All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[jetengine]

Its good and bad.

Setting up the union so they can get $15 long term is good, but not paying them the same initially looks shitty.

[Mister Mets]

Based on RealClearPolitics, as of today, Trump is behind Biden in Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, Minnesota, and Ohio. The only swing state that Trump would take would be Iowa. With a victory in those other states, Biden would win the electoral college, assuming nothing else changes (Colorado, California, and New York are pretty safe blue bets, just like Georgia and Texas are safe red bets), 351-186.

Obviously, things can change a lot between now and November. But there are good reasons to believe Trump’s position could deteriorate. For one thing, we haven’t begun to litigate how terrible a job that Trump has done handling this crisis. We also aren’t on the other side of this crisis yet, which will show us an economy weaker than it was before the shutdown. And, through no fault of Trump’s own (on this front only—the causes are still on him), things are unlikely to improve a whole lot until after a vaccine has been developed. Trump’s best argument in his favor was the strength of the economy and now it has been ravaged by a public health crisis that he wasn’t prepared for.

Things can go south for Biden too. However, Joe Biden doesn’t have an email server issue that can result in new investigations into the problem. Indeed, the Tara Reade thing seems pretty weak and nothing that people haven’t already set aside for worse when it comes to Trump. There can be surprises, to be sure, but it seems like Biden’s issues have long been litigated.

My main point was that Biden would have to flip more than one or two states to win.

I do agree that Biden is favored to win, because he has an excellent chance of flipping enough states that matter.

One important factor for Biden is that he is the ultimate known quantity. It's going to be harder to convince voters to change their mind about him.

[Kirby101]

My main point was that Biden would have to flip more than one or two states to win.

I do agree that Biden is favored to win, because he has an excellent chance of flipping enough states that matter.

One important factor for Biden is that he is the ultimate known quantity. It's going to be harder to convince voters to change their mind about him.

After knowing Hillary for 25 years, some swing voters changed their mind in the last week because of the Comey debacle. I don't trust the media to not allow the GOP to frame the debate, as they usually do. We will see another Benghazi!! or Butheremails long before this is over.

[PaulBullion]

A pastor here in Philly had vowed to hold Easter services as of yesterday, but changed his mind early this morning. At least he had a legitimate reason since he serves a poor, mostly black neighborhood where not all of his congregation have internet access to watch services online. That, I understand, but it still wasn't good enough of a reason to go against the dictates of social distancing. I'm glad that pastor came around to realizing the best course of action was to keep his church closed.

Reminds me of gospel singer Bebe Winans, who was traveling from New York to Detroit and all over the US, posting clips on social media going "I'm not afraid of getting sick, I have the Lord on my side" and then he got sick and now he's like "MAN I SHOULD HAVE USED SOME COMMON SENSE!!"

[TheDarman]

The New York Times did a deep dive into the Tara Reade accusation.

They did find support from a friend who claims to have been told back in 1993 about Biden’s behavior and another whom Reade told in 2008 about this misconduct. They were personally unable to get in touch with her brother.

It also appears that Reade’s story about not overseeing interns was correct as the report confirms she suddenly stopped doing that in April.

However, the good news for Reade ends there.

The report lays out that no documentation of any of her complaints were ever found.

Just as much as those close to Reade vouch for Biden, those close to Biden vouch for him and explain the atmosphere totally different.

In the criminal compliant that Reade filed, she never mentioned Biden by name (though clarifying publicly that it was about him). Lying on a police report is a jailable offense, meanwhile.

While investigating this story for corroboration, the Times found no other stories of sexual assault by Biden.

As well as all of this, they have noted that Reade made supportive comments about Biden as recently as 2017, approximately 24 years after the alleged assault and many years after taking the alleged assault seriously enough to tell two friends about it.

She also claims that she can’t remember the date, time, or place. Itself, it isn’t enough to establish that she is lying, but it makes it incredibly difficult to match schedules or prove/disprove it happened.

