US Politics May 2021: Joe Manchin's Choose-Your-Adventure Book

Mastriano grew up mostly in New Jersey, in a military family, and attended Eastern College, a Christian university outside Philadelphia. After he graduated, in 1986, he joined the military, and, as a junior intelligence officer, was stationed at the border of West Germany and Czechoslovakia. Mastriano, like many conservative Christians, came to see the Cold War as a spiritual campaign, applying religious notions of good and evil to U.S. foreign policy. “Seeing awful things in the East, and atheistic, communistic, socialist regimes oppressing people” convinced him of the need for “protecting freedom, the free people of the West,” he told “Crosspoint,” a Christian podcast, in 2018. While deployed, Mastriano often carried a Bible under his arm. “It wasn’t for show,” he said.
In 1991, as the Cold War was winding down, Mastriano was deployed to Iraq to fight in the Gulf War. He believed that he was on the front lines of a new religious conflict, this time against radical Islam. Mastriano’s wife, Rebecca, knew little about his posting, which was classified, and gathered people to engage in what she called “spiritual warfare,” praying that he would prevail against evil on the battlefield. In late February of that year, Mastriano’s unit was about to face Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, when a sandstorm struck. “Thunder and lightning and rain and sand, and it blinds the Iraqis. We can miraculously see through this silicon and moisture in the air, and we start picking off the enemy,” he said, on the podcast. “Because of this, our small regiment, compared to the armored divisions we were facing, was able to break the back of the Iraqi line and therefore end the war rapidly.” Days later, a ceasefire was announced.

Mastriano believed that this was a miracle, and

deepsigh

Just because you blather on and on about Jesus doesn’t mean you behave according to his very valuable and often otm teaching. Sorry for pointing out the obvious.

Remind me what Saddam Hussein had to do with radical Islam?

The look on Cruz's face when he realizes the woman is a complete lunatic who believes everything he has been saying

i looked for "the look" and didn't see it :'(

i read the gospel of luke again recently and am always taken aback by the number of times that jesus tells everybody to give everything away before they follow him
xp

of course, that is the one metaphor in the bible, and "give everything away" is a metaphor for "make as much money as you can and funnel some of the excess through christian charities, to the degree that it saves you money on your taxes"

he meant "Give It Away" in the Red Hot Chili Peppers sense

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body. What I got, you got to get it; put it in you."

Anthony Jesus

Christ, we solved religion in under an hour.

Just because you blather on and on about Jesus doesn’t mean you behave according to his very valuable and often otm teaching.

Yours truly scowling through Charlie Crist's boilerplate speech on Saturday

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/552596-biden-hits-63-percent-approval-rating-in-new-ap-poll

23% of Republicans approve? Higher than I'd expected

xp

amazing

Alfred is the power behind the throne (throne not included).

this man went to a park dressed as if for a chamber of commerce meeting. He wore black buckle shoes.

excellent scowling work

Alfred are you actually scowling directly at the shoes in this photo

lol please someone else emerge. last thing we need is another Gubernatorial term from someone who already was our Governor as a Republican and then later switched parties.

Hell, I’ll take it. Just get DeSantis gone.

I'm cool with Val Demings, though I wonder how safe her and Crist's districts are.

Alfred are you actually scowling directly at the shoes in this photo

― Guayaquil (eephus!)

I was afraid to look at those shoes lest I transform into a Cristian.

Alfred is the power behind the throne (throne not included).

Soto-San!

extremely strong vibes in this photo from Alfred

Crist don't kill my vibe

.@POTUS: "We're going to make it clear that anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits."

Full speech here: https://t.co/zOJnXufl9Y pic.twitter.com/4B9lKPJWxY

— CSPAN (@cspan) May 10, 2021

fuck this guy

anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits.

Afaik, unemployment benefits in the USA have always carried this stipulation and still do. The intent of this requirement is fucked up and weights power toward employers, but this is how it has always been structured and it's not about to change any time soon.

why even validate that stupid fox talking point?

It's like he can only go so long without slipping back into stern grandpa mode and hectoring about idleness or weed or something.

I remember years ago I when I was on unemployment, I had to show my 'work search' and where I had gone to look for work (this in CA).. I would just use the phone book and put some random places from the yellow pages. AFAIK, they never checked up on me, or if they did it didn't affect my payments.

Yeah, in NJ you have to answer a questionnaire every week asking if you've been looking for work, if you refused any work, blah blah blah, and they always hang it over your head that they can ask to see your job search notes at any time...

in MN it's just going through the motions, click no on two questions before you put in for the week's payment online.. never heard of it being followed up on

Yeah, when I was on unemployment about a decade ago, I had to list a certain number of places I had reached out to each week. I was super paranoid and kept a massive list and copies of all my cover letters I sent out, just in case, but it didn't seem like they did a lot of validating/checking up on them.

i can say with certainly that FL DEO is too overwhelmed and incompetent to do any following up

We are working to change that!

i mean they can try, my mom (whose name is Bernicia Filibusterstein for anybody surveilling this forum) was filling in any five jobs for a while as she outright can't work right now.

well actually she hasn't had to YET since the requirements were suspended til now but she had done that in the past apparently, lol.

Has anyone tried with the FL DIO though

Holy diver, Batman!

Afaik, unemployment benefits in the USA have always carried this stipulation and still do. The intent of this requirement is fucked up and weights power toward employers, but this is how it has always been structured and it's not about to change any time soon.

― sharpening the contraindications (Aimless), Monday, May 10, 2021 4:44 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

"suitable job" allows a lot of wiggle room that meant that many (most?) states didn't in practice enforce this even before covid. see https://www.thebalancecareers.com/unemployment-refuse-job-offer-2064181.

biden's statement is shitty but changes nothing. if the administration does something to make the definition more explicit (e.g. stops california ignoring it with a definition of "suitable employment" that is essentially "a job i want") then that will not be a return to pre-pandemic status quo ante. it will be *worse* than things were under trump.

I applied to be CEO of Amazon, starting pitcher for the Yankees, and lead singer of the Rolling Stones.

Me too. I didn't get a single callback.

I don't know if Biden's statement is the right move, but the goal of it is to preserve the $300 payment for people. Lots of states including mine are talking about opting out of it. I think the White House strategy is aimed at blunting the shiftless-idle narrative. I don't know about where you all live, but the political narrative here is 100 percent that you can't a damn burger at McDonald's in under 10 minutes because Joe Biden is paying all them line cooks to sit home smoking blunts.

To put it bluntly.

traditionally this is known as 'The Servant Problem'

paying all them line cooks to sit home smoking blunts.

lol fuckin' seriously, everybody smoked weed at the restaurants I worked at. I smoked with my kitchen manager in his truck after Cinco De Mayo once.

there was also fucking going on, on the expo table, so...

I think it's less the blunt-smoking than the non-making-me-a-burger part that the right finds so infuriating. The notion that no one wants to work their shitty jobs for shit pay is enraging.