All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[JackDaw]

Anything Corbyn related is radioactive now, like it or not. I'm hoping Starmer is more central since the socialist left element of the party just cant get stuff done unfortunately. Its like the biden situation. He may not be what I want but its better then nothing and hopefully can be moved in the right direction by the socialist element towards policies that help everyone

It’s certainly telling that not that long ago a lot of papers were telling us that Labour’s voting structure was so biased in favour of Corbynites, that only some one from that wing of the party could win.

The fact that Starmer has shown that to be false, is I think an important plus for the Labour Party. (I would actually like to see a young dynamic left wing leader..but don’t think it’s healthy to have a voting structure that is inherently biased in favour of any wing of the party)

[Kevinroc]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donal...b6cbaf2828e7c0

Interview with University of California Davis history professor Eric Rauchway comparing Trump to Hoover.

[Mister Mets]

Are there no homophobes, transphobes, or racists among those groups?

I wouldn't be surprised to see that there were maybe less, but this kind of thing could get hairy pretty quickly.

This can get dicey. Should Democrats tell the 47 percent of African Americans polled who think that it is “always wrong” for two same-sex individuals to have sex, the 40 percent of Hispanics surveyed who say that “it is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family” or the third of registered Democrats who think that whether a person is a man or a woman is determined at birth that until these deplorables become more woke and develop views on social issues more in line with liberal activists, the Democratic party does not want their vote?

[Mister Mets]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donal...b6cbaf2828e7c0

Interview with University of California Davis history professor Eric Rauchway comparing Trump to Hoover.

Speaking of Hoover, there was a really good overview of how Hoover became one of the most respected people in the country in a review of a new book.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/1...review-hoover/

The guy had an amazing background, starting at humble beginnings.

His father dies when he is 6, his mother when he is 10. The orphaned Hoover and his two siblings are shuttled from relative to relative. He spends one summer on the Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma, living with an uncle who worked for the Department of Indian Affairs. Another year passes on a pig farm with his Uncle Allen. In 1885, he is more permanently adopted by his Uncle John, a doctor and businessman helping found a Quaker colony in Oregon. Hoover’s various guardians are dutiful but distant; they never abuse or neglect him, but treat him more as an extra pair of hands around the house than as someone to be loved and cherished. Hoover reciprocates in kind, doing what is expected of him but excelling neither in school nor anywhere else.

In his early teens, Hoover gets his first job, as an office boy at a local real estate company. He loves it! He has spent his whole life doing chores for no pay, and working for pay is so much better! He has spent his whole life sullenly following orders, and now he’s expected to be proactive and figure things out for himself! Hoover the mediocre student and all-around unexceptional kid does a complete 180 and accepts Capitalism as the father he never had.

[TheDarman]

So, while the primary is still underway in Wisconsin (the Democratic Governor insists that he can’t change the election date without support from the legislature, which is still Republican dominated and wants to have in-person voting on Election Day), a federal judge ruled to extend absentee voting and to waive the requirement for witness signatures in the circumstance of casting an absentee ballot.

Now, Republicans are asking the Supreme Court to shoot down this ruling, fearing the precedent that will be set should we still have public health concerns in November.

Can’t have more people voting, because then Republicans might lose! Here’s a dramatized explanation of why voter fraud isn’t a big enough issue to warrant such extreme measures and, rather, its intent is to disenfranchise legitimate voters rather than prevent voter fraud that we’ve seen countless examples of occurring on either side:

So did my Democratic mayor.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...ements-978553/

de Blasio has been so behind the curve on this stuff it’s insane. While we can rightfully point to Trump’s mishandling of the situation to explain how bad it got, de Blasio’s ineptitude made what was already a bad situation even worse. It’s shameful.

[jetengine]

It’s certainly telling that not that long ago a lot of papers were telling us that Labour’s voting structure was so biased in favour of Corbynites, that only some one from that wing of the party could win.

The fact that Starmer has shown that to be false, is I think an important plus for the Labour Party. (I would actually like to see a young dynamic left wing leader..but don’t think it’s healthy to have a voting structure that is inherently biased in favour of any wing of the party)

Yeah we may have to change our minds on Starmer soon. You know I said Corbyn was radioactive? Well the Media Machine just dug out that Starmer was directly involved with the Jimmy Saville case and is implied to have unintentionally let it get as bad as it did. If Corbyn was radioactive then Starmer may well become Radioactive AND on fire at the same time.

