American Politics

[PVMonger]

Since Repubs seem to love conspiracy theories (like the 2020 presidential election was stolen, Chinese thermostats changed votes from Trump to Biden, Jewish space lasers cause forest fires, etc) they ought to chew on this: In September of 2019, the one-term, twice-impeached, twice-indicted, former-guy let funding run out for PREDICT, the USAID project tasked with predicting the viruses that had the potential to turn into pandemics. Several months later, COVID appeared. Coincidence? Could be. It is at least as likely as Hunter Biden's laptop being fruitful.

[John Clayton]

This is the reason I am against both sides of the political spectrum in USA, bcos people and views like this have been shut down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-5r0rDzynw

How exactly has this person been "shut down"? He has 1. 2 M subscribers on Youtube. How are his (kooky, conspiritorial) views being suppressed? And by whom?

[EihTooms]

The federal rate went from 35% to 21%. That's a 40% reduction. We went from the highest corporate income tax rate (state + federal) in the developed world to the middle of the pack. That's not piddling. The corporate cut and other provisions in the TCJA like the GILTI tax on foreign earnings of USA Companies, were badly needed to encourage our companies to add jobs and investment in the USA instead of other countries. And this last fiscal year tax receipts on corporate income were close to an all time high! Thank you President Trump, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and all the other Republican Congressmen who voted for the TCJA!

The failure of major corporate or top marginal tax rate cuts to contribute much if anything to the economy, much less "create jobs" in any meaningful way, has been well known and documented since forever.

Profits Without Prosperity

https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity

Why Dont Jobs and Corporate Profits Match Up?

https://business.time.com/2011/06/03...fits-match-up/

Searching for supply-side effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/s...-and-jobs-act/

These latest Repub Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts were no exception to that repeated and utterly predictable result.

Yes, thank you so-called president Trump, Paul Ryan, Moscow Mitch McConnell and all the other Republican Congressmen who voted for the TCJA! But let's not leave out a big thank you to Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, whose similar agenda with their wonderful tax policies all produced similar Great Repub Depressions, Great Repub Recessions, Great Repub Skyrocketing Unemployment Rates, Great Repub Job Losses and zero sustained boom times, historic expansions or historic sustained job gains.

[JustTK]

This is the reason I am against both sides of the political spectrum in USA, bcos people and views like this have been shut down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-5r0rDzynw

[Tiny 12]

But perhaps the real beauty of that chess move/stratagem (we'll call it, the Prigozhin gambit), was brilliant in a way, so much so, that it perhaps had the desired effect, without having to march all the way to Moscow.

To the world watching, it exposed Putin for the the coward, weakened and frightened "strongman", that he really is and provided the necessary chink in the armour, that all the circling sharks, need to finished the job.

It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Will Prigozhin survive the next 30 days? It is amazing that he advanced as far as he did with no resistance from anyone except the Air Force. Ironically, some believe the head of the Air Force, Surovikin, and some other generals were in on the scheme or at least aware of it, which Prigozhin had been planning for weeks. He supposedly had to accelerate the time line when word leaked of his plans to oust the heads of the military. I don't remember where I read this, but it was coming from American government sources.

You might want to take a look at Xpartan's posts over in the Stupid Kyiv thread. While perhaps fanciful they're a good read and some of it kind of fits with your view.

[Spidy]

However I have to admit, reluctantly, that if Prigozhin had marched all the way into Moscow and taken control, you'd look pretty damn smart. Or psychic.

But perhaps the real beauty of that chess move/stratagem (we'll call it, the Prigozhin gambit), was brilliant in a way, so much so, that it perhaps had the desired effect, without having to march all the way to Moscow.

To the world watching, it exposed Putin for the the coward, weakened and frightened "strongman", that he really is and provided the necessary chink in the armour, that all the circling sharks, need to finished the job.

[Tiny 12]

Very soon it'll be a failed state.

However I have to admit, reluctantly, that if Prigozhin had marched all the way into Moscow and civil war broke out, you'd look pretty damn smart. Or psychic.

