All purpose news and politics thread part VII: News & Politics Total Landscaping

[CaptainEurope]

Now happening: Steve Bannon's conviction for defying the Jan. 6 committee has been upheld by a unanimous three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

His four-month jail sentence has been on hold pending this ruling. This was his final shot at appeals. He's going to jail.

[Mister Mets]

Nancy Mace claims that former staffers mismanaged one million dollars, and spied on her accounts. They say it was all due to mistakes she made.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...1-million.html

Mace, 46, says the departed staffers mismanaged $1million, hacked her phone, spied on medical records, and even submerged electronic devices in water and deleted files to cover their tracks.

The mother-of-two claims they even went as far snooping on her childrens' calendars and would monitor doctor appointments.

Mace, 46, says the departed staffers mismanaged $1million, hacked her phone, spied on medical records, and even submerged electronic devices in water and deleted files to cover their tracks.

The mother-of-two claims they even went as far snooping on her childrens' calendars and would monitor doctor appointments.

Her new team is still trying to repair damage, she said.

'I knew that they were sabotaging the office for a while. I didn't know to the extent that they were doing it,' Mace told DailyMail.com in a sit-down interview at her Capitol Hill home, the one at the center of a dispute between her and her ex-fiancé.

'They were signing my name on documents they didn't have permission to do - one of them submerged their electronic devices under water so we couldn't access their files. They deleted files, some of them deleted files off our server, so there'd be no documentation for the new staff that were coming in.'

In December, the congresswoman fired her chief of staff Dan Hanlon, then her deputy chief of staff, Richard Chalkey, and legislative director, Randal Meyer, resigned. A total of nine staffers had departed the office by February.

Mace went on: 'We had another former staffer that would leak the names of the new employees we were hiring so that negative stories could be written about them.'

'We even had interns quit because old staff threatened the interns, threatened that they would never get a job on the hill if they worked in my office.'

Mace said she had another former staff member who hacked her devices and was tracking her for nine months.

'Literally, they could see where I was at all times. They could see my kids' calendars, my doctors' appointments, my medical information.'

'The stories I have from some of my former staff are horrific, and were a massive invasion of my privacy.'

But not only that, she said.

'We're finding thousands of dollars in bills they didn't pay,' the congresswoman went on. 'Paperwork that didn't get filed that was supposed to.'

Mace was irate to find out that her staff had left close to $1 million on the table in her office budget. 'It was $400,000 in 2022 and close to half a million in 2023,' she said.

'It's our job to manage our office, be fiscally responsible, but to use everything we have to communicate our constituent services,' she said.

'If people don't know that, hey, you didn't get your IRS refund in 2020,w e'll help you or if you need an appointment at the VA, and you've waited for six months and you need assistance, we'll get that appointment for you. Heck, I'll even call the DMV if you can't get in the DMV.'

'That money could have also gone toward salaries, bonuses - especially if you're entry level, it's really hard to get by in D.C.,' she went on. 'It was really outrageous.'

It's not clear who exactly burned the bridge as the staff departed en masse. Mace claims her old staff was plotting against her, and she's found relief in a new group of aides she can trust. But former Mace employees have described a 'toxic' worked environment.

A source familiar with the daily operations of the office shot back: 'The swamp has truly gotten to Nancy Mace. A 'fiscally conservative' congresswoman is upset that staff saved her constituents money?'

Any money unspent in an office budget goes back to the Treasury.

'I guess she never understood that the office budget is not a personal bank account. Ask her mentor, Senator Paul. Every year he sends unspent funds back to the Treasury to pay down the debt. Rep. Mace would rather spend tax money on vanity mail pieces than return a dime back to the American people.'

Two former staffers laid blame on Mace for failing to give approval for a $400,000 mailing program in 2022 before deadline.

They denied that her personal devices had been hacked, and said it was standard routine for elected officials to share their personal calendars with staff.

'She had a personal calendar, a political calendar, and official calendar. All three of those calendars were managed and shared with senior staff so that we could go about the daily operations. No one hacked her accounts. She set them all up.'

'She routinely would try to revoke access, be like 'you can no longer see my calendar' for a couple of weeks. And you know what, we couldn't do our jobs.'

'This seems to be stemming from paranoia and trust issues,' another former staffer said. 'She's clearly unwell and I hope she gets help.'

Everything the staff had access to was granted by her.'

The former aide claimed that the 'submerged device' allegation stemmed from a staff member who dropped water on their computer and took it to the tech team. 'This wasn't espionage or something.'

As for signing her name without her permission, 'she's talking about the run-of-the-mill, every office has hand stamp of a member. This is a stamp that she had directed our team to use for clerical tasks that she didn't want to be bothered with.'

After former chief Dan Hanlon left the office, he launched a brief primary run against her, propped up by other former aides.

