Blair absolutely can’t be accepted

He needs the Abe treatment

They’ll have USAF ATC come in if required. Like during the strike in 80s when Reagan took the union out back and gave it the ol’ “think about the rabbits” treatment.

Remember when people used to claim cellphones would cause a rise in brain cancer? It used to be repeated constantly in the early 2000s on “real” news channels.

Remember when “4G LTE” was going to spike cancer rates? Same for 5G.

Total clown shit. In many ways I don’t blame average hogs for believing insane shit like vaccines are bad or don’t do anything. They’ve been lied to so many times about everything else. Now we have a professionally bad liar as the health guy and Congress (democrats obviously) were last seen spinning in their chairs going “Uh, what can we do? Guess we’ll do nothing!”

I guess there will be no attempts at third parties either for mid terms or even probably for next presidential election. Everyone is just lying down in the highway and waiting for the inevitable.

Using that example, is “the war happened because Bush was there.” Popular demand did not matter.

The question then is what happens when popular demand changes and voting habits change as a result? What happens if a fairly earnest anti-imperialist is elected? Trump ran on being against wars (twice, hilariously). He correctly called Hillary a warmonger; he just sort of left out the “and I will be too.” Without a political record to hold against him it was harder, before his first term, to say “he’s definitely lying!”

My point in bringing up Trump (or Sanders putting aside his actual policies and stances and focusing on his “imagined rhetoric” ie how people regard him which is anti-imperialist) is there is clearly a not always subtle, though rarely directly addressed, undercurrent of anti-war from the American populace. Whatever their reasoning people kind of tend to not like wars if they can’t see a justification for them (that’s kind of key though obviously).

The logical next step is if people are truly against unjustifiable (to them) wars, and they elect a real anti-imperialist, and let’s say the CIA doesn’t day one just sort of make their head do a weird thing. Then the US has an anti-imperialist president. Or majority in congress. That president/congress, being actually earnestly anti-war, actually abide by the will of the people to avoid conflicts.

One could argue that hypothetical person will never be elected or they’ll get CIA/FBI popped day one, etc. The fact is though… that could happen. That person could be elected. That’s what Israel and the military industrial complex and all those who suckle on its innumerable teats fear most. They don’t care about opinion right now. They’re gonna do what they want popular opinion be damned. They care about in 5, 10, 25, 50 years down the line. All it theoretically takes is one election to quite literally vaporize Israel.

I enjoy holding the most petty of conspiratorial opinions

That sounds plausible as well. Basically anything besides “a bullet getting so close that it juuuuust barely scraped his skin.” That is possible, I just don’t believe it. He has every incentive to lie and zero to say “the doctors pulled a shard of glass out of my ear.”

Small factual correction: No proof was ever provided or produced that be was “shot” in the ear. A secret service agent told the press after the attempted shooting he had been struck in the ear by shrapnel. Potentially glass from the podium or whatever.

I just feel the need to always mention this because had someone, anyone, been shot in the ear there would be physical evidence once the wound recovered. Is his ear missing a chunk? Does it have a hole? Is he seriously trying to claim a bullet only grazed him? The far more likely outcome is what the secret service guy said at the time. I’ll be maintaining this opinion until I die. Not sure what evidence could change my mind at this point because obviously any medical or whatever reports will be influenced aka fake to support his narrative.

If AOC was the right wing of the democrats things would definitely be better. I’m not a New Yorker but if she replaced Schumer that would be a good thing for sure. Schumer has quite literally done nothing positive in his position for however long that’s been. I want to say 8-12 years. I used to wonder what that piece of shit was even doing in politics. Now I get it. He just loves Israel.

I won’t be surprised to see one of these shutdowns result in a bipartisan bill to fund arms shipments forever. None of the money is real, obviously, so the funding doesn’t ultimately matter. As long as someone eventually gets their digital dollary-doos in the form of number go up in some account then it keeps churning.

