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

[nose norton]

"And what do they want them for, so they can hide in cellars?"

Your memory ain't that great, probably because you say such things on a regular basis.



Yes, blowing up power plants so that civilians freeze to death is totally different from blowing up hospitals, my bad. Which Russia has also done.

No mocking there, read the related posts.

I think that's what's called collateral damage, if you want to stop the army movements by train, that's how you go about it. Has any Russian official ever said it was so that civilians would freeze? No, that's what MSM says, and you eat it up. Makes no sense, but who cares?

And schools, shopping centres, peoples houses. The amount of indiscriminate rocket attacks is beyond sickening.

The entire campaign is littered with transparent Russian war crimes, even for that minority of people that believe the initial invasion was legitimate. (And yes…I actually accept that there have also been some Ukrainian war crimes. But not on the same scale, not remotely so…and the Ukrainians have been forced to fight for their freedom.)

You obviously haven't looked at a single TV report without comparing what they show with what they say. For me, it's been clear from the beginning that those things never matched. A hospital, a school, a shopping center, people's houses... none of those things are civilian if troops or military equipment are there. Just a few days ago, the Ukrainians blew up a vocational college, killing 89, but those were soldiers, so it was no longer a civilian structure. This happens almost every day on the other side, but the Ukrainian authorities keep quiet on the casualties and just show you the "house".

I get being a Russian and spouting the company line. But how any person that does not live in Russia and is subject to their lies every day can spout their BS and lies I do not know. I dont know how they can sleep in night.

How much you need for us to be lying... you couldn't take being fooled by those you believe in, again, could you?

Plenty of non-mainstream media would say that Ukraine didn't start the war, and that Ukrainian soldiers are more interested in avoiding civilian casualties than the Russians who made the decision to invade.

I am curious about the contrary arguments.

And as is the case when I argue with people on the left, I'm interested in these specific goalposts, and not as a proxy for some different argument.

What are media sources that you believe to be good-faith that describe Ukraine as the aggressor in the conflict, and Ukrainian soldiers as equally willing to put Ukrainian civilians in danger as the Russians are?

By media sources, you mean mainstream?

It's not about portraying Ukrainian soldiers as equally willing to put Ukrainian civilians in danger; Ukrainian soldiers are willing to put eastern-Ukrainian civilians in danger while the Russians aren't, they were called there by that very same people! That's the basic reality you have to face, this is a civil war, raging for 9 years now, it's not about Ukrainians and Russians, but about eastern--Ukrainians vs western-Ukrainians, with someone behind each of them, but for very different reasons.

[babyblob]

Will The House go for a 9th vote today?

[CaptainEurope]

Santos AGAIN didn't react to the first time his supposed name was called.

And again. It's a meme by now.

[CaptainEurope]

And again. It's a meme by now.

One theory is that he keeps stepping out of the chamber to avoid the cameras, after mean but very funny people on twitter put songs like "Creep" to clips of him standing uncomfortably close to colleagues yesterday.

[kidfresh512]

A House Without Rules Makes for C-Span Gone Wild

The United States House of Representatives is currently not governed by anybody or by any set of rules. No one has been sworn in because there is no Speaker, and therefore everyone on the floor is still a member-elect. There is technically still no Congress at all and therefore no rules for it to obey. In the interim, members can do what they want. They can commit minor acts of rebellion like wearing hats on the floor or even accusing their colleagues of drinking inside the legislative chamber, like Florida Republican representative Kat Cammack did when giving yet another nominating speech for McCarthy on Wednesday. Her claim that Democrats were enjoying popcorn and booze while watching the Republican infighting brought outraged howls that she had uttered unparliamentary language and that her “words be taken down” for violating congressional decorum. After all, it is against the rules for members to cast “personal aspersions” against one another on the floor. But nothing happened. If there is no Congress, how could there be congressional decorum?

The lack of rules has benefited the television-viewing audience, too. Without anything governing the House, C-Span controls the cameras, not the Speaker. This means it can film the floor freely with close-ups of members and live reaction shots as the drama plays out — all verboten under standard operating procedure. It’s C-Span gone wild.

On the floor, George Santos, whose life expectancy in American politics rivals that of Leeroy Jenkins online, spent his first day in Congress sitting alone. By day two, he tried to get out and about on the floor during the endless votes for Speaker, which stretched on for over an hour at a time. As conversations were happening, Santos could be seen standing on the fringes, watching and listening. At one point, he walked over to Matt Gaetz of Florida and spoke to him, leaning over the seated Gaetz and talking into his ear. Santos seemed far more engaged in the conversation than Gaetz did. Maybe Gaetz was thinking about his plan to cast a Speaker vote for “Donald John Trump” in the seventh ballot?

