I did read somewhere that all four bills were going to be combined when they went to the Senate.

In the Senate, but not the House which is what I've always been referring to>

And to be clear, some Democrats voted for Ukraine aid and voted against the Israeli/Palestinian package. So, no, all the funding was not "rolled into" the Ukraine bill. All of the bills stood or sunk on their own merit, wholly independent from each other.

#32

Dude, YOU'RE WRONG. The votes were separate by design. Many GOP members voted for Israeli aid and against aid for Ukraine. Being for one didn't mean you had to be for the other. In Johnson's reoriented mind, all of the votes were directly related to his responsibility to protect America's defense and interest as the now 2nd in line of succession.

Stop while you're behind. You don't know what you're talking about.

A summary of the associate's interview with federal agents was among nearly 400 pages of investigative records that were unsealed on Monday by the judge overseeing Mr. Trump's classified documents case. The associate's identity - in the unsealed records labeled as Person 16 - was redacted from the summary.

Person 16 also suggested that some of Mr. Trump's children had been enlisted in the task of persuading him to return the presidential records to the archives. The person recounted to the F.B.I. that one of the children was told: "There are issues with the boxes. They belong to the government. Talk to your dad about giving them back. It's not worth the aggravation."

This is the case that unmistakably shows Trumps disdain for the law and his lifelong propensity of ignoring laws, rules and regulations which keep him from doing what he wants.

#30

No, it wasn't. There were 3 separate bills: One for Ukraine, one for Israel and Gaza, and one for the Indo-Pacific.

Your assertion is wrong.

#28

I think this article clearly states the most probable reasons for Johnson coming to the decision of bucking the Putinites from his Freedom Caucus and Trump's public statements critical of US aid to Ukraine, again insinuating Europe hasn't done enough.

I think the most relevatory part of this story was the fact that Johnson himself - prior to his lightning ascension to Speaker - had never met the President; never been in a high level intelligence briefing; never even met the other Congressional leaders from either party; and didn't know the truth that it's Russia who is persecuting Ukrainian Christians, not the other way around being propagated in the Russian disinformation being touted by MTG and other Putinites dominating the current GOP discourse.

Now, it's obvious that the polling of Republicans on Ukraine added the final steel to his spine, but to me, I think the two most important reasons he finally did what he did is because 1) He had the ephiphany as SPOH his role as 2nd in the line of succession comes with the caveat he has to place the entire nation's wellbeing as his guiding star, not simply the GOP or even a smaller subset thereof; and 2) His son is about to enter the Naval Academy, and if Ukraine fails in its quest to evict Russia from its lands, Russia will most certainly start other hot conflicts in the region that stand a very high probability of drawing US forces into a hot war as a part of NATO's defense.

IOW, some issues simply transcend partisan politics, especially issues regarding national security and world order. With all of Johnson's most important boxes checked (religion, personal interest, favored polling, national security, and global order) he did what any national leader should do given similar circumstances.

#24

I thing you're paragraph is related to remarks Saturday while still in the Capitol Building. Mine was from Sunday, and as yet I've seen no walkback or denial of the intentions she unambiguously stated.

Now that he did, she's going to be "responsible" and "listen to her constituents".

I don't know what tea leaves you're reading, but the opposite appears to be the truth.

Another related viewpoint:

For all its rank partisanship, the House right now is functionally and uneasily governed by a bipartisan group of Republicans and Democrats. The House is led by a conservative speaker, but for any matter of lawmaking he cannot count on a Republican majority.

Members of the Freedom Caucus, however, now see themselves as watchmen of the floor. They set conservative policy demands that are impossible to achieve with Democrats controlling the Senate and White House. And when these demands are inevitably not met they routinely hijack the process to stop legislation before it can even get an up-or-down vote, no matter if a measure has the overwhelming support of the Republican conference or the House.

The Freedom Caucus's power stems from its willingness to take out the speaker. When those tools are removed, their threats quickly become more bark than bite. Whether it's Mr. Johnson or Mr. McCarthy or the two previous Republican speakers for whom I worked, it has not been the Republican leadership that cut out the Freedom Caucus. The Freedom Caucus, by believing in the myth of their own power, made themselves irrelevant to legislative outcomes.

Johnson can find all the safe harbor he needs if he's willing to publicly call the MTG-led Putinites what they are: misguided anti-American/pro-Russian know-nothings, willing to throw away 248 years of tacitly bipartisan foreign policy, especially in the face of Putin's blatant invasion of an emerging democratic country, now in an existential fight for its survival.

