All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Theleviathan]

You mean like calling for his impeachment? Something the Democratic leadership is still refusing to do.

With a buffoonish ogre as President and an evil monster as head of the Senate, what is it you expect these freshman Congresswomen to do?

I do think there is some room to constructively criticize them. Godzilla seems to want them to perform miracles, but I think they're doing a lot of good in the capacity they have served so far. They are actively using the powers of Congress as they are intended for the benefit of common people. It cannot be overstated how awesome that is.

However, their particular ideology is not yet popular or particularly powerful across the country. Most of the Dem wins in 2018 were center left so I'd constructively criticize them to be more mindful of where the country is. Their Twitter following, no matter how large, is not a particularly good indication of where most of the country is. I implore them to keep pushing the population in the right direction, but be mindful of where it is now. That's what Pelosi is doing and sometimes I feel like they unnecessarily criticize establishment Democrats out of passion, whereas Pelosi is correctly trying to calculate. Passion only takes you so far, so fast.

I worry socialism will be the effective hammer that delivers another Trump win. They can't serve him that hammer on a platter.

[aja_christopher]

"I used to work in US intelligence advising presidents on risk. The biggest threat to our country today is the Republican Party"


"Let me say it again: the Republican Party is the biggest threat the United States is facing. And without proper attribution, recognition, and a well-articulated and implemented counter-strategy, it could be terminal.

There is no other reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the facts.

An enemy of the United States might seek to sow discord between ethnic groups, or to wage a disinformation campaign, or to highlight moral inconsistencies that weaken the standing of the United States on the world stage. An enemy of the United States might try and degrade the capacity and public trust within our intelligence apparatus. It might use propaganda and weaponized information. It might seek to engage in fraud or other criminal acts to sway an election in their favor.

Does any of that sound familiar?

The Republican Party has steadily embraced authoritarianism, suspect electoral tactics, and racism more and more over the past few decades. That process has been turbocharged with Trump at the helm of the party.

We’re now seeing an explicit embrace of white supremacy. Denial in the face of climate change. Deliberate sowing of discord within the FBI and the CIA. Weakening of the rule of law. Brazen criminality. Removing funding for elections oversight. Blatant human rights abuses at the border.

The explicit nature of these acts is the point. The Republicans mean to bludgeon any and all resistance to their reshaping of the nation’s institutions to their will."

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices...-a9009441.html

[aja_christopher]

"Republicans Want a White Republic. They'll Destroy America to Get It"

"When in a recent tweetstorm Donald Trump suggested that four Congresswomen of color leave the U.S. and “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” social media exploded. Outrage. Even some news outlets finally let go of the euphemisms and called the tweets “racist.” The Republicans, on the other hand, were quiet. As well they would be. The ideological demographics of the party dictated it.

The GOP’s membership is nearly 90 percent white and can only envision carnage and extinction as it looks upon a rights-based, religious, racial and ideologically diverse America. Or, as Lindsey Graham had noted as early as 2012, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

In short, the United States of America is not really their America. They yearn for a white republic. That’s why they are fighting to recreate the days when, as Archie Bunker sang, “Guys like us, we had it made.” That’s why they’ve willingly gone along with and participated in a sustained attack on the country itself, allowing it to grow weaker so that they could feel stronger.

Already, Trump and the Republicans have severely harmed the institutional heft of checks-and-balances. But they’re not done. America’s international reputation and influence rest on enormous economic and military strength, as well as the intangible but all-important “soft power” brought on by a robust democracy. All three pillars are necessary to sustain America’s nearly global respect and position, yet — and this was the rub — all three are increasingly dependent on more than just whites in the United States to build and sustain. For white America to exist, America must die. And the Republicans have made their choice.

