Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[THE_WIZARD_]

It's clearly shit vs. feces. This country cannot take 4 years of either of these clowns so it will be lesser of two evils when you go to the polls...show me any kind of third party that has the $$$ to win...don't exist.

God help us all.

[Dr. Strangelove]

RFK Jr. is a joke candidate propped up entirely by MAGA goons. To date he has made the ballot in only Utah, a state that requires a mere 1,000 signatures. To get on the Arizona ballot he would need closer to 130,000 signatures by August.

RFK Jr.’s super PAC hires signature gatherers for ballot access efforts (nbcnews.com)

Cornel West couldn't even win the Green Party's nomination. Unclear if he still even has a campaign. Their nominee will probably be Jill Stein again. I wouldn't trust any current polling regarding her.

The front-runner to be the libertarian nominee is some rando from Georgia whose best electoral performance is 2%.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Thus we get Dung v Dung Part Deaux

[Da Geezer]

In the Middle East: It's difficult to assess IDF successes in Gaza. From the various sources I read, Hamas' capacity to conduct effective combat operations against the IDF is being severely degraded. The political and military leadership is being covertly hunted down by the Israeli's and killed. It is going to be months before anyone without access to classified information is going to be able to assess the effectiveness of these kinds of covert operations.

The problem for Israel and its supporters in the west is that Iran has effectively mobilized it's proxies to conduct asymmetric and conventional operations across the larger ME. What's getting a lot of coverage right now is the Houthi's missile attacks on commercial shipping in key shipping lanes leading to the Suez canal. The vulnerability of global supply chains to disruption by unfriendly forces in the ME has been a known for decades. The US has continued a strong naval presence in friendly Arab countries. The maritime security mission has long been a part of the US Navy's 5th Fleet. The 5th also has a co-relationship and co- HQ'ed with NAVCENT in Bahrain.

While you'd get the impression that the Axis of Resistance (including the Houthi's in Yemen) is raining down missiles, it only takes a few to create conditions that commercial shippers aren't going to risk transit. I'm not conversant in how Maritime superiority is established but part of it has to be the significant strikes targeting Houthi targets in Yemen that were conducted this weekend. I suspect significant damage was done to missile storage and launch capabilities. For now, Its a side show to the IDF's operations in Gaza and Israel as a whole threatened by hostile forces in the West Bank and Hezbollah operating from southern Lebanon and Syria.

The forces aligning against US interests in the ME are considerable. It amounts to harassment operations to complicate the Israel/Hamas conflict and try to get US forces completely out of the entire region - that's not going to happen but multiple pin-pricks are going to be painfully augmented in their impact by the press. It's important to keep Israeli combat objectives wrt Hamas in focus regarding the operations by the Iranian Axis of Resistance as a side show.

Jeff:

Do you think we are getting to the point where Israel does what it can to take out Iran's nuclear installations? This has been coming for years, really since Obama guaranteed Iran the bomb when he did his Iran deal. Everything I've read says that the US would have to provide support for such a mission.

[Dr. Strangelove]

A lot of Trump-related legal news today. Besides the E Jean Carroll trial these are all decisions released today:

Trump loses gag order appeal at top New York court (cnbc.com)

Federal appeals court rejects Trump petition over Special Counsel Jack Smith access to Twitter feed | Fox News

Peter Navarro: Judge rejects former Trump adviser’s bid for a new trial after criminal contempt of Congress conviction | CNN Politics

[Mike]

Has anyone encountered pro-Hamas protesters? I've seen two separate groups. The first one was near UM-Flint... location checked out.

As startling as it is to see a mob of people waiving Palestinian (whatever that is) flags, it becomes somewhat comical when you notice young white women in keffiyehs trying to fit it. These are the same "progressive" liberals who prattle on about cultural appropriation, women's rights, whack-a-do trans ideology, and if they don't get their way that will somehow usher in the end of democracy. Yet they stand on street corners cosplaying Yasser Arafat and cheer on a terrorist organization that recently raped and slaughtered young women just like them for the crime of being Jewish.

The second was about 20 miles away in MY hood which shocked me. Smaller group but I made sure to very politely offer an alternative viewpoint as I drove past. We have gone full retard as a country. To steal a line from some moron called Will Compton, "what in the actual fuck is this?"

[Dr. Strangelove]

I have not seen any. But I haven't been near the statehouse in months and I've only been on campus for sporting events.

[Mike]

I passed a group of them standing in front of a Panera on my way home from Home Depot.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Why Panera? Is there some conspiracy theory going round about them? There was a boycott of Starbucks launched months ago because of some dumb misunderstanding but they seem to be managing just fine without the business of pro-Hamas loons

[Mike]

Pretty sure Panera was just unlucky enough to occupy a busy corner that leads into the commercial strip of Walmart, Home Depot, car dealers, restaurants, etc.

[iam416]

Panera sells rye bread, so, you know. Gotsta be had.

[klondike]

Like it or not, Trump won and is here to stay. How long his popularity persists remains to be seen. Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow, both lefty pundits are censoring Trump's speeches and Maddow refuses to even MENTION DJT's name. Of course, this isn't new as the major networks censored Trump's speech after his arraignment.

Are they going to refuse the public's right to hear free speech? They can try but it can only last so long. The fear they have of Trump is frightening in fact. To incarcerate or censor him at all costs.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Those networks are a fucking disgrace to free speech...free speech is what they determine it to be. Gee sounds like democracy to me.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Wow, if MSNBC won’t broadcast Trump live every time he speaks publicly, just imagine what they could do to YOU. Very frightening. Very scary. I thought this was America?

[THE_WIZARD_]

STFU