US Politics, April 2024: "Are You Better Off Today Than You Were <Checks Notes> Four Years Ago?"

xxp i.e. Biden should run "Kennedy is a dangerous pro-gun anti-goverment radical" adverts in trumpy media markets in swing states.

CW is that you leave the attack stuff to independent PACs.

milo, I agree with you, but I'm not a simp for Putin, and people can insult me that way if they want— nearly all of my Russian friends have left the country because they're queer and they've found asylum elsewhere. I'm not a fan of Putin.

Also, scott, with all respect, I'm not your kid, I'm a 39 year-old leftist who disagrees with a lot of people on here about politics and tHe nEeD tO pReSeRVe NATO and western hegemony in eastern Europe.

eh, details.

“Kennedy is antivax” is a great advert.

https://bsky.app/profile/mtsw.bsky.social/post/3kqqk4uauol2c

I disagree with both Milo and The table is the table on this issue, but I prefer not to insult or make insinuations about anybody supporting Putin, which I think is a mistake.

I think collectively we're losing the ability to have people with different viewpoints in the same spaces, which can lead to a form of circling the wagons and self-selection, which ultimately just increases polarization. I think we all need to hear opinions with which we disagree. Opinions aren't, or at least shouldn't be considered as immutable

I have no problem with hearing opinions different from my own, but I also reserve the right to argue with people about how RONG their opinions are :-)

I think collectively we're losing the ability to have people with different viewpoints in the same spaces, which can lead to a form of circling the wagons and self-selection, which ultimately just increases polarization. I think we all need to hear opinions with which we disagree. Opinions aren't, or at least shouldn't be considered as immutable

Who's "we"? I share spaces with people with whose opinions I disagree all day long, ILX included. (ILM especially, where people trumpet their terrible taste in art in the most hyperbolic language they can muster, but ILE too, where people are militantly full of shit all day long.)

i'm sorry i know you aren't my kid i was just shocked that that was their reaction to the war. ukraine is corrupt + nazis. it sounded like a defense of russia. i just hadn't heard that and then i heard it a lot from younger folks/online stuff. it felt like it came out of nowhere and i wasn't hearing any sympathy for the people of ukraine. hell, i wasn't hearing any sympathy for any of the young russian people being dragged onto battlefields to die by the russian military. the whole thing just seems terrible. but i didn't know there were non-russian people who weren't sympathetic to ukraine. now of course i do.

x-post

xpost must be lonely to be so right

xpost must be lonely to be so right

I just tell myself that you'll all come around eventually.

scott, I have a ton of empathy for the people of Ukraine and for the people of Russia, particularly the young men being used as cannon fodder by a craven lunatic like Putin. But I also have read enough about the conflict to be pretty firm in my stance that Ukraine is being used as a proxy for western European economic interests, and the Nazi shit— just look up Stepan Bandera and the cult around him in Ukraine— sort of seals the deal for me. What we have is essentially two ultranationalist forces fighting each other other, and I am against them both.

well sheesh now it just seems hopeless. is there any solution/answer to all the horribleness?

I wonder if sending more guns will help?

well, yes, it might, is the thing

sadly I am with silby here, not quite ready to subscribe to milo's nihilism

as a cold hearted net calculation, the Ukraine fascists will have a better regime for humanity overall than the Russian fascists, lol this is the same reason I vote for Democrats

And does Ukraine have territorial ambitions?

i didn't know there were non-russian people who weren't sympathetic to ukraine. now of course i do.

I think everyone is sympathetic to the people of Ukraine. People have different opinions about what they will think will happen next with different courses of action, or what will or won't help, and navigating that difference of opinion can be difficult but I don't think anyone thinks they deserve what is happening to them

yeah, anyone who thinks they are all Nazis is taking in seriously damaged info

the Jewish president of Ukraine probably isn't for example

C'mon guys, 'corrupt + Nazis' is a lot of places.

white nationalists basically run Texas so I'm a little nonplussed to see that being used a reason to let Ukraine fall to the wolves

Putin can have Texas if he can make it over here.

lol the infamous nihilism of 'proxy wars are bad' and 'I would prefer that we not feed human bodies into the sausage maker'

Ukraine is at best a stalemate that will see tens of thousands more people killed in the near future without any realistic chance of the Ukrainian military pushing Russia back. Our government is happy to sacrifice more Ukrainians for the chance to continue bleeding Russia economically (but not too much, see knuckle rapping for targeting energy infrastructure) and of international support.

If US involvement in Ukraine is a moral necessity and if the goal is to return Ukraine to even its post-Crimean Invasion borders, shouldn't we be putting boots on the ground and planes in the air in order to actually accomplish that?

Today's "LOL this fucking asshole" update:

RFK Jr.: 'I'm gonna put the entire US budget on blockchain'

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he wants to put the “U.S. budget on blockchain,” a ledger of transactions typically associated with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

“I’m going to put the entire U.S. budget on blockchain so that any American — every American can look at every budget item in the entire budget anytime they want 24 hours a day,” Kennedy said Sunday during a rally in Michigan.

