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

[ChangingStation]

80% increase in R turnout across the US in the last 4 days.

I should elaborate that the poll was made by Tyson.

[PwrdOn]

A lot of the undecided voters don't follow politics that closely.

They're the people who don't know who Ruth Bader Ginsburg was, let alone that she died.



Looking at raw numbers is misleading, as the population of the world has increased since 1981.

The numbers are cut off at 2011, when the decline has continued.

It seems we've argued about this before.

Last year, I wrote "there has been tremendous good, like the decline in the percentage of people under extreme poverty, largely as a result of increased trade, improved technology and the establishment of "rule of law." I included some links.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-excl...global-poverty

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2...rtality-charts

You suggested it was mainly in China.

As I suggested at the time, global poverty reduction has been substantial outside of China, from almost one third (29%) of the non-Chinese world population living in extreme poverty in 1981 to twelve percent by 2013.

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post4667570

https://ourworldindata.org/the-globa...-it-only-china

And then we argued back and forth about whether American trade and foreign investment helped China.
O

Well you figure that if a totalitarian hellhole like China can be so successful bringing people out of poverty, that any developing country that really bought into those American ideals of free speech, property rights, and rule of law could do far better right? But since the end of WW2, the list of nations that has successfully managed to join the first world club by embracing Western values and market economics consists of, who exactly? South Korea, Singapore, maybe Taiwan? Meanwhile, all of the American-backed puppet regimes, failed states, and right wing dictatorships that exist primarily to enable American companies to strip mine their countries for resources and exploit their people as dirt cheap sweatshop labor is almost too long to fathom. And can you imagine how sorry the state of affairs would be if there weren't rival superpowers like the USSR and China that these countries can play off against the US to at least be able to recapture some leverage?

It's really not that complicated to understand how American foreign policy works if you just draw parallels between how we deal with poor nations and how we treat minorities at home. Oh sure, we'll make a big hoot about all the initiatives and programs we've started to empower this that or whomever, and generously pat ourselves on the back for whatever incremental progress is made, but at the end of the day anyone with actual power or influence understands that,whether at home or abroad, people from marginalized communities are never truly meant to succeed. After all, it's bad enough having to deal with China, can you imagine how troublesome it would be if countries in Africa, Latin America, or the Middle East developed to the point where they actually became military, technological, and cultural rivals to the US? Or if, God forbid, they tried to leverage their newfound geopolitical clout to advocate for the interests of their oppressed brethren living in the West? Black Lives Matter is already seen as enough of a threat to the fabric of American society as it is, can you imagine what it would be like if there were actually a league of wealthy, advanced, and powerful African nations willing to throw the full weight of their economic and diplomatic power behind it?

[The Chou Lives]

https://youtu.be/MMjjQoFq0xU

Hannity is a clown who gets people killed.

Good for Mark Cuban.

I honestly hope Biden wins.

Trump cult has got to go.

[Malvolio]

That YouTube clip is from May. Not that Cuban wouldn't do the same thing in an interview with Hannity today. But it's not current.

[Malvolio]

Obama unleashed is making me happy. Don't know if it will help in Florida not holding my breath but good to see him getting it all off his chest. He had to eat alot of bs from trump over the years and only defend himself with surrogates and pundits for alot of the slander and conspiracies. But, now he can say what he wants to say and just call it like it is.

Obama, campaigning in Florida’s COVID epicenter, criticizes Trump’s pandemic response

When Obama was President, he had to be Jackie Robinson. Now that he's out of office, he can be Reggie Jackson.

[Jack Dracula]

These are links to the same article in different papers.

The argument seems to primarily be about DREAMers and the wall, rather than detained migrant families.



This doesn't really fix the problem of kids in cages. DACA is not about recent arrivals.

The first is an article describing the bipartisan proposal and the second describes how the Trump administration killed it before it could even be fully explained.
Yes, in an effort to be all-encompassing it had to do with dreamers as well as new immigrants.

You argue in bad faith Mets. I don't care for it.

[The Chou Lives]

That YouTube clip is from May. Not that Cuban wouldn't do the same thing in an interview with Hannity today. But it's not current.

Not current but it happened.

Just to show that what the man said was true and the a Trump people do the same **** for ages now.

Now this. Is recent/current.

https://youtu.be/TRJTQx40BnQ

Spoiled god emperor wannabe wants to delete the FBI.

Because they do not do his dirty work.

[numberthirty]

Since Biden tried to get out of actually being accountable for his political career...

Just because something wasn't actually in the '94 crime bill? It doesn't get you off of the hook when this was the actual reality of things. -

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...2c7_story.html

How an early Biden crime bill created the sentencing disparity for crack and cocaine trafficking

A 44-year-old Democratic senator from Delaware with a growing national profile stepped forward with a bill aimed at heading off the crisis.

The bipartisan legislation crafted by Joe Biden, which authorized new funding for drug treatment programs and stricter penalties for drug offenses, passed overwhelmingly, with the support of most black lawmakers, and was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan.

Later, a little-noticed provision in the law came to be viewed as one of the most racially slanted sentencing policies on record: a rule that treated crack cocaine as significantly worse than powder cocaine and ended up disproportionately punishing African Americans.

Sixteen years after its passage, Biden disavowed the provision, saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” quoting nuns who taught him as a child. His campaign now calls the disparity in sentencing “a profound mistake” that he wants to reverse.

