American Election 2024

[lobster]

2 minutes ago, SoundOfSilence said:

Where's my town Rock?

Have to find a pen first, I cant spell Ukraine place names with out writing them down, it will be along in due course

[SoundOfSilence]

Just now, lobster said:

Have to find a pen first, I cant spell Ukraine place names with out writing them down, it will be along in due course

'ctrl +c' followed by 'ctrl + v' ...

[lobster]

2 minutes ago, SoundOfSilence said:

'ctrl +c' followed by 'ctrl + v' ...

Does that work on paper maps ?

[SoundOfSilence]

3 minutes ago, lobster said:

Does that work on paper maps ?

If you have a paper map you don't need a pen to write it down ...

[lobster]

14 minutes ago, SoundOfSilence said:

If you have a paper map you don't need a pen to write it down ...

I didnt say I had a paper map, it was just a general enquiry 

 

As the task involves standing up, your in a queue, a bit of patience please, there a pack of propelling pencils somewhere, I'm trying to recall quite where 

Edited December 29, 2024 by lobster

[SoundOfSilence]

Joe Biden's two biggest regrets.

 

If you picked Hunter as one of them, you're wrong.

 

Joe Biden regrets stepping out of the 2024 presidential race, thinks he'd have beat Trump: Report – Firstpost 

 

"With just over three weeks left in the office, US President Joe Biden regrets two things, one stepping out of the 2024 US Presidential race against Donald Trump and the other appointing Merrick Garland as the US Attorney General, a White House source has revealed."

Well, you didn't really drop out did you Joe. It was a coup following your trainwreck of a debate against Trump. 

 

Camel Face was installed while they had Biden whacked out on drugs laid up in a hospital bed.

 

Biden goes on to claim that he would have beaten Trump.

 

Yeah, because Americans were desperate for four more years of:

 

Open borders and trafficked children;

Men in women sports;

Rampant inflation;

Massive unemployment;

Forced to buy electric cars that don't work;

High oil prices;

War in Ukraine;

War in the Middle East; and

The indignity of their head of state soiling himself in front of foreign leaders.

 

According to these sources Biden also feels that Merrick Garland moved too slowly against Trump.

 

So, he doesn't regret weaponizing the DOJ, just that it wasn't weaponized fast enough.

 

[1velocity7]

even tho its written by anti putin wikilibs

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_annexation_referendums_in_Russian-occupied_Ukraine

[SoundOfSilence]

On 12/30/2024 at 7:42 AM, 1velocity7 said:

even tho its written by anti putin wikilibs

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_annexation_referendums_in_Russian-occupied_Ukraine

They wear their bias proudly on their sleeve.

 

This: "The referendums were illegal under international law"

 

They don't say how the referenda were illegal. Though they do cite Bloomberg and UN News. Whose opinions, according to Wikipedos, carry the weight of law.

 

The referenda were monitored by more than 100 independent observers from more than 40 countries. No problems were identified.

 

Should it feel aggrieved, the only remedy for Ukraine would be to go to the International Court of Justice. The problem is that it would be questionable whether Ukraine has standing. Elensky is illegitimate so his protests may not be recognized.

 

If it wanted to depart from long standing precedent the ICJ would have to rule that the ethnic Russian living in Ukraine do not have the right to self-determination.

 

This where:

 

They can trace their ancestry to the region back hundreds of years.

They have been told to leave by Elensky.

They have been subjected to years of shelling by the supporters of Sepan Bandera. By the way, Sepan Bandera was even regarded as too extreme by the German Nazi Party.

They are having their cultural heritage eroded by the Elensky regime such as no longer being able to practice their religion and having restrictions placed on their ability to speak their native language.

 

Ethnic cleansing refers to the expulsion of a group from a certain area.

 

While Elensky's actions, in my view, do not amount to genocide (unlike Netanyahu's), telling the people of Eastern Ukraine to leave the area does amount to ethnic cleansing.

 

Here is where it gets very difficult for those arguing against the four region's exercise of their right of self-determination.

 

This is exactly what Ukraine did when it broke away from the Soviet Union. On 26 December 1991 a referendum was held by the people in Ukraine where they exercised their right of determination forming an independent state.

 

It would be very difficult for the ICJ to deny the people of the four regions their right of self-determination while recognizing the right of self-determination of the regime controlling and persecuting them. But judges are capable of all sorts of legal gymnastics when the mood takes them.

 

Ultimately, I doubt it will go the ICJ and I think this will be something that Trump will have to deal with.

 

I hope he understands the situation. I suspect he does.

