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Everything posted by bolverk
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I didn't read this in TFG's voice for once. Instead, it was that guy from SNL reading this as a monologue. Somebody quick! Go grab him from wherever he's vacationing and drag his into the studio to tape this now.
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Right. You still need a foil, an opponent, someone to hate, etc. So, you've got to be interesting to gain attention, and then you define yourself by identifying your enemy, and I think psychologically it's a lot easier for folks to hate the weak, disadvantaged, or different. So, what the GQP does is build up these groups as some supposed threat to the status quo and give permission to punch down and feel good about hating these groups. The Dems have a more difficult challenge: empowering people to "punch up" against those who hold the advantage. While these opponents are widely distrusted (and occasionally hated), you've got to inspire folks to muster up the courage to actually stand up to the powerful, and I think most people aren't really comfortable with that. It requires putting yourself and what you have on the line. There's risk. Hating the weak, and acting on that weak doesn't require shit, especially if a permission structure is in place that allows people to act on that bully impulse. And, as has been frequently stated, Trump has almost single-handedly permitted Americans to be their worst selves. So, for us progressives, liberals, moderates, and even right-of-center, old-school conservatives (never Trumpers), it's going to take a singular personality who can draw eyes, grab attention, and encourage people to stand up to the powerful and fight back. And that person is going to be immediately recognized as a threat and labelled by the media as a radical revolutionary who could topple the social and economic order, which is going to make a lot of folks a bit uncomfortable. But I am convinced that's what it's going to take. Fire up the folks to fight back. Fuck the labels Fuck the billionaires Fuck the fascists Fuck the fear Fight
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The "be interesting" part of that is what @Bozo_Casanova has argued recently, stating that it's more important than the actual policies.
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Username toootally checks out.
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Sure, fine, no problem with that. I'd just like to hear from his critics, who say they'll abandon the party because of people like him, what the actual fuck is wrong with this Mamedi character. What has he said or proposed that tweeks folks so much?
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So, I'll assume your concern is about optics, perception, and/or the label, because you just said it's not about proposed policies or anything else. It's simply that the socialism "brand" turns you off, and you presume you feel like you're speaking for a bloc of moderates who'll sit out the elections because of that label scaring them (and you) off. Does the same kind of toxicity that affects the socialism brand that you say will poison the Democrats' chances of winning back either branch of Congress (even though the vast majority of its candidates aren't) extend to Republicans when the head of their party is called a racist, authoritarian, dictator, or fascist and just about the entire political party unquestioningly follows his lead? I mean, we're not yet six months into this presidency, and it's pretty hard NOT to label them that based on everything that's happened. So, you're conundrum is that you can't be motivated to vote against actual, real, honest-to-god fascism where people (even US citizens) are being kidnapped by masked goons sending people to foreign gulags without due process and the regime is ignoring court orders while also giving away every bit of our personal private data to a Elon or Palantir because you're so turned off by the label of "socialism," even though the majority of Democratic candidates aren't actual socialists but really just want equality, environmental protections, and better healthcare and education for Americans. Is that really your stance?
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Pretend I don't know anything about the guy, which ain't that far from the truth. I haven't followed the primary at all beyond what I've read over the last week in this thread and the Democratic Party one. Yes, I subscribe to the NYTimes, but I skim past those articles for national and international news, and I don't watch teevee news. It's a local election, albeit for a very big and very important American city. In fact, I can't even rightly recall the winner's name right at this moment unless I went to go look it up. It's Mamedi or something. So, I'm pretty much a clean slate. So, how socialist is this guy? Is he proposing that the city government take over Wall Street or something? Like, seriously, how radical is he? What turns you off so much about him specifically? You seem pretty upset by his election, and you obviously are very strongly opposed to it. If you're trying to sway my or anyone else's opinion about how he's a radical departure from the mainstream and will drag the rest of the Democratic Party down with him, you have the floor and I'm listening.
