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Horn Dog

Burnt Ends
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Posts posted by Horn Dog

  1. 36 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    From what I understand, that tracks with "who sucked Trump's dick the hardest."  Meaning that the only important metric of leadership for Republican voters is "how Trumpy can you be?"  And of course....nobody can beat Trump in the Trumpiness department.

    I wonder how much longer it will take the remaining supposedly "sane" GQP voters to realize that by continuing to support the GQP, they are just cult members.  Probably too long.  If they haven't figured out the obvious by now, they don't have the cognitive chops to ever reach that conclusion.

     

    25 minutes ago, tokamak said:

    I know we've been in a topsy-turvy world for a while now, but think about how strange it is that we had a primary debate and most of the candidates decided to stand around praising the front runner. And then voters polled afterward agreed with that strategy.

    It's basically the exact opposite of what normally happens during these things, and what conventional wisdom says that contenders should do.

     

    21 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

    There aren't any sane GQP voters anymore.

     

    When I think of the modern day GQP,  ironically I think of the death of JFK Jr.   He is flying in his plane in the dark thinking he is going in a straight line, but it is slowly, but ever increasingly flipping upside down.   It's just happening at a rate that is undetectable by his vestibular system which has normalized being upside down.  Now the alarms are going off saying he is losing altitude, so he is pulling back on the stick to gain altitude, but instead the plane is heading straight down.   It's the same with the GQP.  They are upside down, and so when they try to correct they are doing the very opposite of what they think they are doing.   Just like JRK Jr.  they can't see out the window but everything "feels" OK,  so they just keep on pulling back that stick.  If they had the ability to look out the window and see that your supporters are increasingly white supremist, bigots, and the hordes of the uneducated, that really should be a warning to double  check your instruments and recalibrate. 

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  2. 2 hours ago, JesusSweatDuck said:

    There are drones blowing shit up across the country already. Not sure why this would change anything other than, "the West gave them these weapons"

     

    2 hours ago, MissingInAction said:

    That is exactly why. 

    Fuck them.  Yea, we gave them some weapons, what are you (Russia) gonna do about it?   

    Is this what we are gonna do when China invades Taiwan?   We gonna play this "its not really our weapons that they are using"  B.S.?   Fuck that, yea it's our weapons, and we gave it to them to use on you, and guess what, we are gonna give them more shit to use on you as long as you insist on trying to take over others land.  And if you don't like it, come start some shit with us and we will give you something legitimate to cry about.  

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  3. 27 minutes ago, Red Five said:

    Oh no. If he has irrefutable proof of voter fraud that cost him the last election, he should definitely hold a press conference and show it to us. It would be irresponsible not to. I, for one, am really looking forward to it.

    IMG_3458.gif.bba8850f960b826d7f551e8633f3869a.gif

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  4. Awkward Americans see themselves in Ron

    https://apple.news/A6UuufwY0RF2iT-Mc6m4DgQ
     

    Spoiler

    After watching awkward videos of Ron DeSantis, Derek Guy had a horrifying realization.

    Guy, a fashion writer known as the “Menswear Guy” writer to his large following on social media, had noticed people on X, formerly known as Twitter, making fun of the Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful for throwing off weird vibes on the campaign trail. Some of these moments have been captured on video, as things tend to be during a presidential campaign: DeSantis struggling to make small talk with voters; bursting into strange paroxysms of wide-mouthed laughter; appearing to sugar-shame a child drinking an Icee at an Iowa fair.

    “What’s your name?” DeSantis asked a voter in a recent clip from a New Hampshire diner.

    “Tim,” the man responds.

    “Okay,” says DeSantis.

    In another video, from a party after the Iowa GOP’s Lincoln Dinner, DeSantis stands ramrod straight, taking gulps of beer and checking the time on his phone and telling potential voters that normally he would already be asleep.

    As he sought to connect with voters and donors, critics said DeSantis had resembled — to quote a couple of posts — “a robot put together from scrapped spare parts from Disney’s The Hall of Presidents” or “an extraterrestrial in a skin-suit trying to learn to be human.”

