That's what they themselves said to the prosecutors, what can I tell ya.

ETA: Not to mention that this is FAR worse than shady shit. Shady shit is Bob Menéndez (fuck him). This is treason.

We dodged the bullet... FOR NOW... Psycho came in second:





And you thought you knew how psycho politicians looked, huh.

Sorry about the nightmares.

i don't know that he's any more psycho than the kleptocracy of kirchnerism. i mean, look at poor argentina in an endless downward spiral, the same clusterfuck of corruption and dysfunction and mismanagement and theft. inflation, devaluation, worthless debt... in a country that should be rich! pathetic...

i mean, i've seen many international headlines comparing milei to el trumpo, which might lead one to believe it's a fair comparison, but frankly i fail to see the commonality. it's just a lazy referent for the uneducated.

milei is well read, principled (he derives his arguments from principles), and is neither ignorant nor capricious. the last debate which i saw live he quoted hayek and made philosophical arguments. i don't think they were a great thing to say in a debate but the points were well articulated.

i mean, one can disagree with him without falling for ridiculous character assassinations. no? i've never seen trump quote a book of any sort, or make any sort of statement of principles, or make a clear and cogent argument about anything.

i'm not saying that milei is the solution to argentina's problems. but massa, for sure, is completely the wrong answer. in the last debate his prescriptions to heal the economic hemorrhage and continuous impoverishment of his people were the equivalent of a set of colored bandaids with cartoon characters in them. housing programs... wtf. kirchnerism is a disgrace. and they want more of it?! poor argentina. doomed.

anyway, maybe not. there will be a runoff election on november 19, with a tv debate on the 12. not sure if there will be any alliances or how they will shape up in the next month. but i'm sure if milei were elected, the congress wouldn't allow him to do whatever he wants.

but more kirchnerism and mismanagement and corruption... omfg... muerte sin fin.

cristina should be in jail, btw.

I take your point, but even assuming they're fucked either way... Remember PJ O'Rourke? From Wikipedia:

In 2016, he endorsed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. O'Rourke stated that his endorsement included her "lies and empty promises" and added "She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters".

That's my point. Trump-like or not, guy's off-the-charts nuts. I mean, just... No. The fact that Argentina can't come up with other alternatives should not be a green light for an absolute mutant to take the Rosada. If we're gonna play "What Do They Have To Lose", I'll even take, shit, you name it - Lionel Scaloni or somebody...

It'll be funny to hear "real communism has never been implemented" about a different ideology for once.

yep. libertarians have the same utopian bent as communists.

they could use some of that as a remedy to the bureaucracy and statism that is strangling them though.

i don't say this on an ideological basis, just a pragmatic one. i don't believe in a libertarian religion, just like communism is a religion, both proclaiming that utopias are within reach, "if only...". but i think they need a change of direction because they are heading into the economic abyss, and halfassed orthodoxy during the macri years has blocked that option. see: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/l...y-under-macri/

argentina is fuuuuucked, fucked, fucked. it's a tragedy to witness. poorer and poorer every day due to mismanagement. so i think maybe they need just less "management." not to utopian levels, just less than what they currently have. you have any idea of how their monetary system functions, what its effect is on the economy and the people? https://internationalbanker.com/fina...ancial-system/ and supplemental to that https://www.bloomberglinea.com/engli...xchange-rates/ (crazymaking)

again with the inapt comparisons... those are not the same things. i thought false equivalences were reserved for fox news.

to begin with... argentina is not "within normal parameters". kirchnerism is not "within normal parameters". rampant inflation and impoverishment are not "within normal parameters". economic destruction of their scale is not "within normal parameters." and what does scaloni have to do with any of that?

i don't see anything in what you say that could be discussed, sorry. just ad-hominems and jokes. you're just making jokes...

for facts and figures just look at their inflation rates, and compare them... to your own country. he wants to copy some of your things actually.

https://georank.org/economy/argentina/chile

those figures are outdated however, argentina inflation is at over 120%... and heading higher

https://www.reuters.com/markets/arge...00-2023-09-13/

you're going to end up getting a lot of economic refugees crossing over the cordillera. how many venezuelans do you have currently? the most significant export from venezuela these days is refugees... and criminal gangs. do you want a venezuela situation brewing right next door to you?

Free Palestine
 

Seeing all of the things being posted on social media makes me so so sad. There's so many things happening everywhere all at once, it's overwhelming. War is terrible, but it simply isn't a conflict in my opinion. Cutting off essentials like water, food, etc. and designating a "safe evacuation route" for Palestinians only to bomb it? This is not a conflict, it's bordering on the lines of genocide.

GUILTY

she's not laughing now, but we are, hahaha

Oh man, Tom Emmer lasted less than four hours as Speaker nominee...

Holy shit, All The President's Mooks: apparently Mark Meadows has been telling the whole love to Jack Smith in exchange for immunity... NOICE.

Once them deals start a-rollin', everyone starts a-flippin'...

so the new speaker is an election-denying traitor who wants to cut off ukraine


https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4...kraine-israel/

no sure how well this is playing out for democrats... it would have been better to negotiate with whatsisname, kevin the spineless, in exchange for support.

Bloomberg headline: "Republicans Pick Some Guy to Be Speaker of the House. No, he's not the Mike Johnson who was on season 15 of The Bachelorette." Would be pretty funny if he wasn't such a piece of shit.

Learning about the prison industrial complex in one of my classes, and that shit is fucking insane.

us jobs numbers just out:

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 150,000 in October, and the unemployment rate changed little at 3.9 percent. Job gains occurred in health care, government, and social assistance. Employment declined in manufacturing due to strike activity

--

so 198k if you count the striking auto workers. a bit slower than last month. unemployment up to 3.9 from 3.8. a tiny slowdown. still soft landing?