[Tiny 12]

Yes, non-lethal assistance after the non-provoked Russia's invasion of Crimea and Donbass. That cowardice has come back to bite us in the ass because if we had armed Ukraine to the teeth, the February 24 wouldn't have happened.

Arm Ukraine to the teeth before February 24? Yeah, confirm Putin's paranoia, execute the Cuban missile crisis in reverse, risk World War III, that's the ticket!

Indisputably, no less! The first sentence in your link says it is a disputed referendum. The article goes on listing numerous issues with this so-called referendum. Did you even read it?

But sure, why not advocate a so-called "referendum" held under the guidance of Russian armed forces and intelligence agencies.

You well know from my earlier posts, including the correction, that I was referring to post referendum polls, conducted by western polling organizations like Gallup.

Read:

Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says "No".

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-fr...bachev-says-no

TL; DR.

NO, Baker has never ever, ever, ever, ever, but wait, let me repeat once again -- ever -- promised Gorbachev or anyone else that NATO wouldn't expand eastward.

And did I fucking say NEVER?

Whatever they were discussing was in the terms "what if". No promises were given. Ever!

Here is the interview with Gorbachev. Will that be enough for you to stop this nonsense?

https://www.rbth.com/international/2...lls_40673.html

I'm confused. You want me to read a link that you say is so long you didn't read it?

Where did I or my link say that Baker promised Gorbachev anything? Where did I even mention Baker? The words we used were assurance and commitment. YOUR link quotes Gorbachev using the same word, assurance:

"The decision for the USA And its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. ".

Here's Gorbachev in 2008:

The Americans promised that Nato wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-Cold-War.html

Here's another quote, from Gorbachev, from 2009:

Kohl, US Secretary of State James Baker and others assured me that NATO would not move an inch east. The Americans didn't stick to that, and the Germans didn't care. Maybe they even rubbed their hands at how well the Russians were ripped off. What did it bring? It's just that the Russians no longer trust Western promises.

https://www.bild.de/politik/2009/bil...4098.bild.html

The assurances about NATO enlargement didn't just come from Baker and weren't directed solely to Gorbachev on the Russian side. They also came from George H. W. Bush, Helmut Kohl, Robert Gates, and others. See my prior link to the National Security Archive / George Washington University link.

You'll undoubtedly find a lot of neocons and Russia hawks and overly legalistic types who agree with you. More historians would probably come down on my side.

I could rant and rant about your hypocrisy (Russia and her proxies have KILLED the economy of Donbass in the last 9 years; it's one ghost town after another now), but since you don't insert "indisputably" I'll let it slip.

Here's an article from the strongly pro-Ukraine Kyiv Post in November, 2019:

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7557

At that point in time, only 5.1% of people living in Russia-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions wanted Ukraine to regain control over the territories under the old terms. Fifty-one percent wanted a union with Russia and another 13.4% wanted accession to Russia with special status.

Philosophically, I don't believe a federal government run by people like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and AOC should impose Green-New-Deal-Like legislation on Texas, if Texas doesn't want it. And Texas governor Greg Abbott shouldn't impose restrictions on abortion on Austin, if Austinites don't want that. Same principal. Since you seem inclined to use the "f" word for emphasis, I shall too. Let the people do what they fucking want. If Crimeans and people in occupied Donbas (pre-2022) want to be part of Russia anyway, why not encourage the Ukrainians to make that part of a solution to this madness?

All Russia's GDP is in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Russia is a 3rd world country everywhere outside a few large cities. Very soon it'll be a failed state. Every part of Russia-occupied territory in Ukraine is a hot mess, and it was a mess long before the war started.

Malarkey. See the GDP figures from 2018 from this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...GDP_per_capita

Russian nominal GDP per capita was 11,290 USD. Moscow oblast has a population of about 8. 5 million and Leningrad 1. 7 million. The population of Russia is 143 million. Exclude Moscow and Leningrad, do the math, and nominal GDP only drops from 11,290 USD / person to 10,595/ per person, still two or three times Ukraine's. As to "Very soon (Russia will) be a failed state," that's not likely.

