US Politics Thread 2021-24

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by August

I bet if you did a search of every congressman and senators house you'd find classified materials in a sizable number of them.

The part which bothers me the most is it seems search parties don’t really know where to look or what they’re looking for. NARA or who ever is responsible doesn’t have a clue what’s out there, where it’s at or who has it.

My arse would have gotten a Big Chicken Dinner or thrown in the brig if I was that irresponsible.


Big Chicken Dinner a.k.a. Bad Conduct Discharge for you civies

[August]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

The part which bothers me the most is it seems search parties don’t really know where to look or what they’re looking for. NARA or who ever is responsible doesn’t have a clue what’s out there, where it’s at or who has it.

My arse would have gotten a Big Chicken Dinner or thrown in the brig if I was that irresponsible.


Big Chicken Dinner a.k.a. Bad Conduct Discharge for you civies

More likely it'd be both dinner and prison accommodations!

This whole business of sending teams of lawyers into homes and workplaces to do searches tells me that there is widespread disregard among civilian politicians for document security procedures and chain of custody regulations. They think that what would send you or me to jail for the rest of our lives does not and should not apply to their own odoriferous posteriors.

No wonder foreign governments are always trying to put their people onto their cleaning crews, chauffeurs and other domestic staff jobs. The pickings must be pretty good if bunches of Top Secret documents are just laying around forgotten in boxes and desk drawers.

[August]

Biden self Pwnage:


President Biden on Thursday joked about his gaffes and intelligence while touting his administration's economic record while in Virginia.
Speaking in Springfield, Biden joked that some people think he's "stupid."
"I said that when I was seeking the nomination, I said, 'Take a seat everybody,' and there wasn't a single chair in the place," he said while speaking at the Steamfitters Local 602 in Springfield. "They said that Biden really is stupid and he doesn't know it."
He then asked, "Where's Doug the congressman?," apparently referring to Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va.


https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bid...ans-name-wrong

[em2nought]

The newspaper characterized this as mishandling of classified documents by first the Trump administration, and now the Biden administration. Isn't it actually the Obama Administration's guilt since that's when the pretender's offenses begin? I know Barry is their "precious" and all, but they need to tell at least some truth at some point.

If there's a higher incidence of chimney fires in DC this month will that be evidence of widespread getting rid of evidence?

[Rockstar]

Seattle faces a moment of truth to save downtown

Jan. 27, 2023 at 6:00 am Updated Jan. 27, 2023 at 5:38 pm

https://www.seattletimes.com/busines...save-downtown/

Jon Talton By Jon Talton
Columnist

I’ve never lived in a city that’s collapsing around me.

Almost every few days, it comes in hammer blows (one literally).

The Nike store at Sixth Avenue and Pike suddenly shut down earlier this month. It’s opening a new location at Bellevue Square.

The Downtown Seattle Association estimated in October 2021 that 500 street-level businesses had closed since 2019. About 300 new street-level businesses had opened.

This audit is more than a year old. Either way, the new shops and restaurants aren’t on Third Avenue, which has become ever more desolate. The losses include important stores such as Columbia Sportswear’s Seattle flagship, which was looted.

Even my eye doctor moved her practice off Third to a safer space on Fourth Avenue. Nike’s exit adds to a retail vacancy rate in Seattle’s central business district of around 13.5%. That compares with less than 2% in 2019. By contrast, Bellevue’s vacancy rate is 1.5% now versus 5% in 2019.

Meanwhile, Amazon is pulling out of its offices at the Port 99 tower downtown. One real estate insider called it “the first domino” as the company — Seattle’s largest private-sector employer — rethinks its property strategy in the city.

When big businesses pull back, small businesses that provide professional services and act as other vendors suffer.

Another blow: Regal Meridian will close its 16-screen movie theater at Seventh and Pike. The closing leaves yet another empty hole in the urban fabric. Seattle’s smile is becoming like that of someone with many lost teeth.

We’re lucky to have the AMC theaters remaining, but for how long? It occupies the top floors of Pacific Place, a once-thriving urban mall, which faces an uncertain future.

Meanwhile, crime is stabilizing or declining thanks to Mayor Bruce Harrell and City Attorney Ann Davison. Shoplifting, which added costs to every retailer in the city, has leveled off, but admittedly from a chaotic and rampant starting point.

