American Politics

[Bobby Hundreds]

The Democrats must genuinely want to lose the election. Its astonishing they believe Biden is capable and in my opinion Biden should do the right thing and realise he's not capable.

[Kevin D]

15 hours ago, polymerpunkah said:

And a Republican senator challenged a witness at a hearing to a fist-fight, right there in the committee room.

 

 

Supposedly an ex-MMA fighter, whatever that means.

 

 

 

An absolute clown-show.

 

 

 

 

 

Good stuff:

 

 

[Skidfingers McGonical]

On 15/11/2023 at 08:51, Bobby Hundreds said:

The Democrats must genuinely want to lose the election. Its astonishing they believe Biden is capable and in my opinion Biden should do the right thing and realise he's not capable.

There lies the problem. He is unable to realise he’s not. 

[Section_31]

18 hours ago, Kevin D said:

Good stuff:

 

 

 

Fuck me. Imagine you're the Russians and you set out 20 years ago to destroy America through funding fringe groups and online disinformation. That's a job well done, a job fucking very well done.

[Mudface]

37 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

 

Fuck me. Imagine you're the Russians and you set out 20 years ago to destroy America through funding fringe groups and online disinformation. That's a job well done, a job fucking very well done.

 

Even better, imagine getting a thick as shit president in place, and convincing a whole swathe of 'patriots' that 'the other side' are traitors. Amazing stuff.

[Kevin D]

59 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

 

Fuck me. Imagine you're the Russians and you set out 20 years ago to destroy America through funding fringe groups and online disinformation. That's a job well done, a job fucking very well done.

I was disappointed in Bernie for stopping the fight. 
 

He’s speaking in Liverpool at the Philharmonic in January. I was going to go, but I’m having second thoughts now.

[Anubis]

1 hour ago, Kevin D said:

I was disappointed in Bernie for stopping the fight. 
 

He’s speaking in Liverpool at the Philharmonic in January. I was going to go, but I’m having second thoughts now.

 

Were you going to offer to fight him?

[Section_31]

Bernie has the exact same accent as Paulie Walnuts' mum.

[Kevin D]

4 hours ago, Anubis said:

 

Were you going to offer to fight him?

I was going to hear rousing support of the social democratic principles that I thought had.

 

Now I don’t know what to think.

[Kevin D]

Would love to see the Greens bring this lad in:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/16/george-santos-republican-house-ethics-report
 

The New York Republican congressman, fabulist and criminal defendant George Santos said he would not seek re-election next year, after the House ethics committee issued a report detailing “grave and pervasive campaign finance violations and fraudulent activity” and recommending action against him.
 

“I will NOT be seeking re-election for a second term in 2024 as my family deserves better than to be under the gun from the press all the time,” Santos said in a statement, calling the report “biased” and “a disgusting politicised smear”.

 

The report detailed the New York congressman’s conduct.

“Representative Santos sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit,” the committee said.

“He blatantly stole from his campaign. He deceived donors into providing what they thought were contributions to his campaign but were in fact payments for his personal benefit.

 

“He reported fictitious loans to his political committees to induce donors and party committees to make further contributions to his campaign – and then diverted more campaign money to himself as purported ‘repayments’ of those fictitious loans.

 

“He used his connections to high-value donors and other political campaigns to obtain additional funds for himself through fraudulent or otherwise questionable business dealings. And he sustained all of this through a constant series of lies to his constituents, donors, and staff about his background and experience.”

 

Santos was elected last year, as part of a successful midterms campaign for Republicansin New York. But as his résumé unraveled amid increasingly picaresque reports about his life before entering Congress, he admitted “embellishing” his record.

 

Allegations of criminal behaviour also emerged. Santos now faces 23 federal criminal charges, including laundering funds and defrauding donors. He has pleaded not guilty.

 

He has survived attempts to expel him from the House, including from members of his own party. Most recently, 31 Democrats voted against, making him only the sixth House member ever expelled, saying he should not be expelled without having been convicted.

 

Three congressmen were expelled in 1861, for supporting the Confederacy in the civil war. Two have been expelled after being criminally convicted, the last in 2002.

