Random Politics Thread

[The Cat]

 

[Virtual ghost]

US: What will Trump do first when he becomes president?


Some speculations on the issue.

 

[The Cat]

 

[The Cat]

 

[Lark]

I know those people are crazy. My point is that suspecting the Russians or organized MAGA behind wildfires without any proof is basically following a similar mindset.

I dont think so, there were stories about fire setters in those areas willing to take advantage of climate change for a long time, it might have been Earth First! who got attention on prime time but you scratch the surface and you can trace fairly easily connections via The Monkey Wrench Gang readers to the radical right militias who ironically get support from Russia and China as "disrupters".

Its not even conspiracy theory, its just exploiting grievances and its the oldest play there is in the KGB handbook, its bizarre to me that the people who boast all day long about being more perceptive than the average citizen are so easily duped into acting as their pawns and proxies but they really are.

Anyway, it was a day after the outbreak of the firestorms that I think I saw the first memes featuring the latest hate figure of the american right, Tom Hanks, and conspiracies about childrens bones in the ashes. So it was clear who was willing to stoke the flames, both figuratively and literally I am willing to bet.

The sad thing is that there are and were ugly things about Hollywood, nothing eyes wide shut or lizards or similar out and out garbage but the stuff exposed by Me Too, Winestein and Epstein etc.

As had proven to be the case again and again the mundane horror of what's actually happening gets easily eclipsed by the most fantastic and confabulated of lunacy. I think that's actually pretty calculated. Part of the Ruskies, and their proxies, hypernormalization and theatre of the absurd.

 

[Lark]

When I brought up QAnon, I want to be clear that I don't think any of the current MAGA leaders would want these fires or even the majority in that cult. My concern is that it would only take a small faction within that group to intentionally contribute to the devastation - whether by starting it or fanning the flames literally. Their fixation on aliens in Hollywood and the timing of the fires makes it suspect to me. There is overlap with militia groups who do have military and engineering training. I'm confused about how there are multiple fires all starting by chance, so it's not just one, but several that broke out. The guy in New Orleans was planning to ignite a bunch of pipe bombs, but crashed his vehicle before he finished.

This plane is red and I saw another news story showing a hole in a white plane, so I'll keep looking for it. Some of these might be collisions between drones taking images, but it's disturbing.

But MAGA leadership like Mike Johnson has said he wants to use it to leverage political support - to withhold FEMA funds to CA unless Newsom agrees to Republican agenda on eliminating the debt ceiling.

As a side note - this feels like a backwards universe. The Republicans want unlimited debt? I hear the words, but have zero comprehension.

I think its straight out of the KGB handbook that you exploit grievances, or fabricate ones where they dont already exist, infiltrate existing organisations where you can and radicalise as you go in the hope that at the very least theere will be a few outliers who decide to engage in Weathermen type stunts or atrocities.

Its been upscaled, refined and developed since back in the day, such as enlisting people with military or engineering backgrounds as you say.

There were very similar things seen during the BLM "riots" including guys turning up passing out molotovs to protesters who were not intending to burn anything, guys torching derelict buildings or filling them with accelerants or the, fairly well known, pictures and vides of guys in trench coats who were just walking around breaking windows in order that it coul be attributed to non-existent "antifa" menaces.

It all fits with a global playbook too, the fire in grenfill in the UK, similar fires in Europe, Australia, I think Japan and China were spared but there were mysterious detonations attributed to "fires in fireworks factories", a lot of it, if you ask me, points to night moves and spy games using the most low tech means you could imagine.

When it doesnt strike me that way it looks like syndicate moves, criminals know how to direct public or police attention to ensure their business moves go unnoticed, or less noticed, and with the Russias you now have the most bizarre shot gun wedding of Trotsky and Al Capone types.

What I do wish would be noticed more is that a lot of these things are made possible by some sort of neglect, usually among public services or public service funding, obviously its something that's being exploited but if there was simply better funded and organized responses to weather extremes or other issues like that it wouldnt be so easy for spooks and proxies to behaviour how I think they are.

It goes double for the periodic outbreaks of disease too, no one can tell me that's not engineered, at least in part, to take advantage of or spotlight the success of things like anti-vaxxers.

 

[Virtual ghost]

World’s largest battery plant on fire in Central California

 

[Virtual ghost]

Lithuania pledges to hit Donald Trump’s 5 percent defense spending target

This is actually pretty big deal in the terms of narrative (for obvious reasons).

 

[Virtual ghost]

World’s cartoonists on this week’s events

 

[Totenkindly]

"Welcome home"?

What a load of shite.

 

[The Cat]

The United States of America:
An Oligarchy.
Welcome to the Jungle.
God save us from their fun and games...​

 

[Virtual ghost]

Let's not kid ourselves, the place is a jungle for some time now.