 

While he has surrounded himself with some incompetent clowns, letting them shoot from the hip, that is typical Trump carrot and stick. I think behind the scenes he is getting better advice.

 

I Base this on his recent statement that he feels this will be more difficult to resolve than the Middle East.

 

[numnuts]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c390mrmxndyo

 

'Trump to be sentenced over hush money case but judge signals no jail time.'

 

A judge has ordered that Donald Trump will be sentenced on 10 January in his hush-money case in New York - less than two weeks before he is set to be sworn in as president. New York Judge Juan Merchan signalled he'd sentence Trump to a conditional discharge, in which a case is closed without jail time, a fine or probation, and that the president-elect could appear in person or virtually for the hearing. Trump had attempted to use his presidential election victory to dismiss the case against him.

 

His sentencing on 10 January will make him the first felon to serve in the White House. (The first felon who actually got collared. And, that's only if Dersh doesn't order Sleepy Joe to pardon him.)

Edited January 3 by numnuts

[SoundOfSilence]

18 minutes ago, numnuts said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c390mrmxndyo

 

'Trump to be sentenced over hush money case but judge signals no jail time.'

 

A judge has ordered that Donald Trump will be sentenced on 10 January in his hush-money case in New York - less than two weeks before he is set to be sworn in as president. New York Judge Juan Merchan signalled he'd sentence Trump to a conditional discharge, in which a case is closed without jail time, a fine or probation, and that the president-elect could appear in person or virtually for the hearing. Trump had attempted to use his presidential election victory to dismiss the case against him.

 

His sentencing on 10 January will make him the first felon to serve in the White House. (The first felon who actually got collared. And, that's only if Dersh doesn't order Sleepy Joe to pardon him.)

Also, the first time the victim of a blackmail scheme has been convicted for making a completely lawful payment.

[lobster]

14 minutes ago, SoundOfSilence said:

Also, the first time the victim of a blackmail scheme has been convicted for making a completely lawful payment.

Wasnt part of the issue he used someone elses money to pay the " blackmailer"

[numnuts]

Jeff Bozo is such a snowflake. 

 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4xk4y2emro

 

'Washington Post cartoonist quits after Bezos satire is rejected.'

 

A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist has resigned from the Washington Post after the newspaper refused to publish a cartoon satirical of its billionaire owner Jeff Bezos. Ann Telnaes, a long-time Washington Post cartoonist, created a cartoon of Mr Bezos and other tycoons kneeling before a statue of President-elect Donald Trump. She said the paper's refusal to run the cartoon was a "game changer" and described it as "dangerous for a free press".

[SoundOfSilence]

On 1/4/2025 at 9:58 AM, lobster said:

Wasnt part of the issue he used someone elses money to pay the " blackmailer"

No.

[Katsika]

By: William Manning,

Immigration resides at the intersection of domestic and foreign policy. Political battlelines are forming along this intersection. Skirmishes are underway. Observing the mele will be interesting.

The Immigration Battle Begins

https://prepareforchange.net/2025/01/04/the-immigration-battle-begins/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-immigration-battle-begins

[Campion]

2 hours ago, Katsika said:

By: William Manning,

Immigration resides at the intersection of domestic and foreign policy. Political battlelines are forming along this intersection. Skirmishes are underway. Observing the mele will be interesting.

The Immigration Battle Begins

https://prepareforchange.net/2025/01/04/the-immigration-battle-begins/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-immigration-battle-begins

 

This is about Donald Trump's immigration policy, which is in a complete mess before he's even taken office. 

  

Around the time of the election he was promising to close the borders and start deportations. 

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5033341-trump-prioritizes-immigration-policy/  

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/11/us/closed-border-trump-immigration-deportation/index.html  

 

Come the new year he's had a chat with Elon Musk and has made a u-turn and started talking about letting people in again, as long as they're smart and competent. Yeah, right.  

https://www.vox.com/politics/393172/trump-musk-immigration-h1b-visas-loomer-bannon  

“We need competent people, we need smart people coming into our country,” President-elect Donald Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, “we need a lot of people coming in.”  

 

Edited January 5 by Campion

[lobster]

8 hours ago, SoundOfSilence said:

No.

