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

[worstblogever]

I honestly wonder if Republican comic book fans watch "The Boys" and root for Homelander and Stormfront without understanding they're the bad guys.

[Joker]

Its not so much about not wanting to pay taxes to improve their quality of life. it is about not wanting to pay high taxes to improve others quality of life. Like most Gop voters are thinking why should I pay higher taxes to improve an inner city school system when my kids private school is doing fine, or an immigrants health care when I can see any doctor I want.

That is what it boils down to.

That's not dissimilar to what I'm saying though. Paying taxes without seeing a return.

But boy is it interesting that you singled out "Inner city" and "Immigrants". (Not because of you, but in representing Republican opinions. Definitely not the party of racism.)

[babyblob]

That's not dissimilar to what I'm saying though. Paying taxes without seeing a return.

But boy is it interesting that you singled out "Inner city" and "Immigrants". (Not because of you, but in representing Republican opinions. Definitely not the party of racism.)

I used those examples because the those seem to be the two biggest problems that most Republicans I know have with high taxes and social programs. Its all going to the inner city and immigrants. Its funny how the party for the people who claim not to be racist always single these two out. I can maybe understand an American first Republican having an issue with immigrants getting programs. Dont agree but I can see how they feel it is taking away from Americans.
But inner cities are part of America. The people who live there are Americans yet they are upset about helping them. But no problems in programs that help rural white Americans. It is amazing how they can defend themselves at this point.

I will use my hardcore Trumper as an example. She hates inner city programs because those people have destroyed themselves with drugs and crime and why should we clean up the mess. yet the area I live in has a huge meth problem and crime from meth. But we need to give them all the help we can. it blows my mind.

[PaulBullion]

It isn't as indicative of the Republican party as socialists are of the Democratic party.

It's interesting that you see it that way.

It's not true, of course.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, that "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Colorado’s 5th Congressional District, Doug Lamborn, who first won office in 2007 by gay-baiting and claiming his primary opponent “supported the homosexual agenda” (which wasn’t the case). Lamborn was also named the most conservative member of Congress in 2010 by the National Journal, which makes sense when you realize he was one of the original member of the GOP to push legislation fueled by FOX News’ “War on Christmas”, as well as being the guy the guy who co-sponsored a bill to try to defund National Public Radio. Plus, long before Mitt Romney ever talked about defunding PBS and speaking ill of Big Bird, Rep. Lamborn did it first. Lamborn even once gave an interview where he described being associated with President Obama “like touching a tar baby”, which he defended by saying he had no idea “tar baby” was a racial slur. That may be part of the reason that he once called for American generals to resign to protest President Obama's foreign policy or the time he made a spectacle of himself back in 2012 by announcing that he was boycotting President Obama's State of the Union Address, then complaining when the media actually reported it, and saying he was being "unfairly singled out". Lamborn has also took to claiming President Obama was doing nothing to prevent Christian persecution around the globe because he was too busy supporting LGBTQ causes, instead.

Needless to say, Doug Lamborn has been getting a lot of grief at his town hall meetings. And then he was implicated as someone who benefited from stock advice from fellow Congressman Chris Collins, whose stock advice really amounts to insider trading, although unlike Collins, Lamborn avoided being directly indicted. He managed to survive the scandal of allegedly using fraudulent signatures to get on the ballot, to fend off two primary challengers in the form of fellow CSGOPOTDs Owen Hill, and Darryl Glenn, before holding off Democrat Stephanie Rose Spaulding in the general election with 57% of the vote.

