WHARRGARBL

u/WHARRGARBL@kbin.social
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It’s the second cattle to human case in the United States. As I understand it, H5N1 isn’t a threat to us until it mutates to become transmissible from human to human. As for all the other things, I suggest you immerse yourself like I did until it completely breaks you, so that you can join me in laughing maniacally at all of it.

One of my dad’s closest friends, who was from China, ran a small business in the United States. Around 2010 he began hearing from relatives still in China that they were being threatened by the government if he didn’t go back to “check in”.

He was terrified that, if he obliged, he’d never get out of China - but he couldn’t take the chance that family might be harmed if he refused. He arranged to close his business for a month and went back to China for a brief visit. Of course, nobody ever heard from him again.

Russia plans to take first Ukraine, then Balkans, then Poland, then Germany, and collapse the EU, which is a threat even to you in whatever miserable little coal-rolling corner of the United States you happen to be griping from.

You want your share of “those wasted taxes” back? Send me your info and I’ll Venmo your fucking $50, big guy.

The April 14 conference call, which was in response to Iran’s drone retaliation on Israel, involved President Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D), and House Majority Leader Mike Johnson(R).

Everyone except Johnson has been in agreement since February that the $95 billion Senate package MUST be passed by the House. It included $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. While Johnson states he supports Ukraine, his refusal to put the Senate package to a House vote speaks volumes. To be fair, Mike Johnson is under the sword of Damocles; Marjorie Taylor-Greene has threatened a motion to vacate if the package is brought to a vote, effectively removing the House Majority Leader from his position.

This general consensus is still not unanimous because Mike Johnson values his power too much to risk it by allowing Ukraine to receive any assistance from the United States.

Anyone who ate hot lunch had to eat everything on their tray, and we weren’t allowed to pass on any part of the meal because children in other countries were starving or something. Lunch ladies checked our trays before we were allowed to leave the cafeteria.

On the days when sauerkraut was served, we’d take turns being the sauerkraut smuggler, cramming that dank crap from about a dozen 8 year old kids’ trays into an empty milk carton, so we could toss it all without the lunch lady catching it. One day when I was the kraut smuggler, lunch nazi grabbed my carton and marched me back to the table. She said I had to eat every strand of the milky garbage we’d all stowed before I could leave.

I tried, but kept gagging and retching. I sat huddled with the collective slop at the table, crying for about 3 hours before my teacher found me and released me from lunch jail.

I think a significant percentage of eligible voters have lost ALL hope. We’re politically and socioeconomically disenfranchised, corporations are turbocharging the Anthropocene mass extinction event with impunity, reality is horrifying, and we’re just fucking exhausted.

That’s just it! POTUS isn’t a dictator. It’s astonishing to see headlines ignore the fact that the powers of the office of the president are limited. No president has the authority to force Congress to pass any kind of foreign aid legislation or to impose peace on the Middle East.

The horrors occurring in Gaza, Ukraine, and throughout the world elicit deep emotions in us, but they’re beyond the control of one elected official, which is what keeps us from living in true tyranny.

It’s disturbing to see so many smart people lean toward a candidate who seeks chaos and destruction simply because they feel outrage at atrocities that can’t be solved by a POTUS, but could definitely be exacerbated by one.

Considering the facts that everything in politics is stupidly transactional, and that:

  1. The POTUS doesn’t control foreign aid and must rely on congress to agree

  2. The deeply religious House Speaker Johnson, who controls which aid proposals will come to the floor, is fervently in support of Israel

Is it possible that President Biden is throwing a bone to the hard right, in the form of support to Israel, in order to get desperately needed aid to Ukraine ASAP?

I mean, we ALL understand that a US President doesn’t have the unilateral power of a king, and there’s a shit ton of finessing behind what we can see.