That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons bring us some web forums whereupon we can gather
http://www.octopusoverlords.com/forum/
malchior wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 4:48 pmThis is the meat of the matter to me. Hunter is putting the administration in a bad spot. They could have said that, distanced themselves, and kept their pledge to maintain high ethical standards after Trump. Instead they did this. It's gross.LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Jul 10, 2021 12:11 pmSometimes when you take the job you/yours forfeit certain sources of income. Well, it used to be that way. Now? We are so obsessed with making money. Can't take away Hunter's right to sell art at bullshit prices. It may be buying access to the White House but Hunter's rights!
Trump was a symptom, not the disease.
Even though this might be 100% legitimate, we just had the most corrupt Presidency in America. This is not the way to restore faith. At all.
Well, like I said, get them in a room and sign what if anything they will sign off on. Then Democrats will at least know where they are at.
The White House wants to get something straight: President Joe Biden is unpopular. But he's not that unpopular.
Yes, really.
Witness a polling memo released Thursday night by deputy White House chief of staff Jen O'Malley Dillon that takes issue with a new Quinnipiac University poll that shows Biden's job approval at a meager 33%.
"This week's Quinnipiac poll, just like Quinnipiac's poll for the last five months, is very likely an outlier," writes Dillon.
As evidence, she cites the FiveThirtyEight running poll average (of all polls conducted) that shows Biden with an average job approval score of 43%. She blames Biden's low numbers in the Q poll on the higher-than-average percentage of people saying they "don't know" in response to the question of whether they approve or disapprove of the job Biden is doing." Concludes Dillon: "This is likely in part because Quinnipiac still exclusively uses a method called RDD (Random Digit Dialing, calling phone numbers at random) to collect data, a method which many major organizations have abandoned."
Which, maybe!
Fair but in this case he actually makes a reasonable point. If you're defending your outlier polls like this...what is going on. It lines up with the questions about whether Biden is looking to make a change that are starting to roll in.
I mean, there is a pretty substantial difference between 43% approval and 33% approval, even if neither is great.
It's certainly true that's a big difference. I just think it is fair to point out this just looks silly (and possibly really weak) that they are spending time getting all wonky on a poll's methodology. Who are they trying to influence there? The media? The pollsters? This is a really weird and ineffective way to work the refs.El Guapo wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 5:56 pmI mean, there is a pretty substantial difference between 43% approval and 33% approval, even if neither is great.
I don't know whether it's out of the ordinary to respond to presidential approval polls like this.
Most people just look around at how things are going. Inflation is galloping, covid is raging and we're all done fighting it, there are rolling supply shortages, and the free money dried up. Biden didn't restore normality. Voters don't want to hear excuses for why.Jaymann wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:22 pm I have a difficult time understanding exactly what Biden did wrong. He got the vaccine distributed. Got us the f out of Afghanistan. Tried to establish Covid restrictions. He was stymied by the solid bloc of Repugnicans and a few DINOs in Congress.
I guess he didn't go far enough to please the Left, and there is no longer any significant center in this country. He is not much of a visionary, but it seems he is what was needed post Florida Man. But it's now a Tik Toc world.
What we need is an outsider. Someone who says it like it is and isn't afraid to shake up the fat cats in DC!Kraken wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:34 pmMost people just look around at how things are going. Inflation is galloping, covid is raging and we're all done fighting it, there are rolling supply shortages, and the free money dried up. Biden didn't restore normality. Voters don't want to hear excuses for why.Jaymann wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:22 pm I have a difficult time understanding exactly what Biden did wrong. He got the vaccine distributed. Got us the f out of Afghanistan. Tried to establish Covid restrictions. He was stymied by the solid bloc of Repugnicans and a few DINOs in Congress.
I guess he didn't go far enough to please the Left, and there is no longer any significant center in this country. He is not much of a visionary, but it seems he is what was needed post Florida Man. But it's now a Tik Toc world.
It's several things. His administration has appeared to be underprepared. They were supposed to be the return of competence and it sure looks like they can not anticipate the problems that somehow people inside and outside the beltway have been warning them about. For example, many said that leaving Afghanistan wouldn't be easy. I'm not talking about the unexpected collapse here. I just mean even if the Afghan army stuck together for 6 month, a lot of folks said we were going to have problems leaving. Part of that was Trump setting him up for failure with the aggressive timeline, so people counseled taking a beat. He said no , we're going, full speed ahead. He rolled the dice, ripped off the band aid, and in the end badly bungled the exit. He embarrassed us, he pissed off allies, the Afghan army collapsed and we had no plan for failure. For instance, we gave up multiple airports which limited our ability to safely exit, there weren't enough troops to provide security (which was known), in the end there were images of men falling off our planes, etc.Jaymann wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:22 pm I have a difficult time understanding exactly what Biden did wrong. He got the vaccine distributed. Got us the f out of Afghanistan. Tried to establish Covid restrictions. He was stymied by the solid bloc of Repugnicans and a few DINOs in Congress.
