Politics 2023

[Buster's Uncle]

And you weren't watching in shock on TV, Nazi Wednesday and after while some third world crap went down HERE?  The US going sour is everybody's problem, now, isn't it?

[Rusty Edge]

I don't know if it counts as political, but offhand I'd say that the diplomatic resolution of the Cuban Missile crisis was a biggie in global terms. Or at least the Northern Hemisphere.

But I was too young to be scared. After that, yeah, I'd say that 1991 was the biggy. And Nazi Wednesday was the scariest.
Imagine the USA changing sides in Ukraine. Totalitarians gotta stick together.

[Rusty Edge]

On a lighter note- When this George Santos character was elected and entered the spotlight I said if he's as bad a liar as they say, I'm sure his financial disclosure and other federal election commission filings are fraudulent- just prosecute him for that.

But the more we know about him, the more entertaining it gets. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and GOP star Marjorie Taylor Greene are defending him. It looks like not only is he a Brazilian fugitive who grifted the Amish out of puppies, but he also is a cross-dressing gay who had a sham marriage to bring a woman into the country illegally. Sounds like a poster-child for the new GOP.

What it tells me is what I've thought for some time (confirmation bias?) - they stand for nothing but the ruthless pursuit of power and schadenfreude.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yes, that, most assuredly.

And I'll concede the Cuban Missile Crisis -political, her lifetime, all lives everywhere directly at stake>Nazi Wednesday.  Not, however, MY lifetime or even this century, and the point still stands within that moved goalpost.

[Buster's Uncle]

Still, yes, within the original parameters I laid out, those darn Russians push Nazi Wednesday to third place.

[Geo]

And you weren't watching in shock on TV, Nazi Wednesday and after while some third world crap went down HERE?  The US going sour is everybody's problem, now, isn't it?

Let's say I wasn't shocked. And not really surprised either. There's plenty more violent news comin' out of the US. Monthly shootings, police violence. Absurdities on the ecomanagement level...
The US goin' sour isn't a problem to entities like the Kremlin, North-Korea, China, Iran,... 

[Buster's Uncle]

Nobody in the world's safe from a US gone stupid enough, fair to say?

[Geo]

Nobody in the world's safe from a US gone stupid enough, fair to say?

The same counts for a couple other state powers. Either because of weaponry they possess or their economy is big enough to affect the planet.

[Buster's Uncle]

Sure.

I don't care to be stuck on the same planet as contemporary Russia, wouldn't care for Great Britain gone any more Boris-stupid than it already is, not least for its leadership/influence of/on the Commonwealth nations, not in love with de Gaulle's France, even.  Wish Israel didn't have the bomb, and I'm pro Israel. Wish nobody did.

Wish there were no guns or explosives in the middle east.  Or anywhere but engineering projects anywhere, on the latter.


   Imagine there's no Heaven

[Trenacker]

...Liberal?  Aren't you a conservative -not reactionary- Republican w/ sense?...

I'm a registered Republican, but I've voted Democrat in every election since 2016 and I have no truck with the Republican social agenda.

I was a Rockefeller Republican, in it for the defense spending and the Iraq War. I favored McCain over Obama, but Obama over Romney in 2012 on the basis that the former didn't seem to understand life for the average American.

These days, I can't stomach Republicans of any kind, least of all [Sleezebag] and DeSantis. I've grown rather fond of Joe Biden, who once I liked least among all Democrats over his opposition to American intervention in Africa during the 1970s.

Put simply, Republican politics hurt too many people I care deeply about, and more intangible political goals have grown less important to me than that.

[Buster's Uncle]

Brother, I thought Reagan started things OFF a step or two too far -Rusty feels somewhat that way too- but I welcome you off that bus when they got stuck with an especially trashy celebrity's look-at-me joke of a campaign accidentally took off.  Better late than never.  I bet you weren't a fan of the Cheney Bund, either, but I 'spect that was before you were 18.  You look that young.

[Trenacker]

Actually, I quote liked George W. Bush and did support his second candidacy. (I was too young the first time.)

George W. Bush's presidency was a failure on its own terms, and I think he actually recognizes it to a degree, but I was there for it. Primarily because I shared the perspective that both Cheney and Rumsfeld attest to in their autobiographies, which is that our national threat appetite needed a seismic shift in reference points after 9/11.

Still, Rumsfeld (and, by extension, Bush as the accountable Chief Executive) deserve heaps of blame for the mismanagement of the post-war reconstruction in Iraq and the utter deterioration of the Afghanistan occupation. Biden, by contrast, deserves enormous credit for having the personal and political courage to admit reality (what a concept!) and withdraw from a situation Americans were never willing to spend enough blood and treasure to rectify.

These days, my hawkishness is satisfied by Biden's rather expert marshaling of Western support for the defense of Ukraine.

[Buster's Uncle]

Torture is not the American Way, sir.

[Trenacker]

I didn't say I'd support him again today.

[Buster's Uncle]

That's right on about Biden showing guts to leave Afghanistan.  That there was an extremely nasty Vietnamese Monkey Trap we done caught ourselves in fo' twenny years.  No way to let go the banana w/o getting cut pulling our hand free.