Well yes, the whole case wasn't that he had paid hush money, it was that he had used campaign funds to do so and as a result had falsified business records. That's always illegal 

 

On the larger point,  paying a blackmailer not to report you to the police for  crimes, is its self a crime, well in the uk anyway, I suspect in the USA as well, it comes under perverting the course of justice 

 

Not however in this case, if he hadn't been so tight and used some of his billions, non of this would have happened

Edited January 5 by lobster

[SoundOfSilence]

28 minutes ago, lobster said:

Well yes, the whole case wasn't that he had paid hush money, it was that he had used campaign funds to do so and as a result had falsified business records. That's always illegal 

 

On the larger point,  paying a blackmailer not to report you to the police for  crimes, is its self a crime, well in the uk anyway, I suspect in the USA as well, it comes under perverting the course of justice 

 

Not however in this case, if he hadn't been so tight and used some of his billions, non of this would have happened

Rock, my original post was that the payment was lawful.

 

Now, Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, was convicted for making an unlawful campaign contribution when he paid the hush moneys. 

 

That means, Rock, that the payment of the hush moneys was for a purpose benefitting the campaign.

 

Since it was a purpose benefitting the campaign either campaign funds, or Trump's own money, could have been used. Either would be lawful under US law.

 

If I recall, this vital piece of evidence was withheld from the jury.

 

Actually, both the inherent bias in the judge and the jury violated Trump's constitutional right to a fair trial. The judge was connected to the Biden campaign in some way (or something like that) and several members of the jury had posted anti-Trump posts on social media.

 

But I digress. The reason that Trump wasn't prosecuted for a campaign violation was because the payment of hush moneys was a lawful campaign purpose. Another court has already ruled as such.

 

They had to, else Michael Cohen couldn't have violated the law regarding campaign contributions.

 

The alleged false accounting was reconstructing a monthly retainer paid to Michael Cohen and saying it really went to the payment of a loan and not a monthly retainer. Notwithstanding that neither the timing nor the amount of these payments corresponded to the $130,000 hush moneys. 

 

But it gets worse for the corrupt NY court.

 

If the retainer payments were really the repayment of a loan (as alleged by the prosecution) there would have been nothing illegal in that. No need to conceal anything. No false accounting. It was a payment to Michael Cohen which was lawful out of either Trump's or the campaign funds.

 

So, no.

[SoundOfSilence]

1 hour ago, Campion said:

 

This is about Donald Trump's immigration policy, which is in a complete mess before he's even taken office. 

  

Around the time of the election he was promising to close the borders and start deportations. 

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5033341-trump-prioritizes-immigration-policy/  

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/11/us/closed-border-trump-immigration-deportation/index.html  

 

Come the new year he's had a chat with Elon Musk and has made a u-turn and started talking about letting people in again, as long as they're smart and competent. Yeah, right.  

https://www.vox.com/politics/393172/trump-musk-immigration-h1b-visas-loomer-bannon  

“We need competent people, we need smart people coming into our country,” President-elect Donald Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, “we need a lot of people coming in.”  

 

I haven't read the article, but that has always been Trump's position.

 

I assume he is talking about legal immigration. In which case he has always advocated for people coming in legally with skills that America is short on. Thanks to the US Department of Education there is a brain drain in the US and a shortage of certain high-tech positions. Not sure about doctors and other industries.

 

So to remain competitive America does need legal immigration.

 

Tom Homan is a Pitbull regarding open borders. So, I expect the border to be closed and criminals to be deported.

 

Where the author may have a point is (I haven't read the article but anticipate this would be discussed) is h1b visas. That is unskilled labor, such as fruit pickers etc. The argument being that these are jobs Americans wouldn't do. Perhaps not at the wages foreign workers would accept. But then if they weren't allowed to come in higher waged American workers would be employed. Food prices would inevitably increase.

 

I think Trump may have even used h1b workers on his construction sites.

 

I have heard suggestions that Musk is exploiting the law and bringing in high-tech people under this program. I haven't looked into it. So, cannot confirm. But that may explain why his cars occasionally explode.

 

Regarding immigration, I'm in the wait and see camp.

 

 

[Campion]

The h1b issue is interesting, as it suggests foreigners getting temporary work visas without immigrating permanently. That's what we need, it's what Arabic countries do to get foreign workers in the oil industry without changing their demographics. Over here the system grants practically everyone a permanent citizenship if they wait long enough, even if they come here illegally and without proper identification. All in the name of their human rights of course. 

[SoundOfSilence]

Blinken's New York Time interview.

 

‘The Interview’: Antony Blinken Insists He and Biden Made the Right Calls - The New York Times 

 

It's behind a paywall, but immediately the page opens, if you're really quick with 'crtl + a' followed by 'ctrl + c', you can copy the article into a Word document and read it there.

 

Or so I've been told ...

 

According to Blinken: 

 

Blinken: "Today, as I sit with you and as we look at all of the terrain we’ve traveled these last four years, I think we hand over an America in a much, much stronger position ..."

