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

[MajorHoy]

COVID-19 is now in third place in terms of mass-casualty events in US History - after 1918 Pandemic, the Civil War.

I wonder how those numbers were compared to the total U.S. population at the time?
(I could probably try and look it up on the internet, but don't know if anybody already has that figured out.)

[JackDaw]

The Civil War was from 1861 to 1865, and according to Wikipedia between 620,000 to 750,000 deaths. That is about (averaging it out) 172,000 deaths per year. So, in a year-by-year comparison, COVID is way ahead of the American Civil War. If COVID lasted 4 years, it would beat the Civil War by at least 3x.

The 2018 pandemic, US death toll was about 675,000 over two years (Sourcing CDC). If COVID followed the same path and more deaths occurred in 2021, we could be looking at a tie with the 2018 Pandemic.

Hopefully the vaccines will slow down the spread and significant decrease the number of deaths. Though there may still be long term complications from the virus among suriviors.

But..of course..total population back then was only around 31 million, so impact was proportionally much worse.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Conservatives have proven that all they care about is power and influence.

If they cared about the budget, they wouldn't have let Trump spend so freely during his term.

If they cared about international policy, they wouldn't have let Trump make deals with foreign nations that have less than ideal histories with us.

But now that Biden is in charge, those matter all of a sudden.

The hypocrisy was as predictable as the sunrise. And, of course, Qpublicans will do all they can to make Biden fail so they say to their sheeple, "See? Democrats can't do anything right! Only WE can solve the nation's problems, so vote us back into power!"

[Marvell2100]

Conservatives have proven that all they care about is power and influence.

If they cared about the budget, they wouldn't have let Trump spend so freely during his term.

If they cared about international policy, they wouldn't have let Trump make deals with foreign nations that have less than ideal histories with us.

But now that Biden is in charge, those matter all of a sudden.

These people are jokes. They're all gung ho to challenge anything Biden does but swallowed everything trump shoved down their throat even when they knew it was wrong.

Frakking cowards. If you don't have the guts to stand up for democracy and decent behavior then don't work in Congress.

[Malvolio]

The hypocrisy was as predictable as the sunrise. And, of course, Qpublicans will do all they can to make Biden fail so they say to their sheeple, "See? Democrats can't do anything right! Only WE can solve the nation's problems, so vote us back into power!"

They've spent 40 years telling us that government can't be relied upon to solve any of our problems, and then they get into government to make sure they fulfill that prophecy.

[Tami]

They've spent 40 years telling us that government can't be relied upon to solve any of our problems, and then they get into government to make sure they fulfill that prophecy.

If Republicans are too incompetent to do anything useful with the power they have in government, they will make damn well sure that no one else can do anything competent, even if it means sabotage, undermining them, spreading lies, and creating obstacles where none need should be.

Vote for us, we may be lazy, shiftless, stupid and incompetent, but at least we know how to make sure no one else can do anything.

[Tami]

People with extremist views less able to do complex mental tasks, research suggests

Our brains hold clues for the ideologies we choose to live by, according to research, which has suggested that people who espouse extremist attitudes tend to perform poorly on complex mental tasks.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge sought to evaluate whether cognitive disposition – differences in how information is perceived and processed – sculpt ideological world-views such as political, nationalistic and dogmatic beliefs, beyond the impact of traditional demographic factors like age, race and gender.

The study, built on previous research, included more than 330 US-based participants aged 22 to 63 who were exposed to a battery of tests – 37 neuropsychological tasks and 22 personality surveys – over the course of two weeks.

The tasks were engineered to be neutral, not emotional or political – they involved, for instance, memorising visual shapes. The researchers then used computational modelling to extract information from that data about the participant’s perception and learning, and their ability to engage in complex and strategic mental processing.

Overall, the researchers found that ideological attitudes mirrored cognitive decision-making, according to the study published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

A key finding was that people with extremist attitudes tended to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggled with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps, said lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod at Cambridge’s department of psychology.

“Individuals or brains that struggle to process and plan complex action sequences may be more drawn to extreme ideologies, or authoritarian ideologies that simplify the world,” she said.

She said another feature of people with tendencies towards extremism appeared to be that they were not good at regulating their emotions, meaning they were impulsive and tended to seek out emotionally evocative experiences. “And so that kind of helps us understand what kind of individual might be willing to go in and commit violence against innocent others.”

