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

[Totoro Man]

Oh for god's sake.

was everybody just supposed to nod their head in agreement with your assertion? even though it was clearly wrong?

[The Cool Thatguy]

Russian sentenced to life in Ukraine's 1st war crimes trial





Russia will definitely retaliate and make up some charges for any soldier they capture.

The world really needs to do something about Russia taking hostages. Dunno what, but damn...

[Totoro Man]

These statistics in the above Vox article are likely going to be worse after this year.

I've read some good interviews at Vox. but I still take articles by Vox with a tablespoon of salt.

I wrote about a frustrating experience reading Vox earlier in the year in the following post:

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post5876306

the short version is this:
Vox ran a headline that said "Study: conservatives amplified Russian trolls 30 times more often than liberals in 2016"

what they didn't bother to do was give readers the actual numbers from the study upon which that comparison was made. it's true, that conservatives amplified Russian trolls more. a lot of those retweets were done by pro-Trump people over the age of 60. when you compared the number of retweets from conservatives and liberals as a percentage out of the grand total of tweets studied the two figures were as follows:

00.000966666667 (Conservatives)
00.0000333333333 (Liberals)

there's a reason why a number of sociologists (including the people who did the study!) said that the difference was not statistically significant. this makes the headline seem misleading and dishonest. so, that's why I'm not anxious to put all of my trust in numbers that Vox provides us. if they're repackaging data relationships completely stripped of any context and don't give us the raw data so that we can make an informed comparison ourselves... then they're not even journalists in the traditional sense.

[Panfoot]

The material about his friendship with Daphne was moving.

Says the guy who defends bigots at every turn, yeah, right.

[Tami]

Raven Software QA Votes to Become First Major Video Game Union in the United States

[AnakinFlair]

Russian sentenced to life in Ukraine's 1st war crimes trial

Russia will definitely retaliate and make up some charges for any soldier they capture.

I fully expect at some time, that soldier and any others that are convicted will be exchanged for any Ukrainian soldiers Russia captures.

David Perdue on Stacey Abrams: “Let her go back where she came from .. She doesn’t care about people from GA .. She is demeaning her own race.”

Good lord.

Isn't Perdue about to get his ass kicked by Kemp this week anyways? Deplorable thing to say, but it feels like the final shots before his ship is sunk.


In some rare good news from a Republican Governor...

Va. Gov. Youngkin restores voting rights to thousands of ex-felons

RICHMOND — Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a conservative Republican who has typically projected a tough-on-crime image, announced Friday that he has restored voting and other civil rights to 3,496 ex-felons.

“I am encouraged that over 3,400 Virginians will take this critical first step towards vibrant futures as citizens with full civil rights,” Youngkin said in a written statement. “Individuals with their rights restored come from every walk of life and are eager to provide for themselves, their families and put the past behind them for a better tomorrow.”

In most states, convicted felons automatically regain the right to vote upon the completion of their sentences. Virginia is one of 11 that permanently strip citizens of the right to vote upon conviction of a felony, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Felons here also lose the right to possess a firearm, hold public office, serve on a jury or as a notary.

But the Virginia Constitution gives the governor the power to restore most of those rights once a felon has completed his or her sentence. The one exception is firearms rights, which only a Circuit Court judge can restore.

Virginia governors of both parties have taken steps over the past decade to make it easier for felons to regain the right to vote, starting with Republican Robert F. McDonnell, a former prosecutor who championed the cause as a moral issue, and greatly picking up speed under Democrats Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam.

McDonnell intervened in several thousand cases before leaving office in 2014. McAuliffe restored voting and other civil rights to about 173,000 felons. Northam did so for more than 111,000 former prisoners and championed a proposed constitutional amendment that would have automatically restored voting rights for felons upon completion of their incarceration.

The measure passed the General Assembly last year, when Democrats controlled the state House and Senate, but it hit a roadblock once Republicans took control of the House in January.

To amend the constitution, the legislature must pass legislation two years in a row — with an election in between — and then win approval from voters in a referendum. The measure died in a Republican-controlled House committee this year, despite bipartisan support.

Youngkin’s action to restore rights presents a softer image of the new governor, who stressed law-and-order themes during his campaign last year against McAuliffe, who was seeking a comeback. Youngkin sharply criticized Northam for the state Parole Board’s decision, at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, to release some aging violent offenders, including a man who’d served decades for killing a Richmond police officer.

“The restoration of rights process provides a fresh step forward for individuals who have made mistakes, but have done their duty to our community and wish to be full and productive citizens of our Commonwealth,” Kay Coles James, who handles rights restoration requests as Youngkin’s secretary of the commonwealth, said in a written statement. “I look forward to their successful futures.”

The administration will restore rights “on an ongoing basis,” according to the announcement from Youngkin’s office, which invited ex-felons seeking to have their rights restored to visit www.restore.virginia.gov.

With all the Republican efforts to strip voting rights from everyone who isn't a white Christian male, it's nice to see one that wants to give them back. Though I have to admit I'm shocked the NRA hasn't tried to sue Virginia over the gun ownership issue.

[The Cool Thatguy]

With all the Republican efforts to strip voting rights from everyone who isn't a white Christian male, it's nice to see one that wants to give them back. Though I have to admit I'm shocked the NRA hasn't tried to sue Virginia over the gun ownership issue.