On top of all that, the Times reports that she did talk to a number of lawyers that TimesUp recommenced (as they are not a litigation organization) and all of them refused to take her case. There was corroboration from the lawyers, but they were not able to disclose the reasons why.

Additionally, even when she came forward about not “sexual” allegations against Biden, the exchange between her and Flores never hinted at more to the story.

There are a few things that still don’t add up that the Times doesn’t mention in its report.

We know that staffers in 1993 were not permitted to wear skirts without leg coverings. That isn’t to say “she was asking for it”. Obviously, even if she wasn’t wearing them, it wouldn’t be an excuse for this crime. But it does mean that I find it unlikely that she would have been allowed to do that.

Additionally, it doesn’t appear that Senate documentation of any incident of harassment or the like ever existed, because as recently as 2008, Biden was thoroughly vetted by Obama’s campaign as a running mate. These kinds of documentation are often the things that come up earliest when running a background check.

Throughout the years, Reade has claimed her move out of D.C. was for a number of other reasons than an assault that had her blacklisted.

It also seems sketchy that Biden would have done this in a semi-private room in an atmosphere of extreme caution in the early ‘90s.

Here is the full report:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/u...complaint.html

[Jack Dracula]

After knowing Hillary for 25 years, some swing voters changed their mind in the last week because of the Comey debacle. I don't trust the media to not allow the GOP to frame the debate, as they usually do. We will see another Benghazi!! or Butheremails long before this is over.

I'd bet money on it. The Ukraine scandal is proof of their intent.

[Malvolio]

Johnson was far from the only President to fight a needless war. But his achievements in Civil Rights and the Great Society make him a better than average President. Jackson and Nixon, yeah,awful.

People often forget about how bad Warren Harding was, but it was his policies, which Coolidge and Hoover continued, that led directly to the Great Depression.

Oh, and then there's Harding's affairs which may have led to his death.

http://https://www.mentalfloss.com/a...sterious-death

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

After knowing Hillary for 25 years, some swing voters changed their mind in the last week because of the Comey debacle. I don't trust the media to not allow the GOP to frame the debate, as they usually do. We will see another Benghazi!! or Butheremails long before this is over.

The thing is you have to ask yourself “why were so many so easily swayed by Comey and Hillary’s supposed scandals and not by Trump’s summer long drop of controversies”?

Psychologically people are more receptive to believing information that goes along with the narratives they already think in their heads or want to believe anyways. I doubt that anyone who switched off Hillary from that was someone that was a locked in hardcore Hillary supporter. It was probably more people who were saying things like “I’m holding me nose”, “I don’t like her but she might be the lesser of two evils”. People who already didn’t like her but were struggling to justify not voting for her and helping Trump who was fumbling all summer. That news came out and all of a sudden those people had their excuse to say “see she’s everything I said, I can’t do it” and there wasn’t enough time for Trump to screw up again and go in the other direction.

I think if Hillary was a beloved candidate to begin with and there wasn’t a prevailing narrative that she was part of some corrupt and calculating political machine, you wouldn’t have swayed voters for that. It would have been like Trump where his supporters were more likely to say it was fake news or a smear.

So yes the Comey letter changed things. However it only had that impact because people felt a certain way about her and were receptive to information to justify not supporting her.

You can see the same thing with the Biden situation with Tara Reade. People who like Biden and were always in on him are more willing to dismiss it as a political stunt (many of the same people who were more than willing to believe similar things about Kavanaugh when there were just as many gaps in the stories of his accusers) and the people who are pushing it to be taken seriously, never really liked Biden in the first place.

New information can change action, but only in people that already had cemented a belief about the subject that was less malleable over all. You see it all the time in how people process new information. It takes a very disciplined person to remove all their biases every time they encounter new information

[GindyPosts]

Followed the whitmer one, and it's as you'd expect. People are angry at her because of the stay in place orders. Apparently they want to go play golf, take their boast out on the water, travel to their cabins in the woods, and who knows what else. They are calling her a socialist and a communist.

Yeah, that's a deep, dank sewer full of suicidal rats.

