Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 394: Espionage a Trois

(+) Yeah! (+)

Dancedreamer posted...

The worst thing is, Sinema KNOWS that McConnell, as soon as Republicans regain power, will do away with that 60 vote threshhold she wants so bad. So it'll only ever be used against Dems. Sinema needs to be primaried, and any organizations that hire her as a lobbyist should be blacklisted.

He could have done that for 6 years and didn't. For 2 of those years it would have given Rs unrestrained power.

Dancedreamer posted...

McConnell, as soon as Republicans regain power, will do away with that 60 vote threshhold

Will he? The only thing old-school Republicans like him want is tax cuts for the rich, which can be done with reconciliation bills instead.

McConnell's entire strategy revolves around everyone doing as little as possible, himself included. He would never remove the filibuster. He loves the filibuster.

Didn't he remove the filibuster (of Supreme Court nominees) as soon as it stood between him and filling a Supreme Court seat?

Its gain Senate, remove filibuster, pass national abortion ban, announce retirement.

https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1574903383097581570?t=7SK3SvOl1CGYPpq6Dvgx5A&s=19

I think the surprise is that he resigned at all, here

When you need a last minute costume for a Halloween party so you just grab what's already in your closet

MalcolmMasher posted...

Didn't he remove the filibuster (of Supreme Court nominees) as soon as it stood between him and filling a Supreme Court seat?

Democrats changed the process to allow nominations for federal positions to pass with 51 votes in 2013, and Republicans expanded that to include the Supreme Court in 2017.

Seanchan posted...

Its gain Senate, remove filibuster, pass national abortion ban, announce retirement.

No, Mitch McConnell actually doesnt care about abortion, he supports Dobbs because its a wedge issue for the base, but hes much more interested in maintaining business as usual and focusing on tax cuts and incentives for the wealthy.

Democrats changed the process to allow nominations for federal positions to pass with 51 votes in 2013, and Republicans expanded that to include the Supreme Court in 2017.

And if I recall correctly, the Democrats changed those rules because the Republicans were broadly filibustering nominations, in a change to Senate precedent where sub-Cabinet/Supreme Court nominations were typically not contentious.

Basically what I'm saying is, I find it hard to believe that any particular line is too far for McConnell to cross. If he thinks abolishing the filibuster will give Republicans an advantage in the long run (not merely "through the next election") then he'll do it.

MalcolmMasher posted...

And if I recall correctly, the Democrats changed those rules because the Republicans were broadly filibustering nominations, in a change to Senate precedent where sub-Cabinet/Supreme Court nominations were typically not contentious.

Correct.

Counterpoint: he is, in fact, stupid.

it's just unfortunate that this stupidity applies to hundreds of other topics but not always to the specific topic of manipulating the US legislature's dumbfuck rules

MalcolmMasher posted...

Democrats changed the process to allow nominations for federal positions to pass with 51 votes in 2013, and Republicans expanded that to include the Supreme Court in 2017.

And if I recall correctly, the Democrats changed those rules because the Republicans were broadly filibustering nominations, in a change to Senate precedent where sub-Cabinet/Supreme Court nominations were typically not contentious.

Basically what I'm saying is, I find it hard to believe that any particular line is too far for McConnell to cross. If he thinks abolishing the filibuster will give Republicans an advantage in the long run (not merely "through the next election", he isn't stupid) then he'll do it.

It's not in Republicans' advantage in the long run, not unless they are sure they won't ever lose the Senate in the foreseeable future. Conservatives are generally in favor of no change. Filibusters lead to no bills passing, ergo no change.

As far as a national abortion ban goes, that is quite likely unconstitutional and the odds are quite good that this Supreme Court strikes down any bill Congress might pass to make it legal or illegal nationally. Note that the Dobbs decision said the power to decide the legality of abortion was returned to the states and the people - not to the Federal Congress.

I dont think theyd hold that a national ban was unconstitutional unless theyd already boxed themselves into a corner by saying that a bill making it legal nationally was unconstitutional (and Im not even sure that that would work). They seem pretty willing to use whatever tortured logic they think is necessary on this issue.

MalcolmMasher posted...

Democrats changed the process to allow nominations for federal positions to pass with 51 votes in 2013, and Republicans expanded that to include the Supreme Court in 2017.

And if I recall correctly, the Democrats changed those rules because the Republicans were broadly filibustering nominations, in a change to Senate precedent where sub-Cabinet/Supreme Court nominations were typically not contentious.

Basically what I'm saying is, I find it hard to believe that any particular line is too far for McConnell to cross. If he thinks abolishing the filibuster will give Republicans an advantage in the long run (not merely "through the next election", he isn't stupid) then he'll do it.

