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

[Tami]

Hmm! That’s interesting. Murphy has shown himself to be a solid politician, and the timing couldn’t be better. In any event, Murphy as a presidential candidate most definitely could work.

I'm not sure how he would do, a lot depends on who else might run, but I'd have no problem with him giving it a try if he wanted to.

[Tami]

Well, another GOP candidate for Congress is making death threats towards the FBI.

Martin Hyde, an old associate of Roger Stone running to challenge GOP Congressman Vern Buchanan in Florida, just promised that if the FBI were to raid his home, they would need "body bags" to clean up after what he did to the agents coming on property.

The Republican Party is an openly criminal party at war with any law enforcement agency trying to stop their crimes, and are still using stochastic terror as a main party plank.

For those having trouble reading between the lines.

I posted something in Twitter a few minutes ago. I was thinking that those who are calling themselves Republicans aren't really, and that it might it interesting if someone took them to court to challenge their right to the name Republican.

Something I didn't post but was thinking of is that this is like the Skrull invasion of the Republican Party, or worse.

[worstblogever]

I posted something in Twitter a few minutes ago. I was thinking that those who are calling themselves Republicans aren't really, and that it might it interesting if someone took them to court to challenge their right to the name Republican.

Something I didn't post but was thinking of is that this is like the Skrull invasion of the Republican Party, or worse.

If only we could solve the problem by hypnotizing them to turn them into cows.

[Gray Lensman]

I just saw on Twitter (take it as you will) that this might have been a contract killing. As in, someone put a hit on Dugin but missed and got his daughter instead.

Latest I read:

Security cameras in the area had been disabled for 2 weeks.
Dugin's daughter, not Dugin himself, was the listed owner of the vehicle.
The bomb was under the driver's seat.

Looking a lot like a professional hit, and is at least somewhat likely that she was the actual target instead of him. The guy does have an article about sacrificing one's children to the state, and how certain members of the elite should only exist for the purposes of being killed for propaganda purposes.

[babyblob]

If only we could solve the problem by hypnotizing them to turn them into cows.

nah the GOP cult have filled in nice with being mindless sheep.

[worstblogever]

nah the GOP cult have filled in nice with being mindless sheep.

[Ragged Maw]

Gotta play that game one day. I hear it's pretty good (and funny).

[WestPhillyPunisher]

More like the cult of Trump if you ask me. I still remember Fled Cruz bashing the Donald and Lady Lindsey griping how the GOP deserved bad things if Trump were elected. Yet, they wasted no time doing an about face to become two of the fiercest kissers of Trump’s orange ass.

[GozertheGozarian]

Gotta play that game one day. I hear it's pretty good (and funny).

DangerouslyFunny has been playing it. Good stuff.

[Tami]

I saw a thread on Twitter from a canvasser that he found out that Black American Flags (ones that are done in shades of black instead of the normal colors) mean that teh person's house where it is being flown is someone who would shoot anyone who comes near their property. It's also supposed to be very hard right and very racist.

Anyone else hear about this?

[Tami]

Student Fatally Shot by Woman He Stopped to Help

he man, Adam Simjee, and his girlfriend, Mikayla Paulus, both students at the University of Central Florida, were driving in Talladega National Forest, about 80 miles east of Birmingham, on the morning of Aug. 14 when they were flagged down by a woman claiming her car would not start, according to a statement from the Clay County Sheriff’s Office posted by television station WBRC.

The woman, Yasmine Hider, pulled out a gun and made the couple walk back into the woods, according to the statement. Mr. Simjee then pulled out his own gun, leading to an “exchange of gunfire” in which Ms. Hider was shot several times in the torso and Mr. Simjee was shot in the back, the statement said.

Ms. Paulus, 20, who was not injured, tried to revive her boyfriend by administering CPR but he died at the scene, the authorities said.

Ms. Hider was transported to a Birmingham hospital where she had surgery for her injuries. The authorities said she may be part of a group of people “living off the grid” in tents in the national forest who were reported to be “armed and potentially violent.”

Ms. Paulus told the authorities that at the time of the shooting, a second woman, later identified as Krystal Diane Pinkins, 36, had been standing in the woods.

Ms. Hider, the assailant, had called out to Ms. Pinkins to help her but she fled, according to officials. It was at this point that Ms. Paulus was able to get her phone and call 911, the statement said.

A tracking team from the Alabama Department of Corrections found what the authorities described as a “base camp” about half a mile from the scene of the shooting where they said they found Ms. Pinkins near a group of tents.

As officers ordered her to the ground, “a 5-year-old child ran from the woods holding a loaded shotgun,” the sheriff’s office statement said. The officers instructed the child, later identified as Ms. Pinkins’s son, to put down the shotgun but he kept going toward his mother before eventually putting it on the ground, officials said.