Imagine Negotiating a Debt-Ceiling Ransom With These Maniacs

The right-wing rebels contesting the vote for Speaker of the House have floated a wide array of complaints against the Republican Party’s leadership — ranging from the budget deals to “cultural Marxism.” But there is one point of action in particular looming ominously on the horizon of their fevered imaginations: the federal debt ceiling. Representative Ralph Norman, one of the holdouts, told reporters that his demands of the new Speaker include a willingness to hold the full faith and credit of the government hostage to as-yet-unspecified demands. “Is he willing to shut the government down rather than raise the debt ceiling?” Norman warned. “That’s a non-negotiable item.”

While Norman appears to believe that shutting down the government and refusing to lift the debt ceiling are the same thing, they are, in fact, different and unrelated. Shutting down the government happens when Congress fails to authorize funding to keep it open. The debt ceiling is a weird quirk of U.S. law that requires Congress to hold a separate vote to authorize paying its debts after it has already incurred the debt. If Congress votes to spend more money than it raises, then refuses to pay the people who lent it the money to make up the difference, it would devalue the dollar as a global currency and possibly trigger a global financial crisis.

This vote was something of a formality, occasionally used as a prod to get Congress to pass other mutually agreeable provisions, until the Obama administration, when Republicans decided to begin using the debt ceiling as a hostage, threatening to start a crisis unless Obama accepted spending cuts. Obama disastrously misidentified these threats as an invitation to a negotiation (which he desperately wanted), only realizing too late that he was actually being extorted.

Now whether the debt ceiling should be used as an extortion device is a normative question. Republicans obviously have rational reasons to believe that it should be: It’s a tool that’s useful for parties that have unpopular economic policies to push and a credible reputation for being crazy — two conditions that apply to Republicans but not to Democrats.

Putting aside the question of whether it’s right or wrong, there is a second one of whether the mainstream Republican plan of a small, “reasonable” debt-ceiling extortion is even possible. The events of this week strongly suggest that it is not.

[Tami]

An alleged fugitive fighting extradition to the US is seeking to be freed on bail from a Scottish jail because fellow prisoners are taunting him by singing John Denver’s hit Leaving on a Jet Plane.

[AnakinFlair]

The thought just occurred to me... does Trump know he's now technically lost the vote to be Speaker of the House twice? Wonder how he feels about that....

[CaptainEurope]

Nine time loser Kevin McCarthy.

[Username taken]

McCarthy might have to step aside.

Clearly he doesn’t have the political savvy or intelligence to get the votes.

[kidfresh512]

McCarthy might have to step aside.

Clearly he doesn’t have the political savvy or intelligence to get the votes.

One of the round table commentators was just saying earlier McCarthy has given away so much just for the title of Speaker. All that is left is to see one of these rebels driving away in his car wearing his jacket at this point.

[AnakinFlair]

I wonder- what would happen if Lil' Kev gets the Republicans together and tells them every deal he made is off. Every concession he made is off. And no one who could get a majority will make those deals again. So either vote for him, or be prepared to sit around a long time and not govern. If he played hardball like that, do you think he could finally get the votes he needs, just to end this?

Probably not. Boebert alone would probably love to sit around and do nothing while we pay her salary.

[Username taken]

One of the round table commentators was just saying earlier McCarthy has given away so much just for the title of Speaker. All that is left is to see one of these rebels driving away in his car wearing his jacket at this point.

Exactly.

It looks like they're getting him to concede so much that he'll be a "puppet" if he becomes speaker.

Truth is, regardless of what happens from here, he's already lost.

[Panfoot]

I wonder- what would happen if Lil' Kev gets the Republicans together and tells them every deal he made is off. Every concession he made is off. And no one who could get a majority will make those deals again. So either vote for him, or be prepared to sit around a long time and not govern. If he played hardball like that, do you think he could finally get the votes he needs, just to end this?

Probably not. Boebert alone would probably love to sit around and do nothing while we pay her salary.

It's just not an option because to many of them more or less campaigned on exactly that.

[kidfresh512]

I wonder- what would happen if Lil' Kev gets the Republicans together and tells them every deal he made is off. Every concession he made is off. And no one who could get a majority will make those deals again. So either vote for him, or be prepared to sit around a long time and not govern. If he played hardball like that, do you think he could finally get the votes he needs, just to end this?

Probably not. Boebert alone would probably love to sit around and do nothing while we pay her salary.

Lauren Boebert said as she left the House chamber that her position on Kevin Mccarthy will not change: "There are no concessions. The deal is over with him. He does not have the votes. He will not become speaker. Nope."

That alone means that at least the never 5 are agreeing they wont cave. Even if he chips away at the 20. He still has to get one of the never 5 hardcore to give in too

[Tami]

I wonder- what would happen if Lil' Kev gets the Republicans together and tells them every deal he made is off. Every concession he made is off. And no one who could get a majority will make those deals again. So either vote for him, or be prepared to sit around a long time and not govern. If he played hardball like that, do you think he could finally get the votes he needs, just to end this?

Probably not. Boebert alone would probably love to sit around and do nothing while we pay her salary.

Real Hardball would be him doing that, then making a threat that if he loses one more time, next time he and his supporters will vote for the Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries.

If it was a simple majority vote, Jefferies would be Speaker.