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The Bombing of Iran May Teach an Unwelcome Lesson on Nuclear Weapons Will America’s pre-emptive strike discourage other countries from pursuing a weapon — or just the opposite? It has been nearly two decades since any country elbowed its way into the club of nuclear-armed nations. President Trump, with his bombing of three Iranian nuclear installations last weekend, has vowed to keep the door shut. Whether Mr. Trump’s pre-emptive strike will succeed in doing that is hard to predict, so soon after the attack and the fragile cease-fire that has followed. But already it is stirring fears that Iran, and other countries, will draw a very different conclusion than the one the White House intended: that having a bomb is the only protection in a threatening world. The last country to get one, North Korea, has never faced such an attack. After years of defying demands to dismantle its nuclear program, it is now viewed as largely impregnable. Mr. Trump exchanged friendly letters with its dictator, Kim Jong-un, and met him twice in a fruitless effort to negotiate a deal. In Iran’s case, Mr. Trump deployed B-2 bombers just weeks after making a fresh diplomatic overture to its leaders. “The risks of Iran acquiring a small nuclear arsenal are now higher than they were before the events of last week,” said Robert J. Einhorn, an arms control expert who negotiated with Iran during the Obama administration. “We can assume there are a number of hard-liners who are arguing that they should cross that nuclear threshold.” Iran would face formidable hurdles to producing a bomb even if it made a concerted dash for one, Mr. Einhorn said, not least the knowledge that if the United States and Israel detect such a move, they will strike again. It is far from clear that Iran’s leaders, isolated, weakened and in disarray, want to provoke them. Yet the logic of proliferation looms large in a world where the nuclear-armed great powers — the United States, Russia and China — are viewed as increasingly unreliable and even predatory toward their neighbors. From the Persian Gulf and Central Europe to East Asia, analysts said, nonnuclear countries are watching Iran’s plight and calculating lessons they should learn from it. “Certainly, North Korea doesn’t rue the day it acquired nuclear weapons,” said Christopher R. Hill, who led lengthy, ultimately unsuccessful, talks with Pyongyang in 2007 and 2008 to try to persuade it to dismantle its nuclear program. The lure of the bomb, Mr. Hill said, has become stronger for America’s allies in the Middle East and Asia. Since World War II, they have sheltered under an American security umbrella. But they now confront a president, in Mr. Trump, who views alliances as incompatible with his vision of “America First.” “I’d be very careful with the assumption that there is a U.S. nuclear umbrella,” said Mr. Hill, who served as ambassador to South Korea, Iraq, Poland, and Serbia under Democratic and Republican presidents. “Countries like Japan and South Korea are wondering whether they can rely on the U.S.”
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And, yet, they were compliant when a deal was in place. But now that Bibi has revealed his hand that regime change was his intent with Operation Rising Lion, the Iranian regime now knows their days are numbered if they don't get the bomb.
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So, a question: Has Trump/the GQP just dropped the whole wall boondoggle altogether now? Because I haven't heard anyone from that side of the aisle clamor to renew construction funding, and then, of course, our state government has dropped funding for one. Are they finally done pretending that a 30-foot wall, which a 31-foot ladder can defeat, is the end-all, be-all of stemming migrant flows? And that's why, instead, they've now gone all-in on a different final solution?
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Not only that, but stupid as shit because infectious diseases don't recognize national borders, no matter how high a wall gets built.
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This is my concern, dude. Once we made the decision Israel forced us to back out of negotiations by unilaterally and preemptively bombing Iran before talks were complete, which set us on a course to end the program by kinetic means. If we didn't get the job done for whatever reason, we're more likely to continue using force to complete the mission, which means more bombing. That said, if we don't have the intestinal fortitude to drop more bombs, then it was only a half-measure and all for naught. Moreover, you've kind of convinced the Iranian regime -- if it wasn't already apparent -- that developing a nuke truly is the only path forward to saving your own skin.
