VaporTrail

Disappear? No. Get knocked down quite a few notches? Yes. Rein in spending. Clarify what the mission is to justify spending rather than being the world police who "protect and promote democracy." Unfortunately for us, as demonstrated in Ukraine and the Middle East, we can't just simply spend dollars to achieve our geopolitical objectives. We should still be able to field a blue water navy. We have two gigantic moats in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. We have more guns than we do people. The Ohio/Mississippi/Missouri River Valley is the biggest breadbasket on the planet. No foreign nation is going to successfully invade and occupy our homeland. We are relatively insulated against a lot of the upcoming upheaval that EU, Middle East, and Southeast Asia are going to experience.

Clearly a conspiracy theorist

Serious question and one I don't know the answer to - is there any measurable outcome that has changed as a result of the MeToo movement? Less rapes or sexual assaults? Increase in rape convictions? Some measure of how safe women feel?

Trump, RFK, and Biden as well as congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle have all said they'd increase funding for Israel. So as far as the presidential election goes, the American voters don't have any choice but to support Israel. AIPAC has a $100M war chest that they're effectively using to outfund any candidate that is critical of guaranteed funding for Israel's military (again, they're a first world country with a top ten military). The entire blue side of the aisle is for more Ukraine funding. Lockheed Martin alone spends over $12M per year over the last 10 years on just lobbying. High ranking military officials retire and then become board members and lobbyists for Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. The government is working on a way to secure extended funding to Ukraine so that the next president can't turn it off. But yeah, it's definitely just a conspiracy theory.

The police are an arm of the government. The national guard is an arm of the government. They both do the government's bidding. The government is far and away in the pockets of the military industrial complex. They have gone as far as killing anti-military industrial complex protesters. They have demonstrated that they will come down hard on protests against their profits. There was a neo nazi rally in West Virginia today that went viral. In contrast to the current Gaza/Israel protests, no one sent the riot cops there to shut the nazis down because neonazis are an irrelevant group of people that don't endanger MIC profits. And honestly, the MIC benefits from neo nazi groups existence because it keeps the general population's anger directed at them rather than the MIC. Hate speech is protected speech. If you want to create a rally about hating jews, queers, blacks, californians, or the irish, that is your god given right as an American. If you want to wish for any of those groups of people to die in horrifying and painful ways, that is also your god given right as an American. If you trespass as an act of protest, then that's deserving of getting arrested, fined, and given community service - not up to 20 years in prison like the Jan 6 people are getting. If you harm someone who disagrees with you at a protest, that makes you a rioter and you belong in jail. If you block traffic to make your point, you are preventing ambulances from getting to hospitals and belong in jail. If you tell someone you're going to kill them, then that is a credible death threat, and 1A does not protect you from that, to jail you go. If you attempt to physically prevent a Jewish student from attending class, then you are in breach of the law and should go to jail. Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is what the ACLU used to be before they turned into partisan hacks. Thankfully legal organizations like this still exist. https://www.thefire.org/news/heres-what-students-need-know-about-protesting-campus-right-now

If it was solely about rape and sexual assault, then I'm with you. When the movement snowballed into every other woman using the MeToo hashtag to bring up an awkward night of consensual sex that they later regretted, it became a cancer. The media and government weaponizing the accusations against Barney Frank and Justice Kavanaugh, both sides of the aisle, was nothing short of shameful. Being labelled as any kind of sex offender, is a life ruining experience for the majority of people. I don't think people should have their reputations permanently tarnished because someone 10 years later decides they regretted having sex with them. Somehow, this is a "redpilled" opinion.

The #MeToo movement was a cancer, and you cheer it on when it affects people you don't like, such as Trump. But the real irony, lost on you, is that Trump never would have become president if it wasn't for the #MeToo movement. Rust belt would have voted Barney Frank over Trump. But instead, Barney got #MeToo'd by Clinton's DNC even more egregiously than Trump did, and the country was left choosing between Trump and Hillary. I maintain that if Frank had stood up to these bullies and never apologized for his actions, he'd probably still be president right now.

