Politics 2025

[Buster's Uncle]

At least one of those countries had the means to deliver and the possession of a biological WMD - remember the Scud attacks on Israel in 1991?

[shrugs]  I remember - and if stuff like that was reliable, effective and not-so-prone to bite the perpetrator on the butt, they could have been doing it since Victorian times...

[Buster's Uncle]

This ends up belonging here...

I've been on Medicaid for about a year-and-a-half.

Yeah; I'm pretty sure I'm screwed in the coming months -probably before my next appointment in five months- and will have to go back to the charity I'd used since I got back to America.  -It's a badly-run operation, frankly, but not that much difference in quality of care, just more bureaucratic overhead/disrespectful waste-of-my-time.

You know, this is a thing where Pig and the T-party directly hurt me, if it turns out that way - and I have to pray they don't undermine my fall-back medical charity, too, which does depend on gov'ment subsidies, partly.

[Buster's Uncle]

A few words on Biden's Brain are in order.

That crap goes back 13 years or so ago, during his first successful run for President - I said on these boards at the time that he held up his end of a debate with Bernie Sanders -another man already inarguably too old even back then, but one no one has ever accused of senility- without getting humiliated.  I ain't senile, but I doubt I could hang with Bernie in a debate.  Case closed on a mountain of loose talk everywhere at the time.  People's lack of memory in politics makes my brain want to explode - it just wasn't true, and it was, indeed, everywhere.

So maybe I'm just having observer bias on what went down last year - I'll never believe that boy after he Cried Wolf that time.  But Nancy Pelosi and that Barely Democrats crowd behind the turmoil and pushing Joe out have proven themselves collaborators and Political Idiots a million times over for about 24 years straight.  It's way past time for what's left of them to retire, joining Joe and Bakrama and the Clintons, especially Mrs. Pelosi.  I simply never saw the evidence that Joe was out of it, more, an old man who had some days better than others, as one does.



Now, Cousin 'Mala -Harris is my maternal family name, and "Claimin' Kin" is a 'Southern' thing- and what she maybe did wrong is a whole 'nother subject.  I was frequently like Fritz Mondale in 1988, asking "Where's the Beef?"...

[Green1]

A few words on Biden's Brain are in order.

That crap goes back 13 years or so ago, during his first successful run for President - I said on these boards at the time that he held up his end of a debate with Bernie Sanders -another man already inarguably too old even back then, but one no one has ever accused of senility- without getting humiliated.  I ain't senile, but I doubt I could hang with Bernie in a debate.  Case closed on a mountain of loose talk everywhere at the time.  People's lack of memory in politics makes my brain want to explode - it just wasn't true, and it was, indeed, everywhere.

So maybe I'm just having observer bias on what went down last year - I'll never believe that boy after he Cried Wolf that time.  But Nancy Pelosi and that Barely Democrats crowd behind the turmoil and pushing Joe out have proven themselves collaborators and Political Idiots a million times over for about 24 years straight.  It's way past time for what's left of them to retire, joining Joe and Bakrama and the Clintons, especially Mrs. Pelosi.  I simply never saw the evidence that Joe was out of it, more, an old man who had some days better than others, as one does.



Now, Cousin 'Mala -Harris is my maternal family name, and "Claimin' Kin" is a 'Southern' thing- and what she maybe did wrong is a whole 'nother subject.  I was frequently like Fritz Mondale in 1988, asking "Where's the Beef?"...

My take on it is this:

Biden was an experienced statesmen and well liked and probably was the only one who could unify the democrats at the time versus DJT. I mean, who else could? Warren, no one took seriously. Harris had issues but was a political compromise and everybody thogh she'd just get VP and an expanded wikipedia page then retire. And hell no if they'd let Sanders or Yang or Williamson anywhere near the presidency, They buried them.

Biden originally wanted just to send DJT to jail, endless legal battles, and retirement for things DJT legit did that were shady. Wash his hands, everyone retires. After all, DJT IS a Hollywood character actor AND a big city and luxury property landlord with mob ties. Of course, dude's banging supermodel pron stars. But Biden's condition was getting harder to hide and DJT did not just go away. Yes, an amendment lets you remove incapable presidents due to health, but that looks bad and opposing propaganda would not spin it as an elder statesman gained a bad condition and we should thank him and wish him luck but the Dems are "hiding" stuff and incompetent.

When Biden's condition was getting bad, bad they just anointed Harris without taking this into Convention or letting the people or party decide. And while Hariss WAS entitled to run by right as a sitting vice president, it was not the best choice. Even in the 20 primary, Harris was never popular. She had a reputation from her years in CA as locking people up right and left for weed in a time when weed legalization was insanely popular. Really destroyed lives. Plus the avoidance. She would not come on any show to prove her case unless it was heavily curated and certain questions that apply to the working man like housing, drug issues, medicaid for all, etc were forbidden. But she did hit high on ID POL which brings engagement, but mostly divisive rage and people were tired of it.

In effect, handing this to DJT and his alliance.