In their effort to restore a white America, the GOP had to wound the kind of multiracial democracy that not only elected Barack Obama to the presidency but enhanced America’s global reputation. Republicans, therefore, set out to create an electorate that was disproportionately white and conservative. In Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Alabama, North Carolina and more than 20 additional states GOP policies targeted African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, Native Americans, the young and the poor to keep them away from the ballot box. Republican governors and GOP-majority state legislatures deployed an array of voter-suppression tactics, including closing hundreds of polling stations in minority and low-income precincts, slashing early voting hours, reinstating poll taxes, mandating discriminatory voter ID laws and purging millions from the voter rolls.

Meanwhile, before his death, Republican legislative mapmaker Thomas Hofeller set in place another key foundation for a white republic. He crafted extreme gerrymandered Congressional districts across the United States that violated the basic Constitutional concept of “one person, one vote.” His legislative maps diluted the electoral strength of large, racially diverse cities, and magnified the power of overwhelmingly white suburbs and sparsely populated rural areas. In North Carolina, for example, Hofeller’s map meant that although Democrats won 50 percent of the vote in the 2018 election, they received only 23 percent of the Congressional seats.

He also had devised a method to erase the electoral strength of the growing Hispanic population by rigging the Census in a way that would create legislative districts that, in his words, “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites,” and, by design, diminish the political voice of anyone else for at least a decade. (That effort was blocked by the Supreme Court.)

The dismantling of a robust, multiracial democracy requires not only acts of commission, such as the 5-4 Shelby County v. Holder decision by the conservatives on the Supreme Court to gut the Voting Rights Act, but sins of omission as well. Mitch McConnell’s flat-out refusal to even engage legislation that would protect the nation’s electoral infrastructure from hacking and foreign interference, despite solid evidence that it occurred in 2016, sends a clear signal that for his ilk this is not an American democracy worth protecting or saving..."

https://time.com/5628283/trump-tweet...white-america/

[PwrdOn]

I do think there is some room to constructively criticize them. Godzilla seems to want them to perform miracles, but I think they're doing a lot of good in the capacity they have served so far. They are actively using the powers of Congress as they are intended for the benefit of common people. It cannot be overstated how awesome that is.

However, their particular ideology is not yet popular or particularly powerful across the country. Most of the Dem wins in 2018 were center left so I'd constructively criticize them to be more mindful of where the country is. Their Twitter following, no matter how large, is not a particularly good indication of where most of the country is. I implore them to keep pushing the population in the right direction, but be mindful of where it is now. That's what Pelosi is doing and sometimes I feel like they unnecessarily criticize establishment Democrats out of passion, whereas Pelosi is correctly trying to calculate. Passion only takes you so far, so fast.

I worry socialism will be the effective hammer that delivers another Trump win. They can't serve him that hammer on a platter.

What Trump voters want is basically socialism as well, except it's the kind that only benefits people like them and leaves everyone else out in the cold. Also Republicans have never really figured out a way to pay for any of their handouts, whether to farmers, corporations, or the military, they just borrow the money and leave it to the next Democratic administration to implement the unpopular but necessary tax hikes.

I disagree that the general public will be turned off by far left policies, because as elections have demonstrated time and time again, Americans don't really care that much about policy and focus almost exclusively on style over substance. And the leadership style of the Squad is certainly dynamic, bold, energetic, and passionate in a way that Republicans and moderate Democrats simply cannot match, and their voices will be critical in the upcoming election because history has shown that Democrats need to have some inspirational and charismatic faces to follow, or else they will just stay home on election day and hand winnable races to the Republicans.

[ed2962]

Ouch! I screwed up my post. Mods please delete this one?

[ed2962]

I do think there is some room to constructively criticize them. Godzilla seems to want them to perform miracles, but I think they're doing a lot of good in the capacity they have served so far. They are actively using the powers of Congress as they are intended for the benefit of common people. It cannot be overstated how awesome that is.

However, their particular ideology is not yet popular or particularly powerful across the country. Most of the Dem wins in 2018 were center left so I'd constructively criticize them to be more mindful of where the country is. Their Twitter following, no matter how large, is not a particularly good indication of where most of the country is. I implore them to keep pushing the population in the right direction, but be mindful of where it is now. That's what Pelosi is doing and sometimes I feel like they unnecessarily criticize establishment Democrats out of passion, whereas Pelosi is correctly trying to calculate. Passion only takes you so far, so fast.