They have? Well, FDR wasn't anti-war when the choice was to fight Hitler or let him have his fun. Maybe Democrats know what wars are worth fighting and what wars are unnecessary like Iraq. I wonder if you remember the administration that started that war.

I'm a semi-pacifist. If Americans had viewed the world like I do, we wouldn't have gotten into World War I, the Vietnam War or the Iraq War. So what I wrote, that Democrats are somewhat more anti-war than Republicans, was a compliment to Democrats from my perspective.

Since you bring up Hitler, if he'd had 6000 nuclear warheads, many pointed at the USA, when he was backed up against a wall in his bunker in Berlin during the final days of WWII, do you think he would have used them? You appear to view Putin as irrational, so I don't know why this isn't a concern to you. Maybe you should be more worried about this possibility than I am. I view him as rational, nationalistic, and paranoid.

If Russia had pumped $100 billion into support for Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush/Obama/Trump war on terror, would you have said Russia was doing the right thing?

[Tiny 12]

And, at which point, so much for any phantom or perceived net economic benefit to anyone of that piddling tax cut.

The federal rate went from 35% to 21%. That's a 40% reduction. We went from the highest corporate income tax rate (state + federal) in the developed world to the middle of the pack. That's not piddling. The corporate cut and other provisions in the TCJA like the GILTI tax on foreign earnings of USA Companies, were badly needed to encourage our companies to add jobs and investment in the USA instead of other countries. And this last fiscal year tax receipts on corporate income were close to an all time high! Thank you President Trump, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and all the other Republican Congressmen who voted for the TCJA!

[EihTooms]

I wouldn't vote for Trump for dog catcher, let alone president Tooms. Nor would I vote for Biden.

Then you might as well vote directly for Trump. With the cactus, tumbleweed, rattlesnake and outhouse Red State Repub-advantaged Electoral College election rigging in place, any vote not cast or not cast for a Dem more often than not ultimately helps a Repub win. But you knew that already.

But yes, I admire some of Trump's policies and actions more than Elvis and Cali Guy put together. For example, the changes in the corporate tax in the TCJA that he signed into law. And the way he pushed approval of the COVID vaccines through the FDA. And Operation Warp speed. Contrast to the abysmal failure of the Biden administration in supporting COVID testing during the Omicron wave and in doing something about the extreme shortage of many cancer drugs right now. Biden's FDA shut down our main supplier of cisplatin and carboplatin. People are dying as a result. President Trump never would have let that happen. Yeah he may have sponsored the occasional super spreader event. But nobody's perfect.

So-called president Trump's decisions contrary to all expert warnings not to do something so stupid and dangerous in 2018 and 2019 not only let Trump's Pandemic happen but his 2020 year long dismissal of its spread as a "HOAX", mocking known and proven mitigation measures and lies about how it was already disappearing and disappearing without a vaccine so nobody needed to bother wasting time and money inventing one or taking one made sure with absolute certainty that it would be as historically damaging and economically disastrous as it was.

But you knew that already too.

And, at which point, so much for any phantom or perceived net economic benefit to anyone of that piddling tax cut.

[Tiny 12]

I wouldn't vote for Trump for dog catcher, let alone president Tooms. Nor would I vote for Biden. But yes, I admire some of Trump's policies and actions more than Elvis and Cali Guy put together. For example, the changes in the corporate tax in the TCJA that he signed into law. And the way he pushed approval of the COVID vaccines through the FDA. And Operation Warp speed. Contrast to the abysmal failure of the Biden administration in supporting COVID testing during the Omicron wave and in doing something about the extreme shortage of many cancer drugs right now. Biden's FDA shut down our main supplier of cisplatin and carboplatin. People are dying as a result. President Trump never would have let that happen. Yeah he may have sponsored the occasional super spreader event. But nobody's perfect.

[Paulie97]

The conservative stacked Supreme Court has in a 6-3 decision rejected the "independent state legislature theory," an unconstitutional angle used by MAGAs to try and steal the 2020 election. It's based on a misreading of Article 1 of the Constitution that reads, "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof. " Looks like MAGAs will still have to win the old fashioned way, at the ballot box.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...court-rejects/

All the major news outlets are covering this so take your pick. The bottom line? State legislatures DO NOT have exclusive and unlimited power in setting the rules for national elections. As a consequence state court decisions in the context of Covid which allowed mail in ballot provisions were perfectly valid. There's other implications, especially in matters of district gerrymandering that gives us a better outlook going forward.

