All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Powerboy]

Trump’s farewell address.

Whoever wrote the speech for him did a great job.

Good sophistry about the greatness of the nation.

A lot of bad fantasy that isn't remotely accurate and usually the reverse of what he really did.

No admissions of any kind regarding blatantly lying about the virus, the election and inciting the riot.

Implying he was banned from social media outlets as a free speech issue rather than for inciting murders.

All in all, exactly the complete BS we expected.

[Mister Mets]

Frankly, then, I don't think you find yourself disagreeing with the mainstream thoughts on immigration, either in the party or even on the board. I think there is a clear limiting principle (i.e. "Do no harm"). That limiting principle, likewise, isn't immoral. If consistent immigration occurs and overwhelms the economy, the draw for immigrants is no longer there. We have to preserve a strong economy at home, not just for ourselves, but for future immigrants as well.



I think the main problem with this discussion is the kind of meaning we extracted from the phrase. Of course there are limitations to citizenship and who gets it. The issue I have with Trump is that he clearly favored different sets of immigrants over others and attempted to persuade Europeans while vilifying and using stochastic terrorism against other groups.

I'm certain my views on immigration are generally mainstream.

According to the polls, I'm to the left of the median Democrat on the number of legal immigrants I'd allow in.

On this board, there have been plenty of calls to ban me, and that's almost exclusively because of political opinions and not because I insult people personally.

I can appreciate "do no harm" as a limiting principle. It might be too limiting, in that there are going to be some losers even if the net gains are worth it. Technically there's harm if one guy's annual salary goes down ten thousand dollars, but the net gains of two workers with in-demand skills rather than just one, could be worth it.

As for your objections with Trump, I suspect that many here go further. They're not willing to articulate "limitations to citizenship and who gets it."

[DrNewGod]

A ban of pre-emptive pardons applies to someone who hasn't committed a crime yet. Joe Biden can't announce tomorrow that he'll pardon whoever runs over Josh Hawley.

Pardons can be done for people who have done something in the past, but haven't been charged for it yet.

Don't tease with such a lovely prospect.

[Mister Mets]

I doubt that very much. Remember that Hollywood's progressive in terms of artists and technicians and above and below the line but actual suits and so on can be conservative.

In 2020, Beverly Hills voted heavily for Trump.
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/02/...ies-a-s-hamrah



https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/...-angeles-2020/


So I think conservatives and others can find work in the movie industry provided they have the talent, the right agent, the right connections, and have an appetite for survival.

Beverly Hills isn't going to be cancelled for sure. I always hated shows on SoCal like 90210 or The OC...it's refreshing to find affirmation that those vapid freaks would vote Trump in time.

And that's another nail in the so-called 'white working class' myth.

There are people voting for Trump, but not necessarily being open about it. If there were no penalty for backing Republicans, an actor should be just as comfortable backing Trump as Mark Ruffalo was backing Sanders, and would suffer the same political consequences (none whatsoever).

[Kirby101]

Melania is the first First Lady to leave with an approval rating of under 50%.
Not even Hillary, who "everyone hated" was over 50%. (Hillary was already a Senator when she left)

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/polit...sis/index.html

[Revolutionary_Jack]

There are people voting for Trump, but not necessarily being open about it.

"Shy Trumpers" you say. Wow, clutch the pearls.

If there were no penalty for backing Republicans,

There isn't.

...an actor should be just as comfortable backing Trump as Mark Ruffalo was backing Sanders, and would suffer the same political consequences (none whatsoever).

And they are:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/202...ers-jon-voight

One independent producer I spoke with told me it was the left who were more likely to be silenced. “The truth is a lot of the head honchos are conservative and Republicans. Even if they don’t love Trump, they have all the power, so it’s the people below who have to shut up.” For Glenn Kenny, film critic at the New York Times and the author of Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, the idea that their politics has damaged their careers is risible. “Jon Voight is working relatively consistently for an 81-year-old. But, like every other Republican, Voight loooooves to complain.”

Others are just not that famous to begin with. If anything, more people probably saw Charles in Charge star Scott Baio speak at the Republican convention in 2016 than watched his 2008 reality show Scott Baio is 45 … and Single. The one Maga supporter who lost her job was comedian Roseanne Barr, whose comeback show was cancelled after a racist tweet about former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett. But Barr herself apologised for her tweet, blaming Ambien for the “joke”. (This led the sleeping pill manufacturers to issue the priceless response: “Racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”)

And Barr is by no means the only Trump supporter to go off the rails, which is perhaps why mainstream conservatives never got on board the Trump train in the first place. Old school Hollywood conservatives such as Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger largely shunned Trump and the Friends of Abe dissolved in 2016, following disputes over endorsing Trump.

The truth is that simply there aren't many far right Hollywood stars anymore. Some actors are probably centrist like McConnaughey and Dwayne Johnson but in the eye of the Trump disaster, even they had to vote Dem.

If the Republican party wants movie stars to support them they need to come to the center. In the classical Hollywood era when both parties -- Dems and GOP --- progressive and conservative wings and the California GOP of the time (the era of Earl Warren) you had Republicans like Cary Grant (who was publicly critical of McCarthyism) as well as John Wayne (a true wingnut albeit he was more welcoming to Hispanic-Americans).

