All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Tendrin]

We built up our empire effectively covering the retreat of the British and French from colonies that they could no longer afford to occupy after WWII devastated their economies. The people in all of these areas of course wanted independence and self-determination, and in desperation turned to the natural enemy of their former colonial masters who promised them support, funding, and weapons if they would adopt a veneer of socialism to further the Soviets' own foreign policy goals. We of course interpreted this to mean some kind of grand international communist conspiracy that must be stopped at all costs, which meant propping up right wing despots in every part of the world that had NO popular support and were MUCH worse than their Soviet-backed counterparts, but because we managed to bankrupt the Soviets with a futile arms race, we declared ourselves the good guys all along. That doesn't mean any of this nonsense was ever true, though.

...yikes, my man. Yikes.

[mathew101281]

Do you think this whole virus thing is going to be around long enough to effect voter turn out?

[Kirby101]

Do you think this whole virus thing is going to be around long enough to effect voter turn out?

In the primaries, yes. In the general next November, it could.

[worstblogever]

Do you think this whole virus thing is going to be around long enough to effect voter turn out?

I think in a different way...

Republican strategists have lamented how the youth vote, since 2008, has trended almost entirely Democratic, and that they were predicting "The Republican Party is literally going to be dying out" as their older voting block, y'know... shuffle off the mortal coil.

Covid-19 is far more lethal for people 65 and up. Predominantly, that's the GOP's core, compared to Democrats. And if the virus affects the age demographics as it's predicted... there might be a lot fewer Republican voters come November. Whether they're still sick or not.

[Tazirai]

If progressive policies were so "overwhelmingly popular" with the public, then why didn't said public vote for Sanders? Can you answer that? Why didn't the people who believed in Sanders and his policies support him when it mattered most on Super Tuesday? What happened? I've said this before and I'll say it again, I don't give a damn who the candidate is come November, Biden or Sanders, I'll vote for either one as long as he can beat Trump, that's the ONLY thing that matters. If you choose to sulk like a five year old denied cookies before dinner because your guy didn't get the nomination, then YOU have the problem.

Because politics isn't that simple and you know it.
Even in the states, he lost, HIS ideas were the popular ones, and some people attributed his ideas to Biden.
The media and the DNC played the electability game, and hey knew that older voters live in a state of Cold War fear, more than the youth do.
When you have a media out to support the establishment and deny the Progressives it's hard to reach those voters.

There is a war in the country and right now the Establishment is fighting HARD against Progressives. But this new Progressive movement is only a couple years old, it'll grow, and things will change.
Then they will become the new establishment and new Progressives will rise.
Why you guys in this thread think the Progressive movement is losing the war is beyond me.
We're winning battles all over, but every now and then we get pushed back.
But Progressives will win this in the end, and Centrists will go poof.

The days of Centrism and working with evil assholes is going away.
If the Democrats want to stay a party of Incrementalists, that's their choice, but don't expect people to vote for them.
Biden like Clinton won blacks in the primaries, but in the general... That's a different story.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

That’s certainly good news. Glad to hear you made it back okay.

Hope it all goes okay.

Glad you made it back safe. I have a trip to Hawaii in 4 weeks that might end up being cancelled - at least I can say it isn't to the heavily touristy islands, I'd be on Maui only long enough to change planes before landing in Kauai. That's assuming the trip goes through - a major travel restriction would stop it and one might be coming before the date hits.

Thanks all. Just made it back in so I’m all set. It was incredibly stressful not knowing if I was going to be stuck out of the country for awhile

Apparently America is shutting down everywhere which is the best way to combat this, but will definitely be a huge sacrifice for many. I really hope the country/world can actually come together right now and take care of each other. Years from now we will still be talking about this moment and how we responded. Hope everyone stays safe. This will probably get worse before we get a real handle on it. I feel like I walked into a different place.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Do you think this whole virus thing is going to be around long enough to effect voter turn out?

