US US Politics General - Discussion of President Biden and other politicians

 

[CharlesBarkley]

I like how Joe Biden somehow can still make everything worse with his antics right before his administration ends.

“Hmmm I only have a few days left. Let’s get NATO more involved in the Ukraine war.”

The hawks know that there is no way Putin can appropriately escalate in response to this knowing full well that Trump is going to put a stop to it in a handful of weeks. They just want to kill as many Russians as possible during this time period without serious consequences.

Allegedly, it’s to crush North Korean ambitions and morale… Which is retarded because NK soldiers are legit Plato’s cave people who are mindless meth addicts, so nothing will change.

Nothing is to be gained from this. Washington needs to heart attack gun all these warhawks. If they NEED to be around, how about they focus on something actually affecting the US, like drug cartels? Nope!! Instead they have to pointlessly play world police in the most retarded manner possible.

 

[God's drunkest driver]

All of them. Most of the square footage is dedicated to produce, meat, bakery, deli, dairy, alcohol (not healthy or fresh, I know), and non-food items like medicine, toiletries, and homegoods. The processed food section is only a small portion.

Deli?! do you think cold cuts are "fresh food"? You can't count the deli section as a fresh food section when half of what they sell in a deli department is cold cuts. I don't know where you live or what grocery stores you're going to, but your average american grocery store is decidedly not 90% fresh food, by whatever means you want to measure; square footage, pounds, sales volume, whatever. Your average american shops in a chain grocery store whether that be aldi, kroger, publix, ingles, and at least half if not more than half is not "fresh food", cereals, bagged breads, snack foods, canned foods, frozen foods, drinks, that's at least half of a grocery store. Anyone who worked a grocery store job in high school knows that most of the stuff you scan or bag in a shift isn't fresh food.

 

[big pauper]

The fact that the left, the Dems, and the corporate media are all going after RFK Jr. for even questioning the chemicals being put into our foods says a lot about how they have completely lost the plot.

Or maybe the Democrats never had the plot to begin with and it was all a facade from the get-go ...

They've spent the last decade or more relying on emotional appeals to hysterical voters about solving non-tangible problems and now they're switching to an approach of relying on rational appeals to hysterical voters about tangible problems - this is just belief management propaganda to maintain hardline democrat voters plugged into the media apparatus. if they swing too hard they get scared and stop paying attention. "oh my god, the golden child kennedy that turncoated is now talking about solving all of the social problems we've been complaining about but in the WRONG WAY!!!"

republicans find rfk curious, its democrats who really like RFK and engage with the cult of personality. but its based on nothing more than setting ridiculously high expectations and sharing a name with the golden child democrat president that got shot by the same deep state apparatus that's attacking trump. the whole point of RFK is to use him to create cult of personality and leverage that against trump's administration from the inside

 

[babadook]

No, the overproduction of milk started for the manufacture of ice cream, that socially replaced alcohol during prohibition.

Someone tag Null on the cheese lore

 

[Nuns with guns]

Shut the hell up about Operation Warp Sneed.

 

[Terrifik]

Shut the hell up about Operation Warp Sneed.

View attachment 6658555

he can't because ts his legacy because NSA Sneed.

 

[Hey Johnny Bravo]

It turns out Captain Kirk is not as based as we may have assumed.


https://www.mediaite.com/entertainm...at-candidate-cant-just-be-woman-black-person/
https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1858246370777313320

William Shatner is a Québécois. No one should listen to his takes on politics.

In uglier news from The Hill...

"The 9 GOP senators who could derail Trump’s Cabinet picks"

(I did not pick this image, The Hill did)
Archive

Multiple Republican senators are looming as potential obstacles to President-elect Trump’s controversial Cabinet picks, especially his two most polarizing choices: former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Trump has had a rocky relationship in the past with a handful of Republicans senators who won’t likely give him the same deference as loyal allies such as Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), who last week called on his GOP colleagues to “get out of the way” and approve Trump’s nominees.

Trump can afford three defections within the Senate GOP conference and still get his picks confirmed.

But four Republican senators would be enough to sink any of his nominees, and two moderates — Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) — have already voiced deep reservations about Gaetz, who was embroiled in a federal sex trafficking investigation, of leading the Justice Department.

