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

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…

Putin is secretly pulling the strings of revolutionary MAGA cadres?

This was my idea for a remake of Red Dawn a few years ago, with a bunch of Russian ops infiltrating and training American right-wing militias.

This is interesting; it comes from Heather Cox Richardson's Substack:

Today, on Earth Day, Biden also honored the idea of a government that works for the people when he spoke at the Prince William Forest Park in Triangle, Virginia, a national park developed in the 1930s by the government’s Works Progress Administration under the New Deal.

Biden called attention to the country’s historic investment in addressing climate change under his administration. He noted that that investment has created a clean-energy manufacturing boom that has attracted hundreds of billions of dollars in private-sector investment and created more than 270,000 new jobs.

In Virginia, Biden announced $7 billion in federal grants for solar projects for more than 900,000 low- and middle-income households, saying those projects would save those households about $400 a year annually, more than $350 million total. The projects will also create nearly 200,000 jobs.

Biden also announced the launch of the website to apply to join the American Climate Corps (ACC), an initiative modeled after New Deal president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Over its nine-year existence, the CCC employed more than three million young men improving the nation’s public lands, forests, and parks, many of whom earned their high school diplomas thanks to the educational opportunities connected to the program.

When the administration unveiled the American Climate Corps program last year, more than 42,000 young people expressed interest within weeks. The first ACC jobs will start in June. Beginning this summer, ACC members will have access to training in trades, thanks to a partnership between the program and the North America’s Building Trades Unions’ nonprofit partner TradesFutures.

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…

That is one positive thing about Biden … he was around for the Cold War and is familiar with the games

Putin was a minor KGB functionary, not exactly Karla.

xpost “the thought of all that money that theoretically could be used HERE”

lies, damnable lies, and theoreticallies, as i recall

Putin is secretly pulling the strings of revolutionary MAGA cadres?

How else would you explain MAGA support for Russia and please show your work

"pulling the strings" here is code for "funding fifth columnists who shit out content on Twitter all day"

Putin was a minor KGB functionary, not exactly Karla.

that the money could be used here also passes my mind.

Think of the tax cuts we could have had

Foreign aid is peanuts compared to the overall bloated military budget
Israel should absolutely be cut off from our largesse

Israel should absolutely be cut off from our largesse

Now we're talking

otm

If our government could agree on investing that same amount of money domestically, they just would, regardless of whether this money goes to Ukraine. This is not what’s stopping us.

Yeah I mean come on the US government can make more money for almost free that’s the famous thing about it

How else would you explain MAGA support for Russia and please show your work

"Why are a bunch of reactionary nationalists, supporters of a reactionary nationalist wannabe straongman excited by a reactionary nationalist actual strongman?"

I dunno man, it's really hard to wrap my mind around this.

But also Republicans are not actually all (or even mostly) supporters of Russia or Putin.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/10/americans-see-both-russia-and-china-in-a-negative-light-but-more-call-russia-an-enemy/

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/04/06/seven-in-ten-americans-now-see-russia-as-an-enemy/pg_2022-04-06_russia-nato_0-03-png/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/06/when-top-republican-says-russian-propaganda-has-infected-gop/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/17/putin-pays-donald-trump-kevin-mccarthy-recording