All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Malvolio]

It all stems back to stigmatizing sex thanks to the religious fundamentalism that white conservatives LIKE, as opposed to the kind that they pretend to hate because its brown people doing it under the 'wrong' God's name. And it's ridiculous to make promises to appear at a venue you KNEW had a dancer's pole, to campaign on and take in money from locals based on an appearance at that specific venue, only to then completely change course at the last possible minute for no reason other than to appease the prudery and fundamentalist nonsense that is damaging not just this country, but every country falling to right wing religious fundamentalist repression.

Without a stripper on it, a pole is just a pole. If it is 'cheap, sleazy, or unprofessional' to be photographed near a pole with no one on it, that's on the viewer, not reality. People have a right to be upset at such a blatant bait and switch.

But hey...the club totally asked for this. I mean, did you SEE how they were dressed...?

I agree. It's similar to the bakeries that are perfectly willing to take money from gay couples when they come in to buy cupcakes or scones, but when they ask for a wedding cake, for the most important day of their lives, these bakers, whom the gay couple have chatted with and almost consider friends, turn their backs on them. So basically, in both cases, they'll be accepting of the homosexual community until they become an inconvenience. Then, they're thrown under the bus.

[Astral Disaster]

Republican Senator On Trump Soliciting Foreign Interference: Humans ‘Make Mistakes’

“Things happen,” Richard Shelby of Alabama said, referring to the president’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden. That is easily THE wackiest defense of Trump yet.

Wouldn't it be something if the GOP were consistent in their actions and applied the same logic to people charged with minor drug infractions and the like, everyone makes mistakes y'know. A depravedly hypocritical lot from top to bottom.

[Tami]

Here's where things get really wild: The president's team argues that a CONVICTION could be "unconstituional" because of the way the House's articles are written.

Twitter Link

This raises the prospect that even if two-thirds of the Senate votes to convict Trump, he simply wouldn't accept the vote and seek to fight it.

Twitter Link

Trump lawyers seek quick rejection of Democrats' impeachment case

President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday offered a sweeping condemnation of the articles of impeachment against him, contending they’re a legally defective “affront to the Constitution and to our democratic institutions” but offering no substantive rebuttal to the charge that the president solicited Ukraine’s interference in the fast-approaching 2020 election.

The 171-page brief, compiled by a team of Trump’s White House and personal attorneys and filed to the Senate on the eve of the president’s trial, suggests Democrats ran a “rigged” impeachment investigation that led to the House’s adoption of the two charges against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Their arguments largely ignored the growing body of evidence that Democrats have presented indicating Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, while withholding desperately needed military aid to the war-torn nation.

Instead, the Trump legal team, led by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and the president's personal attorney Jay Sekulow, focused on broad, constitutionally questionable claims that the House’s process invalidates the articles of impeachment outright. Their most prominent argument is that the House did not allege a violation of any specific statute.

-----------------

U.S. House of Representatives Files Replication to President’s Answer to the Articles of Impeachment

[Mister Mets]

It's not so much dirty as it is pointless and counterproductive. There's a reason VPs are almost always empty suits with no real power or influence, because no sane leader would want a #2 who would backstab you to take the top spot for herself. That's why Obama picked Biden as his running mate and not Clinton. You definitely don't want the person who would benefit most from you having an unfortunate accident in a position of actual power like Secretary of State where she can build up her own network of supporters within the administration who'd prefer to see her in charge.

Vice Presidents have often been ambitious people who see themselves as potential presidential contenders in their own right.

Mike Pence is probably going to run for President at some point in the future.
If Hillary Clinton had won the electoral college in 2016, Tim Kaine would probably run for President.
If Mitt Romney had won in 2012, Paul Ryan would probably run for President at some point in the future. And he still may.
John Edwards obviously wanted to run for President after being on the ticket with Kerry.
Al Gore ran for President after two terms as Bill Clinton's Vice President.
George HW Bush ran for President after two terms as Reagan's Vice President.

Cheney and Biden were rare exceptions. In both cases, inexperienced relative novices picked running mates with more experience. Cheney was deeply unpopular, and had heart problems so severe he would be in need of a transplant, which took him out of the running. Biden's still running, one cycle after the one in which it seemed he would be too old for the office, which does show the advantages of being Veep.

