All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[jetengine]

I appreciate your ability to think complexly in a complex world. Dont let anyone shame you into doing otherwise.

I'd say its actually the opposite. People **** on the left with "Orange man bad" but this guy does exactly the same with "Islam Bad" etc and we're supposed to clap ? **** off with that trash.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Chicago Teachers Didn’t Win Everything, But They’ve Transformed the City—And the Labor Movement

During daily rallies that drew tens of thousands of teachers, staff and supporters, the unions repeatedly made the argument that there was plenty of wealth in the city to invest in schools and public services—it was just concentrated in the wrong hands. They also touched on what’s often a third-rail for public-sector unions, criticizing the resources lavished on police at their expense. The strike’s momentum will carry over most immediately into a budget battle with Lightfoot, with the teachers’ union partnering with a larger coalition fighting to tax corporations and luxury real-estate at a higher rate in order to fund affordable housing, public mental health clinics and other services.

The teachers union also shone a light on an opaque financing tool known as Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, that’s intended to funnel additional property tax dollars to “blighted” areas, but that critics say is akin to a “corporate slush fund.” On Tuesday, nine CTU members were arrested at the headquarters of Sterling Bay to protest the city’s decision to award the Wall-Street backed developer more than $1 billion of TIF subsidies earlier this year.

[zinderel]

Trump winning made him a giant for lack of a better word "pussy" and he's been fucking absurd and scared of his own shadow ever since and now he's coming up with all these crazy opinions. The Islamaphobia I could take or leave because he's been an ******* about virtually every religion and has mocked and denigrated all the others, so it's silly to pick out that one as examples of his bad behavior. He's an ass when it comes to relgion, you either excepted that or didn't.

I think though after Trump he's, as you mentioned, more reactionary. He's just a dude throwing **** at the wall trying to find some secret formula.

Oh, no question he knocks ‘em all. No religion is left UN-touched. But he goes after (Middle Eastern) Islam MUCH harder than he does any other religion, despite the reality that fundamentalist Christianity is as restrictive to women, as anti-LGBT+ existence, as fact-averse, as prone (or more prone, but on a smaller scale) to violent terrorism, and is FAR MORE influential at state, local and national levels as they infiltrate school boards and the military and medical professions and determine what gets into text books and who gets elected by forcing any politician in America to either espouse Christian faith or...pretty much lose.

He goes after Fundamentalist Islam, but he is CLEARLY speaking specifically about Middle Eastern/Arabic Islam, and the more he does it, the more...racist...he comes off.

I'd say its actually the opposite. People **** on the left with "Orange man bad" but this guy does exactly the same with "Islam Bad" etc and we're supposed to clap ? **** off with that trash.

Pretty much this. He blankets all Muslims with his assessment of Middle Eastern Islamic fundamentalists, but asking him to tone down the rhetoric and focus on specifics - or on the actually dangerous, extremist religion trying to do to the US what the Mullah’s did to Iran in the 70’s, instead of having their paid mouthpieces and apologists on to spread twaddle and fooferah - is apparently bullying poor Bill Maher...

At least to hear him characterize the pushback, anyhow.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

One reason they don't get exposed is because they're afraid to speak out because it's the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will fucking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture or write the wrong book.

But. If vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe – and they do - that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea or drawing a cartoon or writing a book or eloping with the wrong person, not only does the Muslim world have something in common with Isis. It has too much in common with Isis.

Absolutely. Because they’re violent. Because they threaten us. And they are threatening. They bring that desert stuff to our world …We don’t threaten each other, we sue each other. That’s the sign of civilized people. And they don’t ... People who want to gloss over the difference between western culture and Islamic culture and forget about the fact that the Islamic culture is 600 years younger and that they are going through the equivalent of what the west went through with our middle ages, our dark ages when religion had way too much power … do so at their peril.

- Bill Maher

[Tami]

Why is Bill Maher even worth talking about? It's not like we spend a day discussing Stephen Colbert, or Jimmy Kimmel, or John Oliver, or any of the others. Does Maher really have any influence?

I'm not saying that anyone can't talk about what they want, only I don't get the interest in Maher? Then again, I have never watched his show, so I don't know much about him.

[Tami]

Mueller interview notes obtained by CNN show Trump's push for stolen emails

(CNN)President Donald Trump and other top 2016 Trump campaign officials repeatedly privately discussed how the campaign could get access to stolen Democratic emails WikiLeaks had in 2016, according to newly released interview notes from Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation.

