All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Malvolio]

Hmm! That hadn’t occurred to me. Whatever that junk is, I would imagine it does provide sufficient defense against any sort of pathogen.

Is that why Trump is so sure that the virus will be contained by Easter Sunday?

[Jack Dracula]

Well, ****, nothing is inaccurate about the spot, Trump just doesn’t want it out there for fear his lemmings might see it, actually start to think, come to the realization they’ve been conned and dump his ass.

If his last three years in office haven't made that happen nothing will.

As far as I know, Trump had come in direct contact with at least three men who tested positive. That miserable orange bastard has the Devil's own luck.

"Oh, hey don't connect me with him!" said the Devil.

[Tazirai]

Except you can't help signal boosting leftist propaganda, like from Kyle Kulinski. When has TYT been wrong? The country won't progress by not learning from its mistakes. Will you learn from Sanders?

All of us have experience, but experience is worthless without acknowledging the facts. Tulsi's experience in the military certainly doesn't make her a good politician who we should take at her word, for example.

I thought you were a leftist. Sounding pretty Centrist to me.
TYT's Cenk was wrong about the Russia thing. It went nowhere. He was wrong about Trump dropping out, he was also wrong about entrenched corruption is in the Democratic party.
I learned that Sanders should have gone harder and negative and not called any of those people his friend.
I've learned to fight entrenched Establishment types even harder. Keep factual information, but fight even stronger and to keep supporting true progressive agendas.
That help?

[Tazirai]

Boris a Johnson has now tested positive for Covid-19

As the Queen would say...
OOPSIE. Seriously though I hope he gets well. He's reacting better than Trump.

[Kirby101]

I learned that Sanders should have gone harder and negative and not called any of those people his friend.

Yeah, that would have definitely gotten him the nomination from Democratic voters.

[Tazirai]

No one here is having "hopes and dreams" of Biden -- they are just pointing out that he won the most votes and is the likely nominee so it's self-defeating for the "left" to continue trying to bash him at every opportunity.

I likewise never said Sanders should drop out but I do think that he should since he has no chance of winning and could hurt the Democrats chances of winning the election and removing Trump from office, which should be a priority at this point in history especially given economic circumstances.

You keep making things up just to try to make "enemies" of people who should be your allies.

I've mentioned that repeatedly but since you keep doing it I'll just assume that's your goal.

That said -- if you have to keep lying about people having "hopes and dreams" of Biden then you really need to ask yourself why that is.

Where's the lie Aja? You ever hear of a thing called metaphor? Some people here are genuinely hopeful it's Biden.
Nobody is making things up. You just don't like the opposite opinion.
You also don't seem to like metaphor.

[Tazirai]

It's not even anything I'd argue regardless -- Sanders can do whatever the rules allow him to do.

The fact that his supporters feel that he is entitled to the nomination is what I take issue with.

Whether they like it or not, this is still a democracy where votes matter more than polls and individual opinions in politics.

My core argument still stands -- let me know when all of those young and progressive voters show up to put their candidates in office.

We feel he is entitled to the vote. Literally what I said. But I guess now that you say it. It's okay? Lol.

Young voters get demoralized easier when the party and candidates don't care about their issues above lip service. Then when they feel if a system is rigged. They stop giving a ****.
You make it sound so simplistic. It's not.

[Tazirai]

Yeah, that would have definitely gotten him the nomination from Democratic voters.

It was working. He crushed Nevada and was predicted to win the majority of states on Super Tuesday. But then the great Centrist coalition formed that Monday and most voters according to exit polls, made up their minds that day.

Going negative doesn't mean personal attacks. Bernie is too nice for that. He could have focused more heavily on Bidens record stop calling him his friend, run more aggressive ads. Defended his supporters from media attacks, not take the Bernie Bros bait. Etc.

Because after Bernie the next Progressives to challenge power will suddenly have Bros too.

[XPac]

Yeah, that would have definitely gotten him the nomination from Democratic voters.

It actually is possible that had Sanders gone negative sooner and harder, it potentially could have won him some support from Biden. Though it's doubtful it would have won him the nomination, give the lead Biden has.

[Jack Dracula]

For a variety of reasons, Trump can say and do things that other career politicians (even Republicans) can't get away with.

Certainly many politicians have had a few off script moments which they may or may not have paid a price for, but for Trump its a daily thing on Twitter and he seems largely bullet proof against any repurcissions from.

ANd like someone else said, I can sort of see that as being refreshing I suppose to see a politician with literally no filters. Not sure it's a good thing.... but it's different than we're used to a lot of the time.

A five-year-old also has no filter. I'd prefer my President to have more self-control than a five-year-old.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

There are a lot of folks, like Glenn Greenwald from the Intercept, saying that if Democrats are sincere about believing women, they should believe Tara Reade. I think that we do need to be careful about engaging in straw men like this. There are obviously conditions attached to that tagline. But let’s back up...

The reason why we have pushed so hard to believe women when they make allegations was because, for the longest time, it was difficult to be taken seriously and honestly. If it wasn’t said that she was lying to make it up or for attention, it descended into victim blaming. There was never true due process or actual attempts to listen to these folks.

Things have started to change for the better. Most of us have started to give women the benefit of the doubt. We indicate we want investigations and the like into what happened instead of just tossing aside their allegations. We have worked to better their chances to be heard and to, ultimately, get justice.