Aside from his duties as Vice President, Biden does appear to have been the equivalent of a senior adviser in the Obama administration.

It all stems back to stigmatizing sex thanks to the religious fundamentalism that white conservatives LIKE, as opposed to the kind that they pretend to hate because its brown people doing it under the 'wrong' God's name. And it's ridiculous to make promises to appear at a venue you KNEW had a dancer's pole, to campaign on and take in money from locals based on an appearance at that specific venue, only to then completely change course at the last possible minute for no reason other than to appease the prudery and fundamentalist nonsense that is damaging not just this country, but every country falling to right wing religious fundamentalist repression.

Without a stripper on it, a pole is just a pole. If it is 'cheap, sleazy, or unprofessional' to be photographed near a pole with no one on it, that's on the viewer, not reality. People have a right to be upset at such a blatant bait and switch.

But hey...the club totally asked for this. I mean, did you SEE how they were dressed...?

The rape comparison at the end is really inappropriate.

A decision to cancel a fundraiser is not the equivalent of sexual assault.

I do still wonder, in the context of the Democratic presidential primary, which candidate is better at pushing against the prudishness of middle America?

[zinderel]

The rape comparison at the end is really inappropriate.

A decision to cancel a fundraiser is not the equivalent of sexual assault.

I do still wonder, in the context of the Democratic presidential primary, which candidate is better at pushing against the prudishness of middle America?

I wasn't referencing rape, though I understand how it could be seen as such by someone obsessed with sex. I was referring to the common 'excuse' men give for harassing women.

"If she didnt wanna get whistled at, why'd she wear such tight pants?!"
Or
"Hey, if she didnt wear such a short skirt, maybe people wouldn't compliment her ass! It's not my fault, its hers!"
Or
"Did you see how perky them **** were!? She WANTS attention, so I'm just giving her what she's after! What's the problem??"

The comparison is apt because of the assumptions made by yourself and others that 'dancers pole = sleazy' just because sex-obsessed prudes say so. Yes, some rapists have used that as an excuse when trying to justify why they raped, but it all stems back to the same conflicted mindset that American men seem so enamored with that 'people who have non-vanilla and/or out of wedlock sex are dirty and bad', but also 'I need and deserve sex from any woman I am attracted to whenever I feel the urge or I have no self worth'. The same mindset that calls a straight man with multiple sex partners a 'stud' while a woman with multiple partners is a 'slut' and a gay man is 'perverse'. We still live in a world where a woman's genitals can be on display in a PG-13 movie, but a flaccid dick in a theatrical release still gets a hard R or an X if it's on screen 'too long'. Where sex in a movie raises the rating faster than excessive blood, guts, explosions, decapitations...

We live in a world where horrific violence is fine in a 'family' film, but sex is seen as 'inappropriate' and its bullshit. The vast majority of us will experience FAR more sex than we do violence, so why shouldn't the weighting of what is 'bad' be reversed? Because America was founded on violence and religious fundamentalism. Two of the three pillars (the third being abject greed) of every 'conservative' movement...

Anyway, a pole is literally just a pole unless a dancer is ON it. And to assume that Dark Lady is a 'sleazy' place because it has a pole is very much akin to assuming a woman is easy because her skirt is what YOU deem to be 'too short' or 'provacative'. Like most gayclubs/bars, yes, Dark Lady has pole dancers. Because gay men arent ashamed of sexuality, in general, and gay clubs grew out of out community's embrace of in-your-face sexuality as a counter to the hypocritical prudery that lay at the root of anti-queer sentiment. But to call the place a 'strip club' or 'sleazy' because of the presence of a dancers pole is both reductive as hell and insulting to boot. A gay club with dancers poles is NOT the same as a straight strip joint, despite what you may think. The dancers at a place like The Dark Lady are 'window dressing' for the rest of what the club offers, as opposed to being the entire point of the place, like you would see at, say...Jiggles Gentlemen's Club...

And it still does nothing to explain why they agreed to hold an event at, and raise money off of their appearance at, a 'sleazy strip club' that they knew had a dancers pole only to cancel it at the last minute to switch from a well-regarded local queer venue to a more 'hetero-friendly' (read: BORING) venue.