The violent crime we see is horrific — a man battered with a hammer in broad daylight near Third Avenue and Pike, his assailant stealing his backpack. The victim, who was apparently trying to steal a bicycle at the time, later died. It was Seattle’s fifth homicide of the new year.

Other crime is so commonplace, it’s barely reported. The front door of my condo building was burgled (again). A building down the street with a bullet hole through the front door. Smashed glass and tagging on every other block.

I can feel the excuses being typed. Remote work is to blame! The “second tech boom” has deflated and the consequences are nationwide! San Francisco and Portland have it worse! Microsoft is vacating office space in Bellevue! Seattle has lovely neighborhoods, even a few without encampments! Regal filed for bankruptcy protection! Third Avenue used to be way worse!

If those excuses aren’t enough, others will say that tourism will offset much of the damage, especially with the cruise season and opening of the expanded convention center. Or that Nike’s closure isn’t a deathblow, just as Banana Republic, Gap and Macy’s departing didn’t end retail downtown.

Some of these points are true, but even those come with caveats.


For example, praising neighborhoods is fine, but downtown generates the majority of city tax revenue. And I don’t know of a quality metropolitan area without a thriving central core. In New York City, Manhattan is seeing a post-pandemic renaissance.

Tourism has long been a part of Seattle’s diverse economy. Thank goodness Pike Place Market survives, along with Seattle Center. The convention center expansion will prove to be a wise investment. But tourism mostly creates lower-wage jobs, and tourists provide limited support for downtown cultural centers and pro sports.

Excuses aside, today’s urban dystopia was unimaginable when I arrived here 15 years ago.

Whether from a consumer or business standpoint, we may be witnessing the demise of tolerance for bad urban experiences on the other side of this pandemic.

The conceit that places like Seattle could get away with street crime and urban disorder, chalking it up to a big city with big-city problems — and people would still come and invest — is being put to the test.

At the same time, the expectation of urban workers, residents, visitors and retailers themselves for reliably clean and safe experiences is even higher coming out of the pandemic. Retailers won’t put up with an operating environment that is expensive because of safety and retail theft issues, and customers won’t either. They’ll go somewhere else.

More workers are returning to the office nationally. For example, in January Austin, Texas, showed 77% of employees back in the office compared with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, followed by Houston (69%).

It’s happening here, too, although at a slower pace. The Downtown Seattle Association estimated 44% had returned as of December compared with less than 30% in January 2022.

Also in December, San Francisco posted 53% and San Jose 52%.

Soon-to-be-empty City Council seats provide an opportunity to continue the backlash that elected Sara Nelson. That is, if centrists can be persuaded to run and face attacks by activists and Twitter mobs.

Otherwise, Seattle will lose out on the back-to-the-city phenomenon from which it has so benefited since the 1990s.

A paper by scholars at NYU and Columbia University put a fine point on the stakes:

“Our research emphasizes the possibility of an ‘urban doom loop’ by which decline of work in the center business district results in less foot traffic and consumption, which adversely affects the urban core in a variety of ways (less eyes on the street, so more crime; less consumption; less commuting) thereby lowering municipal revenues and also making it more challenging to provide public goods and services absent tax increases. These challenges will predominantly hit blue cities in the coming years.”

The loop doesn’t quite fit Seattle yet, whose fiscal shortfall is primarily from overspending rather than lower revenues. But unaddressed, the crisis in the core will only grow worse.

And the hits will keep coming.

Jon Talton: jtalton@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @jontalton. Talton writes about business and the Pacific Northwest economy in the Sunday Seattle Times.

[Rockstar]

Missing Ohio architect killed in Mexico with fiancée

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/missing-...o-with-fiancee


These same cartels that are raping, murdering and destroying Mexico. Are also now the ones greatly enriching themselves running illegal immigrants across Biden’s open U.S. border.

[mapuc]

I..I...I am out of words

(Following article has been translated-Sine I could not find any English version of this Danish version)

I'm white and in therapy for it
The idea that all white people are racists is spreading in the United States. So Americans are using anti-racist training and therapy against their whiteness.

From his chair across from me, Kusum Crimmel looks at me with a calm smile and a slight tilt of his head.

- 'I think whiteness is the belief in white supremacy, dominance and control, and looking down on other people,' she says.