[JackDaw]

Yeah we may have to change our minds on Starmer soon. You know I said Corbyn was radioactive? Well the Media Machine just dug out that Starmer was directly involved with the Jimmy Saville case and is implied to have unintentionally let it get as bad as it did. If Corbyn was radioactive then Starmer may well become Radioactive AND on fire at the same time.

Blimey, I might have said “dynamite”...but your radioactive metaphor is better...if press made that stick, it would nuke his career.

I hope it’s not true (because there would obviously be some unfair collateral damage to Labour).

[PaulBullion]

Blimey, I might have said “dynamite”...but your radioactive metaphor is better...if press made that stick, it would nuke his career.

I hope it’s not true (because there would obviously be some unfair collateral damage to Labour).

I also see people accusing him of being "an out of touch millionaire with a private education" when his school didn't switch to private years after he started going there and his parents were a nurse and a toolmaker with 5 kids, so I am not believing everything I read about him online right now. Mud is being flung.

[PwrdOn]

Nope. This seems like a willful attempt to misunderstand my point. They failed minorities because they directly and explicitly excluded them. FDR’s Administration created the new neoliberal world order in which many European countries today are the result of. In this world order, governments were encouraged to have robust social safety nets and the like. Our country ultimately fought back against it, but only after fights were fought to include minorities in the project were Republicans successful at finally pushing back at programs they had long hated for other reasons.

The issue is that there still isn’t a lot of evidence that there is a solid coalition of people that are fiscally progressive AND socially progressive. People aren’t neatly packaged that way. Never in American History, frankly, has such a coalition actually existed. FDR had to create a coalition of Southern segregationists and Northern Democrats eager for new programs to get his ideas through. He threw minorities under the bus to get his programs. LBJ was eager to do the same until Martin Luther King Jr. pushed him. And then that lost the Southern Democrats and it basically prompted them to have to form a new coalition—one more focused on social justice.



Nah. But they were excluded. And, suddenly, when minorities were included, support for the programs, even among those who benefited from them, collapsed and Reagan was elected on a platform that promised to destroy them. Now, I think you have a ton of people that wonder what good it is to have these programs without the social reforms necessary to ensure they work for everyone first.



The same things Sanders said he’d do—such as criminal justice reform, a new Voting Rights Bill, and more oversight against local abuses of power. But Biden has shown something else that Sanders has failed to demonstrate. Biden has shown that he will listen. He tied himself to the first African American nominee in American History when it was still considered a gamble to do so. He has gone to communities and talked to African American leaders and asked what they need from him. He’s shown up to events like the anniversary of the March on Selma. Where was Sanders? Sanders was talking in platitudes about economic plans, which have always come at the expense of working for social justice for African Americans. He has not made efforts to reassure them that he can be the first president to “walk and chew bubble gum” with those two priorities. He consistently belittles the community into proscribing particular things he thinks it needs without ever asking what they actually need.

Biden was only pandering to black voters during the primary, now that he's likely to be the nominee you'll never hear about any of those issues again, because the idea of empowering black people is completely toxic to the working class white voters he's trying to swing in the general. And while I can envision a situation where people might turn down concrete economic proposals with tangible benefits in favor of dreams of a post-racial society, Biden wasn't even promising that, or much of anything really. His pitch was basically that he was Obama's sidekick and, while he wasn't going to do a damned thing to help black people, at least they wouldn't be disappointed when he doesn't deliver. Frankly, if there had been a candidate running on a radical social justice platform, they'd probably be even more marginalized by the party than Bernie was. No candidate would dare advocate for reparations, or stronger affirmative action policies, or amnesty for undocumented immigrants, or anything that upsets the apple cart even one bit. What moderates are basically pitching now is effectively that conservatives are too strong right now to take on directly, and that we should all just bide our time and wait for demographic changes to make these policies more palatable to the electorate at some undefined later date, which as it turns out, is exactly what they've been saying since the beginning.

[PaulBullion]

Biden was only pandering to black voters during the primary, now that he's likely to be the nominee you'll never hear about any of those issues again, because the idea of empowering black people is completely toxic to the working class white voters he's trying to swing in the general. And while I can envision a situation where people might turn down concrete economic proposals with tangible benefits in favor of dreams of a post-racial society, Biden wasn't even promising that, or much of anything really. His pitch was basically that he was Obama's sidekick and, while he wasn't going to do a damned thing to help black people, at least they wouldn't be disappointed when he doesn't deliver. Frankly, if there had been a candidate running on a radical social justice platform, they'd probably be even more marginalized by the party than Bernie was. No candidate would dare advocate for reparations, or stronger affirmative action policies, or amnesty for undocumented immigrants, or anything that upsets the apple cart even one bit. What moderates are basically pitching now is effectively that conservatives are too strong right now to take on directly, and that we should all just bide our time and wait for demographic changes to make these policies more palatable to the electorate at some undefined later date, which as it turns out, is exactly what they've been saying since the beginning.