[worstblogever]

I saw a thread on Twitter from a canvasser that he found out that Black American Flags (ones that are done in shades of black instead of the normal colors) mean that teh person's house where it is being flown is someone who would shoot anyone who comes near their property. It's also supposed to be very hard right and very racist.

Anyone else hear about this?

That flag is the American version of "no quarter".

As in, people flying them philosophically believe that we're going to go to into a civil war, and they'll be taking no prisoners and killing every perceived opponent they have when the shooting starts.

They are eager to start shooting.

[Mister Mets]

Something I've been thinking about when it comes to how conversations go awry is the difference between being taken literally and being taken seriously. This distinction seems to have been popularized with Trump and his supporters, with the idea that they should be taken seriously but not literally, that it's not helpful to point out the facts and dismiss their complaints, but to determine whether there are legitimate underlying concerns that aren't being articulated.

Beyond Trump, a lot of political discussions aren't about people wanting to be taken literally. Someone may be venting or trying to fit in, and they're not looking for clarifying questions on policy.

It's possible to be taken seriously if you're coming from the same frame of reference, but it's not great for communication or persuasion. There are some attitudes that reward people for things that are counterproductive for their side.

A podcast I follow had an interview with the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen about incentives in the modern world, and he noted that social media rewards things that aren't effective. In social media, rewards come in the form of kudos from your in-group "likes." This encourages people who are politically engaged to say things their peers will already believe. To achieve political goals it's necessary to persuade others, which means that it may be necessary to talk on their level, which is hard to do if that can get you ostracized by your side.

[Tami]

Something I've been thinking about when it comes to how conversations go awry is the difference between being taken literally and being taken seriously. This distinction seems to have been popularized with Trump and his supporters, with the idea that they should be taken seriously but not literally, that it's not helpful to point out the facts and dismiss their complaints, but to determine whether there are legitimate underlying concerns that aren't being articulated.

Beyond Trump, a lot of political discussions aren't about people wanting to be taken literally. Someone may be venting or trying to fit in, and they're not looking for clarifying questions on policy.

It's possible to be taken seriously if you're coming from the same frame of reference, but it's not great for communication or persuasion. There are some attitudes that reward people for things that are counterproductive for their side.

A podcast I follow had an interview with the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen about incentives in the modern world, and he noted that social media rewards things that aren't effective. In social media, rewards come in the form of kudos from your in-group "likes." This encourages people who are politically engaged to say things their peers will already believe. To achieve political goals it's necessary to persuade others, which means that it may be necessary to talk on their level, which is hard to do if that can get you ostracized by your side.

If you say something with the expectation that you will be taken seriously then you will be taken literally. The only exception to that are late night comic talk show hosts who talk about serious things in na way that is intended to be funny or absurd.

Most people talk to be taken seriously, even if what they say isn't reasonable to most people, it may seem reasonable to them and to a few others. If they truly believe what they say they expect to be taken literally and seriously.

If they know that they are lying, then they are the mirror inverse of the late night talk show hosts. While the Late Nighters speak the truth in a twisted way, the Lyers speak lies as if they were truth, seriously and with the expectation that they will be believed.

[Tami]

What Russians See in the News: A War Over Western Plans to Subjugate Them

The reporting is less about Ukraine than “about opposing Western plans to get control of Mother Russia,” said Stanislav Kucher, a veteran Russian television host now consulting on a project to get Russians better access to banned news outlets. The United States is the main antagonist, with Europe and NATO its lackeys.

Vladimir Solovyov, a talk-show host and top cheerleader for President Vladimir V. Putin’s government, said this month that “Russia was invited to join Western society for dinner — not as a guest, but as a dish.”

One of his nightly shows recently presented the war as a kind of cosmic showdown between good and evil. For specific incidents, he brings out various “experts,” like the American-born one-time martial arts star Steven Seagal, now a Russian citizen, who pushed the Kremlin’s narrative that an explosion in July at a Russian internment camp in eastern Ukraine that killed more than 50 prisoners of war had been caused by American-supplied HIMARS rockets. Ukrainian and Western officials maintain that the evidence suggests the Russians planned an attack on the prison, including digging graves ahead of the explosion, and that the damage to the facility was inconsistent with a HIMARS attack.

Lev Gudkov, the research director at the Levada Center, an independent polling organization, noted that at the start of the war, television had long been a trusted, main source of information for 75 percent of Russians. The trust has since dipped, he said, after it became clear that what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine would not be a cakewalk.

The older, mainstay television audience, however, is especially susceptible to anti-NATO, anti-American rhetoric, he said, because it was drilled into Russians as schoolchildren, and the idea of rebuilding the might and reach of the Soviet empire appeals to many.

Over the long haul, analysts note, the Russian propaganda playbook offers little that is new, though the particulars change over time. Throughout the Soviet era, alarms that Western powers were bent on undermining Russia — often true — were standard fare, as were claims that those powers were crumbling.