US Politics

[JCon]

All of this came out after the election, though. The Democrats and the media both failed to investigate Santos. 

Voters thought they were voting for a young, gay, male Republican, not the first astronaut to land on the moon. 

[Wideleft]

12 minutes ago, JCon said:

All of this came out after the election, though. The Democrats and the media both failed to investigate Santos. 

Voters thought they were voting for a young, gay, male Republican, not the first astronaut to land on the moon. 

And yet they got all the above as a bonus.

[Tracker]

I believe it was PT Barnum who said, among other pithy gems, that no one ever went broke underestimating American intellgence.

[HardCoreBlue]

23 hours ago, JCon said:

All of this came out after the election, though. The Democrats and the media both failed to investigate Santos. 

Voters thought they were voting for a young, gay, male Republican, not the first astronaut to land on the moon. 

Great point.

However, controlling for the media and democrats failings on this, I would think there might of been a few kinks in his armour that voters could have picked up on if they wanted to or had the ability to critically think thru.

My point is the voters share some (not all) of the blame here. 

[Tracker]

4 minutes ago, HardCoreBlue said:

Great point.

However, controlling for the media and democrats failings on this, I would think there might of been a few kinks in his armour that voters could have picked up on if they wanted to or had the ability to critically think thru.

My point is the voters share some (not all) of the blame here. 

Agreed, but as a nit-picking point, the correct phrase for  "a few kinks in his armour" is actually "A few chinks in the armour" but that might have been considered racist. In any case, the GOP is so desperate for visible minority candidates, they grasp at anything even close to that without pause.

[Tracker]

A perfect Republican:  Rep. George Santos Reportedly Told Campaign Donors He Produced 'Spider-Man' Musical

The hits just keep on coming for Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) ― or should we say the lies.

Bloomberg is reporting that Santos told some potential donors during his 2022 congressional campaign that he produced the 2011 Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”

Spoiler alert: He lied.

An assistant to Michael Cohl, who actually was the producer of the musical, told Bloomberg that Santos was not a producer of the show.

In addition, his name never appeared in the playbills for the show, which lost tens of millions of dollars for investors and suffered from technical mishaps and actor injuries during its run from 2011 to 2014.

HuffPost reached out to the freshman congressman’s office for comment, but no one immediately responded.

However, the truth-challenged congressman from Long Island has previously and falsely claimed that, among other things, he was Jewish and the descendent of Holocaust survivors, he was a volleyball champion at Baruch College and he once worked at Goldman Sachs.

[bustamente]

Brave Air force pilot George Santos hailed a hero for shooting down the Chinese spy balloon 

[SpeedFlex27]

Americans finally shot down that Chinese spy balloon. 

[JCon]

2 minutes ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

Americans finally shot down that Chinese spy balloon. 

I doubt it was a spy balloon. You don't make a balloon that big to spy when it's so easy to see it. 

[SpeedFlex27]

10 minutes ago, JCon said:

I doubt it was a spy balloon. You don't make a balloon that big to spy when it's so easy to see it. 

Every expert says it is. I'll go with what they say. 

[bustamente]

13 minutes ago, JCon said:

I doubt it was a spy balloon. You don't make a balloon that big to spy when it's so easy to see it. 

 

2 minutes ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

Every expert says it is. I'll go with what they say. 

Well they will try to recover what every it was from the ocean, the Americans will say it was, the Chinese will say it wasn't and it will be all forgotten in a couple of weeks

[SpeedFlex27]

17 minutes ago, bustamente said:

 

Well they will try to recover what every it was from the ocean, the Americans will say it was, the Chinese will say it wasn't and it will be all forgotten in a couple of weeks

This won't be forgotten. Sure, I'll believe the Chinese because we know they never lie. 

[TrueBlue4ever]

With the number of satellites in the sky, computer hacking, and wiretap capability, does this balloon really pose a novel security threat?

