jakee

Just thinking, months ago we were talking about the Ukrainian neutrality / protection treaty that was signed when Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons. IIRC that treaty obliges signatories to intervene directly if Ukraine is attacked with nuclear weapons of any kind. I don’t think the same obligation was written for bio or chemical but the Russians might be getting told that it will all be treated the same, and they’ll be getting up close and personal with a wave of F15s, F35s and Typhoons the day after any such attack.

That is a very good point. Remember that early in the war Russia was claiming one reason they’d had to invade was to preemptively defend themselves against US funded bio-weapons labs in Ukraine (I believe our two new friends were parroting that one). Putin might think he can go ahead with a chemical or biological strike and say ‘see - we told you the Ukrainians were playing with dangerous research and it just backfired on them!’

In other news they’ve (probably) just blown up their own gas pipelines to Northern Europe purely to make the EU uncomfortable moving towards winter. Putin is more than happy to cut Russia’s nose off if it means spiting someone else’s face. Heck, as the leader of Russia, not caring about Russians is one of the pre-requisites of the job.

In more statements so ironic they must be doing it on purpose, senior Tories are now claiming to be really angry at currency traders pushing down the pound, saying they're just 'trying to make money out of bad news'. Where to start? If they're admitting that Kwarteng's budget is bad news then how can they be angry at anyone but themselves? Then, Truss and Kwarteng have barely talked about anything else but increasing the ability of those in the financial sector to make more money because it will magically benefit everyone else. The Tories as a whole have always fought against increased regulation of banking and trading and are right now rolling back some of the regulation created in the wake of the global crash to curb the ability of bankers to do really dangerous things for short term gain. Now they claim to be angry that those same people took an opportunity to do their job and make money by betting against their own naive economic policies? I guess they never listened to Al Wilson. "I saved you," cried that woman "And you've bit me even, why? You know your bite is poisonous and now I'm going to die" "Oh shut up, silly woman," said the reptile with a grin "You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in!"

Alwys worth pointing out that the trains thing is a myth. for some reason a lot of people believe that whatever their faults, at least authoritarian strongmen leaders get things done. But it's simply not true.

Odd one isn’t it. What Conservatives classically do is very different from classic conservatism.

Is massive extra government borrowing classically conservative?

One of the problems with Fascists is that they have this nasty habit of not telling the truth about who they really are.

What power did Biden have over the FBI during his 2020 election campaign against incumbent President Donald Trump?

You guys just don’t understand. It’s hurricanes in August that are important. However crazy the hurricane season ends up being, there weren’t any by August 15th and you can take that to the bank. Just like the fact that May was one cold month, and you know what that means. I sure as hell don’t, but come on, what more proof do you need?

That is the ‘logic’ apparently. Now keep in mind this is the same Conservative party that took us out of the EU, out of the single market and cut us out of freedom of work and movement in the biggest economic area in the world. Turns out they slashed the top level tax rate because it turns out the thing that’ll be really great for the economy is to attract more immigrants to take the highest paid jobs available in this country. So tell us again why Brexit was supposed to be so great? I’m starting to think the last 12 years of Tory government have really been the largest bit of absurdist performance art since Andy Kaufman pretended to be dead.

He was just doing research.

Which underscores how huge this gamble is. Committing to staggering amounts of extra borrowing to pay the bills in the hope that this plan will boost the economy so much that tax revenues will eventually go up despite the reduced rates. But when? And how? Apparently someone making £200k a year will take home an extra £5k under this plan. But what are they going to do with it? Realise they can suddenly afford a new TV? Unlikely, they’ll probably just save it for retirement (which the country can’t afford to wait for) or put it towards the next house purchase and further inflate a housing market already inaccessible to most younger people. On the other hand you could give £500 back to someone on the breadline and the whole thing will make its way back into the economy almost immediately. But that’d be a problem because that’s ‘a handout’.

‘Voting’ has started in Russian controlled areas of Ukraine. ‘Votes’ are being collected by election officials going door to door accompanied by armed police and soldiers, using ballot papers written only in Russian. Election observers around the world are condemning it as a sham, the Texas GOP is condemning it coming too late to copy for the midterms.

The Special Master has given Trump’s team to the end of next week to tell him exactly which documents in the DoJ seizure list Trump claims were planted by the FBI. When they come back with ‘none’ will it make any difference to be trolls here or in Fox News?

I dont know if it's true or how widespread it is, but one analyst said something interesting about Russian military discipline. Because the Russian Army has a strongly stick based motivational system with harsh punishments for small infractions, Russian soldiers learn that following the letter of an order is always the best thing for them to do, even if there's an obvious error, the facts on the ground have changed, or it just plain doesn't make sense. Apparently this is one reason why Russian artillery is good at grinding cities to dust but bad at fighting enemy forces. If they're told to hit a target at a certain location, they could be given new targetting information 10 seconds later but they will often still methodically aim and fire at the first location they were given before moving on to the next one so no-one can accuse them of not carrying out the orders they were given. In the meantime the Ukrainian mobile battery or whatever they were trying to hit has a good chance of staying 3 steps ahead.

Congress will pretty much only ever reuire testimony from the rich and powerful so that's a bit different. And Alex Jones absolutely stepped over the edge. He's so far over it he can't even see the edge anymore. The edge is a dot to him.

I know, I should be too old to believe in fairy tales. But it’s the hope that gets ya

What does a rich guy have to do to get jailed for contempt of court?

True. I do believe that if covid hadn’t happened the Tories would currently be privatising the NHS (after spending 10 years intentionally sabotaging it so they’d have an excuse).

There's another take on their policies here: "Trickle-down economics is as ghoulish, greedy and gross as it appears." He rambles a bit so I wouldn't expect people to listen to much but it starts quite pithily "I'd tell you a joke about trickle down economics but you probably won't get it". So the briefest background - the UK gov't have just committed to spending £200Bn+ on help with energy bills (a figure that is only so huge because it offers the most help to people who don't need it). Their strategy of how to pay for it is £50Bn pounds a year of tax cuts (again the vast majority of it to people who already take home tons of money after tax) in the hope that this will somehow stimulate the economy to the extent that everyone will suddenly be paid loads more money. Now here's what I don't get, and maybe someone can help. We know that the economic strata in society are significantly further away from each other than they've ever been before. We know that rich people have more money than ever before and we know that they have more of the pot of money than ever before - yet the problems that tax cuts for the rich are supposed to solve still exist. So the proponents of trickle down economics must believe that there is some point at which shareholders and company owners decide they have enough money, and they can forego further profit in favour of now taking care of their employees. We just haven't quite reached that point yet, but it's juuuuust around the corner. How do they tell themselves that this makes sense? That this is a realistic outcome of their policies?

Really though? Have his representatives actually introduced legislation based on his ideas? Because if not then according to Bigun, Bigun is fibbing and hasn't actually done anything at all.

Why?

Well, yes. In this case what you have written above is the literal truth. The liberal told the migrants where they were going, only sent volunteers, and coordinated things in advance with the host city. The conservative didn't. Interesting that your response to this imbalance isn't to blame the conservative for being a shower of shit, but to blame the liberal for not sinking to his level.

Yeah bad example - he seems so nice he probably would have a shot. Let's go with Anthony Kiedis.