Republican leaders, beholden to a narrow House majority, had said they would wait for the House ethics report before deciding what to do.

 

In his response to the report, Santos said: “If there was a single ounce of ETHICS in the ‘ethics committee’, they would have not released this biased report. The committee went to extraordinary lengths to smear myself and my legal team about me not being forthcoming (my legal bills suggest otherwise).

 

“It is a disgusting politicised smear that shows the depths of how low our federal government has sunk. Everyone who participated in this grave miscarriage of justice should all be ashamed of themselves.”

 

Somewhat optimistically, he also called for a constitutional convention to formalise action against Joe Biden for the president’s supposed crimes.

 

More contritely, Santos said he was “humbled yet again and reminded that I am human and I have flaws”.

 

The report, submitted by Michael Guest of Mississippi, the Republican committee chair, was accompanied by extensive appendices of evidence submitted and considered, including plentiful evidence of apparent financial malpractice.

 

The committee said Santos had not co-operated with its investigation, “continues to flout his statutory financial disclosure obligations and has failed to correct countless errors and omissions in his past [financial disclosure] statements, despite being repeatedly reminded … of his requirement to do so.

 

“The [committee] also found that, despite his attempts to blame others for much of the misconduct, Representative Santos was a knowing and active participant in the wrongdoing.

 

Particularly troubling was Representative Santos’ lack of candour during the investigation itself.”

 

Members of Congress, the committee said, should now take any action they “deem appropriate and necessary, based on the [committee’s] findings, to fulfill the House’s constitutional mandate to police the conduct of its members”.

 

[TheHowieLama]

6 minutes ago, Kevin D said:

Would love to see the Greens bring this lad in:

 

 

 

Another drag queen committing crimes.

[Gnasher]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-14/mike-pompeo-joins-board-of-veon-s-ukraine-unit-amid-legal-battle?leadSource=uverify wall

 

 

 

 

 

[Kevin D]

On 16/11/2023 at 09:59, Section_31 said:

 

Fuck me. Imagine you're the Russians and you set out 20 years ago to destroy America through funding fringe groups and online disinformation. That's a job well done, a job fucking very well done.

Showed my mate the clip earlier:

 

 

[Kevin D]

 

[Jose Jones]

Sure Obama was a bit of a hype job, but it still amazes me how they’ve gone from him to the current political situation so quickly.

[Section_31]

1 hour ago, Jose Jones said:

Sure Obama was a bit of a hype job, but it still amazes me how they’ve gone from him to the current political situation so quickly.

 

Perhaps not unrelated. The Tea Party is sort of what seeded Trumpism isn't it? And that found new venom in the era where a black man had the temerity to run the country - and the leadup  to him winning. 

 

As I remember it, that's when people started to shout obscene shit at conventions (McCain bollocked someone for it) and you could possibly say Sarah Palin was one of the first real populists, an absolute air head who claimed she could deal wit Russia because she could see it from her window in Alaska, but who also had nice tits.

 

I think Obama got heckled once during a state of the union address in Congress too, which was considered unprecedented at the time. 

 

No doubt Twitter and social media in general has made things worse, as has the legacy of the credit crunch. But Obama as the name and face of America's changing identity I reckon spawned much of the madcap white extremism in their politics now.  

[SasaS]

According to Levitsky and Ziblatt in How Democracies Die, it began sometime in the late 70s with Gingrich and constant "hard ball politics" and then gradually escalated into what we have now through removal of party gatekeeping and growing influence of right wing Republican media personalities.

[Kevin D]

They’ve voted to expel Santos.

 

Gutted.

[Section_31]

Imagine how fucked up you've got to be to get binned by those loons, Red Nick would be house speaker over there.

[Kevin D]

 

[Bjornebye]

 

 

[Gnasher]

Apparently anti zionism is anti semitism now in the States. 

 

Ames sums it up nicely.

 

 

 

 

[Gnasher]

Land of the free.

 

 

 

 

[Gnasher]

Anyone remember these? All in the family. Brilliant.

 

 

 

 

 

[Kevin D]