All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Wildling]

lol.

If I could possess one of them I'd be tempted to ask him if I could still talk about Nixon in Twitter.

But if I had possessing powers I should be thinking of more than possibly sending a domestic terrorist to some guy's front yard.

[The Cool Thatguy]

I think it's the reference to Nixon winning the popular vote twice, and his positive record on Native American rights and creating the EPA, and also the visit to China that pisses him off.

Nixon is a president who did good and bad things. Trump is the guy who did nothing good.


PS: hey how do you put twitter links on the chatbox on CBR?

What did Nixon do for Native American rights?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

What did Nixon do for Native American rights?

https://slulibrary.saintleo.edu/c.ph...6778&p=6314826
https://newrepublic.com/article/1554...-richard-nixon
https://***************.com/which-us...ory-says-80331

Nixon, seeing how his Democratic predecessors Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy had limply opposed the Termination Era policies, was determined to take action. Eight months into his tenure, Nixon made what was at the time a historic move. Louis Bruce, a citizen of the Mohawk Nation and a Republican, had long been a proponent of tribal sovereignty and a federal policy of self-determination. In August 1969, Nixon named Bruce the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, making Bruce just the third indigenous person ever to be appointed to lead the BIA since the office was created in 1824.


Nixon underscored his commitment to upholding the nation’s treaty responsibilities when he stood in front of Congress and delivered a “special message on Indian affairs” on July 8, 1970. In that speech, he admonished the two chambers’ actions during the Termination Era. “We must assure the Indian that he can assume control of his own life without being separated involuntary from the tribal group,” Nixon said. “And we must make it clear that Indians can become independent of federal control without being cut off from federal concern and federal support.”

Nixon followed the speech with a flurry of efforts to reshape and refocus the federal government’s Indian Country policies, using both his executive power and his influence in Congress. Reversing Roosevelt’s decision to steal Blue Lake, Nixon returned the land to the Taos Pueblo in 1970. He more than doubled the budget of the BIA—the first and only time that has happened in U.S. history. Nixon established the special office on Indian Water Rights and signed the Indian Healthcare Act. Striking back at the Termination Era, he championed and signed the Menominee Restoration Act, which restored the Menominee Tribe’s federal recognition.

Nixon not only spoke about the need for tribal nations to determine their own future, but repeatedly went out of his way to ensure that Congress would deliver these rights back to the sovereign nations. Even with Nixon now disgraced and carved into history as first a huckster and then a virulent racist, his legacy on indigenous rights, then and now, stands above all other presidents. Peter McDonald, the only four-term chairman in Navajo Nation history, deemed Nixon “the Abraham Lincoln of the Indian people.”

What Fidel Castro was to Apartheid South Africa, Nixon was to Native American groups...the villain who became a hero.

This is one reason why I can never completely hate Nixon. I think he was a tragic figure of real talent and capacity who made a Faustian bargain to get power and surrounded himself with the worst advisors and people.

In many ways he was a more impressive President than even JFK (though not LBJ).

[Steel Inquisitor]

Going by the insurrection on the 6th, it appears Q's "The Storm" was not a prophecy but a statement of intent. They are telling the world what they we're doing but nobody took it seriously because why would we? Their motives get really transparent in hindsight.

Trump wishes he had the integrity of Nixon, that's how low the bar has been lowered by him.

[DrNewGod]

Consider that he no longer has Twitter or any of his regular avenues of mass communication to engage with his base. Those hour-long rants to Fox & Friends aren't likely to happen after he leaves office. Hannity may even quit taking his calls.

Signal. *******m [that censored word referring to Morse Code]. If you think AWS cut Trump's tongue out, you're kidding yourself. His ability to marshall a primary assault on (relatively) reasonable Republicans remains intact.

[The Cool Thatguy]

https://slulibrary.saintleo.edu/c.ph...6778&p=6314826
https://newrepublic.com/article/1554...-richard-nixon
https://***************.com/which-us...ory-says-80331



What Fidel Castro was to Apartheid South Africa, Nixon was to Native American groups...the villain who became a hero.

This is one reason why I can never completely hate Nixon. I think he was a tragic figure of real talent and capacity who made a Faustian bargain to get power and surrounded himself with the worst advisors and people.

In many ways he was a more impressive President than even JFK (though not LBJ).

Ah, okay. Thanks for sharing. Dang, now I have to respect him more.

