Politics 2025

[Buster's Uncle]

I don't much think there's a lot worth saying that isn't boringly obvious, fer realz.


Last time, he was fooling around at random whim w/o any plan, and the worst harm he did -leaving out the Treason and felony murder on his way out- was arguably the unknowable large number of people he killed screwing around about Covid.  I'm afraid I can't find an actual crime in that last, killing a few hundred thousand Americans, just incompetence.  -Elok wasn't entirely wrong, last time, notwithstanding a few Hundred Thousand Needless Deaths and a few Treason Murders.

I recall specifically saying to Momma, when he returned from his first G7, that I was relieved he had not embarrassed our nation internationally near so much as I had feared.

---

Well.

Project 2025 and all that since, four bitter years to prepare while somebody who wanted to pull on his big boy pants every morning and DO THE WORK actually acted as the actual POTUS, not just hogging the space so no one else could.

And there looks to be a plan this time.  And we are utterly humiliated before the world right out of the gate.  --And probably will still be for about a generation.  And the tank parade on Dear Leader's birthday seems to have hurts his feelings with a poor crowd turnout, emblematic of the death of a million cuts to which Liberty is systematically being subjected.

We are in Hell.  I don't wanna talk about it.


I must add, as both forum managment and thread-starter, that I'm not trying to discourage YOU from talking about it.  I don't want to read about it, either, and you may not give The Pig oxygen in my house using its name -it has a childish need for attention that's at the heart of all problems related to it- but it would be stupid to start the latest politics thread and expect members to not point at the Elephant In The Room...

[Buster's Uncle]

-HowEVER, I DO want to talk about stuff where his name doesn't come up constantly...

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An observation:  I've spent most of my time for the last week since I finally got my life back re-reading old threads, and seen a few times where I got attacked ad hominem for trying to do my job as host w/ accusations of suppressing dissenting views.  Ho-freakin'-ho, considering one was from someone I'd encouraged to come in here because I disagreed with him.  Another had led off kicking me in the jimmies for throwing around the "Nazi"-word so much.  -Yeah; zero freakin' apology for being so angry at the police state turn this country took 24 years ago, and not being more tactful in its manifestation.  ZERO.-  (A third was someone being dim after I called them on manners.)

-The punchline?  I've yet to be attacked in any of a number of excellent conversations about religion we host, and I've been attacked way more -and pretty much as passionately- for somewhat loudly preferring Star Trek to all things misusing the name since Wrath of Khan.  WAY more.  I don't participate much in my own damn Star Trek thread in my own damn forum any more, what with all the impostor shows under discussion.  It's not a funny punchline.

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I'm pondering a post about North Carolina's new Governor, w/ much comparing/contrasting him w/ his two immediate predecessors.  Still percolating, but probably soon...

[Buster's Uncle]

So about NC Governor Josh Stein:

Pat  McCrory, two governors back, was a nationally famous reactionary for the transgender bathrooms ban - far less covered, even locally, was that he worked for Duke Energy -North Carolina's power monopoly, which owns pretty much every riverbank in the state, and pretty much pollutes and raises rates at will- for 28 years -I gather as a PR flack- prior to getting into politics, and it showed as governor.  So, not only did he embarrass us before the world, he was always on the wrong side of one of our most major issues that nobody much talks about in proportion to how bad and important it is.  We did NOT have a good time.

Towards the end of the trans bathrooms debacle, the State Attorney General at the time, Roy Cooper -who had never really been on my radar before- publicly announced that he wouldn't be defending the ban in court.  I said "I didn't know he was running for governor."  The next month, I think, he announced he was running for governor.

Well, Cooper whipped McCrory, and our Klan rally of a state legislature promptly demonstrated their commitment to democracy by  stripping the office of Governor of half its powers.  Did this stop Roy?  Heck no; they couldn't strip Roy of his office's greatest power - leadership.  He vetoed what he could, and spent a good deal of his two terms making speeches at personal appearances across the whole state.

Now, Roy has an amiable and mild presence -which helped get him on the short list as a possible running mate to cousin 'Mala's presidential campaign, as no threat to overshadow the top of the ticket- but the greatest mark of his success with the touring making speeches is that that got him on that short list, too, as he was effective and accomplished while put in a bad situation.

Also, Roy was term-limited.  His successor as State Attorney General, Josh Stein, became his successor as Governor - beating "black NAZI" Mark Robinson, another state embarrassment.  And our Klan rally of a state legislature promptly demonstrated their commitment to democracy by  stripping the office of Governor of more if its powers.  Did this stop Josh?  HECK no; he seems to have learned at the feet of Ascended Master Cooper.  He does nothing to embarrass us, and all he can to lead, notably spending a lot of time up in the mountains since Hellene -which, indeed, did us greek-style and hard.  Leadership in an emergency is pretty freshman 101 politics stuff, but he must have made an A in the class.  Good man.


Interestingly, there's a real pattern emerging.  Go find out more about our new State Attorney General -and former congressman- Jeff Jackson.  I predict you're going to hear about him in the future, possibly even in other countries.  I like the cut of his jib, the job he's done so far, and he's working his way up the qualifications list fast. 

[Buster's Uncle]

There's a thing about Pat McCrory, BTW, that reminds me of my high school principal, a world-class butthole I've never told any of the many stories about online, and barely referenced him sidewise even though he's the star of my best personally-witnessed Bad Journalism story.  I should probably tell it sometime, but man, that was 43 years ago.

It's not hard to put a finger on it, either.  That thing is, Trossie -my principal, and that's not a nickname- would always get carried away/go to any lengths to force his opinion on others, a very bad trait for a professional manager of teachers and students alike, both of whom he treated like dirt.  He not a malicious person, IMO.  He just didn't know he was doing it, and doing WAY too much, too hard.