No I dont think he will. Hes already winning in the long term WITH the filibuster in place. Destroying it himself means letting go of the reins.

In other news, the US appears to have sabotaged the Nord Stream 2, a major pipeline running from Russia to Germany.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

In other news, the US appears to have sabotaged the Nord Stream 2, a major pipeline running from Russia to Germany.

Citation needed. There's footage of Biden saying they would do something about Nord Stream 2 about 7 months ago, but Ukraine is claiming that Russia was responsible, and there's also this:

https://www.reuters.com/world/cia-warned-berlin-about-possible-attacks-gas-pipelines-summer-spiegel-2022-09-27/

It's possible that the US did it, but the only places I've seen claiming that the US absolutely did it are the conspiracy fringe areas of the internet.

Um. What is the evidence the US was behind it? That is Danish and Swedish territory/property. Quite the serious accusation!

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

In other news, the US appears to have sabotaged the Nord Stream 2, a major pipeline running from Russia to Germany.

the ol' horseshoe strikes again

A lot of wild stuff has been said in these topics but just declaring that the US sabotaged and potentially attacked a NATO ally totally unqualified is pretty out there.

Anyway, lets talk about the pipeline.

The Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines were seriously damaged at multiple points in Danish and I believe Swedish waters. Currently there is a massive methane leak into the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream was operational after having been turned off by Russia at multiple points, but Nord Stream 2 was never operational. This was multiple explosions at different points at effectively the same time which leaves sabotage as the most likely option. The EU and NATO are also claiming sabotage. This also occurred the same day that Poland were opening their new Baltic pipeline.

Russia seems like the most likely culprit as a way of intimidating Europe over damaging their new pipelines. Of course this is a deeply flawed strategy as it will only tighten security around the pipelines and lead even further to Europes energy independence. However, this is Russia, they have not exactly been known for their strategic genius lately. The involvement of the Russian state is not guaranteed yet. However, if it wasnt them there are numerous other potential suspects before you get to the US. It could have been private entities trying to push up gas prices, it could have been Gazprom trying to create an excuse so they dont get fined for not fulfilling their contract with Germany, it could have been terrorism, and so on.

There are a few unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about it being the US. Now, you should never trust the US on foreign policy and never put anything past the CIA, but this makes next to no sense. First of all, theres no logical motive in the US committing a potential act of aggression against a NATO member. It being a false flag only makes sense if you believe that the US wants to instigate a hot war with Russia which is obviously absurd given the enormous death toll it would have on the US and the likelihood of nuclear escalation. The US also doesnt have the infrastructure to transport sufficient gas to Europe so theres no business motive. The EU was already moving off Russian gas too, so theres no value in the US doing it to try and put extra pressure towards that. Lastly, the CIA warned of potential attacks on the pipelines months ago. Its not exactly smart to try and increase security against your own attack.

As far as I can tell, these claims against the US are only being posted online completely unsubstantially and the main sources seem to either be Russian bots or Q-style American far-right conspiracy theorists. Additionally, Tucker Carlson has apparently blamed the US for the attack on Fox News. So, nice job repeating the Russian/far-right propaganda line, Tony!

Yeah I'm sure the US was just itching to sabotage a pipeline with the effect of weakening EU/NATO allies, eroding trust in everyone, potentially escalating the war and making the situation more difficult for everyone else, while also substantially raising gas prices everywhere including the US. It's genius, why wouldn't they do it

It doesn't really make any sense for anyone to have done this, but Russia is the most likely since they're the ones that do shit like this

Although honestly I think it's probably some independent party and not a state action because I think it's a little too crazy for Russia to do this

LightningStrikes posted...

Additionally, Tucker Carlson has apparently blamed the US for the attack on Fox News.

You can drop the apparently here:

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1574919819601772544

hillary spoke positively about meloni lol

i hope even LotM doesn't feel the need to defend this one.

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

hillary spoke positively about meloni lol

i hope even LotM doesn't feel the need to defend this one.

she didn't in any meaningful sense

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

hillary spoke positively about meloni lol

i hope even LotM doesn't feel the need to defend this one.

I'm hardly one to enjoy putting out Hillary Clinton's fires, but it's clear from the full context that she wasn't even following the Italian elections and got asked about it because people always ask her about female world leaders and she bullshitted her way through an answer. It's not great, but it's clear from the full context that she is not praising Meloni. It's tiring watching people who should know better fall for this propaganda from the other side. Come on.

I agree on the pipeline incident Para, it is hard to tell right now until more evidence is found if it was Russia or an independent actor as it is quite bad strategy for Russia. However America doesnt even factor into it, as its Russias somewhat risky and low benefit vs. Americas insanely risky and no benefit here.