But then, people have contradictions. Everyone but Trump, who frankly seems to take pains to be the worst person alive.

[Wildling]

Does Trump really know about Nixon's career and achievements? Could he just be mad people generally think it was a positive in American history that Nixon actually resigned after impeachment compared to what is still ongoing right now? Or just triggered in general about impeachment, which is still really really bad?

Or even just jealous Nixon had better Simpsons episodes than him?

[The Cool Thatguy]

Does Trump really know about Nixon's career and achievements? Could he just be mad people generally think it was a positive in American history that Nixon actually resigned after impeachment compared to what is still ongoing right now? Or just triggered in general about impeachment, which is still really really bad?

Or even just jealous Nixon had better Simpsons episodes than him?

Knowing Trump, he could be jealous that Nixon's head was elected president of Earth.

[TheDarman]

May I ask you two questions?

1. Who do you think is the front runner for the GOP presidential nomination for 2024 if Trump doesn’t end up running?

Honestly, it is far too early to say. Usually, polls state that the people most likely to curry favor are the last election’s loser and the people who are big in the party right then. I don’t think Trump topped a lot of lists for the nominee in 2012, after Romney lost, especially given the autopsy released. Nor do I think Romney was a clear favorite in 2008, after McCain lost to Obama.

It could be anyone. Anyone could electrify the base. What I will say is that I am not optimistic about Hawley or Cruz making it very far. They are not well liked candidates on a national level and their only moves consist of trying to ride Trump’s coat tails. Frankly, I think a well-liked administration official like Haley would do better than them. She is a unique enough figure to draw attention away from being policy-Trump-lite. But I don’t know if the Republicans would vote for a woman of color either. So...it’s unclear.

My guess would be either someone in the Trump family (Donald Trump Jr. perhaps?) or someone that isn’t on the tip of any of our tongues.

2. Do you think Joe Biden will run for re-election in 2024?

I think that depends too. And I don’t even think Biden knows right now. There is a lot to suggest that he is thinking of having Harris move into that center role in 2024. He has made her a big part of the process, even including her name in his administration as often as he can. But I think that this is his ultimate episode as a public servant. And, if he feels like there is still more work that only he can do, he will probably run again. But I don’t expect to have a clear picture of this until we can see how public Harris is under the actual administration and how much Biden takes the lead.

[TheDarman]

New Hampshire swings a lot. The state legislature has jumped from Republican to Democratic and back again.

Republicans did take back the state legislature in 2020, and the Republican Governor is one of the most popular in the nation. Apparently, he's interested in going to Washington.

It'll be interesting who gets credit for the vaccines. The development occurred under Trump, and the distribution has started under Trump. Republicans will do their best to spin positive developments as the result of plans in place before Biden became President, while blaming the Biden administration for any mistakes. Democrats will do their best to make Biden seem like the second coming of FDR.

In 2022, there are likely to be other big stories in the news.

Republicans winning legislative seats and governor mansions is quite different from winning Senate seats. The party would have literally zero hope of scoring seats in Massachusetts or Maryland, yet both states currently have Republican governors. Statewide federal votes are far better predictors for where the environment is headed.

As for the other stuff, I’m sure Republicans will try, but most of what people will remember is that Trump’s last year in office was disastrous, sparked riots that he incited, and that the vaccine was really slow moving. It will be hard for Republicans to run against that. Just like it was hard for Republicans after Hoover lost to claim that Hoover at least moved some social programs before FDR. Trump’s strongest issue was the economy. By all metrics, it will probably be stronger under Biden in 2022 than it was under Trump in 2020. And Trump’s weakest issue was COVID. And Biden will probably handle that much better too.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Ah, okay. Thanks for sharing. Dang, now I have to respect him more.

All the bad stuff that Nixon did -- his paranoia, his thin skin, his dog whistle campaigning, his coup-happy foreign policy coup, Watergate -- still remains true. Bear in mind.

Nixon's administration in terms of policy oversaw the shift from the gold standard to fiat currency which is basically the monetary system still in place today with the Dollar being the value the global currency is pegged on. He created the EPA, and he was pretty close to introducing a health care system that would have been far more advanced to Obamacare and give people the public option back in the '70s. Medicare For All is even more radical of course.

He also started the trade partnership between USA and China that remains in place though honestly I am not sure if that's entirely a good thing on record. The idea that capitalism would make China democratic never happened and indeed the Chinese have bent capitalism to a form of tyranny and social bribery and they are swallowing places like Hong Kong and eventually aim to take over Taiwan.