[RisingForce]

The Union Jack is a combination of the English,Irish, Welsh and Scottish flags, it represents the United Kingdom as a whole.

Yes well, those are ancient items from Europe, I am sure that there is more then some passing coincidence or similarity.

I am sure it is similar to the explanation behind the french the fleur-de-lis and not just a combination of flags, those are ancient symbols from medieval European history.

[RisingForce]

Anyway, I never said anywhere that I agree or that I was somehow defending the Nazis, I think they were probably too extreme and am not overly a huge fan, it is just that they legitimately considered themselves "socialists" I guess.

I am not fond of the nazi youth ideas, because that's just something I have had first hand experiences with, there is like this weird fascination with the "youth" and the "young" whatever that is, young people are perfect or more deserving and even superior somehow to everyone else or something? I guess maybe there's some scientific basis for that possibly but that's pretty extreme and just in general, the way they look at people, attempt to segment the population,I realized it was basically like the thing with the Nazis and the Olympics, that's basically how they see people, as if life is basically just a giant elaborate sports game, it is almost a little Hunger Games-esque.

That's not really Marxist or leftist at all, that's very right wing, I guess it is probably similar to how the Greeks and Romans treated or saw each other.

I don't know I guess most people are for this these days, supposedly you only get a few years to "compete" when you're in a specific age rage and then you cannot adequately or it is not okay for you to "compete" anymore, and then suddenly you have to "retire" in some sense or another and become super repressive, avoid anyone younger then you and everything has to be "spiritual" to you or something, which to me is like the equivalent of being dead. It is basically like the film "Logan's run" where they kill everyone as soon as they reach 30 years, so regardless of your "stats" or how well you can compete still or how healthy you are, once you reach a certain age it doesn't matter apparently, it's like a greater sports game of some kind. That's pretty much exactly what Karl Marx meant by his concepts of "alienation" and yet, the Nazis and half of the Western countries do the exact opposite even more. They completely objectify you and treat you like a purely physical thing and a number. It is more difficult to really stand or tolerate because they are not at all socialist about, we still live in a very competitive and capitalist society wherein they force people to largely compete still and they call that "fair" somehow.

[RisingForce]

I have no clue where the hell this user came from that is spouting nonsense about Nazi Germany being socialist. It's that whole "National Socialism" fallacy thing all over again where the terminology doesn't mean the reality, cause we all know the Democratic People's Republic of Korea sure don't believe in democracy or a fair republic, for example.

So you are saying that you would prefer combination of fascism and capitalism?

A large number of Germans were so poor that they were literally forced out of their homes and were starving in the street, I have seen videos of german families sleeping on hay on the back of horse carriages because the inflation was high and they were so poor.

Afterwards, the national socialist party basically gave everyone stable jobs, they gave each other food and helped each other, that's basically what socialism is. While I am not pro-Nazi, I think what people are arguing for when they refer to the left and socialism is that they define or see it basically then, as this large bureaucratic dictatorship, and that's what "socialism" is to them then, a dictatorship basically. That's actually not necessarily true entirely, but of course Germany was a dictatorship in many ways as well.

I would just like to hear instead what others definition of socialism is then? it's not like, favouring or choosing crony very liberal and capitalist policies that aid corporate sovereignty while maybe providing some people a scant amount of welfare benefits while they are stuck on an employment line while they live on food stamps in a low income public housing block. Also, socialism and communism are not necessarily religious either, it is not this overly bureaucratic large oppressive government that forces religion on it's citizens, what is the difference then? a neo-liberalism or a plutocratic regime wherein everyone is forced to simply obeying some exalted upperclassmen?

They made the trains run on time

The trains ran on time

[Tendrin]

Anyway, I never said anywhere that I agree or that I was somehow defending the Nazis, I think they were probably too extreme and am not overly a huge fan, it is just that they legitimately considered themselves "socialists" I guess.

I am not fond of the nazi youth ideas, because that's just something I have had first hand experiences with, there is like this weird fascination with the "youth" and the "young" whatever that is, young people are perfect or more deserving and even superior somehow to everyone else or something? I guess maybe there's some scientific basis for that possibly but that's pretty extreme and just in general, the way they look at people, attempt to segment the population,I realized it was basically like the thing with the Nazis and the Olympics, that's basically how they see people, as if life is basically just a giant elaborate sports game, it is almost a little Hunger Games-esque.