I also think its funny that Tony entered the thread, dropped an enormous propagandistic conspiracy theory and then vanished haha. Maybe sleeping

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

hillary spoke positively about meloni lol

i hope even LotM doesn't feel the need to defend this one.

Oh yes I meant to post this.

https://mobile.twitter.com/presidentbeb/status/1574795528658993156

Absolutely deranged. Incidentally Meloni wouldnt even be head of state she would be PM and thats the Presidents role.

And yeah she clearly didnt know anything about it but:

A) It was front page headlines across the world.

B) If you dont know, dont comment.

LightningStrikes posted...

And yeah she clearly didnt know anything about it but:

A) It was front page headlines across the world.

B) If you dont know, dont comment.

I mean it was a pretty bullshit non-answer, it's embarrassing that she knows less about the Italian elections than I do, and she has a way of putting her foot in her mouth in the most asinine goddamn ways, but she didn't praise Meloni, at best she praised the general concept of electing female leaders.

LightningStrikes posted...

B) If you dont know, dont comment.

Politicians only know how to do this when they know they've fucked up

LightningStrikes posted...

I agree on the pipeline incident Para, it is hard to tell right now until more evidence is found if it was Russia or an independent actor as it is quite bad strategy for Russia. However America doesnt even factor into it, as its Russias somewhat risky and low benefit vs. Americas insanely risky and no benefit here.

Yeah, the Russia theory doesn't really make sense to me either, it's appealing to think that they're so insane that they'd shoot themselves in the foot and then try to act like Ukraine did it for no reason but they surely have a little bit more of a brain than that. It's just hard to make sense of it because I can't think of any state actor that benefits from this. The answer is certainly not the US however, this is purely a complication for the Biden administration. There's no good or evil justification for the US to have done this.

Yeah to be clear I dont think this means Hillary is a fascist, I just think it means she is a very poor statesperson. Though I guess we already knew that!

Paratroopa1 posted...

I'm hardly one to enjoy putting out Hillary Clinton's fires, but it's clear from the full context that she wasn't even following the Italian elections and got asked about it because people always ask her about female world leaders and she bullshitted her way through an answer. It's not great, but it's clear from the full context that she is not praising Meloni. It's tiring watching people who should know better fall for this propaganda from the other side. Come on.

i agree that she obviously didn't have a clue who the fuck meloni is but... that's also bad? sure, it's not AS bad as her answer being "oh yeah i've followed meloni for years and i fully agree with her about [insert specific points]," but it's still bad. we've bashed trump for years for bullshitting his way through answers on stuff he didn't know anything about, don't see why we shouldn't do the same for hillary.

LightningStrikes posted...

Yeah to be clear I dont think this means Hillary is a fascist, I just think it means she is a very poor statesperson. Though I guess we already knew that!

Sadly, yes. I legit don't think she thought through this answer, I think she just defaults to the girlboss response when she's got nothing. Which is, admittedly, pretty close to being as bad as straight up siding with Meloni, but I see this get pushed as a direct act of malice on Clinton's part and it's just like... no, she's just a gaffe machine.

and i'd say "i don't know much about meloni but a woman getting elected is positive" is essentially praising meloni. hillary didn't say she knows NOTHING about meloni, just that she's not a huge expert on her.

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

we've bashed trump for years for bullshitting his way through answers on stuff he didn't know anything about, don't see why we shouldn't do the same for hillary.

I'd say the chief difference is that Clinton doesn't appear to have any aspirations for office anymore whereas Trump either was running for POTUS, was POTUS, or at the moment is clearly gearing up to run again and even holding rallies again.

If she was running for something or was in the Cabinet or something than yeah obviously this would be worthy of calling out. But at this point it honestly feels like she's only brought up these past few years because she lives rent free in so many people's heads and is guaranteed to rile them up.

Yeah the full Clinton quote is just 'its great when a first female leader is elected, now we have to judge her on her actions.'

Hardly praising Meloni, just a generic "yay female leaders" followed by a statement indicating she doesn't necessarily support her and that individual female leaders can still be bad.

On Meloni in general, at least I am not too worried. Italy takes ages to do anything, and governments there are extremely unstable - the longest lasting ministry since the war lasted for less than three years and the average length is only a year. They were largely elected on being the only opposition party to Draghis government, sucking up the vote from the other far-right party and the catch-all cross-spectrum populist part which both collapsed. Fortunately they are unlikely to get anything done thanks to Italys system and their coalition partners. The bad news is nobody else will get anything done either.

I see it posited as part of another far-right wave across Europe because of the Swedish result at the same time and honestly, nah. The left just got a string of victories in countries like Germany and is clearly ascendant in the UK, Ireland, and so on. There are places where the far-right is doing well and others where it is stagnating or falling back. I think its more of a case by case thing, not like what we saw in 2014 at all.