[DrNewGod]

So, figuring that having about 70-odd % of the US pissed off at him is subpar performance, Hawley decided to up his i'm-a-dick game by slapping a hold on Biden's Homeland Security nominee. It won't happen, but Moscow Mitch needs to tell this ******* to shut it and let the adults talk on pain of having every last one of his committee appointments yanked.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

So, figuring that having about 70-odd % of the US pissed off at him is subpar performance, Hawley decided to up his i'm-a-dick game by slapping a hold on Biden's Homeland Security nominee. It won't happen, but Moscow Mitch needs to tell this ******* to shut it and let the adults talk on pain of having every last one of his committee appointments yanked.

I've got to say until the Putsch, I never even heard of Hawley. I thought Tom Cotton was the Dark Lord in Training.

Hawley is truly despicable.

[PwrdOn]

I'm certain my views on immigration are generally mainstream.

According to the polls, I'm to the left of the median Democrat on the number of legal immigrants I'd allow in.

That would be true if people actually took you at your word, but nobody trusts what you or any other Republican voter has to say about immigration anymore. I'm sure everyone here remembers how for the longest time the GOP wouldn't shut up about how they actually LOVED immigration and welcomed all people, but ONLY if they did it legally and didn't jump in line ahead of all the people who followed the rules. But lo and behold, you get a president that's willing to implement the draconian border security measures you always wanted, but now all of a sudden just shutting down illegal immigration isn't good enough, you want to place limits on legal immigration too, because holy hell you let one guy in and then with the chain migration and what not that's like a hundred other people who can sneak in behind him!

If people were to accept now that we need to set limits on immigration based on the needs of the economy, it is absolutely guaranteed that the same people who keep moving the goalposts will start going on about how it's NOT just about the economy and that we have a culture and a way of life that depends on preserving our ethnic makeup and that we cannot let our gene pool be diluted by these foreign hordes! And if we give in to that, those same people will be saying that it's not enough to shut down immigration, we need to be stripping all the people who are already here of their citizenship and sending them packing because they were never REALLY American to begin with! And you can imagine where it might go from there.

[Amadeus Arkham]

[Malvolio]

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/my-pi...-beyond-video/

Will someone explain to this "businessman" how the free market works? If people don't like your product, they stop buying your product. And if they don't like who you do business with, they will not only stop buying your product, but they will also tell anyone who will listen just why they are no longer buying your product. So unless he had an iron-clad contract that Bed Bath and Beyond and Kohl's have to carry his product no matter what, with no morals clause, he really has no standing. Oh wait, we've already established that he and Trump don't understand what the legal phrase "no standing" means, right?

[Malvolio]

Terrible and full of lies as always.
-- I have to ask where did this "greatest economy the world has ever seen" nonsense originate from? He's said it several times during the campaign but it's so over the top and unmoored from reality that it makes no sense. I mean historically the height of America's economy was the post-war boom from 1945-46 all the way to Stagflation in the mid-70s, it's a height America has never regained since. And that period was the pinnacle of the economy in the Western World, in America, England, France, Italy and Germany where states approached full employment.
-- He doesn't once acknowledge that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election or mention him or apologize for his lies.
-- The claim that his is the first administration that hasn't started any new wars is misleading...technically Obama didn't start any new wars, he just managed the ones that W. already started (Afghanistan, Iraq) and W's wars are still ongoing with US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan without any real end or sign of stability, and indeed with basically the only positive (helping Kurdish liberation) retarded and undone.
-- Sure Obama escalated with the drone program but Trump extended the drone program to even higher numbers (https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/20...bama-s-numbers). And the whole concept that Trump didn't start any new wars belies the fact that he actively tried many times to go to war in Iran and abrogated the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Anyway, the man who presided over 400,000 deaths directly as a result of his evil negligence is no man of peace and is no one to talk about his legacy.

"Greatest economy the world has ever seen..." Just typical Trump hyperbole. Everything is either the greatest ever or a total disaster as far as he's concerned. There is never any in-between with Donald Trump.

[Wildling]

I'd like a "Fresh Prince of Bel Air's Jazz gets thrown out" version.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I have to say the memorial for COVID at DC today was quite touching and it's a great gesture for Biden-Harris to start that way. I also like the Inauguration decoration of flags and so on. Whoever's doing this has a good eye and taste for this kind of thing. 400 lights, each representing a 1000 who died and arrayed before the memorial is good.

One of the most awful things that struck me about the last year since Jan 19, 2020 (when the first COVID case was reported, today was the 400,000th), was that we never got once a memorial or moment of silence or grievance for the dead in any sense from the Presidency. It struck me as astonishing since W. and others had done that before. I mean Trump had to be badgered by Biden and the Dems to lower it at half-mast which he did belatedly (https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/polit...ump/index.html) when the toll was reaching 100,000.

[Wildling]

I have to say the memorial for COVID at DC today was quite touching and it's a great gesture for Biden-Harris to start that way. I also like the Inauguration decoration of flags and so on. Whoever's doing this has a good eye and taste for this kind of thing. 400 lights, each representing a 1000 who died and arrayed before the memorial is good.

One of the most awful things that struck me about the last year since Jan 19, 2020 (when the first COVID case was reported, today was the 400,000th), was that we never got once a memorial or moment of silence or grievance for the dead in any sense from the Presidency. It struck me as astonishing since W. and others had done that before. I mean Trump had to be badgered by Biden and the Dems to lower it at half-mast which he did belatedly (https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/polit...ump/index.html) when the toll was reaching 100,000.

IIRC he lowered it for McCain's death only after being pestered too. Dead people are inherently losers to him and out of his attention span generally, the pandemic only existed as far as inconveniencing his re-election year.