    But when Guy, the menswear writer, watched a video of DeSantis cycling through four different facial expressions in about three seconds during a news conference, he saw something even more disturbing.

    “Oh, God,” he remembers saying to himself. “That’s me.”

    The governor’s anti-charisma — his apparent struggles to make small talk, his propensity for letting a smile fall too quickly from his face — reminded Guy of himself at parties. Or the time he had no idea what to say after a fan of his fashion writing recognized him at a tailoring shop.

    “It was exactly like those DeSantis moments,” he said. “A normal human being would understand how to light up your face, how to engage, how to say the right thing. But DeSantis doesn’t have that. And I definitely don’t have that.”

    Guy is not the only awkward American who has identified with DeSantis as he has emerged as the Awkward Candidate.

    “Like Ron DeSantis, I spend every day trying to act like a human,” said Michelle Witherspoon, an environmental consultant in California.

    “Every time I watch the videos, I cringe,” said Kate Ecke, a therapist from New Jersey who recently forgot to bring identification when picking up her child at summer camp and subsequently “really weirded out” a counselor by offering to show her C-section scar as proof of motherhood. “But I’m cringing because I’ve been that person.”

    “It’s extremely relatable to me,” said Audrey Kamena, an incoming freshman to Yale University who said she once called her high school history teacher “Mom” and still thinks “about it every night before bed.”

    Alex Whitlock, a stay-at-home dad and a “Never Trump” Republican from West Virginia, found himself relating to DeSantis after reading an article that mentioned that the governor made people uncomfortable with his “propensity to devour food during meetings.”

    “I don’t always have an appropriate sense of when to eat or not eat,” said Whitlock, who also said he rarely knows when he’s supposed to shake someone’s hand.

    There have been rare cases where the Awkward Candidate managed to make it to the White House. Richard M. Nixon’s ability to make small talk was, according to New York magazine, “a talent at which he is as naturally gifted as, say, the late Harpo Marx.” (Harpo was the one who didn’t talk.) Calvin Coolidge once said that he was “as much interested in human beings as one could possibly be, but it is desperately hard for me to show it.”

    Still, awkwardness is not the kind of relatability a politician necessarily wants. It’s safe to say the DeSantis campaign was hoping their man would be defined by attributes such as toughness or youth.

    “Before he ran for president, he was this abrasive governor, always fighting with reporters and giving off an impression of being extremely confident,” said Joseph Coll, a native Floridian who is now in Arizona getting his law degree. “Now he’s like a sad puppy, and it’s surprising that he actually feels relatable to me.”

    Before law school, Coll used to work as a recruiter for a health-care company, a job that often required him to try to “be normal” in front of potential clients.

    “I was terrible at it,” he said. “I definitely came across as a DeSantis.”

    If you’re “a DeSantis,” the campaign trail is no place to hide it. The never-ending rope line can test the skills of even the most socially adept politician, let alone somebody who doesn’t naturally light up a room.

    “Someone asked me the other day, ‘Is it true that Jeb would hand out turtles?’” said Tim Miller, a former spokesman for Jeb Bush, another Florida governor turned presidential candidate. “It was true! He’d hand out these toy turtles as an awkward way of trying to connect with people.”

    Bush could be open about his struggles with the “performative” nature of running for president, Miller said, admitting publicly that he considered himself an introvert. “It landed with certain people,” Miller said. “But in this political era, it certainly isn’t a benefit.”

    Case in point: Miller says the moment that has come to represent Bush’s failed effort — his famous plea for a New Hampshire town hall audience to “Please clap” — was actually “pretty well received” in the room as a self-deprecating joke. But when the moment got clipped and shared endlessly on social media, it was weaponized against his so-called low-energy campaign.

    A candidate — or at least a person — who embraces their awkwardness might be better off than one who doesn’t, according to Henna Pryor, author of the forthcoming book “Good Awkward: How to Embrace the Embarrassing and Celebrate the Cringe to Become the Bravest You.” Pryor said that, when researching her book, she found studies that showed a “direct correlation” between expressing awkwardness and the perception that a person is “trustworthy, likable, more generous and, surprisingly, more confident.”