But then, people have contradictions.

Absolutely, the French dictator Robespierre during the Reign of Terror while he guillotined people around him also played a part in abolishing slavery for the first time. Castro is a hero to Nelson Mandela and the people of South Africa for his help in ending apartheid even if he is a dictator in Cuba who imprisoned and killed people, and had an anti-LGBT policy (granted his dictatorship on balance is less murderous than other commie tyrannies or Pinochet's government in Chile, and he reformed and apologized for his homophobia...but that's a pretty low bar that doesn't cancel out burying democracy for the people of Cuba).

So yeah, Nixon belongs to that category of interesting, flawed, figures with good and bad on their ledger. A bit like Doctor Doom. I mean Richard Nixon is very much like Doom -- intelligent, insecure, ashamed of his looks, thin-skinner, and resentful of how much people like that idiot JFK...errr RIIICHARDS!!!!!

Everyone but Trump, who frankly seems to take pains to be the worst person alive.

If you look at it objectively, it's hard to find any substantive good done under his administration. The tax cuts for the rich...lol. That's basically his big domestic policy accomplishment. Then there's the stacking of judiciary for the service of one party done by McConnell...yeah, more oligarchy. In Foreign Policy, there's stabbing the Kurds in the back and basically handing the Middle East peace policy to Putin (his premature withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan will also help with that). I suppose Jared "Peace in the Middle East" Kushner will boast of recognition of some gulf states and Sudan of Israel but mostly that's confirming what's already happening and it doesn't rise to the status of the Camp David Accords or Oslo Accords (done by Jimmy Carter, who no joke, was exemplary on Foreign Policy), and indeed it's mostly undone Oslo, what with recognizing Jerusalem as the capital. There's not much here you will like or recommend unless you are a die-hard Republican. A democrat can praise Eisenhower for Brown v. Board and sending the troops to enforce it, for the infrastructure stuff he started (though that came at the price of public transport and probably a big question mark these days), and for DARPA (which created the Internet eventually) and NASA.

This kind of policy is mild, mediocre, and banal and it doesn't compensate for the great harm and evil done by his administration in terms of walking out of the Climate Accords, turning a blind eye to Bolsonaro's bats--t insane polices in the Amazon, cozying up with Kim in North Korea, alienating and angering the EU and the NATO alliance pushing them towards China (recently Germany and others signed a trade deal with China even if Biden told them to hold the pen...but the EU can't guarantee or depend on a bipartisan foreign policy anymore and can't bank on Democrats maintaining an uber-mandate for decades), this dumb trade war with China and so on. And of course inflaming tensions with Iran and walking out of the Nuclear Deal. Trump's weakened America substantially economically and globally from when he started out. Obama restored Prestige to America after the W. years, but Trump f--ked it all away.

The family separation policy, the "Muslim ban", the Ukrainian Hustle, lying about COVID and letting people die, the Putsch of January 6. Those things tower over everything else. Would Republicans really like Trump or have voted for him if he just talked about tax cuts for the rich on the campaign trail, or about stacking the judiciary or cozying up to North Korea? No the reason the GOP voted for him was these things. So it doesn't make sense to talk about Trump and policy.

[BeastieRunner]

Maybe he'll start posting on 4chan.

Anonymous won't let him in.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

An interview with the cop who got crushed at the door during the Putsch. His name is Officer Daniel Hodges:



Apparently he had three near death experiences during the riot, the one we saw on video was just the middle one.

The description of the violence and the emotional reaction to it is quite harrowing. He talks about one colleague who got his finger broken by the rioter.

But man those Putschists were really out for blood. They were beating police officers, called them traitors for not joining them and so on.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The Pentagon won't offer Trump a farewell ceremony traditionally offered to Presidents at the end of the term.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/202...-trump/171408/

Who's gonna accuse the US Military of cancel culture? The woke left has taken over the Pentagon and will soon spread its woke ideas across the Empire.


We also have direct evidence and a confirmation of how it's an inside job. It turns out some members of the group were on the staff of US Representative Bob Good, a very far-right Republican.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...6d6_story.html

[Agent Z]

And just wait until Trump is out of office. I think they will still be getting Secret Service protection for the whole family.

I highly doubt that. The SS isn't any more fond of these people than the rest of the country is.

https://www.npr.org/2020/10/06/92084...onavirus-risks