I imagine they expect Republicans to be filling out the list, and want some per-emptive mercy

[CSTowle]

Well, J.K. Rowling is not a comedian. As a writer, she had the reputation to speak with her heart: when she spoke, you believed her.

Comedians, funny people can say awful things just to make fun…

Fair enough.

[worstblogever]

In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of Tennessee State Senator Todd Gardenhire, who we noted for his reaching office in 2012 by winning a GOP primary in a conservative-leaning district by a mere 40 votes, and since, his utter dedication to mendacity regarding discussions of healthcare. Gardenhire, after voting to block the Medicaid Expansion in Tennessee, lied and said he wasn't being a hypocrite because he wasn't on government insurance himself (he was). He also lied about the Affordable Care Act, claiming it hadn't also, by extension, allowed him to keep his son covered through his own government medical insurance until he was 27 (it did). When confronted on camera by a constituent who demanded he pull himself from his own insurance plans if he was going to deny coverage to a quarter million Tennesseeans, Todd Gardenhire's reasonable response was, "Why don't you give it up, *******?" But back to the lying... Gardenhire falsely claimed in a hearing on abortion that there were more restrictions on men seeking vasectomies these days than women seeking abortions (WHAT?). Gardenhire also voted for Tennessee's attempts to bring back the electric chair, because they're having a hard time getting phenobarbital to perform lethal injections. He has voted to try and block Tennessee from resettling Syrian refugees. Gardenhire called those who wrote protests on the sidewalk outside his office in chalk “Nazis”, which seems pretty hyperbolic given that we’re pretty sure that actual Nazis used far more heinous tactics. Oh, and in 2017 he became the sponsor of an honest-to-goodness “Blue Lives Matter” bill in the Tennessee state legislature.

Gardenhire, now 73 won re-election in a race that was closer than expected, with 53% of the vote in November.

That may have had something to do with the racist comments he made in October of 2020, where he blamed “inner city” obesity on people “eating fried chicken from 7-11”:

”The obesity rate in the inner city is bigger than anywhere else. Because ... they go to a 7-Eleven or a convenience store, there's fried chicken so they get them some fried chicken on the way home and have dinner on that. Well, that's the worst thing you can eat.”

Since winning re-election, Gardenhire has been counterproductive in the United States recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, voting for a bill to prohibit the use of Covid-19 vaccination passports, and voted for both of the Tennessee GOP’s transphobic bills, to both ban transgender athletes from playing against their biological sex, and should there be events where it’s irrelevant, banning transgender student athletes from locker rooms.

Todd Gardenhire will, barring a resignation of untimely death, remain in office until 2024. Especially considering the Tennessee GOP have gerrymandered his district to push a swath of Democratic voters out of it since those vote totals are getting closer and closer for him all the time, as if there were actual democratic representation happening.

[useridgoeshere]

With all the Republican efforts to strip voting rights from everyone who isn't a white Christian male, it's nice to see one that wants to give them back.

Did they report on the pardons by race, religion, or gender? I didn’t see that.

[Kirby101]

was everybody just supposed to nod their head in agreement with your assertion? even though it was clearly wrong?

Nah, my reaction was pretty much the same.

[JCAll]

then why are so many people complaining about him?

"villainize" is to treat or revile somebody as a villain. to speak ill of, to disparage someone as a villainous person. it's an act of passing moral judgement, and saying so, about a person within the context of a larger cultural situation or a narrative.

does it -really- look like he's doing that to himself?

so, by that line of argument, when Trump supporters villainize Hilary Clinton that's just Clinton doing that to herself?

deciding that people are base, crude, or evil is something that every culture and person does. which is why I said that if people want to villainize him that's their right.

You've got things way too complicated in your mind. People are calling Chapelle a bigot,because he keeps being a bigot. That's the only thing happening.

[Tendrin]

You've got things way too complicated in your mind. People are calling Chapelle a bigot,because he keeps being a bigot. That's the only thing happening.

Hence my exasperation. Nobody is forcing Chapelle up on stage to make these comments. People are reacting to things he's choosing to do *over and over* for no other reason than trans people had the temerity to not find him funny. Meanwhile, he's comparing trans women to the act of wearing black face and suggesting they're secret rapists, but yeah, sure, it's *Chapelle* that's the victim here.

[Kevinroc]

Never forget that one of the reasons Chappelle walked off his Comedy Central show was because he grew uncomfortable with certain members of the audience laughing AT Black people instead of with Black people.

What he's doing now laughing at Trans people is just terrible.

[JackDaw]

Well, J.K. Rowling is not a comedian. As a writer, she had the reputation to speak with her heart: when she spoke, you believed her.

Comedians, funny people can say awful things just to make fun…

But that (saying awful things to make fun) is not the sole prerogative of professional comedians. Practically every one does it from time to time.

Why not extend the same approach to everyone? That is try to make a reasonable effort to understand why they are saying what they are…in particular whether it’s coming from a place of kindness or a place of cruelty…and then judge them appropriately?

When it becomes obvious, for example, that a guy is setting out deliberately to say things that will hurt innocent people, I can’t see any reason to think “that’s okay, he’s a professional comic”.