That's not really Marxist or leftist at all, that's very right wing, I guess it is probably similar to how the Greeks and Romans treated or saw each other.

I don't know I guess most people are for this these days, supposedly you only get a few years to "compete" when you're in a specific age rage and then you cannot adequately or it is not okay for you to "compete" anymore, and then suddenly you have to "retire" in some sense or another and become super repressive, avoid anyone younger then you and everything has to be "spiritual" to you or something, which to me is like the equivalent of being dead. It is basically like the film "Logan's run" where they kill everyone as soon as they reach 30 years, so regardless of your "stats" or how well you can compete still or how healthy you are, once you reach a certain age it doesn't matter apparently, it's like a greater sports game of some kind. That's pretty much exactly what Karl Marx meant by his concepts of "alienation" and yet, the Nazis and half of the Western countries do the exact opposite even more. They completely objectify you and treat you like a purely physical thing and a number. It is more difficult to really stand or tolerate because they are not at all socialist about, we still live in a very competitive and capitalist society wherein they force people to largely compete still and they call that "fair" somehow.

"My god, it's full of nonsense."

Words have meanings. You really have *no* idea what you're talking about, especially since you said 'you'd prefer some combo of fascism and capitalism'. It just shows the vast gap between your understanding of these systems and their reality.

‘Why’, I asked Hitler, ‘do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party program is the very anthesis of that commonly accredited to Socialism?’

‘Socialism’, he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, ‘is the science of dealing with the common weal [health or well-being]. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.

‘Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality and, unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.

He simply took nationalism, renamed it 'socialism' to co-opt it, and now has dorks like you repeating his lie for a century since it lets them pretend Naziism was a left-wing phenomenon, even while it was an authoritarian, hyper-nationalist, conservative-dominated movement that protected capital from the actual socialist's movements. Declaring 'WEll they THOUGHT they were socialists' doesn't really change the fundamentals of the Nazi system of governance or what Hitler was actually doing (which was not socialist, unless you're the kind of wackadoodle liberatarian who thinks any kind of state invervention in the economy is 'socialist') or where it falls in with other political, authoritarian movements. It was a conservative and revanchist, as fascism always is. Stop. Falling. For. Nazi. Propaganda.

[worstblogever]

"My god, it's full of nonsense."

Words have meanings. You really have *no* idea what you're talking about, especially since you said 'you'd prefer some combo of fascism and capitalism'. It just shows the vast gap between your understanding of these systems and their reality.




He simply took nationalism, renamed it 'socialism' to co-opt it, and now has dorks like you repeating his lie for a century since it lets them pretend Naziism was a left-wing phenomenon, even while it was an authoritarian, hyper-nationalist, conservative-dominated movement that protected capital from the actual socialist's movements. Declaring 'WEll they THOUGHT they were socialists' doesn't really change the fundamentals of the Nazi system of governance or what Hitler was actually doing (which was not socialist, unless you're the kind of wackadoodle liberatarian who thinks any kind of state invervention in the economy is 'socialist') or where it falls in with other political, authoritarian movements. It was a conservative and revanchist, as fascism always is. Stop. Falling. For. Nazi. Propaganda.

