ChiGoose

‘MURICA!

Really makes it hard to believe the GOP actually is “pro-life” since they oppose policies that help people live.

That may explain why health outcomes are worse in GOP areas than Dem ones. GOP: once you’re born, you can go die for all we care

GOP senators remove $35 cap on insulin from reconciliation bill. They only pretend to be pro-life, but they are very happy to have poor people die.

You may be right, but I don't see her path there. Her brand of not being a conspiracy-believing loon has no home in the modern GOP and she disagrees with Dems on most major policy issues. Does she run in the GOP primary? If so, I can't see her going anywhere. I can't see her running in the Dem primary. Independent? Maybe, but at that point, she's just playing the spoiler and would help re-elect Trump should he run again.

Yeah, I don't get why people are so quick to label something / somebody either all good or all bad without any nuance. Liz Cheney doing the right thing and upholding her oath of office at the expense of her job is definitely admirable. But it doesn't change who she is or the policies she pushes. Same for her dad, who is absolutely an awful person. Glad he's on the right side of this issue, but it doesn't make him a hero. It's possible to appreciate somebody for a particular action or position without having to lionize them as some great hero. Some people are even suggesting Liz should run on a centrist ticket with the Dems. Absolutely ludicrous. Some Very Online Brain happening around the Cheney's.

They will say he’s a RINO. Anyone who doesn’t toe the line is a RINO or somehow a democrat.

1. He's wrong. Lying is protected under the 1st Amendment. Otherwise, the people on this board claiming the election was stolen would be in jail. 2. He also will not decide what free speech is. That is not the job of a senator.

Is Orban talking about the globalists or the (((globalists)))? It's so hard to keep these conspiracies straight at this point...

You absolutely can do voter verification without ID, just like you can do authentication in regular day-to-day things (like logging into your email) without photo ID. It depends on the state, but generally your voter record includes your name, address, signature and other pieces of data. It's why you have to know all of that information and provide your signature so they can validate before you vote (or in the case of mail-in ballots, it's checked when the ballot arrives). The idea that there are hordes of people out there who both know all of the data for everyone else including signatures, and are going around voting in other people's names is ridiculous and has never found to be true. I think that voter ID laws would find broader support if they were crafted to solve a problem that actually exists and set up in a way to ensure people have easy access to the right to vote. But about 10% of Americans do not currently have government issued photo IDs and many of the proposed laws are very specific in carving out certain people, such as not accepting photo IDs from state colleges but allowing other forms like hunting IDs. After Alabama enacted a voter ID law, they closed many DMVs in areas with a high proportion of black residents, making it harder for them to get the ID they need to vote. Many of these laws are not actually about preventing fraud, they're just to make it harder for the "wrong" people to vote. Ultimately, any kind of bipartisan electoral reform will likely add a photo ID requirement to get GOP votes, but that should only happen if the IDs are both free and easily accessible. Otherwise, it's just making it harder for the people to exercise their franchise.

Job creation is a hallmark of modern Democratic presidential administrations

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out. I would not be surprised if there was pork in the bill, but was the pork in there when it passed the senate with 80+ votes or was it added after? I pulled the text from (what I believe to be) both versions of the bill and ran a compare on them and found the only difference to be a removal of a single line about taxation of benefits. Which doesn't seem to be a giant slush fund thingy. However, I am willing to admit I'm wrong. I could have pulled the wrong versions of the text. Or maybe I don't understand the implications of that sentence because I am most certainly not a tax expert. I just wish that the people complaining about how it changed would point to the specific language that changed. I appreciate you providing insight and evidence into this conversation.

I looked through that and I definitely could be reading it wrong, but wasn't that dollar amount in the version passed by the senate in June?

Is there any evidence for this? The text of the bills are public. Did anyone point to where in the text this was?

What I do know is that the CRT panic is a made up phenomenon by a right-wing activist who sought to brand anything around race as CRT: It’s a cynical ploy to get people angry about something and activate that anger at the polls, regardless of the merit. We can certainly debate about when/if it is appropriate to teach kids certain subjects, but elementary school kids are not learning actual CRT.

Funny story from someone we know committed fraud. She was LOSING when the polls closed and then started WINNING OVERNIGHT?!? This is classic DemonRat ballot dumps to change the election to satisfy the lizard people so they can live forever in their med beds.

Ok, this is totally off topic at this point, but CRT is a law school level theory. Who is teaching that to kids?

From what I've read, there is discussion on training them, but I agree that doing that in a war is too difficult. There also had been discussion of transferring NATO planes to former Eastern Bloc countries so those countries can send their MiGs and SUs to Ukraine, but I don't get the impression that this is happening either.

