All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[worstblogever]

Virginia Congressman Walter Jones, he who created "Freedom Fries", has passed away at 76.

[Tuck]

Rep-omars-latest-tweets-expose-thin-line-between-criticizing-israel-being-labeled-anti-semitic

While there is a lot of hustling going on here, and AIPAC is absolutely deserving of criticism, any comments that get into the ballpark of Jews or Jewish organizations controlling people with money wanders into dog whistle areas. While Omar may have been making a sincere assertion, someone else could make the same statement with intent to invoke antisemitic tropes while maintaining deniability.

It doesn't help that an older Tweet of Omar's said that Israel had hypnotized the world, which is pretty clear, straight-from-The-Protocols antisemitism.

After an initial defense of that tweet, she did come around to a thoughtful response on that, and I'm fine with that. But the fact is that the finger-pointing on the progressive side when someone steps into these grey areas on race, gender, or sexuality can be just as unyielding and unfair. We have a bit of a double standard here. (Personally, I'd prefer to see it go in all directions toward taking the totality of the person, context, intent, and possible ignorance about particular triggers into account . . . but in either case there does need to be consistency.)

[PaulBullion]

So germs aren't real because he can't see them? I wonder if he would say the same about God?

You can't make god visible with a UV lamp, or a microscope. Unless it's a really fancy one.

[Tazirai]

It's appalling how quickly Dems publicly called out a black, Muslim woman in Congress (the first ever!) just weeks after they refused to censure an openly white supremacist congressman.

[PaulBullion]

While there is a lot of hustling going on here, and AIPAC is absolutely deserving of criticism, any comments that get into the ballpark of Jews or Jewish organizations controlling people with money wanders into dog whistle areas. While Omar may have been making a sincere assertion, someone else could make the same statement with intent to invoke antisemitic tropes while maintaining deniability.

It doesn't help that an older Tweet of Omar's said that Israel had hypnotized the world, which is pretty clear, straight-from-The-Protocols antisemitism.

After an initial defense of that tweet, she did come around to a thoughtful response on that, and I'm fine with that. But the fact is that the finger-pointing on the progressive side when someone steps into these grey areas on race, gender, or sexuality can be just as unyielding and unfair. We have a bit of a double standard here. (Personally, I'd prefer to see it go in all directions toward taking the totality of the person, context, intent, and possible ignorance about particular triggers into account . . . but in either case there does need to be consistency.)

Omar has issued a very heartfelt apology, making all those "Nancy is totally killing Palestinian kids by calling out the dog whistle" posts on this page very cringeworthy.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I’ve always been of the belief that there are three topics considered as being the “third rail” of political discourse, meaning you can get yourself electrocuted for yapping about them wrong, those topics being these:

Abortion. Gun control. Religion.

Now I think a fourth topic should be added: criticizing Israel. Throwing any amount of shade at Israel, even a tiny amount results in ear piercing howls of bottomless outrage, even when it comes to AIPAC which, like any other lobbying arm, including the NRA and Big Oil, should be under a microscope because of their influence in American politics. When it comes to that sort of shady money, there shouldn’t be any exceptions, all should be scrutinized, plain and simple.

[Mister Mets]

Him mocking someone who really (no one really for awhile did look into Warren's history of Native American claims as 1/64th now) identified as Native American then and using a slur of calling her Pocahontas is just terrible to do. He is slurring Native Americans doing this horse **** repeatedly so he doesn't care. I mean he invited the kids who taunted a Native American to see him so we see where they rank to him.

It would be like if I mocked someone and called them Chief Jay Stronbow or Geronimo to mock them. Its terrible as **** and we should never excuse this. But hey gotta defend this terrible racist behavior I guess.

The mockery isn't about her heritage but about her exaggerated claims to be Native American. No one thinks there's anything wrong with being part Native American.

As a quick note, it's not necessarily 1/64th. She could have ancestors six generations earlier or ten generations earlier. The best guess is 8 generations (1/256th) but it could be 1/1024th. As it's possible that she is 1/64th, I'll err on her side.

That you ask me to explain is the sad part. She has explained her reasons for claiming that over and over. It was her family's history, told to her by her parents. You bend over backwards to give every Republican the benefit of the doubt, but when it comes to Dems, GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!
And to not know making light of Wounded Knee and the Trail of Tears is offensive is illuminating.

I'm aware of the arguments. I wanted to see you articulate it since I didn't want to make any assumptions (SUPERCWFAN1 had a different take on what he found offensive.)

I suppose the main defense of President Trump's comments would be that Wounded Knee is just a reference to a location that the public would understand to have meaning connected to Native Americans, and that there are many trails Native Americans have been associated with.

https://www.wikipedia.com/en/Apache_Trail
https://www.wikipedia.com/en/Assunpink_Trail
https://www.wikipedia.com/en/Bridger_Trail
https://www.wikipedia.com/en/Catawba_Trail
https://www.wikipedia.com/en/Cherokee_Trail
https://www.wikipedia.com/en/Crosswicknung_Trail
https://www.wikipedia.com/en/Dalton_Trail

Ilhan Omar under attack for telling truth about Israel lobby








https://twitter.com/OmanReagan/statu...15774751899648

Her claim that the main reason American politicians supported Israel was money is toxic on several levels, connecting to antisemitic tropes about Jews controlling the world, and suggesting that her colleagues are terrible human beings.

