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

[Maine Starfish]

Here's a good example of what a lot of people considered too "politically correct" on a videogame forum I visited not too long ago...



...Kamala being featured in an Avengers game.

It had nothing to do with them losing their "freedom of speech" -- it was primarily about their open dislike of a Muslim protagonist.

And likewise their dislike of not being able to be openly anti-Islamic on a moderated forum.

None of them discussed actual gameplay or knew anything about Kamala as a character -- same as when they complain about the comics.

yes, even in my limited experience with social media, I’ve seen my share of this, like you say though basically it’s just people masking their bigotry, they complain about losing their freedom of speech, but really they are just upset because they can’t be hateful towards Muslims, at least not without consequence or someone calling them out

I suppose I should clarify what I was asking before, Mister Mets said ‘liberals often go to far in the name of political correctness, and that some people go way to far in the other direction’

so I would say your examples fall into what he’s calling ‘the other direction’, people who just want to be openly bigoted

but he seems to be saying that liberals also go to far with it, so I was just curious what he considered to be ‘liberals going to far in the name of political correctness’

and side note, I was pretty excited about the news of Kamala Khan being in the Avengers game, in my opinion she’s the best new comic book character in the last couple decades, her books are exceptionally fun reads.

[aja_christopher]

I suppose I should clarify what I was asking before, Mister Mets said ‘liberals often go to far in the name of political correctness, and that some people go way to far in the other direction’

so I would say your examples fall into what he’s calling ‘the other direction’, people who just want to be openly bigoted

but he seems to be saying that liberals also go to far with it, so I was just curious what he considered to be ‘liberals going to far in the name of political correctness’.

I likewise wanted to point out that many of said right-wing extremists will resort to violence and murder to promote their bigoted political ideology.

There has to be a clear distinction between strawmen arguments about the "left" infringing on the "free speech" of people who are (possibly) being openly bigoted and the reality of those on the "right" who are openly bigoted and willing to use voter suppression, racist propaganda and even mass scale violence to achieve their political goals.



On a more positive note, it's good to see that Marvel recognizes the potential of characters like Kamala and Miles -- as do their audiences.

[Kirby101]

Freed by Court Ruling, Republicans Step Up Effort to Patrol Voting

Its premise is that a Republican victory in November is imperiled by widespread voter fraud, a baseless charge embraced by President Trump, but repeatedly debunked by research. Democrats and voting rights advocates say the driving factor is politics, not fraud — especially since Mr. Trump’s narrow win in 2016 underscored the potentially crucial value of depressing turnout by Democrats, particularly minorities.

They are trying to steal the election...again. The Republican Party does not believe in Democracy, it is that simple.

[Maine Starfish]

There has to be a clear distinction between strawmen arguments about the "left" infringing on the "free speech" of people who are (possibly) being openly bigoted and the reality of those on the "right" who are openly bigoted and willing to use voter suppression, racist propaganda and even mass scale violence to achieve their political goals.

couldn’t agree more

I like the what’s up danger song better lol

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Freed by Court Ruling, Republicans Step Up Effort to Patrol Voting



They are trying to steal the election...again. The Republican Party does not believe in Democracy, it is that simple.

Republicans know they can't win fair and square, not when their leader will most likely go down as THE worst president in history, so they're going to cheat again. The only thing the GOP believes in is power, and they'll stop at nothing to maintain their hold on same.

[Powerboy]

Ensure that African-American voters have fair and equal representation in elections since they are the most loyal Democratic voting bloc in America.

When black people are motivated to show up to vote and said votes are not suppressed, Democrats win presidential elections.



Studies have proven that many Americans will vote against said policies so long as they think "minorities" might benefit from them.



We all know the truth -- it's only a question of how long America can live in denial with someone like Trump leading our nation.

Edit: In fairness, the above comic applies to those on the "right" much more so than those on the "left".

There's a rather depressing story about that. After the 2018 election, I was waiting for a bus and a young black woman walked up, also waiting.
I was wearing a button that said I voted. She said, "I turned 18 this year and this is the first time I was eligible to vote. I'm so hyped about that."
We talked for a bit, she talked about how great Obama was, and I eventually said, "I voted Democrat and I'm assuming you did too".
She said, "Oh, I didn't vote".
I said, "Oh, but you were saying how great it was that you're 18 and this was the first time you could vote".
She said, "Yeah, but there was nobody to vote for. There was no Obama running".
I did not say this but I was thinking, "So, because there is not specifically an Obama running, whatever you mean by that, you'd rather let everything he did and stood for be flushed down the toilet rather than get out and vote for people who will try to maintain and continue the things he did and stood for?"

It's anecdotal but I think it illustrates that voters need to feel there is a reason to get out and vote and I'm not sure the issues necessarily get a lot of people to vote as much as who the person running is. I personally think Biden should choose Michelle Obama as his VP or someone who is black and possibly a black woman and I say that because I do believe there are countless people who vote based on who they like more or relate to more rather than policies.

The Democrats also need to really push for at home ballots and against voter suppression.