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

I will ask Da Krug.
:)

he will probably say it is too much tightening lol

and summers will likely say it is not enough hahahaha

well, with that attitude...

We have been for decades

so what's the plan? lie down and die?

I know, but I'm too far away to even make a dent. Can't donate, can't snail-mail stuff to motivate voters, can't go door-to-door, etc.

Even if this poll doesn't tell us that much considering we're over a year away from the election, look at a place like Nevada. +10 (well, minus 10 for us) is way outside the usual margin of error. Goddammit.

Trump’s New York Fraud Trial Descends Into Another Shouting Match

okay, but it doesn't help to demoralize the troops.

sun tzu wrote that one doesn' have to destroy the enemy, only their willingness to engage.

we can't be throwing the towel over here with still a year to go.

who do you want to win? figure it out, the support that team, don't demoralize it. jeezus fucking christ.

the last thing we need is a pity party.

--

here's a napoleon copypasta:

An army's effectiveness depends on its size, training, experience, and morale, and morale is worth more than any of the other factors combined.


--

here's an extra sun tzu copypasta:

When strong, avoid them. ***If of high morale, depress them.*** Seem humble to fill them with conceit. If at ease, exhaust them. If united, separate them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.

Sun Tzu

--

so, yeah, news are news, but spreading depression among the troops sucks royal shit.

I'm demoralizing everybody who reads this thread? Like, all five of 'em? ;):)

OH MAN that Craig Robinson gif is priceless... :D

Keep trying new things for a bit, they fail, try some more new things. Carry on.

yes.

every vote counts, every ounce of energy counts, every dollar counts, every word counts, everything counts.

carry on is good! myth of sisyphus ftw.

That's very true. So my message to everybody reading this is pretty simple: VOTE BIDEN NO MATTER WHAT.

lmao

well we'll see where things are when we get there. but read that even ralph nader was trying to help.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...iden-election/


this basically being a choice between flawed democracy or fascism

and personally, honest, i think biden has done great. i don't get what people criticize him for.

inflation? it's global! and the usa has the best economy in the world right now. so what do people expect?

poot'n? he stood up to him without making a clusterfuck of it. russian is losing. every day.

israel? he was never gonna side with hamas, but he's asking bibi to cool it, at the same time.

industrial policy? not without its risks, but he's passed a massive massive law that will have repercussions for years to come.

the public just likes bitching i guess? i really don't know.

This is the most infuriating part, yes.

Look, prices of some items and services went up, many of them are not going down. Welcome to capitalism. Inflation isn't about whether prices go up; it's the RATE at which they increase. And the fact that inflation is mainly under control without causing a recession is almost unheard of. Literally - some ivy league students have never heard of it because they're not taught that it's a possibility. They're not even taught Keynes at all! Talk about canceling! And don't tell ME about how hard it is out there for a pimp!

Yes; now, since most Unitedstateseans are too dumb (sorry not sorry) to understand the horror that that entails, Democrats need to hammer the abortion issue (don't even call it "reproductive rights", even if it's more accurate) with a hammer bigger than Harley Quinn's. "Issue 1", as it was called in former swing state Ohio, won big time tonight. Motherfucking Republicans love to scare the electorate with bullcrap like "They're gonna take away your guns!"; well, fuckit, let's use scare tactics as well, only about shit that will ACTUALLY HAPPEN if they win.

In times of silly wars and irrelevant elections, it's good when someone keeps their eyes on the prize:

Taylor Swift Under Attack by MAGA Christians

MAGA pastor Hank Kunneman has accused the singer of promoting witchcraft and satanism.

okay im not into most comic books so i deleted the picture, but here is my small fear with issue 1: that having defanged the matter of forced pregnancies, ohioans might just say case closed and vote for whoever next time. let me explain.

on the marketing side, "reproductive rights" is a better term than "abortion," for 2 reasons.

one is that abortion is an ugly word, nobody is "for abortion" really, i mean, it's always a remedy of last resort, not something anybody enjoys.

second is that due to loss aversion bias, people fight harder when they lose something than to gain something, in spite of the "having nothing left to lose" expression, losers are more pissed off than winners are greedy.

so, LOSING RIGHTS feels worthier of a battle than gaining rights. it's human psychology. it's not good math either, but that's how we are.

so this is my hesitation, that once those rights have been secured, the will to fight in the next round might be lost. the classic "resting on one's laurels." but maybe. we'll see if people are mobilized in a year. here's to a strong continuation.

on the other hand, i am very encouraged by the approval of legalized marijuana. maybe im making crazy extrapolations, but hear me out. while i am no stoner, i think that this signals more relaxed social mores in ohio. a different mindset from angry, moralizing right wing christians.

(of course let's not forget that john boner (eh) is from ohio, and a marijuana lobbyist nowadays, having been an oppositional speaker of the house under obama. well not as bad as the current batch of donkeys. but anyway, maybe he had something to do there in the weed vote.)

but seriously the marijuana policy barometer i see as a big signal of social change there. even if "legal" marijuana is a big corporate move and not a rasta paradise, it does signal a change in the public's mindset. or so i hope. a less angry and less drunk electorate will lean less maga, is my demented hypothesis.

On the other hand, if Trump gets elected Jared can fix the Middle East AGAIN!

lmfao

fuck that noise. it was always just a money grab.

A colossal one. And the fucker had the gall to call the Palestinian-Israeli conflict "just a real estate issue".

Incidentally, today the House, thanks to 22 Democrats in the Israeli lobby's pocket, censured Rashida Tlaib. Other than the annoying Debbie Wasserman Schultz, I don't see any prominent names among the 22. There's a Ritchie Torres... Wasn't he in Bon Jovi?