I'm pretty sure that's McCrory all over for you.  I imagine Pat's also really tall.

[Green1]

Politics are like the weather. Unless you have a very privileged position in life, there is little you can do except adapt.

I mean, it's nice to know if a Category 5 hurricane is coming. Check the weather. But the real deal is not that the seas will rise and it will get 135 heat index to where you almost need an environmental suit. It's what YOU do.

We know very little about these people in real life. Most of us probably would not be allowed within 10 feet of these people unless it was an approved photo op. All we know is what media - who is all owned by the same 10-15 families- tells us. And what they do. And they are going to pass things for THEM, not us. But are glad to take credit if they do have something that helps us and them (lions share to them).

When I took a journalism class in the 1980s, they used to say "make an attention grabbing headline" and there were examples and deep dives into what attention grabbing is. But in that day and age, there was less media. Nowadays, it's say the most out there thing to pull yourself away from the noise even if you may or may not believe it yourself.

Just like former pro wrestler and MN Governor Jessie Ventura once said, "In front of the crowd, in front of TV, they pretend they hate each other. They pretend like they are big adversaries and that’s the sell job they do to us, the citizens. Just like pro wrestling, my job was to go out and piss everybody off so bad they would pay their hard earned money to go out and see me get my butt kicked. Well, the point is, we are all friends in the locker room. We all work together. It’s entertainment. We put on a show and this is no different. They are putting on a show, because behind the scenes, they are all friends. They go out to dinner together and cut their deals together. It’s a show."

Though that dude to make money started going off on conspiracy rabbit holes and hanging around people like Alex Jones and wring for Russia Today. Saying off the wall things for recognition himself. Just like he did a s a pro wrestler.

I personally take former MN Governor Jesse Ventura's take on it that it's all like professional wrestling.

[Buster's Uncle]

I gather, though, that what Jesse-The-Governor-Ventura observes is obsolete since the T-party became a thing, and increasingly so over time.  He wasn't wrong about it being Wrestling at the time, for sure, a government tradition a lot older than him or us.  That's an essential component of how they made deals and Got Things Done, and most of why the T-party knuckleheads most never accomplish anything but showing their butts.


I really like your first line; yeah, it's like the weather - you have to wait storms out and survive best you can.

I still insist on voting, but for decades have regarded over 90% of that activity as stubbornly insisting on registering my protest, not as anything effective.

[Buster's Uncle]

Please all notice the fresh edit at the bottom of the OP.  I obviously can't expect no one to talk about The Pig in a politics thread.  Didn't mean to give that impression.

[Geo]

"The Beast" is barely 200kms away atm *shudder*.
If there was a missile attack on Den Hague now, I might be able to see the 'show' with the air defenses.

[Buster's Uncle]

Fun fact:  there are two different wars going on for about two years now that both/either look promising for if you needed to escalate something into WWIII...

[Geo]

Well, same could be said about the Korean -and Vietnam Wars.
Nothing of the sort happened.

[Buster's Uncle]

Well sure, but those were both proxy wars - inherently less potential for escalation, McArthur threatening to use the bomb in Korea notwithstanding.


One of these is a major nuclear power -led by something of a conscienceless butcher- getting a bad bloody nose on its own doorstep ... and the other is Israel in the middle east, always a match-fight in a gasoline tank, now w/ The Pig just actually stuck his hand in.

We should be crapping ourselves w/ terror over either, I submit.  We really should.

[Geo]

Things in the Middle East didn't turn nuclear with the Iran-Iraq War of the Eighties, nor with both Gulf Wars. And those were a lot closer to the oil sources, and at least one of them turned out to be genocidal as well.
As long as Putin is in power, there won't be a nuclear launch from Russia towards NATO territory. Not as long as NATO armies don't pour into Russia (the Kaliningrad exclave might be an exception). Not sure about an atomic bomb on Kiev though.

In short, its like in my youth: living with the fear of a nuclear holocaust, but that's about it.
Post-Putin, things are way too much in the air as who would become Putin's successor, and if Russia survives his death as a unified state.

[Buster's Uncle]

But Iran and Iraq didn't have nukes - Israel does, it's been said about all my life.  If they found themselves loosing a war for once, do you trust them to be wise?  I don't trust anyone that much, and they'd be right to think their -whole nation- lives are at stake.  And Bibi's an evil SOB.

And dunno about Russia - they may well be set up for further splintering as you speculate, but I guess you could point at the nukes being settled out peacefully after the chaotic Soviet breakup years, and defend a little optimism?  Crap precedent, really, even so - people weren't as scared as they should rationally have been, which is true of my entire lifetime and several years before.

We just can't live with being as scared as we ought to, and so don't think about it much.

[Buster's Uncle]

Is any of it really as scary as when the US was directly at war with fighting China in 1950, only on third/forth parties' land and pretending that wasn't what was going on?  Daddy's least favorite war story was about pulling rotten Chinese bodies out of a Korean river.  (As technically a medic, Dr. Potter couldn't always get him out of being put on corpse details several times, and it scarred/scared him for life.)

Not much of a proxy war, really, and McArthur's big mouth in the mix.  It's probably a Very Good Thing for the entire human race that the Chinese didn't have a nuclear option yet, but maybe precedent is still that if we got out of THAT mess alive, maybe I'm too pessimistic.

[Geo]

But Iran and Iraq didn't have nukes - Israel does, it's been said about all my life. 

At least one of those countries had the means to deliver and the possession of a biological WMD - remember the Scud attacks on Israel in 1991?