Seriously. Go check Yelp and read some reviews of the place. The majority of reviews portray it as a well-loved local club that offers a variety of things, INCLUDING pole dancing. The negative reviews appear to be primarily from straight girls miffed that they weren't made welcome at a gay bar...

The HORROR...

As to 'which candidate is better about prudishness'? No idea. Most of them are old, wealthy, white people steeped in and benefitting from the conflicted prudery of this country for the better part of a century, so prolly none of them are very good about it. But literally any of them will be better about it that your party's deeply hypocritical 'do as we say, not as we do' style of leadership, even boring ol' Mayor Pete, so...

[jetengine]

Its not prudish Americans dude. Even in europe its seen as low brow, sleazy and trashy. Would the signing of the Declaration of Independence seem as momentous if it was in a sex club ? Or a McDonalds?

And irrespective of how they fluff it, if in your in a club and you see a pole people will naturally go "Strip club"

[BeastieRunner]

The Bill of Rights proudly brought to you by MCcDonalds.

[aja_christopher]

I'd probably trust politicians more if they were honest enough to own up to their vices -- so long as they weren't illegal.

Obama smoking when the press wasn't around seemed dishonest -- it would have been more beneficial if he was straightforward about his efforts to quit.



Edit: I stand corrected.

[zinderel]

Its not prudish Americans dude. Even in europe its seen as low brow, sleazy and trashy. Would the signing of the Declaration of Independence seem as momentous if it was in a sex club ? Or a McDonalds?

And irrespective of how they fluff it, if in your in a club and you see a pole people will naturally go "Strip club"

Calling it a 'sex club' just proves my point. Thank you. The very prudishness we are all steeped in, on display.

A sex club is a place you go to participate in, or simply observe sex acts. Despite all the pearl-clutching and 'Won't SOMEONE think of the CHILDREN?!?!?!'-ing to the contrary, ACTUAL sex clubs are quite rare in comparison to 'strip clubs', and even more rare in comparison to 'bars with pole dancers'. A club with a dancers pole is not a 'sex club', no matter your perceptions or prejudices to the contrary. Nor is it a 'strip club' just because the ridiculously regressive and sex-negative nonsense we have been fed all our lives by hypocritical prudes says it is. The Dark Lady is a club where sexuality is on display, yes (like, oh...every club aimed at young, sexually active people...?), with pole dancers as one part of the entertainment it provides. Pole dancers are not the sole draw, thus it is not a 'strip club' like Jiggles, any more than it is a 'sex club' like the NYC Bath House. The general public not understanding the distinction doesnt make the distinction invalid. Like evolution or climate change, reality is reality, whether John Q. Public accepts it or not.

And again: the campaign knew there was a pole at the venue, and went ahead and promised to hold an event there, likely raised funds off of their promised appearance there, all even after learning that the place would not remove part of it's decor, and then 'suddenly' changed to a more 'rewpectible', hetero-friendly establishment at the last minute, literally telling people at the door that the venue had changed. It shows either a coldly calculating manipulation of the LGBTQ community by one of our own, or it shows the candidate to be a coward who tucked tail and ran instead of doing the right thing and challenging misperceptions and prejudices. THAT is where the focus should be. Not on mislabeling and denigrating the club for 'what it was wearing'.

Also, again: There were likely not going to be pole dancers performing at a fundraiser for the most boring gay man alive and his donors. So the objection is utterly moot, EXCEPT as it relates to the inherently messed up view of sex and sexuality America has.

I'd probably trust politicians more if they were honest enough to own up to their vices -- so long as they weren't illegal.

This. Most people have a kink. Kinks are normal. Sex is normal, as long as it's mutually consensual of course. If America wasn't so messed up and hypocritical about sexuality, Bill Clinton could have just said, "Yeah, I had an affair. It was consensual on both our parts, my wife and I are working through it. How is this your business...?" And the whole mess would have been done. Of course, without the messed up and hypocritical nonsense about sexuality that America is steeped in TO BEGIN WITH, the whole fooferah wouldn't have mattered at all, and Kenneth Starr wouldn't have been able to produce his 700 page spank manual, so...