Kusum Crimmel is white and a former civil rights activist. Today, she has taken the fight against racism into the therapy room

She lives in a quiet neighborhood of cacti and oak trees in Oakland, California. In her home, she has decorated a room with scented candles and pictures of dark bodies on the walls.

Here she treats white people for their whiteness.

- In America, everyone has a degree of white supremacy in them, she says, and asks me to get up to do an exercise with her.

I've told her I don't feel racist, and now she wants to know if she agrees.

All whites are racists
The idea that all white people are somehow racist has been on the rise in the US since the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

Video footage of a white cop kneeing Floyd in the neck sparked the largest race protest movement in US history and new heightened focus on systemic racism.

In the US, blacks are more likely than whites to end up in prison, in poverty, without an education or as victims of police violence.

Some of the best-selling books in the US after the killing of George Floyd place the blame on white America.

In bestsellers like 'White Fragility' and 'Nice Racism', author Robin Diangelo argues that white people unconsciously show they are racists precisely when they reject accusations of racism. All white people should work on their personal racism, she argues.

Diangelo's books are used as a basis for anti-racist training, therapy and healing in public institutions, businesses and universities across the US.

'We are not safe with a white man'
- 'We don't feel safe with a white man here,' Kusum Crimmel says, grabbing my arm.

With the exercise, she wants to show how I, as a white man, react to the suspicion that black people are often subjected to.

When I turn to her and answer "why not?" she is ready with an analysis.

- America was founded on slavery, colonization and racism, and that's why a large group of people don't trust you, says Kusum Crimmel.

- When a white man takes a defensive stance and confronts, white masculinity is reinforced. It doesn't make me want to get to know you.

The idea that all whites are racists and that whiteness should be treated is generating strong reactions from the right in the American racial debate.

In September 2020, then-President Donald Trump stopped the use of taxpayer money for anti-racism training in public institutions.

- We pay people hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach very bad and - frankly - very sick ideas. They teach people to hate our country, Trump said at the time.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Markus

[August]

I know huh?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mapuc

I..I...I am out of words

(Following article has been translated-Sine I could not find any English version of this Danish version)



Markus

We gget also taught that there are over 60 genders and that genetics decide nothing. Its depressing how willingly many people believe the biggest drivel and the most mind-killing madness. We turn ourselves into lunatics. Who benefits from driving these suicidal movements? Those who want to destroy western societies from within. You see it in climate "activist" organisations, too. Often, financier with putspoken marxist-maoist agenda arepulling the strings in the background, like they since decades also hat controlled the german anti atom movement and the peace movement. Russia often has its fingers in the game, too.



People seem to crave for believing just every s##t. Shows how degenerated our educational standard and our intellectual resilience have become. Our culture indeed degenerates.

[vienna]

Comparison of presidents’ classified records handling distorts cooperation with authorities --

https://www.politifact.com/article/2...rts-past-pres/




<O>

[ET2SN]

Originally Posted by vienna

Comparison of presidents’ classified records handling distorts cooperation with authorities --

https://www.politifact.com/article/2...rts-past-pres/




<O>

But, but, but,.... What about Benghazi,.......and Hunter's laptop,....and the e-mails,.....and the space lasers,.....and the Venezuelan voting machines???????

[ET2SN]

Originally Posted by Skybird

We get also taught that there are over 60 genders and that genetics decide nothing.

Ummm.. Can you understand why we get concerned when your people start harping about genetics?

Yeah, I know. It was a cheap shot but I think you can handle it.

[MaDef]

@mupac, that "therapist" (and I use that term loosely), is from California. And that alone should indicate that she's so full of it, her eyes are brown.

[Rockstar]

What a stupid article. Blame people raising backyard chickens for the rising prices in poultry / eggs. Ignoring the over 58 million birds which have been quarantined and killed since February of last year due the biggest bird flu outbreak since who knows when.

Cute title though it has puppies teehee

Forget Pandemic Puppies. Meet the Inflation Chicken.

https://dnyuz.com/2023/02/02/forget-...ation-chicken/

[Otto Harkaman]

Hunter Biden accused of 'intimidation' as it is revealed he was hit with $75K lawsuit by Delaware laptop repairman five days BEFORE he demanded DOJ prosecute anyone who shared his hard drive

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...repairman.html