Her best case scenario is that she's really bad at choosing employees.

[hyped78]

Yet nobody ever seems to protest autocratic Azerbaijan at Eurovision, even though the affluence of the country is built on killing millions over the next years by destroying the climate.

Because that's not "cool", apparently...

[Catlady in training]

Yet nobody ever seems to protest autocratic Azerbaijan at Eurovision, even though the affluence of the country is built on killing millions over the next years by destroying the climate.

Attachment 139449

FWIW, I've seen some people saying that even if Israel was forbidden from competing, they would still boycott it out of solidarity with Armenia. And reminding people to boycott Azerbaijan too if they boycott Israel. But that seems to be very tiny minority compared to those who only talk about boycotting Israel. Make of that what you want...

[Catlady in training]

And of course, we are now buying gas from Azerbaijan instead of Russia, so we conveniently look the other way too...

[Dalak]

Some places, like Brazil, are getting hit hard right now. Other places are only just experiencing the outer edges of the effects. I don't know enough about what makes some places more vulnerable than others, but the effects should become more widespread and more noticeable over the next ten years or so.

The climate change increases the effects of natural climatic variations. After all, climate probably played a role in Mayan civilisation collapse.

Nowadays we cover a larger part of the surface of the Earth so more prone to be victim of natural catastrophies. Hard to say if we are more or less resilient than past civilisations.

One thing is sure: climate change is here to stay and we don’t know how far it will go…

This is a subject that requires swift attention and serious consideration instead of politicization and misinformation.

So you are suggesting that someone who trains e.g. boxing can train karate instead, or train aikido instead of MMA, or wrestling instead of kung fu? Do you understand how incredibly clueless and funny that is? Because all of it is "fighting"? Again - that's like suggesting to someone who plays basketball that they can play handball instead, they are both played with balls. What you are saying makes zero sense. It must be hard to talk about something you clearly have no knowledge about, unfortunately...

On Israel you went from "you should be aware of the alternative I suggested they could have initiated last year" to "I can't make a step-by-step plan for many reasons" and "I don't think you or anyone else on this forum could do much better than vague generalities at this stage"
So what are you saying, exactly? That no one on this forum can do better than vague generalities I agree with, that was my point.

I remember you saying that moving Palestinians around to bomb/invade areas wouldn't work because Hamas would just move as well, not sure if that's what you're referring to?
Well, about 3 months ago, Israel stated they had killed ~10k Hamas fighters (and this is incl. in the 30k+ total Palestinians killed), and at the time an Hamas official reportedly admitted to Reuters ~6k Hamas fighters had been killed. This was 3 months ago.

On the spaghetti logic, I will just quote you again to see if this makes sense, as it speaks for itself: "what I brought up shortly after the initial october attacks in the post you replied to A which is the one I replied to B and reminded you of C (Which you are replying to here)"
If you want to make me aware of the alternative approach you proposed, you can please just tell me the # number of the post I should read.

Yeah, My Post A, Your Post B, and My Post C, makes sense to me. BTW There's a little arrow next to every quote:
Screenshot 2024-05-10 113055.png
It lets you go up a reply chain in every conversation, and with that I'm sure you can find the post you already replied to with no hassle. There's the Advanced Search option that would let you find any post by me with your user name in it too, but I think the post I'm talking about here was another one you replied to which didn't mention you.

As for MMA, it's Mixed Martial Arts, if you like the Grappling, Striking, etc there are other gyms that would focus on what you want to do, and pretending there isn't to make it out like it's so impossible to do to to avoid people who make you uncomfortable isn't being honest. THe goalposts are shown below.

On Israel, if your point was that no one can come up with an answer it sure didn't make it into the post mocking me for trying to come up with anything. If anything's going to change, the actions that aren't working need to be stopped. What's going on now isn't working, and your point about how many Hamas Fighters have been killed doesn't really impact the fact that even if Netty & the Military killed every living member of Hamas in the strip it wouldn't kill them globally, it wouldn't regain the support Israel's lost over this, nor would it make people who hate Israel hesitate to attack them in the future considering how many civilians were killed, maimed, starved, etc

I played a lot of rugby and cricket back in my distant youth…I suspect I’d have been hard pressed to find a club or set of team mates if I’d waited for one without the “benefit” of people with fairly extreme political views.

And that was in UK. In America it must be near impossible to take part in team sport if you avoid all people with “interesting” political views.

Kind of the whole point of The Olympics, isn't it?

The goalposts were "I feel reasonably safe in assuming that the type of person you've described in these posts (Profoundly racist/fascist, in a position of authority they like to abuse, bragging about beating others) isn't in every MMA academy in Madrid, let alone in Spain, Europe, America, or the Globe." as he'd posted "I know a couple of cops here in Europe, both ex-military, who are profoundly racist/ fascist, by the way. We used to train together and at some point I started avoiding certain conversations with them, because they were talking about things like "we love demonstrations! we get to legally beat up people!"