An examination of Biden’s work on a half-dozen criminal justice bills found that his legislation included liberal priorities but also broadly served to push federal criminal policy to the right in response to a surge of violent crime. Biden’s language and policy positions were mainstream for Democrats at the time, reflecting a political consensus around tough-on-crime policies during the crime wave that began in the 1970s and efforts by many in the party to assert a more centrist image.

“He has a burden on him to explain,” Kevin Ring, president of the nonprofit advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said in an interview this month. “He needs to say clearly, ‘Here is what I think I got right back then and what I got wrong, here is what I think today.’ . . . Otherwise, he’s going to litigate the past in a way I don’t think will be helpful to him.”

[BeastieRunner]

I should elaborate that the poll was made by Tyson.

What does that got to do with actual registered Rs being tracked by states voting systems showing up 80% more?

I really don't think we should be dancing in the street. Pumpkin Polpot could still pull this off.

[The Chou Lives]

What does that got to do with actual registered Rs being tracked by states voting systems showing up 80% more?

I really don't think we should be dancing in the street. Pumpkin Polpot could still pull this off.

Yeah. I am not doing a victory dance until he leaves.

Lots of stupid can happen before hand.

[ChangingStation]

What does that got to do with actual registered Rs being tracked by states voting systems showing up 80% more?

I really don't think we should be dancing in the street. Pumpkin Polpot could still pull this off.

I don't think anyone is actually celebrating already, especially not the campaigners themselves. They're far more interested in increasing turnout. Still that scepticism is well earned, but if people do feel hopeful they should use that hope to just work all the harder.

[numberthirty]

For what it's worth, none of the speculation about Biden's age seemed to be anything like a concern in his appearance on Saturday afternoon.

A lot of that stuff seems to be largely in the eye of the beholder anyway, but it's worth the mention.

[Steel Inquisitor]

Well you figure that if a totalitarian hellhole like China can be so successful bringing people out of poverty, that any developing country that really bought into those American ideals of free speech, property rights, and rule of law could do far better right? But since the end of WW2, the list of nations that has successfully managed to join the first world club by embracing Western values and market economics consists of, who exactly? South Korea, Singapore, maybe Taiwan? Meanwhile, all of the American-backed puppet regimes, failed states, and right wing dictatorships that exist primarily to enable American companies to strip mine their countries for resources and exploit their people as dirt cheap sweatshop labor is almost too long to fathom. And can you imagine how sorry the state of affairs would be if there weren't rival superpowers like the USSR and China that these countries can play off against the US to at least be able to recapture some leverage?

It's true that China has a stronger economic stability for the lower classes, this fact does not contradict that China is a more dire country to live in for the reasons. You say China has better rule of law, freedom of speech and property rights but where's the proof that it's the case? In America comedians have a large array of tv shows to make fun of Trump, but this is impossible in China. Winney the Pooh was banned because it was used to insult Xi.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...o-president-xi

Trump at least can be voted out, and is in danger of not having a second term - while Xi made himself president for life.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43361276

And why are "westerns values" bad? You didn't go into any detail with that.

Sure America's bad with right wing puppet states, its something that shouldn't be tolerated. However, this comes up short when China's been confirmed supporting regimes like Maduro's.

https://www.axios.com/venezuela-coro...eee5a1aa7.html

I have my issues with Mets, but by ignoring his sources completely you're not providing an argument to debunk what he said, this does the opposite.

Except those very same countries governments are more than happy to sign up to those sweatshop conditions, and with China this is a big reason why it has immense soft power over America and Africa. It's why various Muslim governments aren't condemning China for the Uighurs and Hong Kong. Their own citizens welfare is sacrificed for political capital and a growing economy.

It's really not that complicated to understand how American foreign policy works if you just draw parallels between how we deal with poor nations and how we treat minorities at home. Oh sure, we'll make a big hoot about all the initiatives and programs we've started to empower this that or whomever, and generously pat ourselves on the back for whatever incremental progress is made, but at the end of the day anyone with actual power or influence understands that,whether at home or abroad, people from marginalized communities are never truly meant to succeed. After all, it's bad enough having to deal with China, can you imagine how troublesome it would be if countries in Africa, Latin America, or the Middle East developed to the point where they actually became military, technological, and cultural rivals to the US? Or if, God forbid, they tried to leverage their newfound geopolitical clout to advocate for the interests of their oppressed brethren living in the West? Black Lives Matter is already seen as enough of a threat to the fabric of American society as it is, can you imagine what it would be like if there were actually a league of wealthy, advanced, and powerful African nations willing to throw the full weight of their economic and diplomatic power behind it?

America's foreign policy is terrible, nobody disagrees with that. However, you're going to need a better alternative to a world leader than China. This shows how bad America is, yet fails to produce a good argument for why anyone should choose China over America. They don't automatically become "better" by not being America. Especially if the subject is about minorities, and marginalised communities.

What has China done to approve of Black Lives Matter? This is what's going on in China right now.



But say you're right, BLM risks being undermined looking like puppets of dictators like the Civil Rights movement did with the Soviet Union. Countries who do this aren't doing that out of the kindness of their hearts. That's how you end up with people like Angela "Jim Jones was right" Davis.

Except China has nothing to do with African nations backing BLM.

[BeastieRunner]

For 45 to win, he would have to to follow a path very similar to his win in 2016. If the same states start falling in the same place and roughly the same time ... He will pull off another EC Hail Mary.

If even one previous state flips, his path will close.

[BeastieRunner]

It appears 4 Pence staffers have tested positive for COVID.