I guess he didn't go far enough to please the Left, and there is no longer any significant center in this country. He is not much of a visionary, but it seems he is what was needed post Florida Man. But it's now a Tik Toc world.
It's just that when asked how much they like Biden, most voters are swiping left. Doesn't necessarily mean we miss trump's toxic embrace, just that this guy isn't working out and we want someone else. Those who do follow politics saw a drawn out, high profile failure dominate the second half of last year, with another one in progress right now. If Biden runs in '24, as el Guapo assures us that he will, then "someone else" will be the R candidate by default. We only ever get two choices.LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:44 pmWhat we need is an outsider. Someone who says it like it is and isn't afraid to shake up the fat cats in DC!Kraken wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:34 pmMost people just look around at how things are going. Inflation is galloping, covid is raging and we're all done fighting it, there are rolling supply shortages, and the free money dried up. Biden didn't restore normality. Voters don't want to hear excuses for why.Jaymann wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:22 pm I have a difficult time understanding exactly what Biden did wrong. He got the vaccine distributed. Got us the f out of Afghanistan. Tried to establish Covid restrictions. He was stymied by the solid bloc of Repugnicans and a few DINOs in Congress.
I guess he didn't go far enough to please the Left, and there is no longer any significant center in this country. He is not much of a visionary, but it seems he is what was needed post Florida Man. But it's now a Tik Toc world.
LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:44 pm What we need is an outsider. Someone who says it like it is and isn't afraid to shake up the fat cats in DC!
Trump 2024?em2nought wrote: ↑Sat Jan 15, 2022 5:33 pmLawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:44 pm What we need is an outsider. Someone who says it like it is and isn't afraid to shake up the fat cats in DC!
I think the other thing we're not privy to is how chummy all these guys are behind closed doors. Most of these senators and congressmen have no real incentive to go after the co-workers they've worked alongside for years and years. And Biden's the very definition of an establishment politician. He's not going to play hardball with these folks.Carpet_pissr wrote:I know, a lot of "SEEMS" and "THINKS" and "FEELS" there, thus all the disclaimers. Maybe a ton of stuff was going on behind the scenes that we are not privy to...but from a common citizen's perspective...the attitude in general has been super weak.
That's the joke.em2nought wrote: ↑Sat Jan 15, 2022 5:33 pmLawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 10:44 pm What we need is an outsider. Someone who says it like it is and isn't afraid to shake up the fat cats in DC!
It goes on and on from there.President Joe Biden often says America's best days are ahead. It just doesn't feel that way right now.
A nation exhausted by a two-year pandemic, struggling against rising food and gas prices, driven to distraction by school closures and torn apart by a political schism that erupted into violence is far from at ease with itself.
The sense of turmoil was captured in a new CNN/SSRS poll released Thursday that showed waning faith in US elections and found that most of the nearly 60% of Americans who disapprove of how Biden is handling his presidency were unable to name one single thing they like that he has done. "He's not Donald Trump. That's pretty much it," one despondent respondent said. Another answered: "I really like his new cat, Willow Biden."
Also on Thursday there was news that a key measure of inflation had climbed to a near-40-year high last month. Rising prices have a kind of strange magic that not only spooks voters, but also seeds the kind of political derangement in which extremists like former President Donald Trump can prosper.
His assault on facts -- aided by pliant right-wing media -- has his fans yearning for his authoritarian return to power 13 months after he incited the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol. The country no longer has a common understanding of the truth, with 37% of Americans saying Biden did not legitimately win enough votes to be president, according to CNN's new poll.
This foul national mood is primarily a disaster in the making for Democrats in November's midterm elections, but it's been a long time coming.
The first two decades of this century have delivered morale-busting military defeats, a generational economic crisis and an age of political turmoil, including sweeping social and demographic change and an equally intense backlash.
Washington Post wrote:Declassified U.S. military analyses of the calamitous exit from Afghanistan detail repeated instances of friction between American troops and diplomats before and during the evacuation, concluding that indecisiveness among Biden administration officials and initial reluctance to shutter the embassy in Kabul sowed chaos and put the overall mission at “increased risk.”
Two “after action” reports were prepared by officials assigned to U.S. Central Command in September, about three weeks after the final planeload of military personnel departed Hamid Karzai International Airport. The assessments appear to affirm separate accounts of senior U.S. commanders frustrated by what they characterized as sloppy, misguided management of the withdrawal.
As The Washington Post first reported Tuesday, military leaders who coordinated the evacuation fault officials in the White House and the State Department who, they say, failed to respect the Taliban’s swift advance last year and resisted pleas from the military to prepare for an evacuation weeks before Kabul’s fall.
The declassified after-action analyses are contained within an official report detailing the military’s investigation of an Aug. 26 suicide bombing outside the airport’s Abbey Gate that killed an estimated 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members. The report, obtained by The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request, comprises dozens of witness interviews, findings of fact, and other official government records. Spanning 2,000 pages, it presents the most extensive, unvarnished account to date of the United States’ 17-day race to end its longest war.
The existence of the after-action reports contradicts claims made Friday by White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who has joined President Biden and other administration officials in seeking to downplay the significance of U.S. commanders’ remarks.