Instead of writing bills to permanently fund all existing federal programs (or whatever legal wording) until/unless that program is repealed by Congress which is how I think every other nation on earth generally operates. They’ll just continue on with the “Oh, boy! Food stamps isn’t funded! Ohhhh boy!” Every year forever.

As annoying as Torres is, Jeffries is the far more important one to boot out immediately. Schumer has to be forcefully evicted as well.

I’ll be honest though. If the proposed replacements aren’t solidly hardline anti-Israel, anti-imperialist, anti-ICE (abolition AND MORE IMPORTANTLY prosecution of every single person connected even tangentially to it), etc. then… why bother? Getting a less assholish asshole is still getting an asshole. Lesser evil stuff repeated. I find it infinitely hard to believe anyone with (D) in their title will be even close to my personal criteria above despite that stuff polling well. Especially explicitly anti-Israel. It’s got like 96% democrat voter support. You’d probably get elected just saying you’ll propose a bill yearly to carpet bomb Tel Aviv. Like that Roman senator who used to always say “Oh, just one more thing. We must destroy Carthage” or whatever. Nerds know who I mean. The famous asshole. This time for good.

Many of those listed things have been explicitly adjudicated as “free speech” by SCOTUS.

But good luck to him on arresting 70-80% of the population, I guess.

Is that the Air Force academy? Or the space nerds? I could believe junior officers in training huffing those delusions. Don’t think I’ve seen/heard of but a handful of the Hegseth phenotype. The drunken wife beating Crusader

Yeah no shit

Is this surprising to anyone really? Most people in the military, even active duty, are fairly “apolitical.” Yeah they lean slightly right all the way to far right wing, just like 99% of Americans. But they aren’t like thinking they’re all warriors for God or something.

It’s mostly underperforming young people who are in good physical health and either couldn’t find a job in the private sector or couldn’t be fucked to find one. Sign up for the military, try to position yourself in a cushy position, and do nothing while getting a paycheck.

The NG guys absolutely 100% are far less “gung ho” than the active who are already far from gung ho. NG being activated means they gotta do stuff. They didn’t sign up to do stuff! Not in the NG! They signed up to like go stack some sandbags after a bad flood. Other than that they go to trainings, get the pay, get the benefits, that’s all they want. Not to be activated and abused for the political ends of some dipshit narcissist. That means they gotta be in conflict with people. They gotta wear a uniform. They gotta travel to Portland. That’s all way too much work just so Fatass in Chief can jerk off to the handsome troops.

I always imagine how hard Xi is laughing every day when he gets a quick update on the crumbling US empire

“Shut down? Again?”

This shit happens every year and the “liberal” party just sits on their thumbs spinning in circles whistling to themselves. The republicans have explicitly said a billion times for decades that they want to shut everything down. You can only beat them by making that impossible aka pass indefinite spending bills and whatever else. Fucking morons and controlled opposition

“Ok. I’ll go hang out with the people not threatening me.”

I don’t think these idiots understand the US needs Taiwan. Not really the other way around. I think they’ve been huffing too many of their own farts.

Many people have made this argument before, so I’m not going to shittily try to re-articulate it. But basically the entire concept of what legally constitutes a genocide is one of those “good ideas” that was immediately co-opted by western powers to weaponize forever. I guess the most boiled down conclusion is “The problem isn’t that they won’t say a specific word. The problem is they deny everything which makes that word apply in the first place.”

I guess that’s where I fall on it and have for probably over a year. I don’t really care if Bernie Sanders says “it’s a genocide.” What I care about much more is Sanders saying “Israel has a right to defend itself” and then never expanding on wtf that means. Israel has zero right morally or legally to do anything to Gaza or even be inside Gaza. The same applies to the West Bank. So what exactly does he mean with that phrase? Clearly he means it’s “ok” to bomb children and civilians in Gaza as long as Israel says it’s meant to kill Hamas militants. Well, not even militants. They just say “Hamas” broadly which includes medical professionals and everyone else. He will say that’s them defending themselves. He just thinks they defended themselves… too much? There’s no real logic there. Just a phrase that requires repeating even though it’s for no one at this point. Zionists are done with your ass for even lightly criticizing their campaign of death. It doesn’t matter if you offer them conditional cover for the atrocities. They require full acceptance or you’re their enemy.