Here are the senators that could stymie Trump’s nominees.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)​

Murkowski signaled her likely opposition to Gaetz soon after he was announced as Trump’s pick to serve as attorney general.

“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for attorney general. We need to have a serious attorney general,” she told reporters.

Murkowski, who didn’t vote for either Trump or Vice President Harris, would likely also be skeptical of Trump’s choice of Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Alaska senator, who serves on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, used social media to promote vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, but she also voted in December 2021 to overturn the vaccine mandate for private businesses.

She expressed surprised over Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth, a military veteran and Fox News host, to head the Department of Defense.

“Wow. … I’m just surprised. I’m not going to comment on whether it’s good, bad or indifferent, I’m just surprised, because the names that I’ve heard for secretary of Defense have not included him,” she said.

Murkowski was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump of inciting insurrection during his 2021 Senate impeachment trial.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)​

Collins is the only Republican senator up for reelection in 2026 in a state Harris won, and she immediately expressed her skepticism about Gaetz serving as the nation’s next attorney general.

“I was shocked by the announcement,” she said. “I’m sure that there will be a lot of questions raised at his hearing. Obviously, the president has the right to nominate whomever he wishes, but I’m certain that there will be a lot of questions.”

Collins will closely review Trump’s nomination of Kennedy, as she also sits on the HELP Committee.

Collins told The New York Times that she found some of Kennedy’s past statements “alarming.”

“I’ve never even met with him or sat down with him or heard him speak at length,” she said before Trump formally announced his nomination of Kennedy.

But she said Kennedy “would be a surprising choice” to head the nation’s health services, given his long track record of claiming that vaccines pose serious health concerns and his push to remove fluoride from public water, something many lawmakers view as a fringe issue.

Sen.-elect John Curtis (R-Utah)​

Curtis will be filling the seat of retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (R), and he has the reputation of a practical centrist who is expected to approach his job in the same thoughtful and measured way Romney did during his six years in the Senate.

Curtis heads the Conservative Climate Caucus and has pushed back against climate skeptics, arguing conservatives have a role to serve as “good stewards” of the environment.

He favored censuring Trump for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election but voted “no” on impeachment during his tenure in the House, urging colleagues to “tone down the rhetoric and calm the tensions.”

Curtis doesn’t have a great relationship with Gaetz, who traveled to Utah in March to campaign against him in the Senate Republican primary.

Gaetz accused Curtis on the campaign trail of “weakness” and a “willingness to prioritize foreign interests abroad” and “special interests in the halls of Washington.”

Curtis has already signaled he would not support putting the Senate into an extended recess to allow Trump to circumvent the confirmation process by making recess appointments.

“Senator-elect Curtis believes that every president is afforded a degree of deference to select his team and make nominations,” Curtis’s chief of staff, Corey Norman, told KSL-TV in Salt Lake City. “He also firmly believes in and is committed to the Senate’s critical role to confirm or reject nominations based on information and insight from confirmation hearings.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.)​

Cassidy will be one of only three Republican senators still serving next year who voted to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting insurrection.

Cassidy is known as a principled politician who’s not afraid to buck Trump or tackle politically dangerous issues, such as reforming Social Security to extend its solvency.

But the Louisiana lawmaker is up for reelection in 2026 and faces a potential primary challenge given his vote to convict Trump.

He will likely serve as chair of the HELP Committee next year, giving him jurisdiction over Kennedy’s nomination to head Health and Human Services.

Cassidy, a doctor, has disputed claims attempting to link vaccines and autism as “fake news.”

“As a doctor who has spent my life trying to bring health to the people of Louisiana, I strongly endorse immunizations,” he said in 2019. “There is no linkage to autism that has ever been made by a credible scientist.”

Cassidy’s Health panel will hold a hearing on Kennedy, but the Senate Finance Committee will handle Kennedy’s paperwork and vote to advance him to the floor, according to a Republican source familiar with the process.

Cassidy dodged questions about Gaetz’s nomination to head the Justice Department but did not appear to be impressed by Trump’s choice of Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense, given his career in television and lack of experience managing large organizations such as the Pentagon.