Actual sewer rats or the ones Bad News Brown lugged around during the summer of 1990 on WWF programming?

Either way, we're talking nasty.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

People often forget about how bad Warren Harding was, but it was his policies, which Coolidge and Hoover continued, that led directly to the Great Depression.

Oh, and then there's Harding's affairs which may have led to his death.

http://https://www.mentalfloss.com/a...sterious-death

Ehhh I think average person forgets about Harding. But actual historians and political scientists usually consistently peg him as one of the worst Presudents. Also there’s a lot of paralleles between him and a certain someone else who is running today in so far as what they campaigned on. Warren’s campaign slogan was “A Return to Normalcy”. That was the election of 1920. Exactly 100 years ago from the current one.

[GindyPosts]

Anti-Muslim Propaganda Is Seeping Into Online Discourse About The Coronavirus

Far-right groups and websites across the globe have taken advantage of people’s fears and vulnerabilities in order to push disinformation to vilify Muslims.

If only there was a group that was Chinese AND Muslim, that already faces internal persecution in their own country for practicing their own religion and the international scene ignores them due to the faith they happen to believe in, then these folks could have the scapegoat of their dreams. Hmm...

[Kirby101]

Comparing Harding to Biden is a course in pretzel logic. Are you also going to compare Wilson to Trump to make it fit this ridiculous scenario.

[GindyPosts]

Ehhh I think average person forgets about Harding. But actual historians and political scientists usually consistently peg him as one of the worst Presudents. Also there’s a lot of paralleles between him and a certain someone else who is running today in so far as what they campaigned on. Warren’s campaign slogan was “A Return to Normalcy”. That was the election of 1920. Exactly 100 years ago from the current one.

Oh, I certainly don't. Warren G. Harding got elected due to Americans wanting a politician they felt was down to home and folksy, but all the Harding administration did was cause scandal after scandal due to Warren hiring his own friends as opposed to qualified professionals (which is not unlike our current administration). Hell, if you ever play the Civilization games, Warren G. Harding (along with Dan Quayle) are the ratings you get at the end of a session if you do very badly, and unlike Gandhi being the man who loves nuclear warfare, that was deliberate on their part from the beginning.

But, I tend to flip flop between Harding and James Buchanan as the worst president historically; Harding for being an administration rife with scandal and Buchanan for allowing a fractured country to effectively go to Civil War due to inaction and ignorance. Buchanan himself said that history would vindicate him, but history has not been kind to him, considering that very few people remember him aside from being "that guy who was president before Lincoln" and having little named after him in dedication as consequence.

[Kirby101]

Harding sounds so much more like Trump than like Biden.

[Mister Mets]

After knowing Hillary for 25 years, some swing voters changed their mind in the last week because of the Comey debacle. I don't trust the media to not allow the GOP to frame the debate, as they usually do. We will see another Benghazi!! or Butheremails long before this is over.

Hillary Clinton was known, but she was also a consistently controversial figure (the main exception was when she was out of the country as Secretary of State.)

Worst is a judgement call, but no doubt the worst human to sit in the Oval Office.

Woodrow Wilson is underrated as a trash human being.

He was racist by early 20th Century standards, promoting the Ku Klux Klan, resegregating the Federal Government, and opposing African-American suffrage.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...-wilson-racist

He hated hyphenated Americans.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/spe...eofnations.htm

I want to say -- I cannot say too often -- any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.

If I can catch any man with a hyphen in this great contest I will know that I have got an enemy of the Republic. My fellow citizens, it is only certain bodies of foreign sympathies, certain bodies of sympathy with foreign nations that are organized against this great document which the American representatives have brought back from Paris.

His wife basically ran the country when he was left an invalid after a stroke.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/...-wilson-stroke

He passed eugenics legislation as Governor, and favored it as an academic.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...a0b_story.html

His involvement in World War One led to a recession and curbing of Civil Liberties. He got outmaneuvered during the post-war negotiations in Versailles.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/th...w-wilson-24137

He also screwed up with the Spanish Flu.
https://www.realclearinvestigations....ar_123047.html