Or somehow sharing it and acting like there's nothing wrong with it, for that matter.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Colorado State Senator Kevin Lundberg, a Colorado State Senator and former candidate for U.S. Congress who has defended archaic laws on the books in Colorado that criminalize adultery, goes to the hilt to fight against a proposed law to defend domestic abusers' continued right to own firearms (as if they wouldn't use them against their significant others as "good guys with guns"), and framed the Aurora movie theatre mass shooting as a "right to life" issue, rather than a gun issue. Of course, he comes off as an absolute hypocrite on that issue (and many others), because for being so proud of being "pro-life", Lundberg is also opposed to public schools having mandatory vaccinations for students, and supports the death penalty. Lundberg's record on voting rights is downright appalling, as he not only supports totally unnecessary strict Voter ID laws, he has argued against creating laws to prevent "caging" schemes where perpetrators can make robo-calls or send out fliers to voters with fraudulent information that gives out false voting dates or polling places to misinform voters from the opposing party to help steal an election by keeping the other side at home. His rhetoric has also had him weigh in on birth control by saying that IUDs "stop a small child from implanting", and an insistence that Democrats are coming any day now to pry his guns from his "cold dead hands". Lundberg has voiced his support for Kentucky clerk Kim Davis refusing to do her job and sign same sex marriage certificates, as well as threw fuel on the fire as relates to Planned Parenthood, launching a series of witch hunt investigations to prove that the Center for Medical Progress’ videos were true, pro-life extremists were polarized enough against the organization that defunding it wasn't simply enough for some. Even after a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs was shot up by a pro-life terrorist all of the investigations that debunked the practices that the video purported to have uncovered, and the fact that a judge had indicted the two heads of the Center for Medical Progress for their deceitful actions... Lundberg continued to waste taxpayer dollars to launch investigations into Planned Parenthood. Y'know, until a result is reached that agrees with his version of reality about what's going on. What Lundberg probably should have taken more care not to do in order to win, though? He should have avoided taking photos with noted Neo-Nazis at the state capitol, like he did in October of 2017. And before you ask how Kevin Lundberg could have known the man was a Neo-Nazi, you should save it, because he was literally wearing a Daily Stormer T-shirt at the time, and that’s a pretty big tip-off. Lundberg was term-limited in the 2018 elections and failed to run for any other office after briefly teasing that he might run for Colorado State Treasurer. He has yet to re-emerge in Colorado politics.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled the former U.S. House Representative from Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District, John Duncan, Jr, who is another GOP political legacy, as his father held office or Tennessee’s 2nd District from 1964 through 1988. Immediately after his father’s death that year, Duncan Jr. was elected in a special election to hold a seat that’s been Republican since 1859. Duncan would frequently not even face a challenger for his seat, getting pushed back into office at one point for four consecutive election cycles from 1994-2000 unopposed. because every now and then, Duncan would go off the reservation and reject the agenda of the main Republican Party, like how he was one of the few Republicans to vote against the Iraq War resolution, or how he voted against the bailouts for Wall Street in 2007. But really, when we really dig, there’s more to learn about Jimmy Duncan Jr. to take exception to. You don’t get to be a Congressman for 30 years and not say or do something stupid in that role. He tended to identify with the Libertarian wing of the GOP, and we didn’t notice at first, that in 2013, Rep. Duncan floated the idea that Ron Paul kept regurgitating, to return the United States to the gold standard. John Duncan votes for the Defense of Marriage Act, co-sponsored and voted for a resolution towards creating a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Dodd/Frank Wall Street reform, the DREAM Act, the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", voted to defund Planned Parenthood, against Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy, voted for two Government Shutdowns, and repeatedly voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Shortly after the election of Donald Trump, in February of 2017, after Duncan had seen the rage from Democratic activists the day after the inauguration, and at the Women’s March, as well as other protests, he rejected call to host a town hall with his constituents. Where he definitely screwed up is when he publicly admitted it was because he felt that doing this entirely normal part of a representative’s job amounted to showing up for "shouting opportunities for extremists, kooks and radicals." Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District has a +20 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Index, and the Duncan family name has been a rubber-stamp for re-election since the Beatles were putting out albums. That seat would belong to John Duncan, Jr. as long as he wanted it, which presumably, he then would try and make his son, John Duncan III, a Knox County Trustee, the shoe-in to be his successor. Well… funny thing about that. Apparently John Duncan Jr. became the target of an ethics investigation for misusing campaign funds for taking personal vacations, to a sum of about $100,000. Meanwhile, his son, John III, was charged with a crime because he worked on his father’s campaign, and the “work” amounted to “do nothing, shut up, and take $300,000”. This news broke probably not coincidentally around the time Duncan opted to not run for re-election in 2018, and thus, for the first time in over a half century, there is not a Duncan in Congress representing Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District.

[RisingForce]

"My god, it's full of nonsense."

Words have meanings. You really have *no* idea what you're talking about, especially since you said 'you'd prefer some combo of fascism and capitalism'. It just shows the vast gap between your understanding of these systems and their reality.




He simply took nationalism, renamed it 'socialism' to co-opt it, and now has dorks like you repeating his lie for a century since it lets them pretend Naziism was a left-wing phenomenon, even while it was an authoritarian, hyper-nationalist, conservative-dominated movement that protected capital from the actual socialist's movements. Declaring 'WEll they THOUGHT they were socialists' doesn't really change the fundamentals of the Nazi system of governance or what Hitler was actually doing (which was not socialist, unless you're the kind of wackadoodle liberatarian who thinks any kind of state invervention in the economy is 'socialist') or where it falls in with other political, authoritarian movements. It was a conservative and revanchist, as fascism always is. Stop. Falling. For. Nazi. Propaganda.

