12
   

Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

 
 
Builder
 
  -4  
Reply Wed 29 Mar, 2023 01:41 am
@hingehead,
Quote:
Hey, Australia would be white too, if we didn't have an indigenous population.


Been up to Broome, lately Hinge? It's one of the most multicultural centres on the planet.

Astounding (and mostly untold) history.

Given the obvious variables, Australia would be mostly Hindu and Muslim, but I guess the "whites" embrace those beliefs at times, too.

Christianity is the dying religious base here.
hightor
 
  4  
Reply Wed 29 Mar, 2023 04:10 am
Quote:
Today, House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) sent a letter to President Joe Biden accusing him of being “missing in action” on efforts to address the approaching debt ceiling crisis. McCarthy accused Biden of “putting an already fragile economy in jeopardy” and tried to portray himself as the reasonable party, trying to negotiate “what is best for the American people.”

It was a simply astonishing document, brazen in its suggestion that it is Biden who is taking an “extreme position” on the debt ceiling when in fact it is the Republicans who are threatening to destroy the world’s economy to get their way. They are insisting they will hold the debt ceiling hostage to force a wide range of spending cuts, and also to push policies like easier access to drilling permits.

Once again, the debt ceiling is not about future spending. It’s about meeting the obligations past Congresses have incurred. And a great deal of that debt was incurred during the Trump administration, in large part from the 2017 tax cuts that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would cost almost $2 trillion over 11 years.

Congress voted to increase the debt ceiling three times during the Trump administration. Biden had been clear that he expects it to do so again; he will not negotiate over paying the nation’s bills.

But, as part of the normal budget process, he has also been clear that he is more than happy—eager, even—to debate budget proposals with the Republicans. Biden produced a budget on March 9 and has said that he will enter into negotiations just as soon as the Republicans produce a budget proposal of their own.

But this they cannot do. McCarthy has promised dramatic cuts to the budget that he cannot deliver without cutting Social Security and Medicare, which the Republicans have agreed not to cut. At the same time, House Republicans have vowed to get rid of the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that fund the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), invest in addressing climate change, establish a minimum tax on the wealthy, and give the government the power to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, provisions that the Committee for a Responsible Budget projects will save the government almost $2 trillion over 2 decades.

And so, McCarthy published a letter trying to blame Biden for the mess the House speaker is in.

Biden responded immediately to McCarthy’s extraordinary public letter with one of his own, thanking the speaker for his communication and reiterating that Congress has always increased the debt ceiling without conditions and should “act quickly to do so now.”

“We can agree,” he wrote, “that an unprecedented default would inflict needless economic pain on hard-working Americans and that the American people have no interest in brinksmanship. That is why House Democrats joined with House Republicans and voted to avoid default throughout the Trump Administration—without conditions, despite disagreements about budget priorities. That same standard should apply today.”

Biden noted that he had already provided the American people with his own detailed budget, one that would reduce the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over ten years by increasing taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, cutting subsidies for the oil and gas industries, and expanding the list of drugs over which Medicare can negotiate with pharmaceutical companies. “My proposals enable us to lower costs for families and invest in our economic growth, all while reducing the deficit,” Biden wrote.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, the Republicans' proposals would “exacerbate the debt problem I inherited by adding over $3 trillion” with more tax cuts “skewed to the same constituencies who should be paying more, like multinational corporations and the richest taxpayers.” He urged McCarthy, once again, to produce a detailed budget plan rather than vague calls for savings, “so we can understand the full, combined impact on the deficit, the economy, and American families.”

Biden asked McCarthy to produce a Republican budget plan before Congress’s Easter recess “so that we can have an in-depth conversation when you return. As I have repeatedly said, that conversation must be separate from prompt action on the Congress’ basic obligation to pay the Nation’s bills and avoid economic catastrophe.”

Republicans are using similar brinksmanship with regard to the military to push their extremist agenda.

Back in July, just after the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Pentagon officials warned the House Armed Services Committee that the abortion restrictions promptly imposed by Republican-dominated legislatures were adding to the military’s recruiting crisis by creating new family planning problems for military families. More than 100 military installations with about 240,000 service members are located in states that have total abortion bans, and Gil Cisneros, the Pentagon’s chief of personnel and readiness, warned that the new laws would hurt recruiting and that service members would leave the military rather than continue to live in those states.

