Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Obama's final SecDef, Ash Carter, has reportedly died.

[lineygoblue]

Britney Greiner's cannibis sentence was upheld by a Russian 'appeals' Court. I doubt there was any chance that the outcome would be otherwise.

So, the political football game continues. Russia is making The Chairman and his pals sweat over this, and the media continues to make a sympathetic hero out of Greiner. It really helps the liberal media's purposes that she's a lesbian, and a married-to-a-female lesbian at that. If she were a straight woman, I doubt they'd spend as much time on the matter.

I think Russia's laws regarding this are too heavy handed as well, and if they want to appear to be sympathetic, the best thing to do would be to put her on a plane and send her home. But, this is an opportunity for them to make The Chairman dangle at the end of a string, while they flick it around for a while longer. Putin won't let this go away very soon.

[Mike]

She has nothing to worry about. We've got our top people working on it.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trafalgar has a new poll out showing Herschel up almost 2.5 points. But in their own write-up they are claiming that he's winning 24% of the black vote and boy, pretty skeptical of that number.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Also in Georgia they're now up to 1.1M votes between in-person early voting and absentees. Little better than 20% of the total vote in 2020.

[Mike]

Voter suppression at its finest.

[Hannibal]

Trafalgar has a new poll out showing Herschel up almost 2.5 points. But in their own write-up they are claiming that he's winning 24% of the black vote and boy, pretty skeptical of that number.

They had Trump winning Georgia by 5 in 2020. IMHO their polling outside of the Midwest isn’t good.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I'm following ISW reports on the Kremlin's management of the information space. It is aggressive propaganda aimed at limiting outside sources of information (e.g. FB, What'sApp, Twitter, Google) and pushing a narrative favorable to Putin's objectives in Ukraine. From outside looking in, it is easy to see the narrative doesn't fit reality on the ground. Most Russians, without access to uncensored information and relying primarily on state media authorized by the Kremlin, see a different picture of Russian successes and Ukrainian failures. The Kremlin narrative is focused most recently on downplaying the successes of Ukrainian armed forces in recapturing territory by rationalizing such losses with blatant lies - to us, Russians don't see that these are lies.

There is virtually no reporting inside Russia of the significant protesting arising in rural Russia (which is bearing the brunt of forced conscription) becasue of Putin's chaotic mobilization efforts. As well, over the last month ISW has been reporting that a schism has developed between Wagner Group principals who advocate for a total victory in Ukraine and Kremlin insiders, close to Putin, but unable to convince him to end his war in Ukraine. This cadre of political insiders have started to go public with their advocacy for negotiations, reaching out to western counterparts asking them to help them convince Putin to stop the war by offering concessions. It is plausible that the combination of Wagner Group principals advocacy for total victory and the cadre of political insiders trying to urge Putin to stop the war could threaten Putin's hold on power.

An ancillary point here is that the crap we are being fed by the Biden administration and megaphoned by a willing leftist press approaches the kind of disinformation that defines what Russian citizens, living inside Russia, are fed on a daily basis about Putin's Special Military Operation in UKraine. The difference is that any American citizen that wants to fact check the shit they are being served up on the D's platter, can actually do that. In that process, the average guy or gal can appreciate the massive propaganda campaign the Biden administration has undertaken to hide or dismiss the scope of the administration's policy failures. Utterly shameful shit.

[Mike]

More on the NAEP national report card.

https://www.fldoe.org/newsroom/latest-news/2022-naep-results-show-benefits-of-keeping-kids-in-school-and-floridas-unwavering-commitment-to-closing-achievement-gaps-floridas-highest-naep-rankings-in-state-his.stml

“We insisted on keeping schools open and guaranteed in-person learning in 2020 because we knew there would be widespread harm to our students if students were locked out. Today’s results once again prove that we made the right decision,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “We also knew that younger and at-risk students would be the most impacted if schools were closed, and the results speak for themselves. In Florida our 4^thgrade students rank #3 in Reading and #4 in Math, achieving top 4 in both English and Math for the first time in state history, while lockdown California and New York aren’t even in the top 30.”

Add Michigan to the bad list:

https://www.michigan.gov/mde/news-an...eighth%20grade.

Michigan improved in state rankings in fourth grade math, now ranked 36^th compared to 42^nd in 2019.

Michigan dropped in state rankings in fourth grade reading, from 32^nd in 2019 to 43^rd in 2022.

And Whitmer has the AUDACITY to run on "getting the schools open". Fuck her.

Just to summarize: Blue state, pro-teachers union, Michigan ranks 43rd in 4th grade reading while red state Florida (DeSATAN) is #3. Tell me again who managed the pandemic better?

[Tom W]

And Whitmer has the AUDACITY to run on "getting the schools open". Fuck her.

Allegedly, as one of the MSU football team's groupies, a lot of Perle's players did just that.

[Jeff Buchanan]

And Whitmer has the AUDACITY to run on "getting the schools open". Fuck her.

The only R that has a machine gun and is using it to blow holes in this kind of obfuscation and lying is Desantis. Sure, there are meeker R's seemingly reluctant to point out the obvious. It is hard to understand the political politeness when the R's have nukes to pave the excuse making and blatant lies of the Biden administration on the economy and D legislated spending policies that drove inflation, future pandemic preparedness, the fall-out of the green agenda the D's have supported and the shit show that is immigration policy. I'm increasingly incensed by the dismissive nature of the D's and the president himself on the obvious realities of major policy initiatives they advanced that are utter failures.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Voter suppression at its finest.

J.C. ON HGH!!!

[crashcourse]

not bad when you can deny the election results before they even happen

2 years in advance has to be a record

https://twitter.com/i/status/1584855261642371072

[THE_WIZARD_]

PRE-INSURRECTION!!!

[CGVT]

I didn't know that Rhonda Santis was in charge of California's schools