Basically, they have a carnival roadie as their first witness.

More like another one of Trump's co-cospirators. That's why he's testifying under an immunity agreement. He's only there because of his working relationship with Trump to commit the charged acts. Nothing's hypocritical about anything.

I'm sorry you feel accoutability is a left-right issue because it only confirms just how non-objective you are. Trump has the best defense money can buy so he's guaranteed a fair trial, and not a single witness against him in any of his trials are Democrats. They're all Republicans that Trump himself chose to associate with or hired to work for him.

They'll all put their hands on a bible and swear to tell the whole truth and let the chips fall where they may. Nothing left or hypocritical about that at all.

But for the most part Unions don't do well at all in the South.

Volkswagen isn't going to lose a minutes sleep over this.

Oh look boys and girls, Captian Obviously Stupid is back with more inanity! As Danforth already rubbed in your face, you didn't post about Unions not doing well, you said that they don't "work" which is a demonstrable lie and an admission that you don't begin to understand how unions "work" or why the "don't do well" is a meaningless statement as it regards their legal existence in Southern states. Unions "do very well" in most every place they exist because their root goals stay the same and no state as yet has legislated them into ineffectiveness. But, as I've stated before, any union's effectiveness is rooted in their members' engagement in jointly achieving their goals vis-a-vis their employment contracts. It's the same in the North, East, South, Midwest, or West.

The South's history and government have always been against worker organization as a means to lift wages and benefits. Their pitch to companies looking at moving there is based on those companies paying workers less than they'd make in more economically progressive or wage competitive cities and states.

But again, this has zero to do with any union either not working or not doing well in the South. You can rightly say that Southern states and many of their employers are typically hostile to unions and especially unionization efforts directed towards auto manufacturers, but that has nothing to do with unions themselves.

And of course VW isn't losing any sleep over the Chattanooga vote, but not for any reason you've identified in your anti-union burpings. Every single VW plant around the world is unionized EXCEPT Chattanooga until now. VW itself mandates union representation of their workers because their employment model is based on worker interaction with their ultimate business decisions.

Forgot about that option. My brain was thinking about statesmanship for a moment, so forgive me.

Let me retune my TDS filters so it won't happen again.

Wonderful quote Lamplighter, thank you.

I may have to take back my word though after reading this:

Many Republicans dismissed what the intelligence showed or refused to attend briefings, causing alarmed Republicans to say that misinformation and Russian propaganda has seeped into the Republican Party. Evangelical Christians tried to bend Johnson's and his staff's ear, pointing to the influence of propaganda from the Russian Orthodox Church. Johnson met with Pavlo Unguryan, a Ukrainian evangelical leader, who had been pushing for U.S. support.

Johnson is a devout Southern Baptist and his faith "guides him in every major decision he makes," one Republican member said.

Johnson was given polling from the American Action Network, the policy arm of the Republican affiliated super PAC, that found a large majority of voters favor aid to Ukraine in battleground districts and that favoring Ukraine aid was not a principle deciding factor for Republican primary voters. The polling reassured Johnson there was little political risk to funding Ukraine, an important data point when working to persuade his GOP colleagues.

A steady stream of European leaders and ministers have knocked on Johnson's door in recent months, telling the congressman from Louisiana that his place among global statesmen is assured if he got this done.

British Foreign Secretary David Cameron applied some debonair wit. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, one of Ukraine's sharpest backers, told Johnson what it was like to live in a nation that borders Russia. Just last week, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala met with Johnson and told him that the world's eyes were on him.

"I really do believe the intel and in the briefings that we've gotten," Johnson said last week. "I believe [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil. I think they're in coordination.

"Look, history judges us for what we do," said an emotional Johnson, holding back tears and with a quivering lip at a news conference last week in response to a question from The Washington Post. "This is a critical time right now, critical time on the world stage. I could make a selfish decision and do something that's different, but I'm doing here what I believe to be the right thing."

Johnson's son will be headed to the U.S. Naval Academy in the fall. "To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine, than American boys," he said. "This is a live-fire exercise for me and for so many American families."

He had never had a high-level intelligence briefing, had never met President Biden, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). He had no meaningful relationship with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.)

In a matter of moments, Johnson became second in line to the presidency. The day after he was elected speaker last October, he met with Biden and the three House national security panel chairs - Reps. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) and Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) - who brought him to the White House for a worldwide threats briefing heavy on Ukraine. Former CIA director and ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo became an informal adviser.