However, we can sway too much in the other direction. Just because we should take women’s allegations seriously doesn’t mean that it unconditional. Amber Heard accused Johnny Depp of domestic abuse. It has since become clear that she abused him by cutting off the tips of his fingers and the like. How many jobs did Depp lose because of these allegations? How many petitions to remove Depp from the Fantastic Beasts series were signed and dotted? We all thought that we were correct by presuming Heard was telling the truth.

My point is that we need to stay in the business of believing women and allowing them to be heard and for formal investigations to take place to seek justice. However, we ought to reserve judgment on the moral character of a person until such a time as those investigations are completed.

Kavanaugh had multiple credible accusations and people willing to comply with full investigations. That lends to their credibility. Will Reade be backed up by similar accounts? If the timeline is correct, Reade was assaulted while Biden was married. How many married men make moves on women and never attempt to do the same again after initial failure? Especially when they have the opportunity to have affairs when they are powerful and wealthy? Very few. If not, will Reade consent to a polygraph test like Ford did? Will Biden react positively to allowing for an investigation or will he try to hide it away?

These are questions that need to be answered, even separate from the information related to Russian meddling. To people being dismissive of this, it is really important to recognize how far many Russians went in 2016 to sew discord and get Trump elected. Outlets like The Intercept were critical for the Russian effort to succeed in 2016. We should be wary about the origin of this story (The Intercept) and the person making the allegations (a person who has stated her active support for Putin as a “liberal Democrat” and has supported two of Biden’s adversaries in the primary and has made a lot of pro-Sanders commentary on her Twitter in between begging for mainstream news to pick her up). This isn’t a clear-cut case. And people treating it that way and ignoring the nuance might just lead us into another Depp/Heard situation, where we are both forced to eat crow and face a set-back for the next woman who has legitimate claims of sexual assault.

I’m going to push back on this.

You brought up Kavanaugh. Exactly 3 people had allegations against him.

1. Was Ford. She is universally considered the most credible. She allegedly never brought it up until around 2011 when his name was floated around as a possible SC pick. She doesn’t have anybody at the time who backs her story up. She is unable to recall the date or location of the alleged attempted assault.

So for posterity the most credible person against Kavanaugh has no recollection of anything surrounding the incident besides it happened and only said he attempted to sexually assault her, and the first instance of her speaking about it was when he was already an accomplished judge who was primed to be in a position of power.

Reade is accusing Biden of an actual sexual assault that supposedly occurred and multiple people back up that she’s been trying to get the story out

2. Ramirez who the extent of that was that at a drunken party in full view party pulled his penis out in her face. She initially said she wasn’t sure who did it. And nobody was found who gave a first hand account. New York Times determines she could not be certain it was even Kavanaugh who did it.

3. Swetnick who never accused him of anything besides being at a party where other people allegedly raped her.

*there is also one other person who accused him of rape but she later said it a false report.

I have no interest in either defending Kavanaugh or smearing Biden. But I don’t think this is a great example of “well we took this seriously because we were prudent with multiple credible accusers”. No there was one accuser who was remotely credible, didn’t accuse him of nearly anything as serious as what Biden is accused of and can’t tell you when or where the allegation occurred.

It just feels selective.

Also plenty of married and/or successful men committed sexual assaults. Trump is someone who is accused of multiple while married. Weinstein wasn’t married but he was rich beyond belief and didn’t need to assault anyone. And Bill Cosby has been married since 1964 and we know how that went.

I don’t think the “oh well he was married and why would he need to anyways” is a great counter argument either. It’s just never been a real deterrent and it’s not about access to sex. It’s a power thing.

Anyways I’m not condemning Biden. But it’s beneficial to nobody to be selective on this because this isn’t a whole lot less credible then other instances we took seriously, and the Republicans won’t be giving him a pass so you might want to know if this will hurt him

[AnakinFlair]

Thomas Massie, not Ben Sasse.

Though it would be fun to introduce those two at a corona party, à la "Oprah? Uma. Uma? Oprah!"

My bad. Must have heard both names and then picked the wrong one

That sounds ominous. Could we be looking at yet another delay in getting that bill passed because some Republican fuckwad decides to cast a no vote for no other reason than shits and giggles?

Nope, Pelosi and McCarthy rammed it through. Some good news this week finally.

[aja_christopher]

We feel he is entitled to the vote. Literally what I said. But I guess now that you say it. It's okay? Lol.

Young voters get demoralized easier when the party and candidates don't care about their issues above lip service. Then when they feel if a system is rigged. They stop giving a ****.
You make it sound so simplistic. It's not.

It is simple -- if they want real change then they need to get up and vote instead of sitting around complaining on message forums.

And you need to stop attacking and misrepresenting others to try to make up for Sanders' poltical shortcomings.

If the man could actually win primaries then you wouldn't have to spend all day here fighting with people.

Your words aren't going to prove anything -- only votes can do that.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Nope, Pelosi and McCarthy rammed it through. Some good news this week finally.

I'm pleasantly surprised, and quite pleased.

[AnakinFlair]

Thomas Massie, not Ben Sasse.

Though it would be fun to introduce those two at a corona party, à la "Oprah? Uma. Uma? Oprah!"

That sounds ominous. Could we be looking at yet another delay in getting that bill passed because some Republican fuckwad decides to cast a no vote for no other reason than shits and giggles?

I'm pleasantly surprised, and quite pleased.

Mnuchin is saying that most American's should get their checks in about 3 weeks, which is sooner than some estimates I've been hearing, but worrisome for those who haven't been working and need that money to pay bills and buy food.