You're right, it's actually the complete opposite. BLM protests didn't threaten military industrial complex profits - police stood down as the protests turned into riots and several American small businesses were destroyed. Vietnam and Israel antiwar protests DO threaten military industrial complex profits - police shut them down promptly. Personally, I'd prefer the government prioritize the average American over any foreigner, but I guess that is considered quite antisemitic in this day and age.

Time is a flat circle.

Meanwhile, at Ohio State. What are the odds Biden has himself a May 4th?

This was supposed to be satire.

https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1782550582148157943/ Somehow, this both saves Palestine and endangers Jews. I call it Schrödinger's idiot.

Yes, and I'm pointing out that he's an unprincipled hypocrite who is only rooting for it this time because the people getting arrested are on the other team.

You can't come up with an actual crime they've committed. 1A allows us the freedom to say offensive things without being jailed for it. You can't throw them in jail because they wished death/cancer/disease/rot on someone or some group. Please try again.

There was a mass arrest of protesters at NYU yesterday. This was the exact cause of the Columbia U protests growing massively. I predict the NYU protests will be bigger today. You want them kicked out of the country for what crime, exactly? You've sat here and argued that the Jan 6 protesters have been treated unfairly by the law because they're getting the book thrown at them for trespassing. Now you want the book to be thrown at pro-Gaza protesters for trespassing? Please help me to understand what you think the difference is.

It's some braindead Washington Examiner journalist's interpretation of what happened. https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2023/23-5572_0pm1.pdf Here's the actual transcript, ctrl+F Alito and see where he appears a bunch to get to the part the legacy media article is referring.

We have given Israel $3B/year since Obama has been in office. We are also sending our Patriot missiles and other munitions to supply them. They are a first-world country with a top 10 military. If they can't defeat Hamas with that astronomical amount of military aid, then why on earth do they deserve more of our money? Same with Ukraine, this $50B package isn't going to change the outcome of the war. If they want to kill each other so badly, then they can do it without us being a party to it. I am an America first voter. I don't care who controls the Israel Gaza border. I don't care who controls the Russia Ukraine border. Our foreign policy shouldn't create a bunch of refugees who will come here and flood the labor market. Our foreign policy shouldn't worsen inflation that's been out of control since COVID. Yemen is going to hold the Mandeb strait hostage as long as Israel keeps killing Gazans. This worsens inflation. Cutting Russia's economy out of the Western markets has reduced supply of all sorts of metals and fertilizers. This worsens inflation. If we keep kowtowing to Israel, don't be surprised when a cornered Iran shuts down the Hormuz. This will also worsen inflation. You can clearly see that inflation peaked shortly after we enacted Russian sanctions. It hasn't gone back down to less than 3% since the pandemic started. Whatever brings the cost of gas and cheeseburgers back to $2

It's astounding how many reps and senators AIPAC is the top donor for.

Every single one of these house reps waving a foreign flag inside of the Capitol should be censured like Ilhan Omar was. What a waste of money and Ukrainian lives this aid package is going to be.

Of determining which speech is offensive. Honk honk. 🤡

Unfortunately, more will be coming because Biden let Israel flatten Gaza. But hey, so long as they're not Israel's problem anymore! 🤡🌎

I hope you're right about this going no further, but I disagree with the rest. Biden is completely deserving of criticism for allowing things to get to this point, and it's gotten this bad because he's kowtowed to Israel every time up until now. But this is the first time he has done something right, showing a spine and using his influence as the most powerful man in the world to bring Netanyahu to heel and try and de-escalate the situation. If the US military attacks Iranian soil, then that is the start of World War 3. It is insane how the people frothing at the mouth for US intervention, such as Tennessee Senator, Marsha Blackburn, seem to be forgetting that Israel is a foreign country.

Yes, the defenses stopped a lot but they were saturated to the point that missiles got through to target. I wouldn't be feeling all that good if I was an IDF general, knowing that Iran is not far off from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran now knows the threshold it takes to get one through Iron Dome.