Then the "These guys are everywhere" gish gallop, my reminding him of what I actually asked about, and the mockery and accusations of making things like "Goalposts" up as I posted earlier.

I remain skeptical that the people described are everywhere in MMA gyms, as opposed to conservatives who I'd just disagree with politically. These aren't 'fairly' extreme views, but very extreme ones.

Purposely ignore all positive accomplishments by Democrats as well as unrelenting obstruction from the opposition.
Point to one or two failures or as yet unfulfilled promises as evidence of overall corruption or incompetence.
Rinse and repeat.

Pretty much.

Is he on drugs?

The funny thing is that everybody in that video is likely to be MAGA.

This is a nice anecdote for how cis het white males would fail a civics test, considering the 5th & 6th amendments don't work like he maintains. Honestly I believe the majority of registered voters would fail such a test in general, regardless of race/sex/orientation.

Yet nobody ever seems to protest autocratic Azerbaijan at Eurovision, even though the affluence of the country is built on killing millions over the next years by destroying the climate.

Attachment 139449

There are many people who have their livelihoods built on this industry, and finding ways for them to continue to support themselves is necessary to phasing this out. It will also involve destroying the national industries of more than a few countries living off Oil wealth.

If it's a choice of finding new industries/ways to live or having the world slowly kill us all, I'd choose the former.

E:

Now happening: Steve Bannon's conviction for defying the Jan. 6 committee has been upheld by a unanimous three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

His four-month jail sentence has been on hold pending this ruling. This was his final shot at appeals. He's going to jail.

Only 4 months? *sadface*

[hyped78]

As for MMA, it's Mixed Martial Arts, if you like the Grappling, Striking, etc there are other gyms that would focus on what you want to do, and pretending there isn't to make it out like it's so impossible to do to to avoid people who make you uncomfortable isn't being honest. THe goalposts are shown below.

On Israel, if your point was that no one can come up with an answer it sure didn't make it into the post mocking me for trying to come up with anything. If anything's going to change, the actions that aren't working need to be stopped. What's going on now isn't working, and your point about how many Hamas Fighters have been killed doesn't really impact the fact that even if Netty & the Military killed every living member of Hamas in the strip it wouldn't kill them globally, it wouldn't regain the support Israel's lost over this, nor would it make people who hate Israel hesitate to attack them in the future considering how many civilians were killed, maimed, starved, etc

On MMA, thank you for the clarification that it means "Mixed Martial Arts", I wasn't aware of that (this is sarcasm, which is a new concept that I was taught here on the last couple of days). Again, you don't know what you're talking about - and I could give you more information, but it's my private life so I choose not to.

"The goalposts were..." - the 'goalposts' were something that you made up on something that was never a 'debate'. As if I need to justify to a stranger where I train/ should train

"Then the "These guys are everywhere" gish gallop" - but I never said that police officers who brag about beating up protestors are everywhere/ in all academies. I said, and I quote: "Plus I've trained at different MMA academies because I've lived in a few different countries, and there are always idiots - always."

That you took that to mean that I was saying that all academies have bloodthirsty police officers is your error/problem, and I've clarified multiple times that's not what I said/meant - but go ahead, keep insisting on imagination.
"Idiots" means several things - it means people with various types of extreme views (of all shapes and sizes, from far-right to anarchism to misogyny to homophobia etc. etc.) but it also means people who do steroids, people who don't know the difference between training vs. sparring vs. competing, among many other things. This is similar to what Jack Daw has now mentioned in post #5836

I also clearly explained to you that I wouldn't even possibly know if 'all academies have police officers who brag about beating up protestors' because.... well, because, I haven't trained in all academies, have I?
But, yes, play around with your 'goalposts'... goal posts that were defined/decided by you for whatever reason on whatever virtual debate you thought was taking place.
If this wasn't clear to you then, it probably isn't now either.



You just transformed this: "what I brought up shortly after the initial october attacks in the post you replied to which is the one I replied to and reminded you of (Which you are replying to here)"

Into: "what I brought up shortly after the initial october attacks in the post you replied to A which is the one I replied to B and reminded you of C (Which you are replying to here)"

My friend, do you even think I know what post A, B and C you're talking about, that the spaghetti gets more organized with three letters?

I'll repeat this part, in case you missed it (but you're free to help/not help, that's your choice): 'If you want to make me aware of the alternative approach you proposed, you can please just tell me the # number of the post I should read'
I can read it and comment. If not, then I'm not going to read what you proposed (I don't know what you proposed 8 months ago...)