“Who?” Cassidy said when asked Tuesday about Hegseth becoming the next secretary of Defense, expressing the same bewilderment several GOP senators voiced about the unorthodox choice when news of it broke Tuesday.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.)​

Young is a serious legislator who doesn’t like to be asked about Trump’s latest provocative statements on Truth Social.

But while Young doesn’t often talk about the controversies that constantly swirl around Trump, he’s made clear in the past that he’s not a fan.

He did not endorse Trump for president in 2024 and has criticized him for refusing to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

He also faulted Trump for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol but did not vote to convict him of inciting insurrection.

Young was one of several Republican senators, along with Collins, Murkowski and Cassidy, to vote for a 2022 bill to address gun violence.

Gaetz said at the time that any Republican senator who supported the measure would be “a traitor to the Constitution,” a statement that won’t endear him to the senators whose support he needs to win confirmation.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)​

Ernst told The Hill that Gaetz has an “uphill climb” to securing enough votes to win confirmation, and she’s taking a wait-and-see approach to Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who is Trump’s pick serve as director of national intelligence.

Ernst said she wants to meet with Gabbard before forming any judgments about her nomination.

“I’ve had a relationship with her. It might be a little unconventional, but at the same time, she might bring value to us too. So we’ll have to sort through all that,” she said.

Asked about Gabbard’s past statements defending Putin and Syrian President Bashar Assad, Ernst said, “We’ll have to talk about that.”

Ernst is also up for reelection in 2026. While Trump won Iowa in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, former President Obama carried it in 2008 and 2012.

Democrats may target her seat simply because they don’t have many other promising options on the electoral map.

Ernst lost her race to become Senate Republican Conference chair and may be more inclined to break with her party now that she will no longer be a member of the elected leadership.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)​

Tillis is not afraid to play the role of Republican maverick if he feels strongly about a nominee or an issue, and he’s already suggesting Gaetz might not have much support in the Senate.

“It’ll just be interesting to see what his organic base is,” Tillis said of the nominee. “At the end of the day, Congressman Gaetz, he’ll have a hearing, but I’m all about counting votes, and I would think that he’s probably got some work cut out for him to get a good strong vote.”

“We’re not going to get a single Democrat vote,” he said.

Tillis will be one of the Senate Democrats’ top targets in 2026 if he decides to run for reelection in North Carolina, a battleground state Trump won by 3.5 percentage points over Harris.

Tillis, who represents more than 90,000 active duty service members in his home state, which is also home to Fort Liberty — formerly known as Fort Bragg — says Hegseth will need to answer some tough questions at his confirmation hearing.

“I think he’s just got to go through the vetting process and withstand what I’m sure is going to be an interesting murder board in the Senate Armed Services Committee,” he told reporters.

Tillis acknowledged Hegseth’s lack of experience leading large organizations will be something he needs to address at his confirmation hearing.

“Those are all things you got to have good, sound answers for. It’s a large, complex, very, very important agency,” he said. “We’ve got to see all the vetting. There’s a lot of work that’ll go into between now and the time he actually comes before the committee.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas)​

Cornyn pledged to get Trump’s nominees through the Senate quickly when he was running against Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to become the next Senate majority leader.

The Texan, however, lost that race, which could give him more freedom to criticize Trump’s picks, especially if he doesn’t think they’re qualified for the highest-profile Cabinet roles.

He joked to reporters that he and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who will retire as Senate GOP leader, are now “liberated” as they won’t have elected leadership positions in 2025, giving them more latitude to push back against flawed nominees.

Cornyn, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has called for members of his panel to have full access to the findings of the House Ethics Committee’s investigation of Gaetz for alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.

He warned that if there’s evidence of wrongdoing, Gaetz could become “an embarrassment to the president.”

“We need to get access to everything,” he said, breaking with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who said Friday that he will “strongly request” the House Ethics panel stick to its practice of not releasing a report about a onetime member who has resigned from the House, as Gaetz did this past week.

Cornyn also appeared surprised that Trump picked Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence, given her past statements disputing the U.S. government’s claim that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people and defending Putin’s stated rationale for invading Ukraine.

Cornyn, however, is up for reelection in 2026 and is likely to face a conservative primary challenger.

