politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Freedom cities sound like freedom fries.
I remember back after 9/11 and France called us on the bullshit… the state legislature voted to call them freedom fries in the capital cafeteria. (I was in highschool and lobbying for some environmental stuff. My former math teacher was our rep, so, we went to lunch and talked about things.)
In any case, those fries were not free, and they weren’t fried. (Orida frozen… stuffed in a microwave…)
Also? As a side note, the reason flying cars are not a thing is because nobody has found a way to make free energy yet- anything that flies has to expend energy to counter gravity- on airplanes, the wings push air down and it moves forward. In things that hover it’s either the rotors/fans/jet engines pushing air.
That expenditure just doesn’t exist on normal ground vehicles.
@FuglyDuck that's so funny, I was literally telling people the freedom fries thing was real earlier today! Someone younger than us had thought it was just a myth or satire.
(Over here - sorry not sure how to link it via your instance but you get the picture).
Yeah. I remember being incredulous when I saw the menu, me and the other highschool kid. The Rep explained that they actually passed a bill for that to be renamed; in this tone of voice dripping with sarcasm. I'm not sure if it happened federally or in other states, but it happened here- it only applied to the state capital cafeterias, though.
Wikipedia seems to think it happened in many places. I don't think people realize how bizarre some of that stuff was.
Yeah.
It was bizarre. The US lost it’s damn mind and went full on crazy. I remember asking what Iraq did and getting called a traitor. (They were mostly Saudis? And Saudis funded?)
I also remember bejng asked why I wasn’t joining up… like, dude, let me graduate highschool first…
Knowing now that Bin-Laden had been in Pakistan and we kinda knew almost where for a long time really makes the Iraq invasion so much worse.
I went and protested it in Copley Square the night before we invaded Iraq. I’m glad I did it, but it seemed to do fuck all. Possibly lead to Barack Obama’s presidency, which I’m happy about, but that in turn may have lead Trump’s as well.
I can’t help wonder how different the world would have been with Gore as president. Even social media may have been regulated differently with a moderately (or even slightly) tech savvy administration, though that’s probably a stretch.
Edit: Wft autocorrect; Batak Obamass? Really?
It's not a stretch. The antitrust lawsuits brought by nine states and the Justice Department against Microsoft was made to simply go away under the Bush administration. Our technology would probably look very different today without Microsoft's monopoly, and without that who knows what the rest of the map would look like?
I can't even imagine. I think 9/11 would have still happened... I don't think they'd have caught it; and I don't think we'd have just... not responded.
That’s probably the case, though I think smarter people who didn’t already want to invade the Middle East to avenge their daddy’s name (before 9/11 strangely) might have heeded the multiple intelligence warnings better.
I hate Nader for his spoiling that election in particular, but he wanted locked cockpit doors way before 9/11. Gore may have listened to his advise but probably not in time.
I think we also would have sanctioned Saudi Arabia and worked with Pakistan instead of the bullshit that happened instead.
The thing was… that at the time, locking the door wasn’t really the issue.
The policy at the time was to allow the hijacker’s to take over because there were hundreds of hostages on board. Before 9/11, nobody thought they’d take the plane and crash it into stuff.
Similar to how cashiers/bank tellers are taught to comply with robbers. The expectation is that doing what they want is safer for everyone - and the assumption was they’d want cash.
Post 9/11, those assumptions changed, and now pilots are instructed to let the hostages die instead of opening up, because its likely that, failing getting down to where a response team could get on board, everyone is going to die anyhow and letting the bad guys control the plane means substantially more deaths.
Yikes. The pressure must have been really intense. I'm in NZ and I lost a bunch of US internet friends (some I'd met irl) for not being enthusiastic about attacking Afghanistan.
In the immediate family, it wasn’t too terrible. It was a certain uncle, that I never speak to any more thinking I should be signing up. (he’s as deep into MAGA world as anyone, the only reason he wasn’t at Jan 6 was he’s too broke to go.)
Most everyone else kind of would just… not talk about it? By the time i did graduate, all the fervor wore off into a kind of … refusal to accept we’d been lied to? I dunno weird times.
I will say this. It definitely colors my understanding of what’s going on with Palestine. Seems to be that history is rhyming again.
I agree.
Wikipedia is correct. I was 34 on 9/11. There was so much of this crazy bs. The freedom fries thing was rampant. I lived a few blocks from a mosque, and sadly there were several threats, picketers and vandalism for several years.
just checked with one of my teenagers, confirmed they didn't know freedom fries. which makes sense of course, but i took it for granted they must have heard - it was such a bizarre thing to me at the time!
In NZ we have these things called Afghans (an iced biscuit/cookie with cocoa and coconut) and we would joke that if the US had them they'd have to rename them.