    But for that to happen, she said, the awkward person actually needs to “acknowledge the cringe.”

    “His problem is he never owns it and names it,” Pryor said of DeSantis. “If he did, it would highly improve his likability.”

    When it comes to political people such as DeSantis, the question of likability has to do with a lot more than how deftly they “own” their awkwardness. There are plenty of people who both relate to DeSantis and find him detestable for his politics.

    “If I shared his politics, maybe I would find it a little more likable,” said Guy, the menswear writer.

    “If his polices weren’t so abhorrent, it would be more endearing,” said Coll, the law student.

    “It’s all part of what I consider a negative personality,” said Whitlock, the Never Trumper stay-at-home dad. “I can’t tell where the awkwardness that I relate to ends and the malicious figure begins.”

    “Given the decision between voting for him and getting a Pap smear from a girl I went to high school with,” said Ecke, the therapist, “hand me the paper gown.”

    Even potential supporters such as Kamena, the soon-to-be college freshman, worry that DeSantis’s struggles might be a problem for him.

    “Sometimes it gives me a little hope that I can be in public policy someday and be given a little bit of grace,” she said. “Though maybe he isn’t receiving much grace …”

    He is receiving plenty of ridicule. The rival Trump campaign — who reportedly paid a plane to fly a sign that read, “Be likable, Ron!”— and the campaign stumbles have become a running gag for the satirical newspaper the Onion, whose headlines include, “Poll Finds Ron DeSantis Candidate Voters Could Most Imagine Drinking Beer Alone.”

    The Awkward Candidate label might prove hard to shed, once it sticks. This summer, DeSantis made headlines for the kind of slightly off-putting exchange that probably would have passed under the radar if not for his reputation for maladroit chitchat. While visiting a fair in Iowa, he asked a child what she was drinking. She told him it was an Icee.

    “That’s probably a lot of sugar, huh?” he responded. “Good to see ya.”

    “I feel like there have been 800,000 times that I’ve said the equivalent of that to someone,” said Scott Shapiro, a Yale professor who dislikes DeSantis’s politics. “And while I understand where he’s coming from and can relate, it only confirms my feeling that I should not run for president.”

     

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  5. IMG_3429.gif.80df4890b4ed2e5ea78a733932f4da68.gif

    unfortunetly he is actually not a digrace to his district nor the state of Ohio, but rather a perfect representative of its citizens, so sorry Tammie, its gonna take a bit than some treason to bring him down.

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  6. Spoiler

    HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — At the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, a major hub of the U.S. military’s space and missile programs, a key officer is supposed to be leaving his post for a critical new job leading the agency responsible for America’s missile defense. But now Maj. Gen. Heath Collins’s promotion is on hold — creating disruptions up and down the chain of command. His absence means that a rear admiral normally stationed at Redstone overseeing missile testing is instead temporarily filling in as acting director of the Missile Defense Agency. Meanwhile, the brigadier general tapped to replace Collins is also stuck, forced to extend his assignment at Space Systems Command in Los Angeles rather than starting work in Huntsville. Collins’s elevation is one of 301 military promotions for jobs around the world currently blocked by the state’s U.S. senator, Tommy Tuberville (R), who since February has been using his power to single-handedly place “holds” on all Pentagon appointments that require Senate confirmation. Tuberville’s goal, he says, is to force the military to end its policy of paying for service personnel and family stationed in states with abortion bans to travel to states where the procedure is legal if they need care. The ripple effect up and down the chain of command from the delayed promotion of one senior leader at one installation offers a vivid illustration of what critics say is the deepening fallout from Tuberville’s gambit to use his Senate “hold” power to wage a culture-war campaign over abortion policy.
    It has undermined the military’s long-term planning, several officials and retired generals or other veterans living near the arsenal contend, derailed the training of future leaders in highly specialized fields and disrupted the lives of military families — all of which stands to worsen the Pentagon’s personnel retention struggles, his opponents claim. [See where Sen. Tommy Tuberville is blocking 301 military promotions] If Tuberville does not budge, the number of positions blocked from Senate confirmation is set to rise to 650 by the end of the year, according to the Defense Department — a majority of the military’s 852 flag and general officer positions. Tuberville, who declined to comment, has said the Defense Department’s policy violates a federal ban on funding for abortions and that he does not believe the holds are affecting military readiness. “I hate to have to do this. But they’re going to listen,” Tuberville, a former college football coach, told the Catholic News Agency last month. “I’m not changing my mind.” About the impacts at Redstone, Tuberville spokesman Steven Stafford said in an email: “No one has been a stronger advocate for Huntsville than Coach.”

