All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Gray Lensman]

I suppose one might assume the progressives are losing the war because they use Bernie as a sort of barameter for the movement since he's the face of it, and his supporter base seems to have shrunk since 2016 at least based on voter turn out. Not trying to in any way bash the progressive movement or anything like that... merely saying that's objectively how one might come to the conclusion you're suggesting here.

The biggest most high profile face of the party seems to be losing support, and after this year he's probably done and will be out of the national spotlight.

That said, it's only look at things from the national perspective. It's entirely possible the progressives are making strides in the state or local level and we're just not hearing about it as much. Tea Party had great sucess impacting governement without ever having a presidential candidate.

One place progressives are doing well is city and county DA races. They've realized that the person with the most power to enact criminal justice reform is the prosecutor. They decide who to charge, what to charge with, whether or not to demand bail, and many of them are from places with a majority of progressive voters. Also some with and county elected judges, for example they swept Houston and triggered the governor of Texas to propose a bill that would make all judges appointees, with an exception for those in low population districts. Yet another reason why I've stopped voting Republican.

[TheDarman]

And McSally is certainly done for too.

Collins, Gardner, and McSally are the most likely losses for Republicans in November. They tied themselves directly to a president who is deeply unpopular in these states. McSally already lost the race once in Arizona, in a mid-term election with less turnout.

The only question is if Democrats can pick up one more. North Carolina’s Senator, Thom Tillis, seems to be underwater against a Democratic opponent this year, too, losing the polling average by seven points. With the White House, that would give Democrats control of the Senate.

The hope is that there might also be a few upsets. Perhaps Jamie Harrison can upset Lindsey Graham too and turn the Senate into an outright majority. Trump probably needs to underperform in a lot of these states for that to happen though. Republicans like Graham have tied their fortunes to Trump. If Trump does well, they will likely do well too.

[Darkspellmaster]

who really pays attention to that junk site anyway? For all it's flaws, I'll stick to traditional news sources.

I don't, but for some odd reason people think they are the truth bringers.

[TriggerWarning]

One place progressives are doing well is city and county DA races. They've realized that the person with the most power to enact criminal justice reform is the prosecutor. They decide who to charge, what to charge with, whether or not to demand bail, and many of them are from places with a majority of progressive voters. Also some with and county elected judges, for example they swept Houston and triggered the governor of Texas to propose a bill that would make all judges appointees, with an exception for those in low population districts. Yet another reason why I've stopped voting Republican.

However your also seeing a lot of progressive actions failing catastrophically. Its long been a progressive dream to reform the bail system as its supposedly systemically racist. So New York did this and now people are automatically released at the first court hearing except for the most serious of offenses like murder. Which has led to a massive crime spike as criminals just go right back out and do it again and it leads to a lot of horrible results like a guy arrested for stabbing people got out at his first hearing, people who have committed serious violent crime within 24 hrs of being released on a lesser crime, a guy who committed manslaughter and got out at his first hearing, etc. Lawmakers are claiming "no one could have predicted this" as they scramble to undo what they have wrought. Um yeah, a lot of us predicted this, progressives just don't listen.

[Iron Maiden]

Why wouldn’t you?

Pragmatically that’s what China did, and it was (relatively) successful for them.

That's not always practical in states that have basically become part of a megalopolis. When I worked in Whiting, which is in the NW corner of Indiana, I could just drive a few blocks and have lunch in the SW side of Chicago. From Chicago to Gary Indiana is like a long urban sprawl, with the steel mills and other industry mixed in there too.

[TheDarman]

A Politico article released today explained Sanders’ weakness in Florida, which he will likely lose by a wide margin. The comments on said article are quite sad:

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[PwrdOn]

Your "response" was propaganda which warped the truth about the USSR's involvement in the Cold War, which made an impressive display to talk around them as though they were a non entity worth examining in that time period when we both know they weren't innocent lambs in that part of history. Supposed? Keep your story straight, your previous post accepted the fact they had alliances with many, many countries - Cuba, China, Vietnam and North Korea being among them. Are you suggesting that none of these countries were Communist during the Cold war?

America did lots of horrible things back then, and many countries did have cause to fear its power, however, you're minimising their own horrible histories and that backing the Soviets didn't automatically make them "good." Stalin was not a "good" person by any stretch.

A few week ago you were defending Castro's Cuba and when I bought up valid reasons for why people would be upset with signal boosting his regime, like how he imprisoned gay man for being "defiants" and forced them to work in labor camps where they were tortured to death. You've made it clear you're an avowed Communist in our discussions, as well. There are Communists who don't support dictatorships but you haven't shown you're one of them.

Meh, all this red scare whataboutism is a bit tiresome. I was responding to a post that claimed America's checks and balances were a safeguard against some kind of Palpatine rising to seize absolute power, and I claimed that even without such a leader we had managed to establish a global empire anyway, which is beyond doubt I would think. Trying to justify it by claiming that we did it for the good of the people there, or that it was out of some desire to stop communism is just unconvincing.