Now in his 7th term in office, Lamborn has continued his feud with PBS, complaining not just about Sesame Street and Big Bird, but getting his knickers in a twist and trying to defund PBS because the teacher on the cartoon Arthur had the titular character’s teacher, Mr. Ratburn, married to another man (anthropomorphic animal man, but GASP, A MAN!). Lamborn’s fury, as follows:

”A case in point is PBS—the Public Broadcasting Service—which recently aired a surprising episode of the children’s show “Arthur” titled “Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone.” In this episode, PBS writers deemed it appropriate to preach their liberal views on same-sex marriage to America’s young children: The episode featured—and celebrated—a same-sex wedding.
After the episode, many conservatives, including Rev. Franklin Graham and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, came out in opposition. Even the state of Alabama opted against airing the program and instead barred the episode from Alabama Public Television. When confronted with criticism, Marc Brown, the creator of “Arthur,” explained: ‘That’s not the kind of world we want to live in, and we want children educated so they can see there’s not just one type of family.’
Taxpayers now know with complete certainty that the goal of the PBS cartoon is to impart social liberalism to children… “

… Get bent, Lamborn. And stop whining all the time about the Green New Deal without seeming to even know what it IS, and labeling everything you don’t like “socialism”.

Anyway, it’s probably not a shock to anyone that Lamborn continues to rack up a highly conservative voting record, now in the minority:

• January 22nd, 2019: Lamborn cannot be arsed to vote against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
  Just a reminder, Lamborn is a high-ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee who seems indifferent about the United States’ biggest adversary.
• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Lamborn voted against HR 648, because he was gleeully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Doug Lamborn votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 7th, 2019: Lamborn votes against HR 183, a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism as a hateful extension of intolerance.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Lamborn votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• April 4th, 2019: Doug Lamborn is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• May 17th, 2019: Lamborn votes against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
• June 4th, 2019: Rep. Lamborn votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Doug Lamborn is one of 187 Republicans who vote against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
• December 3rd, 2019: Rep. Lamborn can’t be bothered to show up to vote against a resolution to disallow Russia from re-entering the G7 and makes it the G8 until it leaves Ukraine.
• December 18th, 2019: Lamborn ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Lamborn votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Make no mistake, Doug Lamborn has become one of the Republicans embracing the GOP becoming the “Party of Trump”, as evidenced by his recent Twitter post commending Donald Trump for choosing to have U.S. Space Command housed at Peterson Air Force, where he bizarrely referred to “space warfighters”, which we can only assume is related to the fever dream of Trump’s Space Force. In November, Lamborn faces off against Democrat Jillian Freeland, a retired midwife small business owner, and grassroots organizer. She’s also a Humanist, looking to take Lamborn to task for opposing Humanist military chaplains during his tenure. Colorado’s 5th Congressional District still has a +14 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, and remains the most conservative district in the state. We’re hoping Freeland pulls the upset, but she’s got a big hill to climb to pull it off.

[JackDaw]

That's not dissimilar to what I'm saying though. Paying taxes without seeing a return.

But boy is it interesting that you singled out "Inner city" and "Immigrants". (Not because of you, but in representing Republican opinions. Definitely not the party of racism.)

In UK I worked in both private and public sector, so I know there is a lot of wasteful spending in both sectors...indeed the most wasteful spending I saw was in the private sector.

In spite of that, something about the waste of public money irritates me more than waste in private sector.

I suppose one key difference is that I can decide to buy or not buy from commercial firms, but I have to pay taxes dictated by government even though large amounts will be spent on things I disagree with like nuclear weaponry.

[Tami]

I'm dumbfounded as to how dumb people are in regards to COVID-19.

Anti-maskers explain themselves

In recent weeks, I spoke with nearly a dozen people who consider themselves anti-mask to find out just that. What I discovered is that there is certainly a broad spectrum of reasons — some find wearing a mask annoying or just aren’t convinced they work, and others have gone down a rabbit hole of conspiracies that often involve vaccines, Big Pharma, YouTube, and Bill Gates. One man told me he wears a mask when he goes to the store to be polite. A woman got kicked out of a Menards store for refusing to wear a mask amid what she calls the “Covid scam garbage.”

But there are also many commonalities. Most people I talked to noted government officials’ confusing messaging on masks in the pandemic’s early days. They insist that they’re not conspiracy theorists and that they don’t believe the coronavirus is a hoax, but many also expressed doubts about the growing body of scientific knowledge around the virus, opting for cherry-picked and unverified sources of information found on social media rather than traditional news sources. They often said they weren’t political but acknowledged they leaned right.