    Collins is one of four senior leaders either currently stationed at Redstone Arsenal or scheduled to transfer to the Alabama base whose Senate confirmations have been held up by Tuberville’s hold. The Washington Post has identified at least six more service members who have had to temporarily change or extend roles, or whose career progression has been frozen, because of those four Redstone holds.

    Tuberville’s hold is “unprecedented,” Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said in an interview, adding that it is playing out in “unexpected and unhelpful ways.” Other senators have previously blocked military promotions but an official said none before had lasted this long. Sabrina Singh, deputy Pentagon press secretary, said that the military needs “tested leaders who are fully empowered to make tough decisions” and that the hold “undermines our military readiness.” The Senate must approve the appointments of the most senior military leaders. Generally, votes are held on large numbers of promotions in batches, which under Senate rules requires that each group receive the unanimous consent of the chamber, allowing any one senator to hold up the process. The Senate majority leader could get around Tuberville’s hold by bringing the nominations to the floor one-by-one but doing so could require devoting two to three days for each vote and prevent the Senate from conducting other business. Such a process would take months, Democrats say. Despite the local impacts, Tuberville faces little political pressure to withdraw the holds at home in Alabama, where Republicans are widely supportive of his antiabortion stance. Earlier this month, the state Republican Party’s Executive Committee voted 99 to 1 to adopt a resolution supporting his position. “Tuberville is not just standing for a pro-life principle. He’s also defending taxpayers who are having their money misused,” said John Wahl, chairman of the Alabama Republican Party.
    Redstone Arsenal, named after northern Alabama’s red soil, was established in 1941 as a war chemicals plant with an ordnance facility next door. After World War II, the Army found itself in need of land for developing for a new kind of military system, rockets, and brought to Huntsville a team of German scientists led by Wernher von Braun. In Huntsville, he went on to develop the rocket that launched Apollo 11 to the moon.

    Today, the 60-square-mile base is home to the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, much of the workforce of the Missile Defense Agency, as well as NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and several other air- and space-focused military organizations and contractors. The base is dotted with historic rockets, including von Braun’s V2 and a Saturn 1B, one of the family of Apollo launch vehicles. It is still an active test site for rockets engines, javelins and explosives. According to the Arsenal’s public affairs office, 45,000 civilians including contractors work on the base every day, as well as 800 military personnel, including a number of higher ranking officers responsible for directing operations. One of those leaders is Collins, who from Redstone currently oversees the Missile Defense Agency’s ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, positioned to counter potential threats from North Korea and Iran. He was nominated to assume command of the whole agency in May. With an annual budget of around $11 billion, the agency is responsible for developing, testing and procuring the country’s defenses against ballistic missiles. The agency has not gone without a Senate-confirmed director since its creation in 2002, said Singh, the Pentagon deputy press secretary. Without a full three-star general at the top — as Collins will be after his promotion — the agency’s credibility in military planning and ability to set long-term strategy will suffer, Wormuth said. The rear admiral acting as director was only recently promoted to one-star.
     

    “Rank matters,” she said. A spokesperson for the agency said Collins was not available to comment.
     

    Another Redstone leader awaiting senate confirmation is Col. David Philips, who is scheduled to become a top Army aviation officer, responsible for developing new airborne vehicles, such as helicopters, and supporting existing ones. His job too is being filled on an acting basis. Vincent Boles, a retired major general who now coaches contractors at Redstone Arsenal, suggested that having an acting leader would hamper the office from plotting a new long-term vision. He said he had performed military roles on an acting basis during his career and would always question for “how long.” “Am I going to make massive strategic decisions that make a significant impact over the next 20 to 30 years?” he said. “Or do I just want to keep the trains running on time?”
     