I worry socialism will be the effective hammer that delivers another Trump win. They can't serve him that hammer on a platter.

They aren't really advocating for actual socialism though. No one is running on a platform about turning the means of production over to the workers. "Socialism" is the bogeyman that the GOP throws out there to scare the masses whenever liberals suggest there might be ways to amend the status quo to help poor and working people. Here's the thing, the "socialist" smear didn't work against Obama and it's not working against Sanders. Democrats need to stop being afraid that the GOP are going to call us names...they've been calling the Dems names.

The thing is, The some of the policies that Sanders, AOC, Warren (?) are talking about are connecting with people ( healthcare reform, minimum wage, debt reform, etc). That's why the Republicans are coming after them so hard. Notice despite her being a WoC they don't say half the crap about Harris that they say about Cortez and Omar. Harris is on the radio claiming she smoked weed and listened to Snopp Dogg! Imagine if Cortez said that? It's cause Harris a blue dog and they think they can get what they want from her. With the others, they know they'll have a fight on their hands and they'll have to compromise.

[ed2962]

Some people don't like strong, opinionated women or strong, opinionated people of color.

And now people are seeing both. AT. THE. SAME. TIME.

Heavens to Murgatroyd! Exit, stage left closet sexist/racist people!

And I hope the people that keep offending the conservatives don't stop being themselves.

Well...to be fair, that's not a liberal or conservative thing. Some folks get salty when the new kids hit the scene and start flexing. Let's not forget, this sorta started when Nancy Pelosi started throwing shade at the Cortez crew.

[Kevinroc]

Trump Renews Attacks On Congresswomen Of Color: ‘Let Them Leave’ America
“If they don’t like [our country], let them leave,” the president said of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and other Democratic congresswomen.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump...MDkWftBvimJvP1

[Theleviathan]

They aren't really advocating for actual socialism though. No one is running on a platform about turning the means of production over to the workers. "Socialism" is the bogeyman that the GOP throws out there to scare the masses whenever liberals suggest there might be ways to amend the status quo to help poor and working people. Here's the thing, the "socialist" smear didn't work against Obama and it's not working against Sanders. Democrats need to stop being afraid that the GOP are going to call us names...they've been calling the Dems names.

I do not disagree it is a boogeyman and a baseless smear. That can be true and it can still be an effective attack. It sucks, but elections these days aren't won on accuracy of attacks, just their effectiveness.

I have yet to hear a Democrat come up with an effective counter-attack. It should be the number one priority because, man, it's coming. It's going to come hard, fast, frequent, and with no regard for truth. Whoever the nominee needs to have an adequate response.

[Theleviathan]

What Trump voters want is basically socialism as well, except it's the kind that only benefits people like them and leaves everyone else out in the cold. Also Republicans have never really figured out a way to pay for any of their handouts, whether to farmers, corporations, or the military, they just borrow the money and leave it to the next Democratic administration to implement the unpopular but necessary tax hikes.

I disagree that the general public will be turned off by far left policies, because as elections have demonstrated time and time again, Americans don't really care that much about policy and focus almost exclusively on style over substance. And the leadership style of the Squad is certainly dynamic, bold, energetic, and passionate in a way that Republicans and moderate Democrats simply cannot match, and their voices will be critical in the upcoming election because history has shown that Democrats need to have some inspirational and charismatic faces to follow, or else they will just stay home on election day and hand winnable races to the Republicans.

I don't disagree with you much at all here....except in your conclusions. Yes, Trump voters are total hypocrites. Yes, Americans don't give a rip about policy. Yes, the left needs energy.

But it's simply a fact that, even in 2018, there weren't many AOCs that won. Their voices should be heard loud and clear, but there needs to be some self-awareness from both those four women and their supporters, that they are still very much in the minority even in the Democrat's base. That's not a slight, it's something to work on improving, but it's nevertheless the case. I feel, too often, they become combative with moderates and less progressive Democrats on a false premise of influence.