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Now happening: Steve Bannon's conviction for defying the Jan. 6 committee has been upheld by a unanimous three-judge panel of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

His four-month jail sentence has been on hold pending this ruling. This was his final shot at appeals. He's going to jail.

Just four months? That's all? And how long had Sloppy Steve been trying to delay the inevitable? Just like every MAGA he-man, Bannon was scared to death of ending up behind bars. Pathetic!

[SquirrelMan]

FWIW, I've seen some people saying that even if Israel was forbidden from competing, they would still boycott it out of solidarity with Armenia. And reminding people to boycott Azerbaijan too if they boycott Israel. But that seems to be very tiny minority compared to those who only talk about boycotting Israel. Make of that what you want...

I saw a Jewish American journalist put it this way on twitter:
No Jews, no news.

[CaptainEurope]

Just four months? That's all? And how long had Sloppy Steve been trying to delay the inevitable? Just like every MAGA he-man, Bannon was scared to death of ending up behind bars. Pathetic!

Keep in mind that to privileged rich guys, 4 months feels like 4 years.


I'm wondering if Bannon will still look as smooth and well moisturized when he comes out of jail, or the experience will make him look like a bum.

[Mister Mets]

Yet nobody ever seems to protest autocratic Azerbaijan at Eurovision, even though the affluence of the country is built on killing millions over the next years by destroying the climate.

Attachment 139449

Azerbaijan seems to bribe people.

Congressman Henry Cuellar and his wife were indicted last week over the country giving her a no-show job.

https://www.wftv.com/news/trending/r...ATCJDC23NMUYM/

[CaptainEurope]

Azerbaijan seems to bribe people.

Congressman Henry Cuellar and his wife were indicted last week over the country giving her a no-show job.

https://www.wftv.com/news/trending/r...ATCJDC23NMUYM/

That's likely why Texas did not send an act to perform at Eurovision this year. And the homophobia, of course.

[hyped78]

That's likely why Texas did not send an act to perform at Eurovision this year. And the homophobia, of course.

Our Eurovision singer is being investigated because of an 'incident'

https://news.sky.com/story/eurovisio...ident-13132862

Embarrassing..........................

[Mister Mets]

White voters acting dumber than black voters (on average) is not bias, it's a fact.

It's an opinion.

And there are pitfalls to any consideration of using this as pretext to limit voting to someone who can pass a test.

Kind of the whole point of The Olympics, isn't it?

Fair point.

An advantage of sport is that it exposes you to people with different views.

Hillary Clinton slams pro-palestinian protesters on ignorance of Middle East history

https://www.newsweek.com/hillary-cli...e-east-1899106
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/u...l-history.html

"Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has suggested that pro-Palestinian protesters at college campuses across the nation are uneducated about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"Clinton suggested campus protesters may have fallen prey to pro-Hamas "propaganda" on social media and in the classroom, adding young people are consuming information that often has a hidden "agenda" or lacks "any kind of context."

"Propaganda is not education," Clinton said. "Propaganda, whether it's on TikTok or in the classroom, is actually the opposite of education. Anybody who is teaching in a university, or anyone who is putting content on social media, should be held responsible for what they include and what they exclude."

"So much of what we're seeing—particularly on TikTok—about what's going on in the Middle East, is woefully false," she continued. "But it's also incredibly slanted: pro-Hamas, anti-Israel. And it is not any place where anyone should go to get information on complex manners, like what's going on there."

Clinton concluded by saying that educators "need to do a better job" in helping young people understand how to "filter" and interpret information on world affairs, while avoiding the pitfalls of falling into "easy absolutes" on issues that are "too complicated.""

She's right on this. Many of the passionate young people are deeply misinformed. How many know that Israel gained Gaza after it was attacked in a war? Or that Hamas has been in charge of Gaza for years.

Figuratively killin' me, Smalls...

Setting aside the possibility that a sitting President steps down/passes away during his first term/decides against running for a second term?

The period of time where he is running for reelection is during that first term.

It can rather easily be proposed as a part of one's pitch for a second term.

It would also be a pretty good way to make the case for that the President in question would also need voters to elect as many members as possible to Congress to support it.

(Never mind that one could also as those voters to make sure not to send any dead weight like Manchin or Sinema to Congress...)

That second article lays it out rather clearly...

I appreciate the "figuratively.

They seem to want you to talk about Republicans, and it seems to me you don't care about Republicans. You don't like their policies, and have no interest in voting for them. You probably agree with the posters on many stories, and in some cases aren't familiar with a story, but it wasn't like you were going to support the Republican either wat.

Your preference is to talk about Democrats because you want them to be better, and they're the ones with a shot at your vote.

[CaptainEurope]

It's an opinion.

If you saw a guy repeatedly hitting his thumb with a hammer on purpose and then saying foreigners hurt his thumb, would you nominate him for MENSA membership?