Edited February 5, 2023 by TrueBlue4ever

[Tracker]

 

 

                                

[FrostyWinnipeg]

[Tracker]

5 hours ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

 

                     

 

 

 

[Tracker]

 

 

                                      

[Tracker]

George Santos is the superstar MAGA deserves

The political media fascination with Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican who appears to have faked approximately 95% of his life, is such that it was inevitable that it would draw a "savvy" backlash piece scolding the press about their priorities. The wannabe party pooper finally emerged last week at the Washington Post in an opinion column headlined, "Real people don't care about George Santos." In it, self-assigned buzzkill David Byler argued  "America doesn't seem to care" about Santos, which he can tell based on Google search traffic. 

Our nation was founded by puritans, so as soon as people had a laugh over Santos, inevitably someone would shake their finger disapprovingly. But there were some flaws in Byler's argument, starting with his assumption that Santos' own embarrassed constituents are not "real" people. There's also the fact that Google Trends isn't a very exacting measure of interest in a subject, as it only measures if people are searching out information. It doesn't capture people who read articles they saw on social media or directly on a news website. Traffic to stories about Santos is plenty healthy on that front. 

But perhaps most importantly, this narrow-minded focus on search traffic ignores what a lot of the sneered-at political observers saw coming a mile away: The imminent George Santos makeover into MAGA's Next Top Superstar.

Santos may not matter to "average" Americans, but his story is being leveraged directly into the right-wing propaganda machine that currently controls the Republican Party. On Thursday night, for instance, Santos was sanctified into the echelon of MAGA saints by the Pope of neo-fascism himself, Tucker Carlson. In a typically dishonest segment on his wildly popular Fox News show, Carlson painted Santos as a hapless victim of the bigoted news media by pretending that the only thing Santos lied about was his volleyball career. (Which is one of the more minor fake careers and hobbies Santos has claimed on his resume.)

https://www.salon.com/2023/02/06/george-santos-is-the-superstar-maga-deserves/

[bustamente]

Truly the most brainless people in the United States want to hold power

 

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

The cognitive dissonance is astounding....

 

[Tracker]

27 minutes ago, bustamente said:

Truly the most brainless people in the United States want to hold power

 

I see your Kari Lake and raise you a Jim Jordan:

Jordan’s first hearing on 'so-called' weaponization of government mocked Over conspiracy theorist witnesses

Its first hearing isn’t until Thursday but already Chairman Jim Jordan‘s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is being mocked after the list of witnesses was released.

NBC News’ Garrett Haake reports testifying before the committee on Thursday will be ex-Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and former FBI special agent Nicole Parker.

Gabbard left the Democratic Party and is now an independent and a Fox News contributor. In 2019, Hillary Clinton suggested she was a Russian asset being groomed for a third-party presidential run. She sued the former Democratic presidential nominee and former U.S. Secretary of State but later dropped the defamation lawsuit.

Also, Gabbard “shared false information,” Forbes reported last year, “about U.S. involvement in Ukraine biological laboratories … giving credence to an unfounded Russian-backed conspiracy theory the U.S. has warned could serve as justification for Russia to use biological and chemical weapons against Ukraine.”

Sen. Johnson, who narrowly won re-election after being among the top promoters of Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” is a conspiracy theorist who uses his Senate seat to spread false information about COVID and a host of other crises.

CNN’s Chris Cillizza branded Johnson the “Senate’s leading conspiracy theorist” just one year ago. The Washington Post reported last May that Sen. Johnson “expressed openness” to “a fervent anti-vaccination” commentator’s “idea that maybe the coronavirus vaccines are a conduit for deliberately giving people AIDS.”

Sen. Grassley has come under fire for his racist remarks about COVID-19, dangerously false claims about the IRS, and apparent falsehoods about the January 6 insurrection and its participants.

Last year The American Independent reported Grassley told a constituent “what you said is accurate.” According to The Independent, the constituent said during a town hall: “Knowing that the FBI and Capitol Police were complicit in Jan. 6, what have you done to get the political prisoners being held in gulag conditions out on bail?”