[Buster's Uncle]

My take is largely that yours is factually challenged in too many places - past my bedtime already, but I'll surely have time to get into a counternarrative tomorrow when I'm woke up good and get bored, no worry.  I'm no news/politics wonk, haven't been -out of disgust- for 25 years; maybe I'm wrong.

[Buster's Uncle]

Turns out we got us a tech volunteer to help t_ras - another busy morning multitasking w/ keeping different people in the loop.  I'll get back to this when I can...

[Buster's Uncle]

Prospects not looking like soon.  Busy with my job here -getting moved and tech stable has to come first of all- and I'm tired.

Green, pal, take another turn and save me some quibbling by re-reading and thinking about my post on Senile Joe - and try to actually prove your case for he was senile in office.  Relate facts, informing your opinion; I'll tend to believe facts.  It'll save time, as that's much of what I want to argue in your last.

[bvanevery]

for somewhat loudly preferring Star Trek to all things misusing the name since Wrath of Khan.  WAY more.  I don't participate much in my own damn Star Trek thread in my own damn forum any more, what with all the impostor shows under discussion.  It's not a funny punchline.

Star Trek... people can get wound up about it.  I seem to remember some forum debate I had with someone about Star Wars, quite awhile ago, which pretty much stopped me from participating further in the Rec Commons.  Think it was Star Wars.  I'm much more of a Trekkie than whatever people call Star Warsers.  And I'm a nominal Whovian.  But I'm sure I've watched A New Hope the requisite 50 times in my life or something, before that was trivially easy to do.  I still quote lines occasionally, but I'm in danger of getting them slightly wrong.  I see the world slightly through that lens, as geeks of my age typically would.

The Orville was better Trek then Trek for awhile recently.  Not sure what's going on now.  I managed to swallow all of Discovery because it finally came on one of the cable streams at no additional cost.  Trek hasn't done anything I'm willing to go behind a paywall for.  Neither has Star Wars.

Wouldn't mind some kind of Stargate reboot.  Yet another franchise where occasionally, you'll meet people that are getting pretty wound up about it.  At least there's commonality of material though.  Star Trek has become so broad in treatment, in all its various incarnations, that Trekkies of one generation or another cannot necessarily recognize each other as belonging to the same community.  I ditched r/StarTrek quite some time ago on that basis.  Too much noise.  Too many people who like things that "aren't Trek".

I've seen documentaries on the origin and trajectory of Trek and it's pretty remarkable.  I didn't previously realize that Lucille Ball was a big reason it went anywhere.

Yeah, so, verbal violence about Trek.  I'm not exactly surprised.

One can only ask, what is the thing, and what underlies the thing.

[Buster's Uncle]

That damn Star Trek thread IS on the first page in here.

[bvanevery]

It appears on a page 2 for me.  I notice a fair number of topics that have had new posts since the June revival, so perhaps it's been bumped down.  Not the Trek thread though.  The ending of the thread seems innocuous enough.  I don't think I'll be digging through 125 pages to find what any hubbub was about.

[Elok]

Dunno what to say here; I was pretty convinced by that debate performance that Biden was simply not competent to be president anymore.  Of course the other fellow was unfit to be president any number of ways, but it remains a matter of concern that they concealed, for an unknown but apparently substantial period of time, that the president sometimes descended into utter senility.  Some unknowable percentage of decisions from the White House were made not by the elected president but by unidentified minders nudging him along.  That this was hushed up to such an extent was a serious unforced error that definitely contributed to [Sleezebag]'s return.  Yes, [Sleezebag] is awful, but he passed the very low bar of being able to complete comprehensible, if rambling, ugly, and stupid, sentences.  He never said we have to beat Medicare.

As for me, I remain an atypical libertarian.  We are spending money that does not exist and a reckoning will inevitably come due and when it does it will be ugly.  Neither party is serious about addressing this--the Democrats are presently somewhat less spendthrift but that doesn't really count for much with me--nor are they interested in serious and comprehensive defense of civil liberties.  Each party is in hock to illiberal radicals, which it refuses to condemn because it needs their help against the other side's illiberal radicals, who are ostensibly much worse.  This is not new.  I hate them both and generally turn my eyes away from the problem because I have no power to fix it.  I wrote in Justin Amash in the last election.

EDIT: I sort of wish Elon Musk well in the VERY narrow context of his America Party venture.  It will fail, because he is an arrogant nerd who is very good at a very particular kind of leadership but sucks at politics, and also probably whacked out on ketamine.  But he is at least trying, ineffectually, to draw attention to the problem before we either default on our debt, or hyperinflate and THEN default on our debt.

[Buster's Uncle]

Agreed about both parties.  DO BETTER.

[Buster's Uncle]

To be clear - Not, BTW, any equivalency.  The Rebublikkkans and the opposition are NOT at all equivalent in their failure of the electorate.  Just, the dems do also suck, and they fail to oppose sufficiently in the Face Of Evil.

[Buster's Uncle]

Now, Biden sucked v. Pig --- but any ordinary wonky adult ought to destroy The Pig in debate like Dr. Warren kneecapped Bloomberg.  For some reason -people are stupid?- professional politicians cannot do it - Joe is hardly the first.