[Tami]

The day before the Senate impeachment trial against Trump begins, the Bernie Sanders campaign circulates this op-ed attack on Joe Biden

Twitter Link



IfSanders and his supporters did similar things to Clinton in 2016, giving Trump more false ammo to use against her. I hope this doesn't become a pattern.

[Mister Mets]

I wasn't referencing rape, though I understand how it could be seen as such by someone obsessed with sex. I was referring to the common 'excuse' men give for harassing women.

"If she didnt wanna get whistled at, why'd she wear such tight pants?!"
Or
"Hey, if she didnt wear such a short skirt, maybe people wouldn't compliment her ass! It's not my fault, its hers!"
Or
"Did you see how perky them **** were!? She WANTS attention, so I'm just giving her what she's after! What's the problem??"

The comparison is apt because of the assumptions made by yourself and others that 'dancers pole = sleazy' just because sex-obsessed prudes say so. Yes, some rapists have used that as an excuse when trying to justify why they raped, but it all stems back to the same conflicted mindset that American men seem so enamored with that 'people who have non-vanilla and/or out of wedlock sex are dirty and bad', but also 'I need and deserve sex from any woman I am attracted to whenever I feel the urge or I have no self worth'. The same mindset that calls a straight man with multiple sex partners a 'stud' while a woman with multiple partners is a 'slut' and a gay man is 'perverse'. We still live in a world where a woman's genitals can be on display in a PG-13 movie, but a flaccid dick in a theatrical release still gets a hard R or an X if it's on screen 'too long'. Where sex in a movie raises the rating faster than excessive blood, guts, explosions, decapitations...

We live in a world where horrific violence is fine in a 'family' film, but sex is seen as 'inappropriate' and its bullshit. The vast majority of us will experience FAR more sex than we do violence, so why shouldn't the weighting of what is 'bad' be reversed? Because America was founded on violence and religious fundamentalism. Two of the three pillars (the third being abject greed) of every 'conservative' movement...

Anyway, a pole is literally just a pole unless a dancer is ON it. And to assume that Dark Lady is a 'sleazy' place because it has a pole is very much akin to assuming a woman is easy because her skirt is what YOU deem to be 'too short' or 'provacative'. Like most gayclubs/bars, yes, Dark Lady has pole dancers. Because gay men arent ashamed of sexuality, in general, and gay clubs grew out of out community's embrace of in-your-face sexuality as a counter to the hypocritical prudery that lay at the root of anti-queer sentiment. But to call the place a 'strip club' or 'sleazy' because of the presence of a dancers pole is both reductive as hell and insulting to boot. A gay club with dancers poles is NOT the same as a straight strip joint, despite what you may think. The dancers at a place like The Dark Lady are 'window dressing' for the rest of what the club offers, as opposed to being the entire point of the place, like you would see at, say...Jiggles Gentlemen's Club...

And it still does nothing to explain why they agreed to hold an event at, and raise money off of their appearance at, a 'sleazy strip club' that they knew had a dancers pole only to cancel it at the last minute to switch from a well-regarded local queer venue to a more 'hetero-friendly' (read: BORING) venue.

Seriously. Go check Yelp and read some reviews of the place. The majority of reviews portray it as a well-loved local club that offers a variety of things, INCLUDING pole dancing. The negative reviews appear to be primarily from straight girls miffed that they weren't made welcome at a gay bar...

The HORROR...

As to 'which candidate is better about prudishness'? No idea. Most of them are old, wealthy, white people steeped in and benefitting from the conflicted prudery of this country for the better part of a century, so prolly none of them are very good about it. But literally any of them will be better about it that your party's deeply hypocritical 'do as we say, not as we do' style of leadership, even boring ol' Mayor Pete, so...

The phrasing of they "asked for this. I mean, did you SEE how they were dressed...?" is usually meant to refer to or imply sexual assault, or at the very least, sexual harassment. Has anyone seen it used in a different context?

I'll note I'd back Buttigieg (and a few of the Democrats) over Trump, and have not used the word 'sleazy' (which you quoted four times) in this discussion.

[Mister Mets]

Jonathan Chait thinks there's an American historical figure similar to Trump: Joe McCarthy.