Are you a payed corporate lobbyist trained to shill out propaganda and constantly deride your opponents with excessive petty arguing over semantics?

You are then somehow implying that to be truly "socialist" in essence or definition, one can only solely rely on international finance .i.e. capital to adequately sustain it's economies?

That only capital exists within conservative economies, and communist or socialist countries somehow run or sustain themselves on air, pure ethanol and water based solubles or something? they don't believe in capital or money but yet require international finance for them to adequately sustain themselves?

[worstblogever]

On this date one year ago, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled Tennessee State Senator Randy McNally, who serves both District 5 in the State Senate, also currently serves as the Volunteer State’s Lieutenant Governor, and has been floating around the world of Tennessee politics since 1979. McNally cemented his permanent status in his state’s politics in the late 1980s when he assisted the FBI in combating corruption in the Tennessee state legislature as the key figure in the Operation: Rocky Top sting. So we’ll commend him for doing a good thing 30 years ago. Since, however… There are several Republicans who we’ve discussed as having the fanatically insane misconception that there isn’t a guarantee of a separation of church and state guaranteed by the First Amendment, even though the courts have quite specifically ruled on this through the years. Well, while the Tennessee GOP have tried to pass several bills through the years to act like this isn’t the case, Randy McNally took it a step further back in 2013 and actually wanted to make it a crime to protest a violation of the separation of church and state. Which… literally doubles down on theocracy by trying to create a law that is also a First Amendment violation. If this wasn’t already unsettling enough, McNally wrote the bill to indicate that this would dictate to the federal courts to enforce this law. Which… we had a whole Civil War about what courts dictate to the other, Randy. Get with the program. It probably will come as little surprise, then, that Randy McNally also thinks that Christians are a persecuted minority and are being denied government job nominations because of their religious beliefs being carried out by Democrats, saying, ”I think there is a movement to target people of faith who are being nominated. They want their own, either agnostics or people who are non-Christians. ‘They’ being the Democratic Party.” So it should come as little surprise, then, that McNally has supported some of the most insane bills that have come through the Tennessee legislature in the past decade, including votes in support of welfare drug testing, a vote to try and prevent Syrian refugees from being resettled in Tennessee, a vote to allow students to give “opposing viewpoints” on scientific theories in public school classrooms, (In other words, deny the existence of evolution, or the age of the Earth.) support for stricter Voter ID laws aimed at suppressing the vote, a vote for HJR 587, a resolution against the United Nations Agenda 21 treaty, for fears from hard-right conspiracy theorists that it’s a plot to establish global domination, a bill that would “require the publication of abortion statistics” that also included the addresses of the people performing, and receiving the procedure and a vote for SB 2580, to allow the return of the electric chair as a means of execution in the state of Tennessee. Now, the terrifying part is that Randy McNally is one slip in the tub by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee away from running the Volunteer State. Randy McNally is now 77 years old, and does seem to be leaning towards running for office again when his term is up in 2022… but as we have no updates on him doing anything bizarre in the past year, we’ll pause from his profile to take a look at a different wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 969-45, since this was established in July 2014.


Francis Rooney

Welcome to what is the 969th profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Francis Rooney, the former U.S. House Representative from Florida’s 19th Congressional District from 2017-2020. Rooney was the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican during the second term of the administration of President George W. Bush, and was the fourth generation owner of a construction company as well as the owner an investment and holdings company that was one of the reasons behind him being one of the wealthiest members of the House. While many thought him one of the more levelheaded members of the House GOP Caucus, we have a bit of a problem with that, given that how all through the Trump administration, Rooney was promoting conspiracy theories about a “Deep State” within the U.S. Intelligence community that needed to be rooted out, most explicitly in a December 2017 interview on MSNBC, of all places. In that interview alone, Rooney raved about various conspiracy theories, including ones about Hillary Clinton, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and Andrew McCabe. He called for a “purge” on both the FBI and Department of Justice, which is probably not the term someone wants to use if they aren’t out of touch rich guys and know their pop culture franchises.

So how was he ever thought of as “levelheaded”? Well, at least the guy would say things like he was considering voting for Joe Biden in 2020, or after Trump lost the election, that his fellow Republicans would be “playing into Russia’s hands” if they questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election. I mean, at this point if a Republican ever wakes up on a day and accepts reality, they clear a bar most can’t and/or won’t.