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Promise of Victory Over H.I.V. Fades as U.S. Withdraws Support A new drug that gives almost complete protection against the virus was to be administered across Africa this year. Now, much of the funding for that effort is gone. This was supposed to be a breakthrough year in the 44-year-long struggle against H.I.V. Decades of research and investment produced new approaches to vaccines that were going into their first significant clinical trials. The hunt for a cure was homing in on key mechanisms to block the virus, which can lurk dormant and near-untraceable in the body for years. Most critically, a breakthrough preventive drug, lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that offers total protection from H.I.V., was to be rapidly rolled out across eastern and southern Africa. The main target: young women. About 300,000 of them were newly infected with the virus last year — half of all new infections worldwide. Every one of these plans has been derailed by the Trump administration’s slashing of foreign assistance. There is more potential than ever before to end the H.I.V. epidemic, scientists and public health experts say. But now, H.I.V. programs across Africa are scrambling to procure drugs that the United States once supplied, replace lost nurses and lab technicians, and restart shuttered programs to prevent new infections. “We imagined we would be in a different world right now,” said Dr. Leila Mansoor, a senior research scientist at the Centre for the AIDS Program of Research in Durban, South Africa. She had planned to spend 2025 analyzing data from one H.I.V. prevention trial, preparing for another and tracking how lenacapavir was transforming the epidemic — alongside colleagues testing new vaccines and cure strategies. “And instead we’re moving backwards at warp speed,” she said. Already, there are fears that H.I.V. infection rates are rising in the hardest-hit countries, but there is no clear way to measure the damage because data collection was mostly reliant on the terminated U.S. funding. Stocks of prevention drugs once supplied by the U.S. are running out across Africa.
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It was the only thing I could think of that fit. Didn't expect it to work, but I ain't gonna complain. Wordle 1,467 3/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟨⬛⬛🟨⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Connections Puzzle #745 🟦🟨🟦🟦 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪 🙂 Daily Quordle 1248 4️⃣7️⃣ 5️⃣6️⃣ m-w.com/games/quordle/ 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜🟩⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟨⬜⬜🟨⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩⬜⬜⬜ 🟩⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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I'm not sure whether you read the NYTimes article link that was posted above bor what is being reported in other outlets, including cable news, so I'm posting a relevant passage from it where there'sa little more detail: Current and former military officials had cautioned before the strike that any effort to destroy the Fordo facility, which is buried more than 250 feet under a mountain, would probably require waves of airstrikes, with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots. American warplanes did hit the same spots at least twice on Saturday. B-2s dropped 12 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs — often referred to as “bunker busters” — on Fordo, and six aboveground entry craters are now visible, according to Brian Carter, the Middle East portfolio manager at the American Enterprise Institute. But many military bomb experts believed that more than one day of strikes would be needed to complete the job. I definitely recall reading last week that experts believed it would take several waves of bombings to get the job done. Hopefully, those assessments were wrong, but this maybe wasn't sufficient. Plus, if a lot of the stuff was moved, then well I don't know.
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Who to believe? A known drunkard who speaks in bold, absolutist language like this? “Based on everything we have seen — and I’ve seen it ALL — our bombing campaign OBLITERATED Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth] said. “Our MASSIVE bombs hit EXACTLY THE RIGHT SPOT at each target and worked PERFECTLY.” Or these guys who are more cautious and careful with their language? Despite claims of the sites’ obliteration by Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth, Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has been more careful in describing the attack’s effects. “This operation was designed to severely degrade Iran’s nuclear weapons infrastructure,” General Caine said that at the Sunday news conference. The final battle damage assessment for the military operation against Iran, General Caine said on Sunday, standing next to Mr. Hegseth, was still to come. He said the initial assessment showed that all three sites “sustained severe damage and destruction.” General Caine added that it was “way too early” to assess how much of Iran’s nuclear program remained. Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the former commander of Central Command, said in an interview, that he had “a lot of confidence in the weapons systems used.” But he added: “I’m not surprised that elements survived. That’s why you do battle damage assessments, because everything can go as planned but there are still other factors.”
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I regret to inform you guys, but Big Ballz has been neutered and is no longer working for the federal government. https://www.wired.com/story/big-balls-coristine-doge-resigned-us-government/
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I watched the first couple of episodes this weekend. I wasn't sold on it at the end of the second episode because it felt a little too much like a soap opera, and I've got a bunch of other shows on my list. Ping me if you still like it after the fourth one, and I'll pick it back up.
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https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/early-us-intel-assessment-suggests-strikes-iran-did-not-destroy-nuclear-sites-2025-06-24/ WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) - An early U.S. intelligence assessment indicated that the U.S. military strikes on three of Iran's nuclear facilities last week did not destroy the core components of Tehran's nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing three people briefed on it. "This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong," CNN quoted White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt as saying.
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Genocide is genocide, no matter the ethnicity of its victims. By posting that reply, he proves he's the type of guy who -- had he been raised in early 20th-century Germany -- would've totally been on board with gassing Jews. Total sociopath, bereft of morals, and deserving of damnation. Also, dumber than a bag of hammers.
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