jakee

The Conservative party conference has just finished - the week where PM had the opportunity to flesh out her vision for the country in a supportive atmosphere surrounded by friends and without any antagonistic people butting in to ask any awkward questions. And she has still managed to emerge from it with the worst approval rating of any Prime Minister at any time - even worse than Boris as his own cronies were kicking him out. “Even though voters generally like it when politicians U-turn to abandon unpopular policies, the fact that ‘U-turning to abandon unpopular policies’ seems to have defined her time in office so far means that she doesn’t even get the benefit of being seen as principled: her ratings for this are as poor as they are for being competent or being a strong leader.”

Wendy's question was why you think it was OK for Putin to invade, and your answer was an explanation of why you agreed with his invasion. Why do you believe every word from a fascist dictator who idolises one of history's greatest mass murderers? Why do you think he has 'good' motives?

Ah ok, I had been wondering about that odd over-recovery from the initial crash. Wasted on the intended recipient, but thanks for explaining.

You just posted a comprehensive explanation of why you agreed with Putin’s invasion.

What a convenient way of avoiding having to think about anything. But since we already know you were moaning about progressives believing something that you also think is true, I’d imagine we’ll eventually find you agreeing with what the echo chamber says as well.

The other thing here is the deflected attention from Russia’s own government. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded this year in part to an organisation banned by the Kremlin who research and document atrocities throughout the history of the USSR. They were shut down because Putin’s Make Russia Great Again propaganda actively glorifies Josef Stalin and casts Putin as his spiritual successor. Stalin, a dictator and amoral mass murderer of his own people on an even greater scale than Hitler. So even if the above tattoo is true, on the Ukrainian side you have at worst a few Hitler loving soldiers in a nation currently governed by a Jewish man who won a free and fair election. On the Russian side you have a fascist dictator whose entire government worships Stalin - a man of equal evil to Hitler’s own. So who should be ‘liberating’ who?

Yeah - I really have no issue with Fauci pointing out that anti-Fauci conspiracy theorists are anti-science. They are. (You didn’t mean to say that, did you?) You say, while still dodging the point that you just criticised progressives for believing something that you 100% agree with and is supported by your own source.

You are so far down the rabbit hole it’s not even worth unpicking any of that. You just keep being a good little establishment mouthpiece. Ah fuck it - two things. Just because Putin says Ukraine is making bioweapons, why do automatically believe him? And if Ukraine is the worlds most corrupt government, if they’re embezzling all the western support, why are they winning against a far superior force? Ukraine was corrupt, that’s why they lost Crimea without a fight and areas of the Donbas before that. Russia is corrupt, that’s why their army doesn’t work. Since Crimea and at the wests urging successive Ukrainian governments have made huge strides cleaning up the country and that’s why they’re now able to fight effectively.

You haven’t watched or read your own source, and as a result every time you double down on attacking Fauci you just dig your own hole even deeper. So far in this thread your defence of Republican science is a claim that anti-Fauci conspiracy theorists can’t be criticised, just like your attack on a progressive ‘truth’ is an admission that you 100% agree that it’s true.

And again, the evidence you have for any of that apart from ‘YES’?

It’s actually the link you provided, but whatever. You were also explicitly talking about vaccinated contagiousness as something that was a liberal ‘truth’ in the past. So if it was a liberal ‘truth’ in the past, and you freely admit that it was indeed entirely true in the past… what exactly is your problem anyway?

And yet you clearly didn’t see the interview from which you’re quoting, because as I keep saying and you keep dodging, they very very obviously weren’t talking about anything like that. (And come on, pushing herd immunity with everything we know at this point? Dude.) So again, it’s incredibly dishonest of you to suggest one line in an interview where he spends quite a bit of time discussing the mistakes that were made at all levels of the US Covid response including things he wishes he’d realised earlier means he thinks he’s omniscient. Because it cannot possibly be what you really think.

Why is it that whenever a right winger says ‘what’s your source?’ The answer is always ‘same as your source, you just haven’t read it properly’? Executive Summary Key findings and considerations for this brief are as follows: Available evidence shows that fully vaccinated individuals and those previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 each have a low risk of subsequent infection for at least 6 months.

So why did you also quote him saying “because I represent science” when you had no problem with him saying that? Because if you have no problem with him saying that, it’s the bit that exactly explains why you are completely and totally wrong about his meaning. You were awake during covid, right? You did see the enormous amount of insane and unjustified criticism he got from elected Republican Party representatives and right wing followers, right? You do accept that mental right wing anti-Fauci conspiracy theories are a real thing that really happened and got/still have a huge amount of traction online and among right wing politicians, journalists and personalities, right? That’s what he’s talking about. So again, it’s incredibly dishonest of you to suggest one line in an interview where he spends quite a bit of time discussing the mistakes that were made at all levels of the US Covid response including things he wishes he’d realised earlier means he thinks he’s omnipotent. Because it cannot possibly be what you really think.

Hapless or incidental? What on earth are you talking about? You said that Fauci was claiming to be omniscient because he said he represented science. You can’t possibly have forgotten that already, so why be dishonest? Fauci was talking about the political motivated criticism he received in the real world by Republican lawmakers and their right wing supporters, and that really was anti science. He’s not talking in hypotheticals, he’s talking about what actually happened. In order for your criticism of Fauci’s statement to have any merit whatsoever you literally have to ignore reality. It’s a right wing culture war ‘truth’ that what you have just stated is a progressive ‘truth’.