[aja_christopher]

There's a rather depressing story about that. After the 2018 election, I was waiting for a bus and a young black woman walked up, also waiting.
I was wearing a button that said I voted. She said, "I turned 18 this year and this is the first time I was eligible to vote. I'm so hyped about that."
We talked for a bit, she talked about how great Obama was, and I eventually said, "I voted Democrat and I'm assuming you did too".
She said, "Oh, I didn't vote".
I said, "Oh, but you were saying how great it was that you're 18 and this was the first time you could vote".
She said, "Yeah, but there was nobody to vote for. There was no Obama running".
I did not say this but I was thinking, "So, because there is not specifically an Obama running, whatever you mean by that, you'd rather let everything he did and stood for be flushed down the toilet rather than get out and vote for people who will try to maintain and continue the things he did and stood for?"

Obama openly criticizes this as well -- though I'd argue it extends to the Democratic party in general, especially during midterm elections prior to Trump.

Personally, I can't see where Biden would be much different from Obama policy-wise -- for better or for worse.

That said, I'm sure he will pass even more "progressive" legislation if the Democrats can gain solid control of both the House and the Senate.

Then there's the matter of the Supreme Court which many on the "left" don't even seem to take into account when considering their options.

My personal take on the VP situation is that I believe Kamala is the most qualified but if she isn't selected it's not at all a deal-breaker.

The strategic matter of increasing black voter turnout and maintaining a relatively safe Senate seat only gives more credence to said choice.

The Democrats have the benefit of having a lot of good choices with regards to potential VP picks -- all have something to bring to the table.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

FBI finds evidence of al Qaeda tie to 2019 Florida naval base shooting -U.S. source

[Tami]

NEWS: State Department Inspector General Steve Linick was investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s decision to green-light billions of dollars of arms sales to Saudi Arabia against the will of Congress, two sources tell @JoshNBCNews and @mitchellreports.

Twitter Link

[Iron Maiden]

I doubt Trump ever read a book from cover to cover in his misbegotten life, not even his own autobiography (ghost written by the way), so his having taken cues from Mein Kampf are highly doubtful to say the least. But yeah, Trump has gone back to his old one trick pony play of using distraction to take the minds of the rubes off his utterly disgraceful handling of the COVID-19 crisis. What Democrats need to do is hammer home in public like nobody's business Drano Don's glaring failures that led to so many cases and likely 100,000 deaths by the end of the week. Trump CAN NOT be allowed to continue using the bully pulpit of the Oval Office to spread his lies about the crisis without being challenged at each and every turn.

I have to disagree a bit here...if he didn't read it in the book mentioned in the article, which is an earlier book "My New Order", than he most likely got the gist of it from somewhere. It became popularly known as "The Big Lie" and is sometimes credited to Hitler's Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. This is the most famous quote about it and is credited to Goebbels but there is doubt about that.


"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

Hitler's Quote on the Big Lie from Mein Kampf

All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.

Now that Trump is into upwards of 12,000 lies, I think we can safely say that whether or not he actually read the book he certainly does use the technique of the Big Lie. How many times in the past month has he stated that the Obama administration left him with "empty shelves"?

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

If it was about ideological purity though, nobody would have supported Bernie in the first place, since by global standards he would be considered a moderate and his particular set of policies would probably not do much to fix the fundamental rot in American society. And frankly there's no point in trying to teach the Democrats a lesson, because they will never learn from their mistakes anyway. They keep dreaming of this West Wing type administration where a couple of grand speeches and a commitment to unity and bipartisanship can magically make all the problems disappear, never mind that they nominate the one candidate who clearly isn't capable of doing even that.

Put it this way. It was a lot more convenient to believe the narrative that Bernie was a cult leader who couldn’t play nice with the party and mislead and incited people with unrealistic promises and they would follow him over the cliff. Because then it was a personality issue and not a policy issue and if the personality lost and went away so did the problem.


Now that he lost, now that it’s beyond doubt that he is playing nice and that he doing everything to help Biden, and now that his former supporters are not playing nice and attacking him the way they accused them of attacking others did not being him, now it’s a policy issue of a subset in the party who cares about a specific set of policies and is refusing to budge on them regardless of who it is. That was the harder problem and it was the one that didn’t go away easy

[Tendrin]

Looks like we all, and most of all WBE, get some good news for once.

Matt Shea will not appear on the ballot for reelection.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/f...-by-colleagues

After being shunned by his colleagues for aligning with the far-right militia movement, Washington state representative Matt Shea will not appear on the ballot for re-election in 2020 after 11 years as a legislator.

[PaulBullion]

Perhaps trivial or perhaps an example of how a lot of people tend to perceive liberals including a lot of liberals. Note, all these issue are important, very important. But a lot of it has been trivialized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...ature=emb_logo

I am never, ever clicking youtube links that are not embedded as videos to give me an idea what I am clicking on.

Never ever ever.

[PaulBullion]

True on the first but I think we need to push what will get the win and then focus on the rest.

I think you're talking about Bernie supporters wanting to undermine Biden just because the party didn't go with Bernie? There definitely needs to be unity to get the Republicans out of power.

Most of them don't support Bernie anymore, since he sold out and endorsed Joe. We need to call them something else.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Twitter Link

Hmm! Last I checked, Republicans are also part of Congress. Are they going to raise a stink over this, or will they swallow any indignation they might have because they don't want to risk pissing off Trump if they complain?