[Elvis 2008]

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...ion-bombshells

Globalists now seek:

1) Biden out on health grounds.

2) Hunter out with him faded into obscurity after his plea deal.

3) Trump locked up or disqualified.

4) RFK Jr marginalised like Bernie Sanders was.

5) A Gavin Newsome Vs Ron DeSantis presidential race.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[EihTooms]

Whether COVID 19 came from a lab leak, from gain of function research, and / or the Wuhan market is indeed not settled, and as you say various USA government agencies disagree about the source.

Some evidence came out earlier this year that supports the theory that the transmission of COVID-19 to humans was through animals at the Wuhan market. See.

https://www.science.org/content/arti...sing-sequences

If this theory is correct, it points to a Chinese coverup, of the origin of COVID. The Chinese CDC acquired samples from stalls of the Wuhan market between January 1, 2020 and March 2, 2020. They submitted papers that said the samples that tested positive for the COVID virus contained human genetic material, but no DNA from animals. Furthermore, they concluded that the animals at the marketplace probably weren't the origin of COVID.

Fast forward to 2023. On March 4, Florence Debarre, a French evolutionary biologist, randomly came across a previously unknown sequence of data from the samples collected at the Wuhan market, while doing other research, on the GISAID virology database. The data had been posted there by Chinese researchers, probably in order to satisfy requirements to get their research published in a journal. Based on her analysis, some samples from the Wuhan market that tested positive for COVID did contain animal DNA, from raccoon dogs, bamboo rats, palm civets, and other animals.

What happens next? Well, the data mysteriously disappears from the GISAID database. It's removed, at the request of the submitter.

So why did the data disappear? Well, at one time the Chinese military was pushing the idea that the USA developed the virus and was using it as a weapon. And China also claimed it shut down all its wet markets, where live animals were sold. Neither of those is very compatible with the idea that COVID 19 was initially transmitted to humans at the Wuhan market.

Anyway, Debarre's theory is consistent with JustTK's belief that the Chinese government bears some responsibility for the pandemic, by engaging in a cover up. The Chinese initially reported an outbreak of pneumonia, with no deaths, in late December, 2019 and early January, 2020. The data they provided to the World Health Organization caused the WHO to state there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission on January 22, 2020. The Chinese knew better. On the same day, January 22, they announced a quarantine of the Wuhan area. If the Chinese hadn't been involved in a cover up, perhaps the world could have responded better and fewer lives would have been lost. Or maybe not. The reproduction rate of the virus was pretty high -- as many as 6.5 new infections were generated by each infectious person, according to estimates by researchers. It must be hard to prevent the spread of something like that. See

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7074654/

Debarre's theory is not consistent with your and JustTK's belief that the USA Government bears responsibility for the worldwide pandemic. It's not reasonable to expect that a president Hillary Clinton would have somehow shut down the Wuhan market prior to 2020, or otherwise caused the USA to respond quickly enough to prevent a pandemic, when the Chinese were doing their best to cover it up. Remember, while the first few COVID-19 cases in the USA may have come from China, the pandemic initially spread from China to Europe, and then from Europe to the USA.

Seriously, Tiny. I have never seen anyone work so hard to sidestep, dismiss and ignore the most blatantly obvious incomparable World Leader contribution made by Trump in making sure the initial spread developed into a Pandemic regardless where or how it started.

The World expected China to engage in cover ups of that kind. That is what they do. That is why we had agents stationed in those labs, in order to alert responsible officials at the earliest possible time rather than wait until whatever was spreading around in China got so bad even the Chinese could not cover it up anymore.

A President Hillary Clinton could not have prevented a Pandemic from developing by the time China's cover up was no longer possible in the face of so many covered up infection cases? LOL. Hey, no kidding. And neither could a so-called president Trump. Obviously.