 

[Vendrah]

This specific election of Trump makes me dislike americans, to be more specific the boomer's and trump voter americans.

This election will have a negative impact that likely is going to be felt in terms of heat in a 1000 years from now.

My country seems to be vulnerable from global warming, we are going to pay with hell so these boomer's, trump and trumper supporters are going to have their own glory.

The high levels of selfishness motives, the election of a likely psychopath billionaire, a picture with a row of billionaires oligarchs, its a high level of immorality. I hope in the next life they rot in hell.

 

[Virtual ghost]

1000 years ?

Global warming should run out of control in the next 10 to 20 years. In a sense we are already in the spiral where it is quite hard to avoid mess.

 

[ygolo]

Here Are Trump’s Expected Executive Orders

The president moved swiftly in his first hours in office, signing a slew of executive orders in front of a roaring crowd and then in the Oval Office.

www.nytimes.com

 

[The Cat]

Let's not kid ourselves, the place is a jungle for some time now.

Pretty sure you and I don't kid ourselves; Ive been telling people in my life its an oligarchy in disguise for years. Now its not a disguise. It's openly the jungle and anyone who is gonna try to pretend otherwise now, is gonna have to jump through so many mental gymnastic hoops, they may as well just come out as crazy. But mark me, its not gonna stop the vast majority from trying to jump through them anyway.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Russia warns Trump against snatching Panama Canal

I guess we can call this one "a plot twist".

 

[Virtual ghost]

Pretty sure you and I don't kid ourselves; Ive been telling people in my life its an oligarchy in disguise for years. Now its not a disguise. It's openly the jungle and anyone who is gonna try to pretend otherwise now, is gonna have to jump through so many mental gymnastic hoops, they may as well just come out as crazy. But mark me, its not gonna stop the vast majority from trying to jump through them anyway.

In my book it was already in the open, now the process is only speeding up.

 

[Virtual ghost]

In my book it was already in the open, now the process is only speeding up.

But to be fully honest the whole "oligarchy" thing in my book is basically just a detail in the big picture. Which will be open struggle between first world and China's sphere of influence on the other. That one is going to be the real game, everything else seems to be just preparations and closing of loopholes.

 

[Totenkindly]

Soo.... just something of interest related to my work (since I maintain initial claims software for SSA).

There had been a push during the Biden years to accommodate Gender X values (beyond the M or F values). Part of this was because various states were supporting alternate / additional codes for sex and our systems needed to also be able to handle them, because a lot of the intake comes through states. I'm not knowledgeable on Medicare and Medicaid, but I guess what is covered and the payments are done via individual state too and/or they have their own approaches?

(Obviously this is tossed now, this project is GONE -- and I knew that was going to happen because Biden's administration didn't really prioritize it or make sure it was a done deal before he left office, it just sat and festered for 2-3 years.)

As typical, they are making this "HA HA NOW ALL SEX = M OR F AND NOTHING ELSE" sound simple by the wording of the EO, but frankly it's not that simple at all.

• Federal datastores are passed data from all the different states + covered territories (like Puerto Rico).
• The proofs used by fedgov and stored in our system or proving coverage by federal programs are provided by, again, all the different states + territories.
• States and territories each have their own rules for how they treat and prove sex. They have their own separate policies on how birth certificates are created, stored, and modified. Many of them seal the records once changes are made.

You can probably see where I am going with this.

Maybe the fed gov can try to mandate that only M and F are acceptable values, but it doesn't matter because of all the state data.

Fedgov systems have to be able to accommodate what is sent to us by all of these different states.

And the fedgov can't just 'throw out" data that doesn't match a M or F template because we have no idea whether it "should be" an M or an F. What would we change it to? We don't know. We would just be randomly assigning a gender. I suppose you could try to base it on the name, but what if the name was also changed? We would not know.

Also, the fedgov has no separate "proofs" aside from passports and similar, where the sex is typically based on the state's proofs -- birth certificates, driver's license. If your state says you are male, then you are male; same for female; and then if your state offers alternatives, well, that's your gender potentially as well. The fedgov is not the source for sex/gender; the state is.

Sooooooo..... to implement this plan, fedgov needs to either negotiate with every state / leverage power of some kind (punishment? incentive?) to get all separately on board the rigid binary train. And I think some states are prepared to resist that kind of coercion.

At the very least, this kind of enforcement of sex/gender marker will take quite awhile and it might not even be possible, since the sex/gender of citizens is not localized within the fedgov, it is localized within each separate state.

At least, that's my first thought about this, with the knowledge I have. (There might be something related to the master file, so that's something to think about I suppose... if a fedgov record was kept at birth and they could compare... but I don't work with that and don't know the details of what is stored and whether it's traceable.)