    Another Redstone organization impacted by the holds is the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, responsible for the soldiers who defend the United States against potential intercontinental ballistic missile attacks. Army Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey was nominated in January to take over the command but with his promotion on hold, Lt. Gen. Daniel Karbler has postponed a planned retirement to remain in charge. “I’m going to continue to serve, continue to give it my all and set a good example for everybody to follow,” said Karbler, who did not otherwise comment on his predicament. In the Redstone world of space and missile defense, leaders have received highly technical training and only two or three are groomed for top roles — meaning there are fewer with proper qualifications to fill vacancies, said a Senate Committee on Armed Services staffer.
     

    To get such an officer ready for top roles, Wormuth said their career path is plotted “years in advance.” “It has ripple effects all the way down the line, especially on mid-grade officers such as colonels,” said a senior leader of the Space and Missile Defense Command who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to be quoted. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a retired Army officer and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said younger officers may now fear missing out the chance to gain key experience. He added that some may question why they should stay if they are now “just a political pawn,” given many will have “no problems walking out of the military getting very significant jobs.” In Huntsville, where military and space industries are key to the local economy, Tuberville’s stand has drawn much criticism — but also plenty of support. Concern over the military hold issue has been compounded in recent days by a decision by President Biden to keep the headquarters of the U.S. Space Command in Colorado, rather than move it to Huntsville as President Donald Trump had announced shortly before leaving office. Some in town suspect the decision was intended to punish Tuberville, which administration officials have denied. Jimmy Sam, an Army veteran who lives in Huntsville, said he thought Tuberville’s blocking of military-career progression would be unpalatable to personnel stationed in the state. “If you’re from Alabama, your own senator didn’t vote for you to get promoted,” he said.
     

    But at the Alabama Republican Party’s summer dinner in Montgomery earlier this month, where Trump was the star speaker, many said they back Tuberville.

    The senator should hold out for “as long as it takes,” said Edward Bridges, 69, a Huntsville resident in the audience, who said the military should not be doing “social stuff.” Arthur Orr, an Alabama state senator whose district is near Redstone Arsenal, said Republican senators who do not hold the majority have “very few levers of power to use.” “That’s what Senator Tuberville is using,” he said. This week, Karbler addressed the annual the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, where fatigue-clad troops rubbed shoulders with defense contactors offering solutions such as “directed energy” technology that brings down weapons with lasers or microwaves. But, as he opened his address, the officer putting off his retirement as head of the Space and Missile Defense Command because of politics wryly alluded to his circumstance. “I’m truly excited to be with all of you here this morning,” he told the crowd, adding: “Still.”


     

    In Tuberville’s state, one base feels the effect of his military holds

  7. 22 minutes ago, Nivek said:

    So can she sue Abbott, her bosses, her bosses, and every member of the legislature for the abortion bounty and collect?   Can I?

    Now we are fuckin talking!  Maybe we can energize the Surly legal team and file a class action lawsuit representing every surly user for around $2 trillion dollars and upgrade the lounge room.

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  8. 10 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

    the only polls that matter are local to michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, arizona, georgia, and nevada. 

    polling in any other state is masturbation.

    True but I am told that Florida is a swing state and, like always,  go either way and is too close to call and therefore deserves a tremendous amount of attention and polling resources.  Also, I am also told that Texas is on the verge of some demographic tsunami and will go blue any day now!  

  9. Christie is brave in the same way a white police officer witnessing his partner beating an innocent black motorist to death decides to speak up to try to stop a murder.  Yea he is doing the right thing, but it really isn’t more than what should be expected of anyone.  He still has to bring in his false equivalency of comparing Hunter and Kush as the same thing.  Appealing to the low IQ voter and not above tellling straight lies but yea, for a GOP politician he is definitely top 0.1% in morals

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