Most claimed not to know anyone who had contracted Covid-19 or died of it, and when I told them I did, the responses were the same: How old were they? Did they have preexisting conditions? They know their position is unpopular, and most spoke on condition of anonymity and will be referred to only by their first names. Amy told me people are “not very nice about this.”

[Mister Mets]

Oh, so let's just watch as a conspiracy theorist with white nationalist ties Senate candidate who has boasted of smuggling drugs with Mexican cartels is compared to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez., who dares to support Medicare for all.

That's a false equivalency by any sane standard.

Also, starting a note a sad pattern of defense being played by white nationalists in the GOP. Again. And that shouldn't be something that is reflexively done per the "both sides" treatment that started me doing a blog in the first place, y'know?

In your initial statement, the word indicative did a lot of work. If someone is unwilling to clearly and unambiguously say that socialists are indicative of the Democratic party, by those standards, it doesn't appear reasonable to conclude that QAnon is indicative of the Republican Party.

Democratic Socialists, not 'socialists'. It's weird for a guy so stuck on 'accuracy' you can't get that part right, but then, you still think the Democrats support 'open borders' while pretending that having a bunch of lunatics spouting gobbledygook about Bill Gates putting tracers in Covid Vaccine isn't representative of your party.

We can't really compare the two things.

Democratic Socialism is a functional form of government and coherent political philosophy. Even so, it is not one supported by the broader Democratic party, and membres of the DSA aren't exactly known for being embraced by the mainstream party.

QAnon is sheer lunacy and it's being embraced by the party and the president.

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be making the same distinction between self-described "white nationalists" and "republican white nationalists" so I don't see any need to claim that people who call themselves "democratic socialists" aren't actually socialists. Democratic socialists are a subset of socialists.

If you're willing to vote for them, that's a different argument than whether they're a force at all within the Democratic party.

As for the open borders argument, I've been saying for years that the problem is that Democratic officials are not clearly articulating limiting principles when it comes to immigration. When there is a reform to legal immigration to increase the numbers significantly, by how much should those numbers be increased? What level of cooperation should there be with authorities when it comes to sending back those who crossed the border illegally? Under what circumstances should legal immigrants be sent back? What limits should there be on asylum claims so it's not an end-run around current immigration law?

Decent people could believe that there should be no upper limit on the number of legal immigrants, that legal immigrants who commit crimes in the United States should not be sent back, that those who crossed the border illegally (as well as those who will cross the border illegally in the future) should be allowed to become full citizens, that asylum restrictions should be made much broader, and that efforts to deport people prior to the passage of more generous immigration reforms should be stymied. But they should be willing to admit to supporting open borders, or a policy close enough that it's a distinction without a difference.

Polls consistently show that the majority of Democratic voters are against any increase in legal immigration (which means that on this topic, I am to the left of the typical Democrat as I do support modest increases in legal immigration) and I really doubt that the reason officeholders are quiet about their opinions on major questions is that they're afraid of letting people know that they secretly hold popular views.

[Kirby101]

Mets, Democratic Socialism has nothing to do with the American Democratic Party. It is a form of Government practiced in almost all modern countries that is different from Socialism. Socialism is a term that can apply to everything from Nazi Germany to North Korea. The Democratic part is essential because they are Democracies. Are you being disingenuous, or are you not knowledgeable about the big distinction?

[Mister Mets]

Mets, Democratic Socialism has nothing to do with the American Democratic Party. It is a form of Government practiced in almost all modern countries that is different from Socialism. Socialism is a term that can apply to everything from Nazi Germany to North Korea. The Democratic part is essential because they are Democracies. Are you being disingenuous, or are you not knowledgeable about the big distinction?

I agree that socialism can be a wider umbrella term. The Democratic Socialists of America, and democratic socialists in general, would fall within that umbrella term.