 

That's just utter nonsense. The man's completely delusional.

 

About $80 billion worth of weapons was handed to the Taliban in a more comical retreat than when King Arthur met the killer rabbit in the Holy Grail. The rest of the US military stockpiles were handed to Ukraine for the to waste in an ill-fated endeavor to weaken the Russian bear. 

 

Instead, now Russia is the world's number one military superpower, and it has broken away from its dependence on the Western financial system.

 

He's been doing a bit too much nose candy with Elensky.

 

Blinken: "... most Americans want us to be engaged in the world. They want to make sure that we stay out of wars, that we avoid conflict, which is exactly what we’ve done." 

 

Sorry, I just spat my coffee across the room.

 

Well other than picking a fight with two of the three world's greatest superpowers, creating a genocide in Gaza, bringing Al Qaeda, ISIS ... whatever back in Syria, trying to pick a fight with Iran that could escalate into World War III and cutting off Europe's cheap energy to turn its economy back to third world status.

 

Yeah, it's gone swimmingly.

 

Blinken: "the reason so many of the institutions, including NATO, came into being in the first place was to try to make sure that we never had another global conflagration after World War II."

 

How's that one working out?

 

Blinken: "But again, I think throughout we’ve been able to navigate this in a way that has kept us away from direct conflict with Russia."

 

Well other than firing ATACMs and Storm Shadow missiles into Russian territory which Putin described as an act of war and said Russia is at war with NATO.

 

Glad you managed to stay out of it ...

 

Blinken: "Well, first what we’ve left is Ukraine, which was not self-evident because Putin’s ambition was to erase it from the map. We stopped that. Putin has failed. His strategic objective in regaining Ukraine has failed and will not succeed. Ukraine is standing, and I believe it also has extraordinary potential not only to survive, but actually to thrive going forward. And that does depend on decisions that future administrations and many other countries will make."

 

Putin has never said he wants to erase Ukraine from the map.

 

Blinken reveals his final strategy. When Russia wins, either through a treaty or conquest, which is inevitable the Demonicrats and the media will just circle the wagons and blame Trump.

 

Unfortunately, there will be enough gullible idiots to lap it up.

 

[SoundOfSilence]

17 hours ago, Campion said:

The h1b issue is interesting, as it suggests foreigners getting temporary work visas without immigrating permanently. That's what we need, it's what Arabic countries do to get foreign workers in the oil industry without changing their demographics. Over here the system grants practically everyone a permanent citizenship if they wait long enough, even if they come here illegally and without proper identification. All in the name of their human rights of course. 

H1b is interesting. 

 

There is certainly an argument to be made that where a country lacks employees with certain skills then it should recruit from overseas.

 

However, with h1b this is not the case. America has low skilled workers.

 

To rebut my previous argument that it would drive prices up, while it is true that it would drive the costs of food and other things up, Americans are already paying this additional amount anyway. Through food stamps and other benefits to the unemployed. 

 

You'd probably need an economist to do the numbers to ascertain the net benefit/detriment of abandoning the program.

 

It's interesting how quickly human rights disappear when the government wants to do something. Oh, I don't know, like inject the public with a poison shot. I note the illegals aren't forced to take the poison death shot.

 

Have you thought about relinquishing your citizenship and then coming back into the country illegally?

 

You'd be better off.

 

 

[1velocity7]

every migrant needs to be sent back to rebuild whatever they left behind.

 

could you imagine if all british men in 1939 got on boats to south africa to run away from war

leaving the women and kids behind

[Katsika]

18 hours ago, SoundOfSilence said:

Thanks to the US Department of Education there is a brain drain in the US and a shortage of certain high-tech positions. Not sure about doctors and other industries.

 

So to remain competitive America does need legal immigration.

 

I have heard suggestions that Musk is exploiting the law and bringing in high-tech people under this program. I haven't looked into it. So, cannot confirm. But that may explain why his cars occasionally explode.

The brain-drain has been ongoing since god knows when - every country in West - where do the various brains mostly go to?  In Europe are they just recycled as it were e.g. leave Greece, work/study in London for a few years, return to Greece only to find conditions are even worse, cost of living even higher etc. then return to London etc?  (Just talking out loud, I don't expect you to know!).

 

 

 

[SoundOfSilence]

7 minutes ago, Katsika said:

The brain-drain has been ongoing since god knows when - every country in West - where do the various brains mostly go to?  In Europe are they just recycled as it were e.g. leave Greece, work/study in London for a few years, return to Greece only to find conditions are even worse, cost of living even higher etc. then return to London etc?  (Just talking out loud, I don't expect you to know!).