Oh, so you do believe it’s possible for a person to represent science? Please explain who those people are, and why you think they are the omniscient single source of truth in their fields. But anyway, if you think he was talking about other scientists in his field legitimately advising a different path you clearly didn’t watch the interview you’re referencing, and haven’t been awake for the last 2.5 years.

Uh, no. You’ve completely mischaracterised what he’s saying. What he means is that he is the public face of scientific advice on dealing with covid. He’s not saying he personally came up with all the science or that he’s omniscient, he’s saying that he’s a lightning rod for criticism from anyone who doesn’t like Covid safety measures because he’s the guy they see on TV talking about it. Given that he also actually said this in the same interview the sentence before the one you quoted, why are you lying about it? He also spent a significant amount of time in that same interview discussing the mistakes that were made and the delays in recognising certain things about how Covid works that affected the advice he had given. Can’t you see how ignorant your claim that he was saying he thinks he’s omniscient looks in the context of actually listening to what the man said? You know, if you ever decided to step outside the right wing culture war bubble you might be an interesting person to talk to. It’s really a shame you chose that path.

Says who?

Parroting an anti-Fauci conspiracy meme as evidence that the Republicans like science? An innovative approach, but one I think will only be effective with your fellow travellers.

But Elon Musk’s Twitter feed is gospel.

This woman has bigger balls than 99% of the male Russian population put together. Russian anti-war journalist escapes house arrest “I consider myself completely innocent, and since our state refuses to comply with its own laws, I refuse to comply with the measure of restraint imposed on me as of 30 September 2022 and release myself from it,” “Put a tag like this on Putin,” Ovsyannikova added, pointing to what appeared to be an electronic ankle tag. “It should be him, not me, who has to be isolated from society and prosecuted for committing genocide in Ukraine.”

How do you know? How do you know how much it would cost to provide everything that is needed to a high standard? How do you know how much money they already have to do that? How do you know how much they have been given to do that? How do you know how much they are spending on that? How? You sad, despicable puppet. Others here still seem lost in their trauma, like 66-year-old Nadia. She was alone on the streets, walking slowly, as if she could not recognise her surroundings. "I hope for the best," she said "and that they [the Russians] won't come back here. It was very bad. Both sides were firing. We didn't understand anything. When it was quiet, we went outside to cook. Then it started again. We have all gone mad now." And she had a question for us. "Why am I being bombarded?" she beseeched us. "I didn't do anything bad. I didn't kill. I didn't steal. I don't understand why. Maybe you can tell me. We lived well, everything was good, we worked. And in one moment it was turned upside down." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63130571 Your money wasn't stolen and it wasn't given to Zelenskiy. And of course they can't track munitions given to the Ukrainian Army. They were given to Ukraine and the dispersal and usage of them is up to the Ukrainian Army. The US can't track them because they are not in Ukraine using them.

Your offensive question is so lacking in basis it doesn't even deserve and answer, but fuck it - I actually wouldn't mind working through all my thoughts on this. The first objection is functionally irrelevant but a very important principle - after 6 months of Russian military occupation there can be no such thing as a fair election even if it was genuinely free. The Russian occupiers have spent 6 months torturing, killing, imprisoning, deporting and otherwise disappearing known pro-Ukrainian citizens. Many more have fled the region to get away from the Russian occupiers and/or the front line. It is simply not legitimate to remove everyone who opposes you then claim to be justified because most of the people who remain support you. Imagine the FBI came to your state and convicted every registered Republican voter on trumped up felony charges, making them ineligible to vote. Would the crushing Democrat victory in the next election be a free and fair result? Now, the reason why that whole line of thought is irrelevant is because it will simply never happen. First, what does 'under UN control' mean? The occupied regions are not under UN control, they are under Russian military control. If you send in UN election observors, people are still voting in a Russian organised ballot guarded by Russian soldiers so it wouldn't be a free vote. If you contract the UN to run the whole election (which isn't a thing they do) people are still voting in an area controlled by Russian soldiers, and could be questioned outside the polling booth about their voting by Russian soldiers at any time in any place so it wouldn't be a free vote. If you bring in enough UN peacekeeping troops to replace the Russian forces and literally have UN control over the entire regions... well Elon Musk will have us all living on fucking Mars before he convinces Putin to let that happen. Which brings us to the third point - whether or not I find it is offensive is also entirely irrelevant because Putin himself finds it offensive. Putin has held the 'vote' he wants to hold. A rigged, forced vote. The same type of vote (just with less of a smokescreen) that he 'wins' in Russia in order to stay in power. He is not the head of a democratic country, he is a dictator with absolute power inside his own realm and that is what he wants for Ukraine. Any thought of a fair vote for the occupied territories is an ignorant, delusional fantasy. So tldr, the reason I disagree with Musk's suggestion is because I do not live in a world that is governed by the Disney movie version of Geopolitics and I have no interest in spreading pro-Putin propaganda. Unlike you, I have no desire to simply parrot the statements of the global elite or march with the brainwashed legions in servitude to the rich and powerful. (That's actually really unfair to Disney, they're capable of much more nuance and insight than that. I just thought it was a good line.)

How can he tell, right? How can he possibly tell? I could walk around any city in my own country at peace and I couldn't possibly hazard a guess from that of what the local authority budget is, how much money they're raising from local taxes vs central government funding and how much of that money is being spent on which departments. How could I possibly do that? But he can walk around a totally foreign country in the middle of a war and tell you for sure that no aid money is being spent? That's just batshit crazy radical right wing propaganda.

If you teach Putin that he can invade a country and we will give him everything he wants from that invasion for the sake of peace, how will that lead to less war?