The Presidency of the Joes, part II: lol documents

Politics & News
4489

Speaking of gaming, a couple of years ago Peter Svidler was doing a “banter blitz” stream where he would play speed chess online against challengers while discussing the game as well as shooting the shit with the followers.

I typed a message complimenting him on his near perfect English and asked him how he learned and how old he was, since I believe he was born and raised in St. Petersburg.
Surprisingly, he read my comment out loud, and he noted that he learned English by having been an online gamer, which makes sense since he would have been in his early 20s in the late 1990s.

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4491

https://twitter.com/RebeccaforWA/status/1484713750724628481?s=20

4492

oh great putin is going to gift a quick war to biden right before midterms.

4494

I think the problem is that once they fire one, you have to proceed with the assumption that you are actually dealing with a madman. You cannot attempt to proceed as if they’re logical, because they just fired a nuclear warhead at the only country in the world that has as many nukes as they do.

So I think what the military advisors would say is that the only logical thing you can do is attempt an all-out strike on their entire nuclear armament, while announcing that if they stand down and allow that strike to hit without retaliation, you won’t attack anything else. Ideally that strike would be conventional, and perhaps you’d fire a nuke at an outpost in Siberia to prove you’re going to match them if they escalate and mutually assured destruction is on the table.

The problems are then:

  1. They have about 6,000 nukes. Good luck hitting all of them.

  2. Their advisors will be telling them that if they let you significantly deplete their nuclear arsenal, they are now at a tremendous strategic disadvantage and the only way to avoid this is to fire their nukes now or wipe out the same percentage of your nuclear arsenal.

  3. Domestically, it’s a disaster for them to nuke a test site in Nevada, get a huge chunk of their nuclear arsenal wiped out by evil America, and then stand down. So they have to retaliate somehow in a way that is considered strong enough.

Which leads me to think the best strategy once they fire at Nevada is to fire at all of their known nuclear test sites, announce that if they stand down this will be all you do, and then backchannel to them that you will arrange a few empty bases in the middle of nowhere for them to hit and they can announce that they hit some of your nukes too and you won’t publicly dispute it. You’ll then cut a peace deal with some toothless sanctions on them, and you can tout the sanctions and they can tout hitting the bases.

I think the odds it works are < 10% but it seems better than mutually assured destruction. Hopefully the Pentagon has something better up their sleeve, given that they’ve had about 60 years to think about it.

4495

I want to be crystal clear that I am not rooting for Nevada to get nuked, lest anyone get confused and accuse me of that. I am also not rooting for a war for political gain. I am simply discussing the situation.

A war might be the only thing that can save Dems/Biden in '22 and '24. Wag the dog, rally around the commander in chief, don’t change leaders mid-stream, etc. I highly doubt Putin wants to gift that to Dems, though.

I think his goal is to get the US to stand down while he takes Ukraine, and I think he’s smart enough and well positioned enough to have a good shot to accomplish it.

4496

dustin hoffman and robert deniro ain’t walking through that door.

4497

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

4498
4499

B … But I thought we had him.

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4500

So this is exactly what Biden would do

4501

Afaik, there’s no practical difference between these.

4502

In the film, A-list actor Tom Hanks appears in animated form as a spokesman in an ad for the US government, with this memorable line during his brief cameo: “Hello, I’m Tom Hanks. The US government has lost its credibility so it’s borrowing some of mine.”

Flash forward 14 years, and Hanks is working as a spokesman for the US government in real life, narrating a new White House video promoting the achievements of the Biden administration during its first year in office.

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4503

https://twitter.com/Mediaite/status/1484607639464071172?s=20

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4504

https://mobile.twitter.com/dougjballoon/status/1485444956399493133?s=10

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4505

Jesus Christ. Does he actually believe police depts will use more money for psychiatrists and social workers? As soon as the check clears they’re buying whatever stupid-as-fuck, price-of-a-house armored vehicle that just debuted at the police convention, shining it up and posing next to it for pictures with wraparound shades over their soulless eyes and that sinister, smug smile of a violent asshole who can enact their racist, raging, barbaric beatdown fantasies under the absurd layers of protection as an “officer of the peace.”

7 Likes
4506

It’s like he’s trying to court support from those who will never even consider voting for him while disenfranchising those who he needs if he has any chance of being reelected. Textbook example of a Democrat trying to act like a Republican.

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4507

He is a Republican

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4508

If he’s going to start throwing shit at the wall in the face of the upcoming midterm obliteration maybe try starting with student loans. Everything’s going to piss some segment off, maybe give a HUGE boost to younger generations and minorities while you’re ohh nevermind

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4509

Centrist Dems always try to court the right, but republicans are never going to vote for them. At this point it’s performative political theater with them playing the role of the Washington Generals. Either they’re constitutionally incapable of learning from their own mistakes or they’re in on it. Occam’s razor leads me to believe it’s the latter.

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4510

The police aren’t doing a good job, there’s too much crime: give them more money.

The police aren’t doing a good job, they’re killing innocent people: give them more money.

The police are doing a good job, crime is down: give them more money, they deserve it!

Democrats believe “Defund the police” is a losing message they’re being saddled with. They could try to explain that defund doesn’t mean abolish and that we could shift the same money to social workers and psychiatrists and paramedics, or perhaps train more cops to work without any lethal weapons to reduce problems…

But that doesn’t focus group as well, so the simple thing is to just pound the table for more money for cops.

Yeah, it’s this. I mean it’s not like they’re trying to help Trump win, or even necessarily that they’re trying to lose elections. But they’re owned by corporate donors, so they have to push the policies of corporate donors. So they have to try to court the votes of the center-right, because their donors would stop donating if they tried to do stuff that people on the left would like.

So we have two parties. Democrats are the party for people who want lower taxes for millionaires on up, no increases on billionaires, deregulation, military strength, corporate darling judges who are sane, women’s rights, and identify as non-bigoted. Mix in a little lip service about the working class.

Republicans are for the party who want lower taxes for millionaires on up, but especially for billionaires, even more deregulation, military strength, corporate darling judges who are batshit crazy, anti-women’s rights, and all the isms.

The proof that this is the right take is that Democrats are extremely competent when it comes time to just absolutely destroy anyone well left of center who runs in or God forbid wins a primary. Like, they tanked their own primary winner in the Buffalo mayoral race because she was a democratic socialist. They couldn’t let her have the mayorship of fucking Buffalo, of all places.

1 Like