[PwrdOn]

I don't disagree with you much at all here....except in your conclusions. Yes, Trump voters are total hypocrites. Yes, Americans don't give a rip about policy. Yes, the left needs energy.

But it's simply a fact that, even in 2018, there weren't many AOCs that won. Their voices should be heard loud and clear, but there needs to be some self-awareness from both those four women and their supporters, that they are still very much in the minority even in the Democrat's base. That's not a slight, it's something to work on improving, but it's nevertheless the case. I feel, too often, they become combative with moderates and less progressive Democrats on a false premise of influence.

None other than MLK Jr. himself warned of the dangers of putting too much trust in moderates. The fundamental issue is that while most of these people find racism to be distasteful and will vocally denounce it, they benefit materially from it and thus will stop well short of any substantial action to effect meaningful change. I feel like what these moderates are advocating for is just for minorities to stop talking about their problems so that white people don't need to feel bad about it, and hoping for things to miraculously work themselves out at some unspecified time in the future. But at this juncture, people just aren't willing to wait and see anymore, because we've tried that approach and it's gotten us nowhere.

[jetengine]

I do not disagree it is a boogeyman and a baseless smear. That can be true and it can still be an effective attack. It sucks, but elections these days aren't won on accuracy of attacks, just their effectiveness.

I have yet to hear a Democrat come up with an effective counter-attack. It should be the number one priority because, man, it's coming. It's going to come hard, fast, frequent, and with no regard for truth. Whoever the nominee needs to have an adequate response.

You cant say anything.

Why ?

Because immaterial of what you say the Republican base wont believe you and the term "socialist" has been made poison by them. Even though there are several nations working quite well using socialist ideals (not necessarily full on socialism but like all good governments picking and choosing)

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump’s Mass Raids Didn’t Happen. But Immigrants Are Now Prepared If They Do.

Thanks to Trump’s false alarm, immigrants know what to do when ICE comes knocking. Thanks, Donnie Dumbass! What a tool!

**********

Trump Campaign Trying To Rebrand Racist Attacks As Clever ‘Strategy’

But watching Fox News and rage-tweeting is not a good strategy when the president needs to win back college-educated voters, GOP consultants said. Why bother? It's no secret Trump prefers the poorly educated who's pea brains are easier to mold and accept his message of hate and division.

**********

Rep. Ted Lieu: Trump Is Implying Immigrants Are ‘Somehow Less Loyal To Our Country’

In a raw op-ed, the congressman reflected on how his service in the Air Force and Congress haven’t shielded him from racist remarks. Ahhh, but if you're a WHITE immigrant, you're VERY much loyal!

**********

Lindsey Graham Says Trump’s Not Racist, Just Narcissistic

“If you’re a Somali refugee who likes Trump, he’s not gonna say ‘Go back to Somalia,’” the senator argued. On the flipside, if you're a Norwegian refugee who hates Trump, he won't say, 'Go back to Norway' either.

**********

Kayleigh McEnany Gets A Brutal Fact-Check On Live TV: ‘How Dare You!’

President Donald Trump’s campaign spokesperson received a lesson about one of the most fundamental rights of every American.

[numberthirty]

**********

Kayleigh McEnany Gets A Brutal Fact-Check On Live TV: ‘How Dare You!’

President Donald Trump’s campaign spokesperson received a lesson about one of the most fundamental rights of every American.

That young woman does always come off like she is putting a tremendous effort into not forgetting the recipe for ice.

She makes Katrina Pierson look positively competent.

I almost wonder if it is strictly "Bit" to act in the usual Ben Carson/Rudy Giuliani "Smoke Bomb" capacity.

[shooshoomanjoe]

This 'America: love it or leave it' hypocrisy from the right is laughable. If they actually believed that then they would have left the country during the Clinton and Obama administrations.