You are describing the Joe Biden in your head, not the real Joe Biden. Who poisoned your opinion of him so much?

[Kirby101]

Bernie supporters are spending way more time these days attacking Biden than Trump. Thereby helping Trump. I hope when Biden finally secures the nomination and Bernie endorses him, they will cut it out. But I don't count on it.

[PwrdOn]

Bernie supporters are spending way more time these days attacking Biden than Trump. Thereby helping Trump. I hope when Biden finally secures the nomination and Bernie endorses him, they will cut it out. But I don't count on it.

Whatever, just don't blame us when you lose again.

[Malvolio]

Bernie supporters talk a lot about how economic inequality is the biggest issue holding back minorities. But I ask, what would you do about the Black businessman in a three piece suit who can't catch a cab in a big city? Or the brown skinned small businessman who's often yelled at to "Speak English!" Or the transgender person who's persecuted for using the "wrong" bathroom? The economy is a big part of it, but there are other significant issues that need to be addressed, as well.

[Malvolio]

Coronavirus Is Upending Many Of The World’s Biggest Religious Holidays

Nearly every major religion has an important holiday in April — which means it will be a month of surreal new changes for American believers.

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As Fauci Pleads For Americans To Keep Distance, Trump Talks Of Opening Country

Despite saying that the worst was yet to come, President Trump talked of opening things back up: “We don’t want to be doing this for months and months.” Rather TRUMP doesn't want to be doing this for months and months. He knows the economy is the only thing keeping his poll numbers from flatlining. As for the American people? He could care less.

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‘It Was Terrible What He Did’: Trump Rips Navy Captain Who Sounded Alarm On His Sick Sailors

“This isn’t a class on literature. This is a captain of a massive ship that’s nuclear-powered. He shouldn’t be talking that way in a letter,” Trump said of Brett Crozier. Let me see if I've got this right, in Trump's warped mind, a ship commander protecting his crew is bad, but a SEAL who committed war atrocities is good. Got it.

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Jared Kushner’s COVID-19 Brainstorms Stole Time From Scientists Racing The Clock: Report

The former real estate developer threw half-formed ideas at health experts they didn’t have time to deal with, The Washington Post reports.

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As U.S. Food Lines Grow, Chef Jose Andres Warns The ‘Worst Is Yet To Come’

Latest consequence of grim COVID-19 pandemic in America: Hunger

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Governors Are Going To Extraordinary Measures In Hunt For Medical Supplies

They’re bidding against each other and the federal government for supplies Americans desperately need. Then sometimes the orders just don’t show up.

None of us WANT to be doing this for months and months. But we understand that it's something that we need to do, like laundry. Of course, I'll bet Trump has never once done his own laundry.

"He shouldn't be talking that way in a letter," Trump says. Maybe he should have tweeted it. Would that have been better?

[TheDarman]

Bernie supporters talk a lot about how economic inequality is the biggest issue holding back minorities. But I ask, what would you do about the Black businessman in a three piece suit who can't catch a cab in a big city? Or the brown skinned small businessman who's often yelled at to "Speak English!" Or the transgender person who's persecuted for using the "wrong" bathroom? The economy is a big part of it, but there are other significant issues that need to be addressed, as well.

And there are a lot of issues with economic mobility that are more specifically a problem for black and brown folks than white folks. To paint with a broad brush and insist “class is all that matters” is to insist that dynamics in American society that have even been fundamental in our inception don’t really exist. It is a type of white-washing that occurs to our society so that the focus can be shifted to economic programs. This kind of erasure has been popularized by the FDR wing of the party for a long time. The sooner we dispel this myth, the sooner we get on a closer page on what to do.

The truth is that progressive economic programs that include minorities lose popularity. How do you hope to solve these problems you identified without excluding those people to get these programs you desperately want or by allowing them to fail as a result of robust pushback among a population of folks who dislike the idea of black and brown folks sharing in this elevation? Passing them and including them later is simply not an option.