This might give him reason to be cautious in criticizing Trump’s nominees, but even so, he’s not likely to shy away from standing his ground on Trump’s most controversial picks, such as Gaetz.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)​

McConnell will be one of the most interesting Senate wild cards next year given his deep skepticism of Trump’s character and many of his policy positions.

McConnell has served as Senate majority or minority leader for the past 18 years, which saddled him with the responsibility of preserving unity within the GOP conference.

As majority leader during Trump’s first four years in office, he played a leading role in confirming Trump’s nominees to the executive and judicial branches. He counts his role in confirming three conservative justices to the Supreme Court under Trump among his greatest career accomplishments.

Yet McConnell, an institutionalist and defense hawk, is not likely to rubber-stamp Trump’s nomination of Gaetz to head the Justice Department if he thinks it would undermine public confidence in the nation’s top law enforcement institution.

“Looking at his track record, he’s never cowed to Trump on things, especially as they relate to the Senate and the Senate’s role,” a Senate Republican aide said.

McConnell rejected Trump’s call in 2018 for Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster to improve the chances of passing his legislative agenda at the time.

Given his role as a defender of Senate prerogatives, he will likely counsel against putting the Senate in an extended recess to allow Trump to make recess appointments.

McConnell will carefully examine Gabbard’s statements about Russia, given the leading role he has played directing U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

He said his priority over the final two years of his seventh Senate term will be to build up defense spending and the nation’s defense industrial base. If he views Hegseth as a Trump loyalist who might be at odds with that mission, he will likely speak out against him.

 

[Nuns with guns]

Trump is still uploading propaganda ads heavily featuring RFK Jr and he’s taking Bobby to hang out with him. I think Trump will find out a way to assign RFK Jr as Secretary of Health no matter what.

 

[big pauper]

Deli?! do you think cold cuts are "fresh food"? You can't count the deli section as a fresh food section when half of what they sell in a deli department is cold cuts. I don't know where you live or what grocery stores you're going to, but your average american grocery store is decidedly not 90% fresh food, by whatever means you want to measure; square footage, pounds, sales volume, whatever. Your average american shops in a chain grocery store whether that be aldi, kroger, publix, ingles, and at least half if not more than half is not "fresh food", cereals, bagged breads, snack foods, canned foods, frozen foods, drinks, that's at least half of a grocery store. Anyone who worked a grocery store job in high school knows that most of the stuff you scan or bag in a shift isn't fresh food.

there is a legal distinction made for government benefits in america where food that is ready to consume is "fresh" and cannot be purchased with government money. the deli is 'fresh food.' well, deli meats arent, but the fried chicken is. it's pretty trivial to eat well in america because staples are very cheap and most of our produce comes from mexico anyways, and but the quality of the processed food in this country is legitimately animal fodder and there's no amount of money you can spend on frozen food that prevents you from getting fed rancid gluten and soybean oil because those are subsidized by the government.

there's also a secondary problem where i think older people grew up with lower quality food and they have no problems eating it and spending money on it. like bologna, it's never cheap and it's such a low quality food, people are paying $16 a pound for bologney and chicken hot dogs from oscar meyer and i don't know how much of that is just because they're using government subsidy and don't care that it costs 3x more than better quality processed meats

 

[Useful_Mistake]

https://archive.is/U5cEN

https://megalodon.jp/2024-1119-0023-11/https://www.washingtonexaminer.com:443/politics/3230347/musk-ramaswamy-doge-jobs-work-80-hours-week/

 

[grocerygoblin]

This 100% sounds like a Karen wrote this.

 

[BobbyBriggs69420]

Delete outright and do not revert saar!

 

[John.Doe]

Trump is still uploading propaganda ads heavily featuring RFK Jr and he’s taking Bobby to hang out with him. I think Trump will find out a way to assign RFK Jr as Secretary of Health no matter what.

He has to do it, otherwise he's going to look like either a lying sociopath that won't keep the promises he made or a weak cuck that doesn't have the power to deliver what he owes. He has to reward RFK's loyalty with this appointment, and if he fails to do so for whatever reason then his entire term is going to be derailed. I cannot over emphasize how important these appointments will be for Trump, and not just in what they do for the next 4 years, but as an exercise in power and setting a tone of authority.

