

what is wrong with twitter

heard now they are using a generic letter as logo that everyone can just slap on whatever they want

that could be as fun as those fake blue checkmark account were a few month ago

[Keyrock]

All Your Banks Are Belong To Elon

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Of course the most divorced man in the world rebranded his company to X corp.

[Keyrock]

Elon stole the old X Window System logo

Edited July 25, 2023 by Keyrock

[uuuhhii]

might as well name it lex corp

does being evil megacorp ironically some new trend