Master-Debater131

Yup, your right. He wasnt the PM at the time.

The whole "gun control" thing is so damn stupid. Japan averages less than 10 gun deaths a year, and the vast majority of those are related to the Yakuza. Japan is probably the definition of a country where extremely strict gun control has worked. The gun used was clearly homemade. From the looks and sounds of things he used fairly available materials to create an improvised gun, and he used that to assassinate the former PM.

Its complicated. Some fairly broad strokes incoming. For starters, Japan has a long history of political assassinations. The most famous probably being in the 60s when the PM was killed when an assassin stabbed him with a samurai sword. There have been waves of political violence in the past, with the 60s and 70s being some of the worst decades for political violence. Abe himself is a fairly popular, although controversial, figure. He was the longest serving PM since the end of WW2. He led the LDP party, which is the conservative party in Japan. While leader he pushed some controversial positions including rearming Japan and dropping the pacifist constitution. He worked closely with the US to try and increase military ties and readiness. He saw China as a threat and tried to rally the democracies in the area to recognize that China is an existential threat for more military cooperation. While PM he also visited the Yasakuni shrine which enraged a lot of old wounds because its a war memorial that also includes war criminals from WW2. So while he was pushing for more militarization and cooperation in the area he wasnt exactly trying to heal any old wounds. Internally he also led an economic revival in Japan with his "Abenomoics" policy. That became his trademark for a long time and led to sustained electoral victories for the LDP. His economic policies were fairly popular. He retired due to health reasons (Colitis) or he would have still been PM. Even after he retired he remained an extremely influential figure within the LDP and was the leader of the largest faction within the party. He still welded extreme influence on Japanese politics. More recently he openly stated that after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that Japan should host US Nuclear Weapons on the Japanese mainland. Which, as you can guess, was just a little controversial. Its also widely assumed that we have Nukes there, but we keep it quite for fairly obvious reasons. As stated above, he worked extremely closely with the US and greatly increased our ties. After Trump won he worked to bring Japanese rail investment to the US as part of Trumps initial infrastructure push. That didnt go to far, but Abe was serious about trying to bring Japanese rail technology and processes to the US. AFAIK that attempt is still ongoing, just with new people involved. So honestly, take your pick for why this happened.

I dont want to live in a world where you cant have sex for fun. That just sounds....miserable.

Im still so damn happy

What a parade! That was so fun! I recorded the entire thing on TV so that I can go back and rewatch it. What an amazing run by the Avs. Soooooo many drunk players and coaches.

HOLY NO MY EYES

What in the actual fuck is that and how do I get it out of my brain.

NATO formally invites Finland and Sweden to join alliance https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/29/politics/joe-biden-nato-day-2/index.html " Madrid CNN — NATO formalized its invitation to Sweden and Finland to join its alliance Wednesday, a historic expansion of the defense bloc that directly undercuts Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aims as his war in Ukraine grinds ahead. The group collectively decided to approve countries’ applications to join after Turkey dropped its objections Tuesday, paving the way for NATO’s most consequential enlargement in decades." It could take as little as 30 days for this to happen. This will go down as one of the single biggest backfires in history. Putin started a war to keep Ukraine from joining NATO, and hes going to end up with a massive expansion of NATO. Theres nothing that Russia can do to stop it at this point either. Its pretty clear that Sweden and Finland already have defacto NATO status with everyone pledging to defend them if Russia does something stupid.

Cant forget the clear examples of witness tampering!

Fucking disgusting. This is clear Incitement. There has to be charges.

This is my biggest complaint right now with all of this. They are showing a step by step playbook on how the insurrection went down, where the failures were, where failures in our system are, and then doing nothing to fix it. We can all see this train wreck coming, and instead of stopping it we seem to be adding nuclear fuel to the engine. If there arent charges recommended by this committee by the end of it then its a total failure of duty by everyone there. We cannot risk Trump making another run at this in 24. And we absolutely cannot allow these weaknesses to continue to exist, Its an existential threat to our Democracy.

Im going to the parade Thursday Talked to work and got the OK to take the rest of the week off after the parade. They know Im an addict and told me to just have a nice long celebratory weekend. A couple of my coworkers are also taking the day off to go. I am still so insanely happy Going to be able to ride this joy for a while. Ill keep on posting stuff in this thread as it comes out. So many great videos from the night of, and the day after. I cannot wait for the parade.

You can actually hear the entire city cheering as we won. Thats just awesome.

Listened to this a loooootttttt

Holy shit, she is fucking insane. The bit about the election is totally unhinged. This isnt healthy on so many levels.

There were so many fireworks in my neighborhood last night. Just an unreal amount.

https://twitter.com/BradyTrett/status/1541253390184853504