Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....II

[Simon of the Playa]

fuck this guy, fuck texas, and fuck evangelical christian nationalists.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... n-kate-cox

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[Simon of the Playa]

"If you're being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you're doing,” he said. “History will judge harshly those who turned their back on freedom's cause."

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... er-12-2023

[Simon of the Playa]

Putin warmly thanked the GOP and Mr. Trump for their continued support

https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-h ... id-2023-12

[some seeing eye]

Corruption...

https://www.propublica.org/article/clar ... ars-scotus

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/02 ... h-circuit/

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

from the "Shit Sarah Says" collection...

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[Simon of the Playa]

better than WWIII...

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzMe7YfOuGD/

[Simon of the Playa]

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https://apple.news/Ae9FTKKIERL2zi3CPXuETmQ

[DoctorIknow]

Imagine if The Lincoln Project got enough donations to put this in the SuperBowl ads!

[url] https://action.lincolnproject.us/dictat ... olnproject [/url]

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

“I have a question for my colleagues,” King said. “When the history of this day is written, as it surely will be, do you really want to be recorded as being on the side of Vladimir Putin?... Or on the side of China, as they contemplate the invasion of Taiwan…. [H]istory's going to record this vote as one of the most important votes that any of us have ever made.”

For his part, King said, “I want to stand on the side of resisting authoritarianism, on the side of democracy, on the side of the values that the country has stood for and that people have been fighting for 250 years"

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ry-31-2024

[some seeing eye]

Bolton:



Trump will withdraw the US from NATO. Then Putin will invade Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, possibly part of Poland, and finish cutting Ukraine off of the Black Sea. Trump is easily manipulated by Putin, XI, Kim, Bebe, MBS, etc. All they need to do is flatter him and pretend to like him, best buddies, while they work against American allies and the American people.

[Simon of the Playa]

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) wrote. “They literally demanded specific policy, got it, and then killed it.”

Foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum reflected on the teetering national security measure and wrote: “People will die, today, because of the cynical game played by the American Republican party. Their irresponsibility is breathtaking.”

Foreign affairs specialist Tom Nichols of The Atlantic wrote: “Letting Ukraine fall because of [Republicans’] cultish loyalty to Trump will be a betrayal that will stain America forever—and probably end up pulling us into a fight for Europe later. This is one of the rare moments when the path to disaster is clearly marked and avoidable.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ary-5-2024

[Simon of the Playa]

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https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker- ... age-2024-2

[Simon of the Playa]

Trump’s ties to Russia are deep and well documented, including by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was dominated by Republicans when it concluded that Trump’s 2016 campaign team had worked with Russian operatives. In November 2022, in the New York Times Magazine, Jim Rutenberg pulled together testimony given both to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and the Senate Intelligence Committee, transcripts from the impeachment hearings, and recent memoirs.

Rutenberg showed that in 2016, Russian operatives had presented to Trump advisor and later campaign manager Paul Manafort a plan “for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded, and -directed ‘separatists’ were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead.”

But they were concerned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) might stand in their way. Formed in 1947 to stand against Soviet expansion and now standing against Russian aggression, NATO is a collective security alliance of 31 states that have agreed to consider an attack on any member to be an attack on all.

In exchange for weakening NATO, undermining the U.S. stance in favor of Ukraine in its attempt to throw off the Russians who had invaded in 2014, and removing U.S. sanctions from Russian entities, Russian operatives were willing to put their finger on the scales to help Trump win the White House.

When he was in office, Trump did, in fact, try to weaken NATO—as well as other international organizations like the World Health Organization—and promised he would pull the U.S. out of NATO in a second term, effectively killing it. Rutenberg noted that Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine looks a lot like an attempt to achieve the plan it suggested in 2016. But because there was a different president in the U.S., that invasion did not yield the results Putin expected.

President Joe Biden stepped into office more knowledgeable on foreign affairs than any president since Dwight Eisenhower, who took office in 1953. Biden recognized that democracy was on the ropes around the globe as authoritarian leaders set out to dismantle the rules-based international order. He also knew that the greatest strength of the U.S. is its alliances. In the months after he took office, Biden focused on shoring up NATO, with the result that when Russia invaded Ukraine again in February 2022, a NATO coalition held together to support Ukraine.

By 2024, far from falling apart, NATO was stronger than ever with the addition of Finland. Sweden, too, is expected to join shortly.

Trump’s 2024 campaign website calls for “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission,” and in a campaign speech in South Carolina today, he made it clear what that means. Trump has long misrepresented the financial obligations of NATO countries, and today he suggested that the U.S. would not protect other NATO countries that were “delinquent” if they were attacked by Russia. “In fact,” he said, “I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”




https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ry-10-2024

[Simon of the Playa]

i prefer the term "fucking asshole"...

[Oldguy]

Reporter interviewed Putin without bias. Peace was denied by the action of that former Prime Minister from the UK. Dems ( new world order ) wants a new European Empire. Biden is a useful idiot. Reelect President Trump. Primaries are very important this year. Vote.

[Simon of the Playa]

wow.


and here we have a perfect example of someone who has been completely bamboozled by their media intake.


i feel terribly sorry for you oldguy, you are a fool at best.

[lucky420]

Bwahahahahaha

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

Netanyahu is facing an ongoing corruption trial and apparently counts on staying in office to keep himself out of prison. To stay in office, he must hold his coalition together, and that means bowing to his far-right partners, who want to rebuild Israeli settlements in Gaza and oppose any Palestinian control there. Any plan for a postwar settlement threatens to break his coalition and lead to new elections that Netanhayu would likely lose. Until last week, Netanyahu vowed only “total victory” over Hamas.




https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ry-26-2024

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

"After 2016, I helped lead the US gov[ernmen]t response to Russia’s election interference. In 2024, foreign interference will be *worse.* Tech[nology is] more powerful. Adversaries more brazen. American public more susceptible. Political leaders across party lines MUST UNITE against this.”

Taylor served as chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump.

Today, Catherine Belton of the Washington Post reported on a secret 2023 document from Russia’s Foreign Ministry calling for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures that attack “‘a coalition of unfriendly countries’ led by the United States. Those measures are designed to affect “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” of Russia’s perceived adversaries.

The plan is to weaken the United States and convince other countries, particularly those in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, that the U.S. will not stand by its allies. By weakening those alliances, Russian leaders hope to shift global power by strengthening Russia’s ties to China, Iran, and North Korea and filling the vacuum left by the crumbling democratic alliances (although it is not at all clear that China is on board with this plan).

According to Belton, one of the academics who advised the authors of the Russian document suggested that Russia should “continue to facilitate the coming to power of isolationist right-wing forces in America,” “enable the destabilization of Latin American countries and the rise to power of extremist forces on the far left and far right there,” increase tensions between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, and “escalate the situation in the Middle East around Israel, Iran and Syria to distract the U.S. with the problems of this region.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... il-17-2024

[Simon of the Playa]

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.

At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/ ... -goat-book