I don't mean to imply that the Social Democratic Party of Austria or Slovenia's Initiative for Democratic Socialism party are affiliated with the American Democratic party.

I disagree with the idea that democratic socialists have nothing to do with the American Democratic party, since there will be a few members of the Democratic Socialists of America in Congress after the next election, and they're all going to be members of the Democratic party. Nancy Pelosi was on a Rolling Stone cover with one of the members of the DSA elected to Congress in the 2018 midterms.

https://news.yahoo.com/does-biden-hi...121933107.html

The Dems are going to have stop being the good guys here when the opposition is literally throwing caution to the wind.

Conservatives are running targeted misinformation programs, voter suppression, flat out lies and Trump himself is organizing massive rallies DESPITE health warnings.

How would you like Democrats to stop being the good guys?

[Tami]

Wow. a super-sedated @realDonaldTrump is attacking "A People's History of the United States" author Howard Zinn, who has been dead since 2010.

The Right, Conservatives, hate Howard Zinn.

[numberthirty]

I agree that socialism can be a wider umbrella term. The Democratic Socialists of America, and democratic socialists in general, would fall within that umbrella term.

I don't mean to imply that the Social Democratic Party of Austria or Slovenia's Initiative for Democratic Socialism party are affiliated with the American Democratic party.

I disagree with the idea that democratic socialists have nothing to do with the American Democratic party, since there will be a few members of the Democratic Socialists of America in Congress after the next election, and they're all going to be members of the Democratic party. Nancy Pelosi was on a Rolling Stone cover with one of the members of the DSA elected to Congress in the 2018 midterms.

Which has done nothing to change "Business As Usual..." Democrats who are members of Congress that seemingly see politics as vocation.

[worstblogever]

Mets, Democratic Socialism has nothing to do with the American Democratic Party. It is a form of Government practiced in almost all modern countries that is different from Socialism. Socialism is a term that can apply to everything from Nazi Germany to North Korea. The Democratic part is essential because they are Democracies. Are you being disingenuous, or are you not knowledgeable about the big distinction?

Wouldn't be nice if actual flagrant white nationalism inspired such criticism from a Republican as hypothetical socialism does?

A doctor at ICE facilities is forcefully sterilizing detained women against their will... but GRRRRR, the rich might not get all those tax breaks!

I wish that weren't so much to ask for these days.

[Tami]

Trump's vesion of 'Hitler Youth'

Trump Launches 'Patriotic Education’ Commission, Calls 1619 Project 'Ideological Poison’

At the White House Conference on American History, Trump took aim at the 1619 Project, a series of essays in the New York Times re-examining America’s legacy of slavery which has become a common foil for right-wing politicians, calling it “ideological poison” that will “dissolve the civic bonds” of America.

Trump also called out what he said is “left-wing indoctrination” in schools and curriculum, which he claimed “views every issue through the lens of race" in an effort to impose “tyranny” and “a new segregation.”

Trump instead proposed “patriotic education,” applauding a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop, in his words, a” pro-American curriculum that celebrates the truth about our nation's great history."

Trump also announced that he will sign an executive order establishing a commission to “promote patriotic education,” which will be called the “1776 Commission,” in contrast with the 1619 Project.

Another example why we need to get Trump out of the White House ASAP [and maybe some serious therapy].

[Kirby101]

I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be making the same distinction between self-described "white nationalists" and "republican white nationalists" so I don't see any need to claim that people who call themselves "democratic socialists" aren't actually socialists. Democratic socialists are a subset of socialists.

Saying Republican White Nationalist is not the same as Democratic Socialist, because the Democratic part has nothing to do with the Democratic Party. It is apples and oranges. So yes, when you talk about Democratic Socialist who are also Democrats, you do have to say Democratic Socialist. If not you are not differentiating Norway from North Korea. You are being terribly, terribly inaccurate. And in case you didn't know the US is in part a Social Democracy. Every Republican who wants to keep Medicare, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance (there may still be a few) and even Oil subsidies is a Social Democrat in part.