We don’t know enough about this to know how long it could last. We aren’t sure if you can catch it again, if we will develop natural immunities. How soon a vaccine can be released. Today it will have a big impact. I’d imagine in 8 months we are a bit more adjusted

[Steel Inquisitor]

Because politics isn't that simple and you know it.
Even in the states, he lost, HIS ideas were the popular ones, and some people attributed his ideas to Biden.

Don't attribute every left position Biden has because of Sanders.

The media and the DNC played the electability game, and hey knew that older voters live in a state of Cold War fear, more than the youth do.
When you have a media out to support the establishment and deny the Progressives it's hard to reach those voters.

A "game" which wins, Sanders tried twice and lost. Maybe try giving that a shot? Yes, they do - why didn't Sanders? He knew this going in and set himself up for failure. That's a struggle Sanders and the movement has to figure out, don't blame us for your heroes failing to make good strategies. The Cold War fear is very real which is why it's stupid for Sanders to ever compliment Communist regimes every chance he gets. Freshmen congresspeople know this fact, why didn't he? Old age is getting to Sanders more than you can admit.

There is a war in the country and right now the Establishment is fighting HARD against Progressives. But this new Progressive movement is only a couple years old, it'll grow, and things will change.
Then they will become the new establishment and new Progressives will rise.
Why you guys in this thread think the Progressive movement is losing the war is beyond me.

It's the primaries, not the coronation of one Bernie Sanders. Why wouldn't the other factions fight back? That's not an unholy sin to commit. Except it is losing, that's why it couldn't get the nomination and the majority of congress belongs to everyone else.

We're winning battles all over, but every now and then we get pushed back.
But Progressives will win this in the end, and Centrists will go poof.

Like in '18?

The days of Centrism and working with evil assholes is going away.
If the Democrats want to stay a party of Incrementalists, that's their choice, but don't expect people to vote for them.
Biden like Clinton won blacks in the primaries, but in the general... That's a different story.

This posturing and theatricality may impress the naive new voters who don't know how this works, but it falls flat to anyone with years of elections under their belt. This isn't about convincing us, it's about convincing yourself and justifying destroying the Democratic party is a higher priority than stopping Republicans.

Incrementalism is how the system works, Sanders hasn't changed that and being president wouldn't either. That's how it's built which the "progressives" have done a terrible job dismantling.

You say that as though you have proof those black voters are in Sanders pocket if he were to be in the general, where's the evidence?

[Tendrin]

...turnout in the dem primary was high, and it was high for Biden. Black voters came out, like they always do. A big reason it was softer in 2016 was post-Obama fatigue, but let's not underestimate the impact of misogyny in the black community, nor the impact of closed polling stations and voter ID as well. Those are probably far more responsible for decreased AA turnout alongside micro-targeted rat-$#$ing we can still see the Impact of today.

Meanwhile, I think there's a real chance congress can turn completely blue in 2020 and progressives will have for the first time since 2008 a chance to push for a real agenda, and the highest part of that needs to voting reform, IMO. Being able to accomplish the rest stems from that and that alone.

[jetengine]

The days of Centrism and working with evil assholes is going away.
If the Democrats want to stay a party of Incrementalists, that's their choice, but don't expect people to vote for them.
Biden like Clinton won blacks in the primaries, but in the general... That's a different story.

In a long line of dumb posts this is perhaps the dumbest.

Do you think Bernie and the meagre progressive presence in the capital can somehow clone themselves to fill EVERY political seat IN THE COUNTRY ? Are you sure their all completely pure of purpose ? Do you have a magic machine to detect that like your cloning vat ?