[sunofdarkchild]

$3.2 million is buying Congressional support? That's a pittance by lobby groups standards. Amazon spent $13 million on lobbying in 2017. J Street, which is pretty much an anti-AIPAC, made almost $5 million in political donations in 2018. Saudi Arabia has paid $18 million to lobby in the US since 2015, an average of $6 million a year. The NRA spent over $30 million in 2016.

[Kirby101]

The mockery isn't about her heritage but about she exaggerated claims to be Native American. No one thinks there's anything wrong with being part Native American.

As a quick note, it's not necessarily 1/64th. She could have ancestors six generations earlier or ten generations earlier. The best guess is 8 generations (1/256th) but it could be 1/1024th. As it's possible that she is 1/64th, I'll err on her side.

I'm aware of the arguments. I wanted to see you articulate it since I didn't want to make any assumptions (SUPERCWFAN1 had a different take on what he found offensive.)

I suppose the main defense of President Trump's comments would be that Wounded Knee is just a reference to a location that the public would understand to have meaning connected to Native Americans, and that there are many trails Native Americans have been associated with.
.

Amazing how far you will go to defend this horrible man. And how lame your equivocation is. You should just realize we all know he is a racist twit and your hemming and hawing is just a sad little dance you are doing to music no one is listening to.

[zinderel]

I like how two women of presumably Semitic descent - remember that people of Arab descent are also Semitic peoples, folks... - are being called anti-Semitic for having the audacity to criticize the outsized financial obligation our nation has to, the human rights violations of, and the relentless lobbying of our government officials by the government of Israel.

Complaining about how the Israeli government has several US Senators over a barrel in terms of lobbying money and purchased influence - and using the same language with which we criticize Russia for doing the SAME THING, while also using the same language to criticize Israeli lobbying that we use to criticize ANY lobbying - is not in any way anti-Semitic, and it's incredibly dangerous to stifle valid criticism by calling it 'racist'. Certainly, there will be racists who leap at the chance to 'stick it to the Jews', but those are opportunistic parasites, and should not invalidate the valid criticisms of those who are NOT ignorant hate-muppets.

At what point can a non-Jewish person criticize Israel's apartheid policies without being called anti-Semitic?

At what point are we allowed to point out the human rights violations going on at the hands of the Israeli military without being called racists?

Is ANYONE who is not Jewish allowed to speak up? Oh wait, even Jewish people have been called anti-Semitic for criticizing the Israeli government...

So I guess all we're allowed to do is remain silent while people suffer, while homes are demolished to make room for a golf course or a 'nice, Israeli-only neighborhood'. We just have to bite our tongues when women who aren't ultra-Orthodox enough get assaulted on public buses by rabbis. I guess that, since it was our decision, through the UN, to just...declare...Israel to be thing again, no matter who lived there at the time, that we now need to stand by that decision, and damn the consequences to anyone or anything else. I guess that, due to our collective guilt over the Holocaust and the years that the US government spent ignoring it at the behest of the rich and powerful like Ford and Bush and Trump and the rest, we have to remain silent. There was, after all, no profit in rescuing a bunch of foreign Jews who didn't recognize Jesus as Lord from that little civil spat going on in Germany, but there was PLENTY of profit in German industry and in all that gold the Germans mysteriously suddenly had in abundance...

We seem to have resigned ourselves to supporting the Israeli government in shameful silence, no matter how monstrous their policies, no matter how inhumane their actions, no matter how illicit their lobbying of our politicians.

Now, I guess I should resign myself to being called an anti-semite for this post, too...

[Mister Mets]

$3.2 million is buying Congressional support? That's a pittance by lobby groups standards. Amazon spent $13 million on lobbying in 2017. J Street, which is pretty much an anti-AIPAC, made almost $5 million in political donations in 2018. Saudi Arabia has paid $18 million to lobby in the US since 2015, an average of $6 million a year. The NRA spent over $30 million in 2016.

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/to...18&indexType=s

The US Chamber of Commerce spent $94,800,000 in 2018
The National Assn of Realtors spent $72,808,648 in 2018

[Tazirai]

What MLK Actually Thought About Israel and Palestine-Some try to paint Martin Luther King Jr as an unswerving supporter of Israel. They're wrong.

[Tazirai]

[Tazirai]

[InformationGeek]

Trump having another rally and insanity as always.

Holy **** -- Trump falsely accuses Ralph Northam of saying he supports "a newborn baby [coming] out into the world, and wrap the baby, make the baby comfortable, & then talk to the mother & talk to the father and then execute the baby. Execute the baby!"

Huge, angry boos. https://t.co/VZaZXVoi7Y