Although I hate making these statements, I will say quickly this is obviously not some sort of argument for genocide as a legal concept being thrown away. I’m just gesturing at part of the problem without offering much of a solution beyond I suppose “they should stop the political bullshit spin-jobs and just say the truth.” I think it might be beneficial for Medhi, etc. to ask “is it a genocide?” one time. Then whether they say yes or no, keep probing. “At what point was it a genocide?” “Did Israel have any legal or moral right to do a single attack in Gaza?” “Is starving an entire population ever acceptable?” “Was the siege on Gaza for decades not an act of aggression on the entire population living there?”

I don’t think someone calling it a genocide is enough I guess. I’ve seen many liberals cave and start calling it that. Yet they still remain very clear apologists for Israel and Zionism. They still hand wring and condemn Hamas. It’s victim blaming to a crazy-ass magnitude that I’ve never really seen before.

I think they’re really struggling to find that magical “out” for western imperialism broadly. Some way to condemn the evil Muslims but also say “well, this went too far.” The more honest ones know there is no way to condemn Israel but also uphold US/western imperialism. They don’t even attempt it. The others are stuck defending a genocide. They “condemn” it and then immediately explain why it has to happen. Which wraps back around into the obvious fact that if they’re defending a genocide even a little bit then that indicates they don’t believe one is happening or they think don’t actually think genocide is unacceptable across the board. This is the contradiction liberals have had ripping their brains apart for years now. There’s only two logical conclusions when they finally settle and I don’t place much faith in them landing on condemning Israel without reservation and advocating for the dissolution of Israel.

“Kill fascists”

“No, stop! We love fascists!”

Honestly glad dogs like Little Marco continue to just openly be pro-fascist at every chance. It makes it a fuck of a lot easier to say “those guys are fascists. See they keep saying it.” Despite their attempts to “make fascism cool” or whatever I don’t think it’s really worked at all. Most people understand you don’t want to be a fascist, Nazi, etc. They might not know why or what it means but they know it’s bad. Openly running to the defense of fascists, openly saying your government is anti-anti-fascist (pro-fascist or just fascist), not sure that’s gonna work out for you, big dawgs. The crypto angle was much more effective. But something something enemies, mistakes, not interrupting.

Next to his best buddies

Hell has already claimed a few of them. Rumsfeld, Powell. But the top dogs are still around. Necks totally intact to my knowledge.

Someone

Please

Be a Luigi

Had to be General Harold Greene. He got killed by an Afghan National Army guy working in cooperation with the US in Afghanistan. Not sure if this “counts” because he was an ally but not an American soldier. Also he was shot not literally fragged (like with a grenade).

The highest rank I saw killed directly by actual fragging was a major and a captain in one event. That was an American soldier killing other Americans in Vietnam. I assume it’s incredibly rare for anyone over the rank of major to be literally fragged because they won’t be staying out “in the field” with the regular soldiers the way a lieutenant or captain would be. A major would also not be near regular soldiers for the most part, not in a war scenario, so that must’ve been quite the opportunity that person took to nail a major and captain at once.

Here’s the funniest story of “purposeful friendly fire” I could find. Heinrich von Breymann he was a lieutenant colonel serving under a British officer when they were fighting to put down the American revolution (Battle of Saratoga).

From the Wikipedia article: “On 7 October 1777, Breymann’s unit was driven behind a redoubt by American troops; he grew frustrated with his own men and began attacking four soldiers with his sabre before Breymann was shot and killed by one of them.”

Lol.