The public accounting of spending would theoretically allow more transparency and accountability into how the government spends taxpayer dollars, although getting every government transaction onto the blockchain would be a Herculean task.

Federal spending is also controlled through legislation, which is available to the public, and federal departments are often audited by government watchdogs such as the Government Accountability Office and their own inspectors general.

Man's running a 2020 campaign, he should have promised to put an AI in charge of the federal budget.

sure, because all Americans know how to read blockchains

Love how support for Ukraine means “seeing as many Ukrainian men die as possible so that Western Europe can continue mining the east for resources”

If US involvement in Ukraine is a moral necessity and if the goal is to return Ukraine to even its post-Crimean Invasion borders, shouldn't we be putting boots on the ground and planes in the air in order to actually accomplish that?

― papal hotwife (milo z)

yes

Oooh, get an AI to audit the federal reserve on the blockhain. Throw in some thinly veiled race science and you can lasso in all of the worst people in the country at once (and then we can ship them off to a FEMA camp).

Love how support for Ukraine means “seeing as many Ukrainian men die as possible so that Western Europe can continue mining the east for resources”

While you may or may not be correct in that assessment its unlikely supporters of aid to Ukraine see it that way, and I think there's a danger of falling into the same trap as those who accuse people who prefer not to send aid to Ukraine as being closet Putin supporters. I think these types of characterisations are mostly counter-productive and contribute towards polarization

Fwiw in both cases I don't think there's any merit to those characterisations

imagine the tweetstorms from people who misread the data on the blockchain

"WE'RE 3.87 GIGATRILLION IN DEBT. HERE'S WHAT THAT MEANS, AND HOW MANY DOGE THE GOVERNMENT WILL NEED TO SELL TO REDUCE THE DEFICIT"

RFK, Jr, 2028 - Buy the dip!

I know it sucks that Ukraine doesn’t want to be ruled by Russia

Taking a hopefully good faith (tho still bleak af) approach to this argument here but cutting support is hardly game over...likely tens of thousands of deaths in the next few years either way, probably at a much slower rate than in Palestine and a couple of areas in Africa.

If you stop sending weapons that doesn't mean you pretend Eastern Europe doesn't exist. You could work on brokering a ceasefire or peace deal.

That would not re-establish Ukraine's pre-2022 or pre-2014 territory but that's not happening anyway (absent an actual NATO intervention and probably not even then) but it might stop years of needless slaughter until the west gets bored or Ukraine runs out of bodies for the grinder. If the people of Ukraine don't want a ceasefire or peace deal, that is their right - the various insurgencies that have kicked our ass for 60 years can send them some good advisors - but we don't have to prolong it while it serves our desires and aims.

I guarantee RFK doesn't even know what a blockchain is

sunlight on government spending is an admirable goal but it can be done without resorting to blockchain

How many apes can you get for a trillion dollars?

221, but I'll cut you a deal and throw in another 100

A Rep can use two slurp juices to automatically pass one pork barrel project for their district.

Ukraine is at best a stalemate that will see tens of thousands more people killed in the near future Our government is happy to sacrifice more Ukrainians for the chance to continue bleeding Russia economically (but not too much, see knuckle rapping for targeting energy infrastructure) and of international support.
?

A Rep can use two slurp juices to automatically pass one pork barrel project for their district.

― papal hotwife (milo z)

USA has gone down hill since they clamped down on earmarks! Bring back $2 billion post offices in shitty towns

xp when did Putin become the Fed Chairman?

Dedollarization would certainly destabilize the US economy and political system (even more than we already do on our own) but similar to the eye rolling about Putin’s delusions about the CIA on his doorstep, that urge doesn’t come out of nowhere or require a deranged fascist ideology.

xp Good idea. Passing legislation used to be a matter of making sure everyone with any seniority could wet their beak when the budget bills were finalized. It was how the sausage got made. Now Congress can't even pass a transportation bill without the threat of a government shutdown or the speaker being deposed.

Returning to the question of what happens next

a) How much time does this actually buy Ukraine? When is the next time that will all happen again?
b) Are MTG/Massey able/willing to follow through on threats against Johnson and is there a window of opportunity on that or its open ended

xp when did Putin become the Fed Chairman?

Dedollarization would certainly destabilize the US economy and political system (even more than we already do on our own) but similar to the eye rolling about Putin’s delusions about the CIA on his doorstep, that urge doesn’t come out of nowhere or require a deranged fascist ideology.

At the very least something like adjusting the maximum deduction for student loan interest to inflation (it has not been raised in over 20 years) and removing the marriage penalty from that deduction (a married couple has the same maximum deduction as a single person)…

I have absolutely no idea what that vanguardist line is supposed to mean. Putin is secretly pulling the strings of revolutionary MAGA cadres? God knows white nationalism and reactionary politics were unknown to Americans…