Heres a thought, spend less time bitching on the internet and more time building a progressive, grass roors organisation that can flip more senate seats thus meaning your message is more likely to actually do something and get somewhere then investing your energy into one man who'll turn up then promptly be told to quieten down because he CANT ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Clifton Johnson, a candidate for U.S. Senate from Nebraska in the 2014 elections. Johnson’s best, and possibly only qualification for elected office was the fact that he bore a striking resemblance to our first president, George Washington. He tried to parlay that uncanny likeness into framing himself to be the candidate in the race who would best serve the principles of our Founding Fathers (like his idea to abolish the IRS and establish a “consumption tax”, where you would be taxed not on what you earn, but what you spend), and thus ride to victory on the strength of the Tea Party movement. Unfortunately, Johnson’s actual message was an incoherent mess, including an immigration policy that would have 8 U.S. Soldiers placed at every mile marker along the U.S./Mexico border. He refused to do press interviews, which is understandable because the recurring statements he would make seemed to only be that “George Washington is back, and he’s upset.” Johnson only won 2% of the Republican vote in the primary in that election and has disappeared from the political scene since.

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of Elbert Guillory, who In the 2015 elections, gave up his seat in the Louisiana State Senate to make a run for Governor of Louisiana, finishing a distant fourth, with only about 8% of the vote. Guillory likes to work on behalf of Republicans to perpetuate the myth that Republican policies actually do better by African Americans, by declaring that he was “leaving the plantation”, and that Democrats are the “Party of Jim Crow”. This, of course, fails to recognize the fact that the Southern Democrats who favored Jim Crow left the Democratic Party over the passage of the Civil Rights Act and switched to the same Republican Party that Guillory finds himself in. Y’know, the one whose party platform advocates for strict Voter ID Laws that serve as a 21st Century Jim Crow. But anyway, that’s just the tip of the iceberg with Guillory. In May 2015, he actually argued in defense of a law on the books in Louisiana that allows teachers to promote Creationism or other unscientific theories as an alternative to teaching evolution by claiming there was a time when scientists thought the world was flat, and when religious people tried telling them it was round, it was the religious people who were burned at the stake for their heretical stance against science. Unless Elbert Guillory was born on Bizarro World, I have no idea what his problem is. Maybe it’s just that he’s worried what the voodoo houngans might think. (No, we’re serious. When that law for teaching Creationism popped up originally he argued in favor of it by referencing voodoo.) But back to Elbert Guillory commenting on race… When you’re talking about political discourse in this country being at its most polarized point… Guillory sure does his part. Take his starring in a campaign ad in North Carolina in the 2014 elections to take shots at Sen. Kay Hagan in her bid for re-election where he said that Democrats were “limousine liberals who have become our new overseers”. Or how prior to the 2015 election in Louisiana, when he ran an ad to campaign against Kip Holden, a Democrat running for lieutenant governor, by running an ad where he just straight up looked in the camera and used the N-Word. Guillory’s inflammatory racial rhetoric is far from his only controversial issue, as one of his biggest legislative efforts since taking office was to push hard for the legalization of “chicken boxing”, which he insists should not be cast aside because it’s a whole different, classy sport and unrelated cockfighting (the non-sport that’s actually animal abuse). And his passion for chicken boxing got Guillory noticed by Steven Colbert, who ran a segment on him in April of 2014. As recently as January of 2016, Guillory was still putting out videos to attack Democrats that were mired in conservative fantasy-land, including one about how, in Guillory’s warped mind, President Obama is tougher on American gun owners than he is ISIS (last I checked, Wayne LaPierre wasn’t the target of a drone strike, so…) In the 2016 elections, Guillory tried to get elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in Louisiana’s 4th Congressional District, but managed to finish a distant fifth in the primary, earning about 8% of the vote.