McCarthy began his career calling himself a supporter of the New Deal, but he was really more of a political opportunist. His first opportunity to run for statewide office required the support of Wisconsin’s conservative, anti–New Deal Republicans, and McCarthy quickly molded himself to his new constituency. McCarthy was hardly the first Republican to smear his opponent as a communist. What made him so terrifyingly successful was his political style.

McCarthy was a serial liar, often frustrating his staffers by departing from whatever text they had prepared for him. “If we give this to the senator … he will blow it up to proportions which cannot be supported,” fretted one staffer. And while erratic and uncontrollable, McCarthy managed to commandeer hyperbolic press coverage, simply because the very fact of his sinister accusations was objectively newsworthy and attracted attention from readers. Reporters were well aware that McCarthy was manipulating them, and they brooded over his ability to turn their principles of journalistic objectivity against them. One paper experimented with banning all McCarthy stories from the front page. Much like the Huffington Post’s short******d policy of exiling Trump coverage to the entertainment section, it did not take.

When the press subjected McCarthy’s lies to scrutiny, he would lash out viciously, often likening the papers in question to the Daily Worker, the communist party organ. These assaults were calculated to train his supporters to distrust any claim not made by McCarthy himself. In private, McCarthy often cozied up to the reporters he savaged in public. “If you show a newspaper as unfriendly and having a reason for being antagonistic, you can take a lot of the sting out of what it says about you,” he confessed privately to a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal, “I think you can convince a lot of people that they can’t believe what they read in the Journal.”

McCarthy’s commitment to bury any critic with counteraccusations intimidated many of his critics into silence. “I don’t answer charges; I make them,” he liked to say, and his counterpunching could force anybody who stood up to him to defend whatever weak point McCarthy could locate.

Many of the stylistic similarities between McCarthy and Donald Trump can be attributed to their shared link with Roy Cohn, who served as the closest adviser to both men in their formative years. But what is perhaps more illuminating than their shared methods is the eerily familiar response McCarthy provoked across the political spectrum.

McCarthy’s crude populism repelled educated voters in both parties, making him the subject of private disdain and ridicule among elites in both parties. But it gave him an allure to the (white) working class voters, some of them Democrats, that fellow Republicans could not match. The core of his support was widely seen as impervious to reason or any amount of proof that he was lying. “Even if it were known that McCarthy had killed five innocent children,” pollster George Gallup remarked privately, “they would probably still go along with him,” anticipating Trump’s famous “5th Avenue” boast.

McCarthy also benefited from a backlash that observers of the Trump era will recognize instantly. McCarthy’s demagoguery terrified his opponents, many of whom targeted him with smears of their own. Liberals incessantly compared him with Adolf Hitler. Many conservatives who blanched at McCarthy’s tactics nonetheless found themselves more agitated by the excesses of his critics. “They charged that the righteous people who condemned his name-calling were the same people who called him a Nazi, a jackal and a thug …” recounts David Oshinsky in his 1983 biography, “A Conspiracy So Immense” (from which many of the details in this article are taken), “the people who yelled loudest at his ‘dirty’ tactics were the same people who spread rumors about his alleged homosexuality and hired spies to infiltrate his office.” Anti-anti-McCarthyism became a powerful glue for the right.

Jake Tapper's been making this comparison, and it seems pretty apt. It works better than Hitler, Mussolini and Nixon at least.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/tapper-c...orgiving-mood/

https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2018/0...-parallels.cnn

[GindyPosts]

The Bill of Rights proudly brought to you by MCcDonalds.

And is in the Wawa National Archives, located near the Dunkin' Donuts White House.

[Malvolio]

The phrasing of they "asked for this. I mean, did you SEE how they were dressed...?" is usually meant to refer to or imply sexual assault, or at the very least, sexual harassment. Has anyone seen it used in a different context?

I'll note I'd back Buttigieg (and a few of the Democrats) over Trump, and have not used the word 'sleazy' (which you quoted four times) in this discussion.

It's called sarcasm, Mets. Zinderel was trying to lighten the mood. I guess that didn't work for you.

[aja_christopher]

"As deficits soar, Trump asks, ‘Who the hell cares about the budget?’"

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...out-the-budget

"Democratic candidates link arms at MLK march; Sanders and Warren shake hands"

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation...king-day-march