 

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

 

When I was using the term, I was referring more to the declining educational standards in the West. Not so much a rush to the exits. Though for a number of professions there is good money to be made in Russia, China and the Middle East.

 

Charlotte Iserbyt (spelling?) wrote a book called The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America (or something like that) where she discusses how critical thinking was removed from curricula. Modern Western education is more about learning x, y and z but not questioning or understanding its relevance. Which is what critical thinking would encourage.

 

For example, a lot of materialists struggle with morality. They try and equate it with evolutionary biology. The problem with that is that you can't get an 'ought' from an 'is'. Just because psychopaths kill it doesn't mean that they ought to. And before anyone jumps in to correct me, I am aware that not all psychopaths kill, it is just an example.

 

An early example of brain-drain, how I am using the term, is robber baron John D Rockefeller. He first gained a monopoly on oil that lasted until Standard Oil was broken up in 1911 when the US Supreme Court declared it to be an illegal monopoly. Standard Oil was broken up into corporations such as Mobil, Chevron, Exxon, and others.

 

Meanwhile, in the early 1900s, researchers found out that vitamins could be produced from oil and marketed as pharmaceutical drugs. Rockefeller saw this as a big opportunity to develop vitamins and medications from petroleum. Thereby controlling and monopolizing multiple industries at once: petroleum, chemical and medical.

 

Consequently, even after his oil empire was broken up, he was able to continue monopolizing the medical and pharmaceutical industry. A big threat to Big Pharma at the time was posed by traditional herbal and natural remedies. These were very popular in the US in the early 1900s.

 

Rockefeller knew that to get total control of the medical industry he would have to purge the competition. Rockefeller’s first move was to use his vast wealth (from oil) to purchase part of the German pharmaceutical company I.G. Farben. You may have heard of it. This company would go on to manufacture the infamous Zyklon B gas used in WWII.

 

Once he controlled I.G. Farben, he could move forward with his plan to eliminate the competition. He hired Abraham Flexner to submit a report to Congress in 1910. This report “concluded” that there were too many doctors and medical schools in America, and that all the natural healing traditions which had existed for hundreds of years were pseudoscience. The report called for the standardization of medical education, whereby only the American Medical Association (another monopoly) would be allowed to grant medical school licensure in the U.S.

 

With new laws in place, Rockefeller teamed up with Andrew Carnegie and started funding medical schools all over America on the strict condition that they only taught allopathic medicine (treatment through surgery or pharmaceuticals). Through the power of their huge “grants”, this powerful team systematically dismantled the previous curricula of these medical schools, removing any mention of the healing power of herbs or natural treatments. Teachings on diet and other natural (non-drug) treatments were also completely eliminated from medical programs. 

 

After removing traditional medicine from medical schools, Rockefeller made sure to secure his monopoly by launching a targeted smear campaign against his competitors. Homeopathy and natural medicines were discredited and demonized through the newspapers and other media of the time.  Some doctors were even jailed for using natural medicine treatments, including treatments that had been used safely and effectively for decades before. In a very short time, medical colleges were all homogenized. All the students were taught the same allopathic system and medicine was now defined as a process of prescribing patented drugs. “A pill for an ill” became the mindset of American medicine.

 

This model, whereby medical students are taught only to prescribe pharmaceuticals, now permeates Western medicine.

 

But Rockefeller seems trustworthy. I'm glad it wasn't an evil Emperor Palpatine look-a-like hijacking medical education.

 

 

[Katsika]

1 minute ago, SoundOfSilence said:

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

You are welcome - I was being mindful that you might be busy preparing some seafood

 

31 minutes ago, SoundOfSilence said:

to purchase part of the German pharmaceutical company I.G. Farben. You may have heard of it.

I have indeed - it morphed into various companies (BASF/Bayer/Hoechst) after it was sold by GD Searle - I think they then morphed or linked with Pfizer and Monsanto who with the help of the  unindicted war criminal D Rumsfeld, managed to get FDA approval for Aspartame.  I believe Agent Orange was mainly a Monsanto vile killer, continuing their anti-human agenda.

 

I feel sick when I see Rockerfeller - the Ludlow Massacre etc. - an event that initiated the cult of the  "philanthropist".

 

Critical thinking had to be discouraged/eliminated because "the ability to think systematically, see other perspectives, change your mind when new evidence arises, identify relevant versus irrelevant information, identify and discard logical fallacies, be aware of biases and avoid them, and look beyond the obvious" = danger to the mthfers.