In February, the military launched a policy permitting military personnel up to three weeks’ leave and reimbursement for travel expenses to go to a state that permits abortion care and fertility treatments. Those rules went into effect this month.

Now, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is refusing to permit senior military promotions—at this point 160 of them—in protest of the military’s rules covering reproductive health care. “You all have the American taxpayer on the hook to pay for travel and time off for elective abortions,” Tuberville said to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin today as he spoke before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “And you did not make this [policy] with anybody in this room or Congress taking a vote.”

Austin responded that women make up almost 20% of the military and about 80,000 are stationed in states that don’t have access to abortion (and men want to plan their families as well). Tuberville’s hold on promotions means that senior officials cannot rotate into new positions, leaving the military without leaders in places like the Navy’s 5th Fleet, which oversees military operations in the Middle East and which is due for a new leader within the next few months. Those holes will become worse over the next several months as key military leaders are set to retire or rotate out of their posts.

Austin warned that Tuberville’s stance affects military readiness, and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that Tuberville’s brinksmanship with the military risks “permanently politicizing the confirmation of military personnel…. If every single one of us objected to the promotion of military personnel whenever we feel passionately or strongly about an issue, our military would simply grind to a halt,” Schumer pointed out.

Tuberville says he will not stop his objections until the abortion policy is ended.

hcr
0 Replies
 
izzythepush
 
  3  
Reply Wed 29 Mar, 2023 10:33 am
@hingehead,
In the UK the children's commissioner has found out that kids from ethnicminorities are 6 times more likely to be subjected to illegal strip searches than white kids.
0 Replies
 
hightor
 
  3  
Reply Wed 29 Mar, 2023 02:20 pm

Bright new idea in urban planning gets shot down by the same old bunch of paranoids...
Mame
 
  3  
Reply Wed 29 Mar, 2023 05:16 pm
@hightor,
They were talking about a plan for the 10 minute city here before the pandemic and I read today they're going to bring it forward at City Council again this year. Today's local paper was full of shopping local, getting around, and problem/solution issues today.

Apparently our city has the most km of bike/pedestrian/e-scooter paths in North America. I had no idea, but those rental scooters are everywhere and their drivers are causing problems. Apparently they've been having bad interactions with pedestrians and cyclists. Do they drive on the road, sidewalk, bike path (when there is one)? No real regulations as yet, as it was a pilot project from '21 which was extended.

Our major problem in this city is terrible transit connections. They aren't frequent enough (who wants to wait 25+ minutes in the cold?), too many transfers, and now safety is a big issue with people who are homeless and mentally ill basically living on the trains and in the stations. Just last night there was a knife fight at the station nearest me involving 6 or 7 people.

The city is so sprawling and the most affordable homes are out in the burbs, of course, a good 45 - 60 min from the core, so people drive. Not much car-pooling going on, either. I hardly ever see anyone in the HOV lanes.
0 Replies
 
hingehead
 
  2  
Reply Wed 29 Mar, 2023 05:36 pm
@blatham,
Quote:
Actually it is about 30% here as well. In the US, the percentage of blacks in prison is closer to 40%. In New Zealand aboriginals account for over 50% of the prison population.


What percentage of the US is native american? I saw 2%. I can't find a definitive percentage for native american share of the total prison population, just the incarceration rates per 100,000 of each ethnic group:
https://static.prisonpolicy.org/images/incarceration_byrace_2019.webp

New Zealand Maori make up about 18% of the population - it's not great but it's substantially better than the situation for Australia's indigenous population.
snood
 
  5  
Reply Wed 29 Mar, 2023 05:56 pm
Simple. It’s because the superior races are just genetically more law-abiding.

Hope that saves everyone some time.
hingehead
 
  2  
Reply Wed 29 Mar, 2023 06:32 pm
@snood,
Some f***ers will agree and believe you're serious.

https://media2.giphy.com/media/mEahVAkKjt0VL2o5Jk/200.webp?cid=ecf05e470625ak3gtnnx7ky28himgjvdol5qxf5uutzu7k0n&rid=200.webp&ct=g
hingehead
 
  2  
Reply Wed 29 Mar, 2023 06:33 pm
@Builder,
Good.
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  2  
Reply Wed 29 Mar, 2023 08:16 pm
@hingehead,
Sorry, I do not have that data.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  3  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 10:11 am
Russian elite hackers are targeting airports, power plants and the internet worldwide. Confidential data from Moscow now provide insight into their arsenal of weapons for the first time - and reveal their strategy.