LightningStrikes posted...

and is clearly ascendant in the UK

are you sure

Paratroopa1 posted...

are you sure

https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1574661427323105280?cxt=HHwWgMDTkbWOqdorAAAA

https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1574781927349010435?cxt=HHwWhoC-pbj039orAAAA

100%.

Labour are literally at their strongest in over 20 years, averaging about 13% ahead, equivalent to their famous 1997 landslide. It cannot be overstated how much the Tories have absolutely fluffed it. Getting *told off by the IMF for being reckless with the economy* is not going to go away, nor will crashing the pound after two working days of your ministry. With Starmer finally announcing some leftist policies Im actually optimistic about the UK for the first time since the recession even.

The downside is that theres still a year and a half to two years of the current jokers left.

First of all, I said appeared to.

The reasons being 1) Joe Biden literally said we would 7 months ago, and 2) one of the first things that broke after it happened was a Polish Politician tweeted Thank You, USA.

So comments immediately calling this horseshoe/Russian False Flag and not waiting for the US statement are, in effect, more conspiracy brained than simple speculation.

Paratroopa1 posted...

Yeah I'm sure the US was just itching to sabotage a pipeline with the effect of weakening EU/NATO allies, eroding trust in everyone, potentially escalating the war and making the situation more difficult for everyone else, while also substantially raising gas prices everywhere including the US. It's genius, why wouldn't they do it

It doesn't really make any sense for anyone to have done this, but Russia is the most likely since they're the ones that do shit like this

It makes the most sense for Russia to blow up their own pipeline they control and deprive themselves of money?

Also for the record, I havent seen a single Liberal media type say they DONT think its the US, and the US hasnt denied it yet.

Also this awful shit happened:

https://twitter.com/drugsnsatan/status/1574859387851616259?s=46&t=OItLHs813YGf-SUIsNMhQQ

That'll teach scared young kids to run at cops when they fear for their safety!

The US havent denied it because theres nothing to deny. No credible accusations have been levied and no evidence exists. They also stand to gain nothing from it as the US physically cannot increase gas shipments to Europe, Europe was already getting off of the Russian supply, and nobody in the US government wants a hot war with a nuclear power. Theres no appeared to about it, its just a ludicrous conspiracy theory peddled only by the far-right and Russian assets. No, the US isnt going to attack Denmark and Sweden for no material gain, dont be silly. No evidence, no motive, nothing to be gained here.

Furthermore, regarding that Biden statement. He said Nord Stream 2 should be stopped, not destroyed, and he already got what he wanted. Nord Stream 2 was not operational and never had been. Nord Stream had stopped pumping gas some time ago although there was still gas in the pipes hence the leak. There is no benefit to Biden attacking a non-functioning pipeline. Also the Polish politician who tweeted that A) seems to have been doing so sardonically, B) has a history of wild statements about the current conflict, and C) got firmly rebuked by the Polish government for it.

As for why Russia might do it? To intimidate Poland on the same day they opened their new pipeline, to further pressure Europe with high gas prices, and to avoid legal action for violating their contracts with Germany. The reward is likely not worth the risk but at least there is motive, and its not like Russia havent been making a lot of strategic mistakes lately. Now thats not to say its them, I agree with Para that independent actors seem more likely right now, but it is at least a credible possibility, which is not true for the accusation that the US did it.

So no, it doesnt appear that way, its a conspiracy theory. You got got by misinformation Im afraid.

I didnt get got by anything, its speculation with reasoning as strong as yours.

A funny thing is happening on Twitter where Im seeing the exact same tweet What benefit does Russia have when they control the tap? Its obviously US/NATO repeated a dozen times in the same threads, quite obviously bots. Its so blatant that it cant be taken at face value, right? Are we to believe that Russia is cartoonishly stupid? Idk, I mean obviously the invasion wasnt smart, but you can at least see the logic in him expecting another Obama/Crimea situation. All this? Theres no logic to it.

With respect, the reasoning is not as strong. For starters theres no motive, or benefit, or evidence for the US. Russia at least has two out of three (and it sounds like the third may be forthcoming) even if there are drawbacks to them.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I didnt get got by anything, its speculation with reasoning as strong as yours.

I have a Chupacrabra in my trunk, wanna see?

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I have a Chupacrabra in my trunk, wanna see?

Sure dude

Anyway, since weve been bouncing around Europe I just wanted to mention how insanely screwed the UK economy is. The Bank of England is already having to intervene directly (almost never happens), the pound has hit its all/time record low, the IMF has told the government off and the chancellors facing calls to resign after being in the post for four working days. Absolute chaos. Luckily this is probably what finally gets them.