CNN sued the Justice Department for access to Mueller's witness interview notes, and this weekend's release marks the first publicly available behind-the-scenes look at Mueller's investigative work outside of court proceedings and the report itself. Per a judge's order, the Justice Department will continue to release new tranches of the Mueller investigative notes monthly to CNN and Buzzfeed News, which also sued for them.

A retelling of events from former Trump deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, who served alongside campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is the fullest detail revealed by the Justice Department yet on discussions within the Trump campaign as it pursued damaging information about its Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. The documents were stolen by the Russians, the American intelligence community has found.

[Tami]

Nancy Pelosi Is Worried 2020 Candidates Are on Wrong Track

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is issuing a pointed message to Democrats running for president in 2020: Those liberal ideas that fire up the party’s base are a big loser when it comes to beating President Donald Trump.

“What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan,” Pelosi said at a roundtable of Bloomberg News reporters and editors on Friday. “What works in Michigan works in San Francisco — talking about workers’ rights and sharing prosperity.”

“Remember November,” she said. “You must win the Electoral College.”

“As a left-wing San Francisco liberal I can say to these people: What are you thinking?” Pelosi said. “You can ask the left — they’re unhappy with me for not being a socialist.”

Her call for caution is backed by the authority she carries as a giant of Democratic politics who rose from the left wing of the party to become the first female speaker of the House and has earned grudging praise from her foes for her skill as a legislator.

She spoke as polls show a significant tightening of the race with Warren edging up on Joe Biden at the top of the field. A New York Times/Siena College survey of Iowa Democrats released Friday showed the top four candidates — Warren, Sanders, Biden and Pete Buttigieg — all bunched up in a five-point spread at the top of the field.

The speaker’s concerns reflect those of many Democratic leaders and donors who believe that left-wing policies will alienate swing voters and lead to defeat.

[Tami]

Christopher England elected new Alabama Democratic Party chair

Rep. Christopher England, D-Tuscaloosa, was elected Alabama Democratic Party chair on Saturday, after months of struggle inside and outside the state party.

England got 104 of 171 ballots cast at the meeting of the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC). Tabitha Isner, the Democratic nominee for the 2nd congressional district in 2018, got 63 votes. Will Boyd, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, got four votes.

“Elected officials had to stand in the gap and create the platform the party did not have," England said before the vote. "You've seen me stand for the issues that matter to us."

The vote came after 172 members of the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC), the governing body of the Alabama Democratic Party, voted to remove Chair Nancy Worley and Vice-Chair Randy Kelley.

[PwrdOn]

Why is Bill Maher even worth talking about? It's not like we spend a day discussing Stephen Colbert, or Jimmy Kimmel, or John Oliver, or any of the others. Does Maher really have any influence?

Maher captures the whole white middle class moderate Democrat zeitgeist very well, in that their opposition to Trump and the GOP stems mostly from the optics and not anything related to actual policy, like the real problem is people saying racist things rather than, you know, people being racist.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Nancy Pelosi Is Worried 2020 Candidates Are on Wrong Track

Does Pelosi realize that the candidate she thought was on the right track, ended up losing to the most unpopular presidential candidate ever?

[Theleviathan]

I'd say its actually the opposite. People **** on the left with "Orange man bad" but this guy does exactly the same with "Islam Bad" etc and we're supposed to clap ? **** off with that trash.

Some of his takes do fall into that camp. I would say he has a lot of company on that crime. Me and you included.

Much of the criticism these last few pages lacks complexity and nuance, a rising problem on both fringes. I find most of Maher's takes to have complexity and independent consistency. I value that even when I disagree with it.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

I’m not trying to be sexist here, but I’m just saying that women try a lot of different tacks when they’re in arguments. Look at Hillary Clinton. The first thing a woman does, of course, is cry — and then they go to sweet talking … and then they throw an anger fit totally unrelated to anything.

Such value. Such complexity.

We should not expect less from the guy that has said "the left is scarier and crazier than Trump", that the Vietnam War was good, actually, and said in a 1999 interview that he'd be Republican if they weren't so openly bigoted.

I would be a Republican if they would. Which means that I like the Barry Gold-water Republican Party, even the Reagan Republican Party.

[Mister Mets]

- Bill Maher

Charlie Hedbo.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

Charlie Hedbo.

Tiger Beat.

[Farealmer]

Trump winning made him a giant for lack of a better word "pussy" and he's been fucking absurd and scared of his own shadow ever since and now he's coming up with all these crazy opinions.

I think though after Trump he's, as you mentioned, more reactionary. He's just a dude throwing **** at the wall trying to find some secret formula.

It's like you haven't been in these threads since 2016...