“I think it’s important for people to understand that there was no after-action report,” Psaki told reporters in the White House briefing room.
A National Security Council official — who, like some other officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue — said Saturday that Psaki’s statement from the podium referred to a forthcoming, more extensive review of the war’s endgame.
“Many people have wrongly conflated the Abbey Gate report and documents released to The Washington Post with the Pentagon’s after-action review of Afghanistan — a broad report that will examine the final months of America’s longest war, beginning in February 2020,” the official said, referencing the month that President Donald Trump made a deal with the Taliban, setting the stage for a withdrawal of all U.S. troops.
Yeah, this is where I'm at, as well. A major part of the problem, IMO, is that precisely because the need to beat Trump was so great, that we wound up with Biden, the 'compromise' choice. Not the best choice, but the one most likely to steal back some MAGA folks (misguided as that belief may have been).malchior wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 3:50 pm Yeah the decision between Biden/Trump is a no brainer. I'm personally angry that we had someone who had a pretty poor track record foisted on us as the best compromise. It's been a year now and we have to face that Biden is looking to be another weak/terrible President. The system keeps churning out these bad choices and we keep getting further and further into the hole. I didn't have a lot of hope for Biden but I didn't think he'd be polling in Trump territory. Or that he would have earned the crap ratings without the GOP even having to get their hands dirty to some degree.
Ya the reality is that they looked at all the candidates and the only one they knew would beat Trump was Biden because they couldn't firmly label him as a socialist. It's f'n ridiculous that our likely choices in 2024 will be Biden or Trump again. We're so f'n screwed. And now the right wing is pushing hard on the Durham probe saying Clinton did spy on Trump. Which they are then spinning into him being right about 2020. Seriously f off...Zaxxon wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 4:37 pmYeah, this is where I'm at, as well. A major part of the problem, IMO, is that precisely because the need to beat Trump was so great, that we wound up with Biden, the 'compromise' choice. Not the best choice, but the one most likely to steal back some MAGA folks (misguided as that belief may have been).malchior wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 3:50 pm Yeah the decision between Biden/Trump is a no brainer. I'm personally angry that we had someone who had a pretty poor track record foisted on us as the best compromise. It's been a year now and we have to face that Biden is looking to be another weak/terrible President. The system keeps churning out these bad choices and we keep getting further and further into the hole. I didn't have a lot of hope for Biden but I didn't think he'd be polling in Trump territory. Or that he would have earned the crap ratings without the GOP even having to get their hands dirty to some degree.
For fans of The West Wing, he's Bob Russell.Zaxxon wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 4:37 pmYeah, this is where I'm at, as well. A major part of the problem, IMO, is that precisely because the need to beat Trump was so great, that we wound up with Biden, the 'compromise' choice. Not the best choice, but the one most likely to steal back some MAGA folks (misguided as that belief may have been).malchior wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 3:50 pm Yeah the decision between Biden/Trump is a no brainer. I'm personally angry that we had someone who had a pretty poor track record foisted on us as the best compromise. It's been a year now and we have to face that Biden is looking to be another weak/terrible President. The system keeps churning out these bad choices and we keep getting further and further into the hole. I didn't have a lot of hope for Biden but I didn't think he'd be polling in Trump territory. Or that he would have earned the crap ratings without the GOP even having to get their hands dirty to some degree.
TOBY
As befits this vertiginous choice? [Toby stands up] Distinguished is as
high as we go; you have to be high to go loftier. Here's what it should
be. [Will beings to type] In a triumph of the middling, a nod to mediocrity,
and with gorge rising, it gives me great nausea to announce Robert Russell -
Bingo Bob himself - as your new Vice President.
WILL
This lapdog of mining interests is as dull as he is unremarkable.
TOBY
As lacklustre as he is soporific...
WILL
Good.
TOBY
This reversion to the mean...
WILL
This rebuke to the exemplary...
TOBY
Gives hope to the millions unfavoured by the exceptional...
WILL
Yes.
TOBY
The Vice Presidency, being famously once described as not being worth a
warm bucket of spit; let's now hock a big loogie for Bob Russell. Not the
worst. Not the best. Just what we're stuck with.
WILL
Amen.
Sadly, +1. I started with low expectations for him, got my hopes up, and now have even lower expectations than I started with.Zaxxon wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 4:37 pmYeah, this is where I'm at, as well. A major part of the problem, IMO, is that precisely because the need to beat Trump was so great, that we wound up with Biden, the 'compromise' choice. Not the best choice, but the one most likely to steal back some MAGA folks (misguided as that belief may have been).malchior wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 3:50 pm Yeah the decision between Biden/Trump is a no brainer. I'm personally angry that we had someone who had a pretty poor track record foisted on us as the best compromise. It's been a year now and we have to face that Biden is looking to be another weak/terrible President. The system keeps churning out these bad choices and we keep getting further and further into the hole. I didn't have a lot of hope for Biden but I didn't think he'd be polling in Trump territory. Or that he would have earned the crap ratings without the GOP even having to get their hands dirty to some degree.