Ah, I didn't realize they had changed their minds. I recall them asking for F-15's and F-16's, but the Biden administration was worried about them using the planes to strike inside Russian territory. In any case, they need to be able to destroy Russian artillery to level the playing field. HIMARS seem to be doing a good deal there, but they only have a couple and Russians are already adjusting their tactics.

A leading California secession advocate got funding and direction from Russian intelligence agents, US government alleges "According to a federal indictment unveiled Friday, Russian intelligence officers also cared deeply about West Coast secession — as part of an effort to destabilize the United States. The indictment focuses on Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a resident of Moscow and head of the "Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia," Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen said in a statement. Prosecutors alleged he worked with at least three Russian officials on a "brazen influence campaign, turning US political groups and US citizens into instruments of the Russian government," Olsen wrote. That effort involved hosting government-funded conferences in Russia, inviting secessionists from around the globe, as well as providing "financial support, consulting, instruction and promotion in Russia media outlets" to separatist movements in the US." Add the California secessionist movement to the other accounts / groups being used by Russia to harm the US: Twitter accounts: @TEN_GOP @jenn_abrams @Pamela_Moore13 @America_1st_ @march_for_trump Facebook Groups: "Being Patriotic" "Stop All Immigrants" "Stop All Invaders" "Secured Borders" "Tea Party News" "Black Matters" "Blacktivist" "Don't Shoot Us" "LGBT United" "United Muslims of America" Social Media hashtags: #HillaryClintonForPrison2016 #nohillary2016 #KIDS4TRUMP

I'm not sure what the answer is or if there even is one. But from what I can tell, the only thing that might accomplish both: Recovering all of, or enough Ukraine territory to allow the Ukrainians to feel comfortable with a peace deal; and Punching Russia in the face enough that they have to accept their losses and acquiesce to a deal Would be to supply the Ukrainians with enough weapons, ammo, and intelligence, to enable them to push Russia back, at least to the 2014 ceasefire borders, if not further. Already, the HIMARS are changing the game. Give them more, and give them additional weapons like MLRS, drones, maybe even planes, and tons and tons of ammo. There is no scenario I can think of in which a peace is reached without things getting a lot bloodier first.

This feels true to me. Also to note that, after the atrocities in Bucha and the reports of Russians castrating POWs and then murdering them will make it very hard for Ukraine to accept any agreement that leaves parts of Ukraine under Russian control. Ultimately, whatever deal is to be made must be made by the Ukrainians and I just don't see them agreeing to anything that keeps Ukrainians under Russian control.

It's more like: working together towards a shared goal is not the same as entering into an agreement to work together towards a shared goal. But the end result is the same: there's no crime of collusion and no agreement between the parties means no conspiracy.

1. The Steele Dossier The Steele Dossier was covered terribly by the media and caused people to believe it was a thing that it was not. What happened was that the Clinton Campaign paid their lawyers to get oppo research on Trump. The lawyers then found a company that had been doing oppo for one of the GOP primary challengers and paid them to continue their work. That company, FusionGPS, then subcontracted this out to a former spy (Steele) who then put together a raw intelligence piece. There is a tremendous difference between a raw intelligence document and an intelligence assessment. The dossier was the former but was treated as the latter. Essentially, it's a document saying "this is what we've heard and been told, but we have not analyzed these claims for credibility" but the media took it to mean that these claims had been vetted, which was wrong. It is not surprising that most of it was just junk, but that's what happens with raw intelligence and why it needs to be analyzed. The media totally botched this. 2. The Russia Investigation The Steele Dossier did NOT lead to the Russia investigation. The investigation was underway before then. The investigation also was not bogus and was found to be properly predicated. While there were issues with things like the Carter Page FISA, the investigation found dozens of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians. However, since "collusion" is not a legal term of art, Mueller compared the facts to the crime of conspiracy, which requires an agreement between the parties. While the Russians and the Trump campaign both wanted to help Trump and frequently worked together (something that might meet the colloquial definition of "collusion"), they did not have an explicit agreement to work together and therefore did not meet the elements of a conspiracy. 3. Hillary Campaign I would have no problem with investigating the Hillary Campaign for wrongdoing if it is appropriate. In fact, I believe they recently got in trouble over the Steele Dossier. They believed the document was embarrassing and wanted to bury it, so they hid how they paid for it to avoid it becoming public. This was blown when the dossier was leaked (I believe by Steele himself), which lead to the Clinton campaign being fined for not following disclosure requirements.

The irony of deflecting by saying I deflected... I know you'll never answer my question but, sure, I'll answer yours. 1. The media effed up the Hunter Biden laptop. The problem with conspiracy believing morons who make up garbage about their political opponents is that when they actually have something with a grain of truth to it (even if that truth isn't exactly what they are claiming), it gets dismissed into the large pile of BS they've been raging about. 2. No.