 

[indomitable snowman]

surgeons wear them while operating on people. It makes logical sense and it is actually rooted in proven science

Evidence to support that is weak

https://www.cochrane.org/CD002929/WOUNDS_disposable-surgical-face-masks-preventing-surgical-wound-infection-clean-surgery

Key results

Overall, we found very few studies and identified no new trials for this latest update. We analysed a total of 2106 participants from the three studies we found. All three studies showed that wearing a face mask during surgery neither increases nor decreases the number of wound infections occurring after surgery. We conclude that there is no clear evidence that wearing disposable face masks affects the likelihood of wound infections developing after surgery.

 

[Potatoherder]

Shut the hell up about Operation Warp Sneed.

View attachment 6658555

Of all the things pinning the covid shots on him would have worked. Really shows how attached at the hip they are with big pharma.

edit: update on the various races the dems are trying to fortify. This guy is from DDHQ.

https://x.com/MichaelPruser/status/1858526000495075682

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

Fuck outta here throwing mental disorders around. Narcissism isn’t just someone having ambition. That’s called being a man. Narcissism is a destructive, anti-social personality that ends in a miserable life.

To add, you could call sufficient self-interest Health Narcissism, it's not bad on its own. It's not really a problem until it's Pathological. A Pathological Narc, or Narcissistic Personality Disorder, is something vastly different from lots of self-interest. NPDs don't actually think very much of themselves, it's all a manufactured personality shell to protect an utterly shattered core of self-worth. They may self-aggrandize and demand everyone play along with the outer personality, but when they look in the mirror they hate what they see.

I wanna expand upon this, because the masks they wear also don't fucking work. Surgical masks do not prevent the transmission of viruses. They are to prevent you from spraying spit on a surgical site or to keep you from getting infectious fluids in your mouth.

I remember reading a study done year ago that showed there was no difference in post-surgical infections these days whether masks were worn or not. So long as you keep the physical shit out, it's good. Handwashing, however, well wash your hands your filthy animals.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but do people actually think these guys are real?
View attachment 6657194
It feels like every time something politically spicy happens like a week later a ""new"" neo-nazi group of like 12 dudes shows up in front of cameras and then proceeds to do absolutely nothing.

I mean, that's a bit north for that, but Southern Ohio can be pretty racist, but it's usually pretty casual.

View attachment 6658596
This 100% sounds like a Karen wrote this.

That tracks if it came from the Jeet. It sounds good in corporate speak, so that's what he goes with.

 

[BigJoey41X]

Evidence to support that is weak

https://www.cochrane.org/CD002929/WOUNDS_disposable-surgical-face-masks-preventing-surgical-wound-infection-clean-surgery

I assumed the reason they wear masks is to reduce the stench right?, I heard that the insides of a human body smells like pure ass, and they operate a patient for up to hours at a time.

If the patient actually has some airborne illness, maybe they're gonna use hazmat suits

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

There has never a Tim elected as VP.

Tim Walz and Tim Kane BTFO

Trump ironically chose well with James Daniel Vance. That’s one of the most common first names for a Vice President and President.

Two of those are terrible (Buchanan and Carter), one that got killed early in his term (Garfield), two that were very good (Monroe and Madison), and one that is in the top five (Polk).

 

[The Ugly One]

Not to worry, the USAF had been navigating the skies without GPS for many years before GPS came along.

How do black female fighter pilots fare without GPS?

In March of 2020, I was definitely scared of covid given how unknown it was at the very beginning of everything. Once the "two weeks to slow the spread" ended and nothing changed, though, I knew then that something was up. By April of 2020, I was dooming all over the place trying to tell everyone that what was happening was dystopian. Granted, I wasn't fooled for long, but I was still fooled for a period of time though.

The rational response was to take heavy precautions at first, then adjust as new information came available. What actually happened taught me that the authorities adjust their policy responses based not on new information, but on power dynamics and political outcomes. Basically made me feel like Murray Rothbard.

 

[JustSomeDong]

Look for a Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods near you.

Bug Hive dweller detected.