Example USA 2016
During the US election campaign, the servers of the Democratic Party are hacked and data is later published on WikiLeaks. In addition, false reports are spread in favour of the eventual election winner Donald Trump. In another cyber attack, 60,000 emails of the campaign manager of his rival Hillary Clinton are captured. Various Russian hacker groups, including "Fancy Bear", are behind the attacks.

Quote:
The Washington Post joined a consortium of news organizations, led by Paper Trail Media and Der Spiegel in Germany, to investigate NTC Vulkan, a software and cybersecurity company that has commercial and government clients. The reporting, which took more than a year, included the study and translation of the documents along with interviews with former employees, cybersecurity experts and intelligence officials from Western nations.


7 takeaways from the Vulkan Files investigation


Btw: an anonymous whistleblower has leaked numerous secret documents, which SPIEGEL got, because of the attack on Ukraine.
Rebelofnj
 
  6  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 10:53 am
For all that talk DeSantis said about fighting Disney and their "woke agenda", he and his team are not very good at actually fighting Disney and their army of lawyers.

Disney World board picked by DeSantis says predecessors stripped them of power

Quote:
Board members picked by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to oversee the governance of Walt Disney World said Wednesday that their Disney-controlled predecessors pulled a fast one on them by passing restrictive covenants that strip the new board of many of its powers.

The current supervisors of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District said at a meeting that their predecessors last month signed a development agreement with the company that gave Disney maximum developmental power over the theme park resort's 27,000 acres in central Florida.

The five supervisors were appointed by the Republican governor to the board after the Florida Legislature overhauled Disney's government in retaliation for the entertainment giant publicly opposing so-called "Don't Say Gay" legislation that bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, as well as lessons deemed not age-appropriate.
.....
"We're going to have to deal with it and correct it," board member Brian Aungst said Wednesday. "It's a subversion of the will of the voters and the Legislature and the governor. It completely circumvents the authority of this board to govern."

In a statement, Disney said all agreements were above board and took place in public.

"All agreements signed between Disney and the District were appropriate, and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida's Government in the Sunshine law," the statement said

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/29/1166925827/disney-world-board-desantis-power-florida

Quote:
Among other things, a “declaration of restrictive covenants” spells out that the district is barred from using the Disney name without the corporation’s approval or “fanciful characters such as Mickey Mouse.”

That declaration is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England living as of the date of this declaration,” if it is deemed to violate rules against perpetuity, according to the document

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-ne-disney-new-reedy-creek-board-powerless-20230329-qalagcs4wjfe3iwkpzjsz2v4qm-story.html

Disney made a point to make sure this outlasts DeSantis' term. (For those wondering, King Charles' youngest descendent is his one year old granddaughter)
0 Replies
 
Lash
 
  -3  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 11:58 am
@Walter Hinteler,
Actually, an insider leaked those materials proving Hillary & team cheated the 2016 primary. Donna Brazile included those details in her book about the experience and was deemed persona non grata for her despicable truth telling. At least they didn’t put 2 bullets in her brain in a dark alley…

Julian Assange received and published that leaked information and is being murdered by the US govt—sort of like many Americans are being murdered—very slowly but surely.

Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 12:22 pm
@Lash,
Obviously, you didn't look at the Vulkan Files or any of the reports about them.



0 Replies
 
snood
 
  4  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 03:44 pm
Manhattan Grand Jury just voted to indict Trump

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/manhattan-grand-jury-voted-whether-indict-trump-rcna73588
0 Replies
 
blatham
 
  3  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 03:45 pm
GRAND JURY VOTES TO INDICT TRUMP
Region Philbis
 
  2  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 04:07 pm
@blatham,

apparently they pushed it through today before they go on a long break...
blatham
 
  3  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 04:09 pm
@Region Philbis,
Yes, looks like it.

I think I might collect some of these as they appear:
Quote:
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was the first Republican to come to Donald Trump’s defense on social media. “President Donald Trump always fought for us,” Gaetz said on Twitter moments after news of the indictment broke. “He puts the American people above corrupt interests. For that reason alone, the powerful will never stop coming for him.”
0 Replies
 
BillW
 
  2  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 04:56 pm
@blatham,

Big question, is it a Felony?
blatham
 
  2  
Reply Thu 30 Mar, 2023 04:57 pm
@BillW,
Yes.
 

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