The new speaker heard from evangelical Christians in the United States and Ukraine about the persecution of Ukrainian Christians by Russia. Over the next months, the other congressional leaders twice brought him to the White House to meet with Biden, where he got an earful about the importance of this moment in history from the president, McConnell and Schumer.

It was eye opening.

One Republican House member recalls: "I'll never forget Johnson one time said, 'I've gone from representing my district only to representing the entire [House] and the country.' For someone to go from where he was to where he is now as quickly as he did ... is remarkable."

And to make clear, RTW gave individual workers employed in a position represented by a union to opt out of paying dues while they're still mandated by law to receive the same compensation and representation as dues paying members.

As usual, retrograde Republicans and their billionaire ownership/donor class thought that by giving people the option of getting something of great value for nothing would end up bankrupting the unions. It didn't happen. While varying percentages of workers do opt out in order to put more union-negotiated contract money in their pockets, most unions are still thriving and growing, especially after the pandemic.

And as shown by the just-completed UAW deal with the Big 3, unions announced a multi-million dollar effort to unionize American-based foreign car manufacturers and Tesla, their first vote was overwhelmingly positive as are signs at other plants still gathering cards in their attempts to hold union elections at those workplaces - almost if not ALL of them in RTW states.

Unions don't "work" in RTW states - especially southern states.

You insist on continually proving you're a moron. RTW laws affect unions but they in no way stop them from being effective for their members as it regards negotiating pay, benefits, and working conditions.

I should know. I belong to a union and I live in a RTW state. I work with 100s of union locals and all of them would laugh at your idiotic ignorance. As a matter of fact, 3 of the 10 states with the most union members are RTW states including the hub of the UAW, Michigan.

I don't know why you think RTW causes unions not to "work" in such states. They make organizing life and dues collection more difficult (depending on which state you're talking about), but they do not stop unions from working, period. So you can stop spamming multiple threads with disinformation. Thank you.

Of course, there is always this from Bishop Robert Gruss on Biden, 'I'm not angry at him, he's just stupid'.

#3

Do you mean the Facebook embed? First you have to find the original FB post you want to embed. (You can get to the original by clicking on the post's timestamp beneath the site heading on the top)

Click on the 3 dots in the upper righthand corner which opens a dropdown. Then click on 'embed'. Another tab will open, then click on 'copy code' and then paste it in the Extra Text box.

Buck, who left Congress last month after announcing that he wouldn't seek another term back in the fall, repeated his "Moscow Majorie" nickname for the Georgia Republican during an interview with CNN's Erica Hill.

"Well, 'Moscow Marjorie' has reached a new low," said Buck after Hill tossed to a clip of Russian TV personalities claiming Greene as "running Congress" and "believes Americans should help Putin win."

He continued, "You know, during the Russian Revolution, Lenin talked about American journalists who were writing glowing reports about Russia at the time as 'useful idiots' and I don't even think that Marjorie reaches that level of being a 'useful idiot' here."

Buck said Greene is mouthing Russian propaganda and added that she's "really hurting" U.S. foreign policy in the process.

"She's acting completely irresponsibly," Buck said.

If Democrats and Biden aren't constantly pointing to both her and Trump - and their outright disdain for Ukraine and their alignment with Putin and Russia - as the faces of today's GOP, they're simply not doing it right.

"The prime minister has asked us to withdraw U.S. troops, and we have agreed to do that," a senior State Department official told The Washington Post in an interview. The decision was sealed in a meeting earlier Friday between Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Niger's prime minister, Ali Lamine Zeine.

"We've agreed to begin conversations within days about how to develop a plan" to withdraw troops, said the senior State Department official. "They've agreed that we do it in an orderly and responsible way. And we will need to probably dispatch folks to Niamey to sit down and hash it out. And that of course will be a Defense Department project."

For years, the Pentagon has deployed a mix of mostly Air Force and Army personnel to Niger to support a mission scrutinizing militant groups in the region. Until the coup last year, the arrangement included counterterrorism drones flights and U.S. and Nigerien troops partnering on some patrols.

This is a huge deal, and 73% in favor sends a massive signal to other auto manufacturing workers in the South: Yes you can become unionized and have a greater say in your own working conditions.

Welcome into the family VW workers ... and leave the door open for Nissan, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Toyota, et_al. to join you later.

Didn't the Supreme Court just hold event organizers responsible for ANY damage caused by their protest?

Wow. I hadn't even thought to make that connection. Trump called these people to DC and he gave them their marching orders.

Pretty cut and dried, isn't it?