But, of course, that utterly misses, ignores and misdirects from the unavoidable fact of Trump's incomparable contribution in removing those agents against all expert warnings not to do something so stupid and dangerous in the first place so as to allow China free reign to engage in a cover up.

How about this; I will even concede that a so-called president Trump could have and indeed might have moved to prevent or at least far more quickly and effectively responded to the earliest possible cases alerts if only that same so-called president Trump had not so stupidly and dangerously removed all the "anti China cover up" agents assigned to that job 5 months earlier. We don't even need to compare him to a Dem in that regard.

Who knows, maybe Roger Stone would have gotten wind of those earliest alerts and decide preventing a historic worldwide economic and health disaster would look nice on Trump's bio instead him having contributed more to creating one than any other individual on the planet and he would have had one his famous meetings with him where he fools big dumb Trump into thinking Stone's idea was something he thought up himself.

[Tiny 12]

U.S. intelligence agencies remain divided over likely Covid origin, report shows

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/24/us-i...ndroidappshare

Now, if only there had been some Pandemic Prevention and Response agents in that lab in November 2019 to monitor and report those first cases to the world so immediate action could have been taken to prevent or at least greatly delay its development into a Pandemic until effective vaccines had been invented, distributed and administered throughout the world. Word is just a 2-3 month heads up would have made all the difference.

I hear such agents were fully funded and maintained there during the Obama Administration. I wonder what happened to them after that.

Lololol.

Whether COVID 19 came from a lab leak, from gain of function research, and / or the Wuhan market is indeed not settled, and as you say various USA government agencies disagree about the source.

Some evidence came out earlier this year that supports the theory that the transmission of COVID-19 to humans was through animals at the Wuhan market. See.

https://www.science.org/content/arti...sing-sequences

If this theory is correct, it points to a Chinese coverup, of the origin of COVID. The Chinese CDC acquired samples from stalls of the Wuhan market between January 1, 2020 and March 2, 2020. They submitted papers that said the samples that tested positive for the COVID virus contained human genetic material, but no DNA from animals. Furthermore, they concluded that the animals at the marketplace probably weren't the origin of COVID.

Fast forward to 2023. On March 4, Florence Debarre, a French evolutionary biologist, randomly came across a previously unknown sequence of data from the samples collected at the Wuhan market, while doing other research, on the GISAID virology database. The data had been posted there by Chinese researchers, probably in order to satisfy requirements to get their research published in a journal. Based on her analysis, some samples from the Wuhan market that tested positive for COVID did contain animal DNA, from raccoon dogs, bamboo rats, palm civets, and other animals.

What happens next? Well, the data mysteriously disappears from the GISAID database. It's removed, at the request of the submitter.

So why did the data disappear? Well, at one time the Chinese military was pushing the idea that the USA developed the virus and was using it as a weapon. And China also claimed it shut down all its wet markets, where live animals were sold. Neither of those is very compatible with the idea that COVID 19 was initially transmitted to humans at the Wuhan market.

Anyway, Debarre's theory is consistent with JustTK's belief that the Chinese government bears some responsibility for the pandemic, by engaging in a cover up. The Chinese initially reported an outbreak of pneumonia, with no deaths, in late December, 2019 and early January, 2020. The data they provided to the World Health Organization caused the WHO to state there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission on January 22, 2020. The Chinese knew better. On the same day, January 22, they announced a quarantine of the Wuhan area. If the Chinese hadn't been involved in a cover up, perhaps the world could have responded better and fewer lives would have been lost. Or maybe not. The reproduction rate of the virus was pretty high -- as many as 6.5 new infections were generated by each infectious person, according to estimates by researchers. It must be hard to prevent the spread of something like that. See

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7074654/

Debarre's theory is not consistent with your and JustTK's belief that the USA Government bears responsibility for the worldwide pandemic. It's not reasonable to expect that a president Hillary Clinton would have somehow shut down the Wuhan market prior to 2020, or otherwise caused the USA to respond quickly enough to prevent a pandemic, when the Chinese were doing their best to cover it up. Remember, while the first few COVID-19 cases in the USA may have come from China, the pandemic initially spread from China to Europe, and then from Europe to the USA.