U.S. Politics

[Davkaus]

Fair play to McCain. 

How **** up is America that they held that vote in the middle of the night, hoping people wouldn't turn up to vote against it. That's so antidemocratic that it ought to be unlawful. 

[itdoesntmatterwhatthissay]

1 hour ago, peterms said:

From about half way through, he kept on touching her.  Very odd.  And then there's this.  She seems to be watching his hands...as you would...

 

 

Perhaps he was wearing shorts and she was checking out his legs or bulge. Bloody pervert!

[peterms]

Is that a vestigial pencil moustache on his smug face, or has he been drinking chocolate milk?

[PieFacE]

On 27/07/2017 at 05:13, Keyblade said:

So John McCain (who's dying btw) checked out of a hospital where he was receiving publicly funded healthcare just to vote to take away other people's healthcare. Couldn't make it up.

Plot twist!

[OutByEaster?]

Big day today.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1261678/

Quote

Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $3,693,062,124 undefinitized not-to-exceed modification to the previously awarded low-rate initial production Lot 11 F-35 Lightning II advance acquisition contract (N00019-16-C-0033). 

They generally spend about a billion dollars a day - that's about three dollars each - but they  excelled themselves today a good $12-13 from every single American.

It's good for business Edwin, it's good for business.

 

[villakram]

And Reince is toast... former head of Homeland and military man John Kelly promoted to new WH chief of staff, gonna be a fun weekend.

[peterms]

1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said:

Big day today.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1261678/

They generally spend about a billion dollars a day - that's about three dollars each - but they  excelled themselves today a good $12-13 from every single American.

It's good for business Edwin, it's good for business.

 

Interesting piece here about the politics of Lockheed Martin procurement.

Quote

. ..An enormous project brings an enormous number of jobs, and Lockheed sensibly ensured that everyone and his neighbour was invested in keeping it from going belly-up. The joke term for this is ‘political engineering’: for all its rivets, bearings, shafts, ducts and pipes – as well as its fibre optics and sensor systems and radar and onboard computers – the F-35 programme now involves more than 1200 suppliers in 45 US states, accounting for forty thousand jobs in Texas alone. It’s a brave congressman who will stand up and complain about appropriations when hordes of sizeable businesses are going to have at him for it. So Congress barely peeped as costs soared – though there were a few notable holdouts, like Senator John McCain, who called it ‘a scandal and a tragedy’. McCain is a leading representative of a dissident American military tradition that prefers light and agile to massive and lumbering, but it may not be insignificant that his home state, Arizona, is one of the few where Lockheed has recently shed jobs rather than piled them on. ..

 

[peterms]

4 hours ago, villakram said:

Reince is toast.

An examination of the corpse shows puncture wounds to the back, though an informant had assured us the place to look would be his front.

[Guest av1]

This prat can't see out a whole term can he?

[sne]

On 7/26/2017 at 23:58, villa4europe said:

scaramucci on newsnight...**** me

what a vile man he is

"I see a little silhouetto of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango? Thunderbolt and lightning, Very, very frightening..."

[Brumerican]

 

[blandy]

McCain canny

Quote

I'm not sure if it's really being appreciated just how comprehensively the Republicans were just **** over.
See, the Republicans have been trying to pass these godawful healthcare bills through a process called budget reconciliation, which, among other things, protects the bill from being filibustered in the Senate and only requires a simple majority of 50 votes (rather than 60, which the Republicans don't have).
The thing is, the Senate can only consider one budget reconciliation bill per topic per year. Of course, if the bill dies in committee and never comes to an official vote, it doesn't count- which is why they've been able to keep hammering away at the issue.
This bill, though, was allowed to come to the Senate floor, because the Republicans thought they'd secured the votes. Collins, Murkowski and the Democrats would vote no, everyone else would vote yes, and Pence would break the tie. And then McCain completely **** them. And it was almost certainly a calculated move; he voted to allow the bill to come to the floor. Had McCain allowed it to die in committee, McConnell could have come back with yet another repeal bill; but he let it come to a vote, and now they can't consider another budget reconciliation bill for the rest of the fiscal year. The Senate needs 60 votes to pass any kind of healthcare reform now.
So now they're caught between a rock and a hard place. Either they concede defeat on the issue and try again later (causing a big, unpopular stink that could damage elections if they try it before the midterms, or risking losing the slim majority they already have if they wait) or they actually sit down with the democrats like adults and write a halfway decent healthcare bill.
This is amazing.