A Politico article released today explained Sanders’ weakness in Florida, which he will likely lose by a wide margin. The comments on said article are quite sad:

8C8D80D5-B54A-49E7-9CD8-15FF9362D2E6.jpg

I mean, Florida's Hispanic population isn't really representative of the nation as a whole, since most of them are Cuban and tend to lean Republican, which is obviously not true of most Latino communities. Bernie has done pretty well among Latino voters so far, at this point that support will probably wane since nobody wants to jump on what looks like a sinking ship, but realistically, between him and Biden, who do you think better represents the interests of Latinos as a whole?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Collins, Gardner, and McSally are the most likely losses for Republicans in November. They tied themselves directly to a president who is deeply unpopular in these states. McSally already lost the race once in Arizona, in a mid-term election with less turnout.

The only question is if Democrats can pick up one more. North Carolina’s Senator, Thom Tillis, seems to be underwater against a Democratic opponent this year, too, losing the polling average by seven points. With the White House, that would give Democrats control of the Senate.

The hope is that there might also be a few upsets. Perhaps Jamie Harrison can upset Lindsey Graham too and turn the Senate into an outright majority. Trump probably needs to underperform in a lot of these states for that to happen though. Republicans like Graham have tied their fortunes to Trump. If Trump does well, they will likely do well too.

If a president from either side of the aisle slow-walked, then outright botched the government's response to coronavirus like Trump had done, his poll numbers would probably be under 30 percent while politicians from said president's party would be sprinting for the lifeboats like Usain Bolt. However, Trump is an entirely different animal, and therein lies the problem, his base remains fanatically loyal and won't abandon him, not even if COVID-19 starts picking them off, and that's forcing Republicans to stick with him because they need his supporters for the reelection bid, and, hopefully, to maintain their grip on the Senate. Nothing has gone according to script ever since Trump announced his candidacy nearly five years ago, and, god help us all, he might even survive this clusterfuck.

[Starter Set]

Such times we are living through.

Right now in France we aren't allowed to go out of our homes except for getting food and or if we have specific and/or really needed jobs such as doctors for example. (35 euros first offense, 135 if you are caught again lol)

Feels weird.

[Jack Dracula]

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.

I think I may have found my new avatar image.

[Darkspellmaster]

Such times we are living through.

Right now in France we aren't allowed to go out of our homes except for getting food and or if we have specific and/or really needed jobs such as doctors for example. (35 euros first offense, 135 if you are caught again lol)

Feels weird.

Saw some pictures, any word about field hospitals?

[Iron Maiden]

Such times we are living through.

Right now in France we aren't allowed to go out of our homes except for getting food and or if we have specific and/or really needed jobs such as doctors for example. (35 euros first offense, 135 if you are caught again lol)

Feels weird.

I think that is a bit extreme. But you will have a lot of idiots doing crazy stuff in times like this. I don't know if they will do that here yet. I hope they don't.

[PwrdOn]

Such times we are living through.

Right now in France we aren't allowed to go out of our homes except for getting food and or if we have specific and/or really needed jobs such as doctors for example. (35 euros first offense, 135 if you are caught again lol)

Feels weird.

That's a prudent policy though, a few months of inconvenience and discomfort will soon be a blip in the rear view mirror, and you'll be glad these measures were in place because they are definitely going to reduce the death toll and severity of the outbreak. The reason America is having such difficult right now is because all the people with wealth and power are still hanging on to that hope that their lives can continue as normal and are pulling out all the stops to make sure that can happen, the consequences for the rest of the country be damned. Trump and his advisors are still prioritizing propping up the stock market over actually making sure people can get tested and treated for the virus, when any casual observer would realize that the only sane policy is to halt trading on those markets for the time being, which would contain some of that panic while also allowing leaders to focus on more immediate concerns.

[Darkspellmaster]

This one might have snuck under a lot of the radar on the COVID-19 story... The VA's website, since 2014, had listed its mission statement, including that the fourth goal of the VA, since a law passed by Congress in 1982, was to serve the overall public in times of crisis. For example, in 2005, VA doctors were dispatched to Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to tend to the sick and injured.

Last night, the VA, under the Trump administration, deleted the part of the mission statement about aiding the public during a crisis from the website.

Just, y'know, in the middle of one.

We're all on our own out here.

Mother F@$&*#! Wasn't that part of serving and protecting. Isn't that part of what the military personnel is for? Christ this guy is a total monster!

[Iron Maiden]

If a president from either side of the aisle slow-walked, then outright botched the government's response to coronavirus like Trump had done, his poll numbers would probably be under 30 percent while politicians from said president's party would be sprinting for the lifeboats like Usain Bolt. However, Trump is an entirely different animal, and therein lies the problem, his base remains fanatically loyal and won't abandon him, not even if COVID-19 starts picking them off, and that's forcing Republicans to stick with him because they need his supporters for the reelection bid, and, hopefully, to maintain their grip on the Senate. Nothing has gone according to script ever since Trump announced his candidacy nearly five years ago, and, god help us all, he might even survive this clusterfuck.

It does make you wonder just what it would take to get these die-hards to get off the Trump Train but I think nothing will. Faux News is still toeing the line of Trump worship even though there have been some cracks. Now that they are staying home more they will prob ably get even more brainwashed.