[HardCoreBlue]

32 minutes ago, Tracker said:

George Santos is the superstar MAGA deserves

The political media fascination with Rep. George Santos, the New York Republican who appears to have faked approximately 95% of his life, is such that it was inevitable that it would draw a "savvy" backlash piece scolding the press about their priorities. The wannabe party pooper finally emerged last week at the Washington Post in an opinion column headlined, "Real people don't care about George Santos." In it, self-assigned buzzkill David Byler argued  "America doesn't seem to care" about Santos, which he can tell based on Google search traffic. 

Our nation was founded by puritans, so as soon as people had a laugh over Santos, inevitably someone would shake their finger disapprovingly. But there were some flaws in Byler's argument, starting with his assumption that Santos' own embarrassed constituents are not "real" people. There's also the fact that Google Trends isn't a very exacting measure of interest in a subject, as it only measures if people are searching out information. It doesn't capture people who read articles they saw on social media or directly on a news website. Traffic to stories about Santos is plenty healthy on that front. 

But perhaps most importantly, this narrow-minded focus on search traffic ignores what a lot of the sneered-at political observers saw coming a mile away: The imminent George Santos makeover into MAGA's Next Top Superstar.

Santos may not matter to "average" Americans, but his story is being leveraged directly into the right-wing propaganda machine that currently controls the Republican Party. On Thursday night, for instance, Santos was sanctified into the echelon of MAGA saints by the Pope of neo-fascism himself, Tucker Carlson. In a typically dishonest segment on his wildly popular Fox News show, Carlson painted Santos as a hapless victim of the bigoted news media by pretending that the only thing Santos lied about was his volleyball career. (Which is one of the more minor fake careers and hobbies Santos has claimed on his resume.)

https://www.salon.com/2023/02/06/george-santos-is-the-superstar-maga-deserves/

We all lie along a continuum of severity and consistency but some do it for a living and with greater purpose.

Professional liars back each other when convenient.

Professional liars throw each under the bus when its not convenient.

Everything is transactional to professional liars.

[Tracker]

Lauren Boebert Tells Church To Pray For Biden’s Death

The congregation laughed and cheered as Rep. Lauren Boebert told them to pray for Joe Biden’s death, and that his days be short.

Boebert said, “We pray for our president. Let his days be few and another take his office. That’s why I filed the articles of impeachment for Joe Biden. Unfortunately, he does have a really good insurance policy named Kamala Harris.”

The psalm Boebert was referring to: The verse Lauren Boebert referenced, Psalm 109:8, is clearly about praying for the death of an enemy in office.

Context: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

[HardCoreBlue]

4 minutes ago, Tracker said:

Lauren Boebert Tells Church To Pray For Biden’s Death

The congregation laughed and cheered as Rep. Lauren Boebert told them to pray for Joe Biden’s death, and that his days be short.

Boebert said, “We pray for our president. Let his days be few and another take his office. That’s why I filed the articles of impeachment for Joe Biden. Unfortunately, he does have a really good insurance policy named Kamala Harris.”

The psalm Boebert was referring to: The verse Lauren Boebert referenced, Psalm 109:8, is clearly about praying for the death of an enemy in office.

Context: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”

She’s just offering another viewpoint, another side to add to the discourse.

or

Yea she’s an idiot but they’re all idiots, they’re all bad.

This is how some explain away these gross types of human beings.

 

 

[Tracker]

Big Government House Republicans Look To Impose Chocolate Milk Mandate

Now that their gas stoves are safe, Republicans want a national law forcing schools to provide kids with chocolate milk.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) is leading the charge to protect chocolate milk.  Stefanik has even proposed legislation to mandate that all schools be forced to offer chocolate milk to students:

@RepStefanik: Mayor Adams’ threat to ban chocolate milk in schools is a non-starter. I’m standing up to make sure our NY students have a flavored milk option. #SaveChocolateMilk!