 

[Davkaus]

And I just thought he was a word removed.

I think I owe him an apology.

[StefanAVFC]

 

[villakram]

3 hours ago, blandy said:

McCain canny

 

Nope, nope and nope again.

The WH can cut off the insurance company subsidies or stop enforcement of the individual mandate,  and the resulting increase in premiums and the wails of agony from the poor little insurance companies will force a decision in some not to distant timeframe.

There is also the other slightly important thing. The filibuster exists because the republicans allow it to exist on some sort of principle (they talk all lofty, but it's simply an imagining of the shoe being on the other foot). They can change this whenever/if it appears necessary. I'll bet their super trickle down tax cuts will be the kind of thing they'll have no problem sacrificing their "principles" for.

[sne]

Russia has just decided to deport 755 American diplomats in response to the new US sanctions.

Frosty.

[Awol]

1 hour ago, sne said:

Russia has just decided to deport 755 American diplomats in response to the new US sanctions.

Frosty.

If Putin has given up on any great change of Russia/US relations under Trump it's probably worth keeping an eye on Wikileaks..

[Jareth]

On 28/07/2017 at 11:39, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

Perhaps he was wearing shorts and she was checking out his legs or bulge. Bloody pervert!

The Mooch is an absolute legend - just when you thought the US government couldn't get any more twisted, they go and appoint a character from Wall Street (the movie) to speak for el presidente. Bloody loving watching all this. Sadly I think a North Korean war is inevitable, Japan gonna get flattened. 

[Chindie]

I certainly wouldn't want to go to Seoul any time soon... If anything happens in North Korea Seoul will become pockmarked in minutes. It's North Korea's great defence. They have a gun to Seoul's head. They barely need much else.

Something will happen sooner or later though. They will eventually make a nuke capable of fitting to an ICBM, and that understanding will lead to action sooner or later. Which will be a outright disaster making Iraq look like a success. An instant enormous refugee crisis, guerrilla war, an army unlikely to give up... And leave it too long and you're playing a game of how good your intelligence is - if you attack because you are certain they have the bomb, how do you know you know about all of them? Do you risk missing one and taking away all reason for them not to use it?

It's an impending disaster and it will come to pass.

[Awol]

48 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I certainly wouldn't want to go to Seoul any time soon... If anything happens in North Korea Seoul will become pockmarked in minutes. It's North Korea's great defence. They have a gun to Seoul's head. They barely need much else.

Something will happen sooner or later though. They will eventually make a nuke capable of fitting to an ICBM, and that understanding will lead to action sooner or later. Which will be a outright disaster making Iraq look like a success. An instant enormous refugee crisis, guerrilla war, an army unlikely to give up... And leave it too long and you're playing a game of how good your intelligence is - if you attack because you are certain they have the bomb, how do you know you know about all of them? Do you risk missing one and taking away all reason for them not to use it?

It's an impending disaster and it will come to pass.

They've missed the window now. The latest launch (missile capable of hitting CONUS as far as Chicago definitely, and probably NYC) came from a launch site that was previously unknown to western intelligence. 

The gig is up, NK is now a defacto nuclear weapon state and there's nothing the US can do about it without risking catastrophe. 

That's a lesson that won't be lost on Washington's Iran hawks. 

Strongly recommend a guy called Arms Control Wonk on Twitter, he's very good on this subject and does excellent podcasts.