On this date in 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Bob McDermott, who has served in the Hawaii House of Representatives since winning office since 2012 (after several years away), who moved to the Aloha State from Pennsylvania and quickly rose in the ranks of the GOP there for his brazen opposition to LGBTQ rights. Bob McDermott was trying to ban gay marriage in Hawaii as far back as 1998, when he served two terms in office before disappearing from the Hawaiian political scene for a decade. In 2014, was trying to still filibuster attempts at legalizing same sex marriage in the state, and falsely claim that Hawaiian citizens voted to ban same sex marriage in ’98. Among the bills he’s introduced include an amendment to the state constitution to “reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples” (that would be immediately overturned as unconstitutional via the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling), a bill to redefine the term “place of public accommodation” to allow religiously-affiliated organizations including hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, hospitals (!), retail stores, and mortuaries to deny services to LGBTQ people. How self-righteously stupid is it to try something like that in Hawaii? Let’s put it this way…Neither of those McDermott bills has even a single co-sponsor. McDermott has also proposed a bill focused on limiting the Department of Education’s ability to implement sexual health education programs which he hopes will eliminate all mention of LGBTQ people in public classrooms, and is also currently at the forefront of the Hawaii’s GOP’s attempts to prevent their Democratic counterparts from a bill to ban public school teachers from promoting ‘gay conversion therapy,’ a practice discredited by all leading national medical and psychological authorities because it is ineffective, risky, and can be harmful. If you ask McDermott, though, it’s the “gay cure”, which would then mean yes, he views homosexuality as a disease. The bigoted rhetoric for him knows no boundaries for taste, either. In January of 2014, Bob McDermott hosted a press conference where he decried gay sex in a long rant, that featured a big focus on anuses. No, really, he spoke, “The anus is presented as genitalia, just another sex organ. This is another example of forced ‘equality’ by ignoring the natural function of the rectum and anus. Therefore ‘political’ correctness dictates that the male rectum and the female vagina are ‘equal’ in terms of being sexual organs. This totally ignores the obvious facts of human biology and reproduction.”

Of late, Bob McDermott’s fanaticism has begun to even carry over to what few colleagues he has in the state legislature. In early February 2017, the Hawaii GOP voted to oust their own House Minority Leader, Beth Fukumoto, for the grievous offense of having attended a women’s march to protest the presidency of Donald Trump the day after his inauguration. McDermott chastised her for this on the floor of the Hawaii House, saying, “You are speaking not for yourself anymore. It is a high-level responsibility.” At that point, Fukumoto took stock of her party, rallying around a misogynistic orange bigot, and with her main ally being a deranged wild-eyed homophobe obsessed with anuses only slightly less than the mad scientist from the film Human Centipede and opted to switch to the Democratic Party.

Bob McDermott still won re-election in 2018 with 55% of the vote, and continued in his anti-LGBTQ extremism in 2019, voting against a ban on gay conversion therapy and voted against a bill that would establish a non-binary gender option on state IDs. We’re hoping that 2020 is the year where either he, or the people of Hawaii get tired of his fanatical, bigoted crusade and choose to have someone legislate from his place in the state government that is, y’know, sane.

[Starter Set]

We built up our empire effectively covering the retreat of the British and French from colonies that they could no longer afford to occupy after WWII devastated their economies. The people in all of these areas of course wanted independence and self-determination, and in desperation turned to the natural enemy of their former colonial masters who promised them support, funding, and weapons if they would adopt a veneer of socialism to further the Soviets' own foreign policy goals. We of course interpreted this to mean some kind of grand international communist conspiracy that must be stopped at all costs, which meant propping up right wing despots in every part of the world that had NO popular support and were MUCH worse than their Soviet-backed counterparts, but because we managed to bankrupt the Soviets with a futile arms race, we declared ourselves the good guys all along. That doesn't mean any of this nonsense was ever true, though.

All very true.

[JackDaw]

Thanks all. Just made it back in so I’m all set. It was incredibly stressful not knowing if I was going to be stuck out of the country for awhile

.

Sympathy. I can imagine how it felt..because I was due to spend a few days in New York (I’m from UK) in late March, and was imagining flights back to UK being cancelled when I was over there. Even that was a wee bit stressful. And obviously actually being abroad having same thought would ratchet it up.

So was grateful when flights from UK to US were banned a couple of days ago. Mind you Virgin Atlantic...apparently operating in an alternate universe are still trying to see me additional services for the flight....

[Steel Inquisitor]

All very true.

It really isn't.

[jetengine]

It really isn't.

The right despots part yeah, but I'm pretty sure Pol Pot wasnt putting up a "thin veneer of socialism"