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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Didn't they go extinct after the Cretaceous Period?

[Tendrin]

What alternatives do Indian people have? Walking a thousand miles isn't very practical if you need to get somewhere within a reasonable time

I dunno, maybe we should ask the Proclaimers about this one.

[Vakanai]

They are still doing that? That is way too overcrowded. You'd think the Indians would be afraid of trains after several deadly train accidents. But many Indians are still riding on those unsafe trains. Why are they still riding on trains?

I'm not Indian so I wouldn't know, but my guess is because it's an affordable way to get to point a to point b. Not everyone owns a vehicle, taxis can be expensive especially for trips you have to make routinely like every work day. I imagine trains are probably the main mode of transport for the poor than anything else. But again, as I am not from India this is only a guess. But in my experience, usually when people keep using a more dangerous method of anything, it tends to be because they can't easily afford better.

[Vakanai]

Didn't they go extinct after the Cretaceous Period?

I always hated "Make America Great Again" as it's always clearly been "make America safe to be a bigoted self-centered ass hat again." Because America before Trump WAS GREAT! The Obama years were 8 of the best years for this country in my lifetime. But some people don't think moving towards inclusiveness and greater equality, or away from trickle down economics and fossil fuels, are great things. To me America was great before Trump, and his campaign came across as "Make America Bigoted Again". And the four years he was in office fucking proved that. I don't want that kind of greatness - great doesn't always mean good apparently, because there's still people who think Hitler was great. I don't go for great in politics anymore, I'll take inclusion equality and social justice now.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I always hated "Make America Great Again" as it's always clearly been "make America safe to be a bigoted self-centered ass hat again." Because America before Trump WAS GREAT! The Obama years were 8 of the best years for this country in my lifetime. But some people don't think moving towards inclusiveness and greater equality, or away from trickle down economics and fossil fuels, are great things. To me America was great before Trump, and his campaign came across as "Make America Bigoted Again". And the four years he was in office fucking proved that. I don't want that kind of greatness - great doesn't always mean good apparently, because there's still people who think Hitler was great. I don't go for great in politics anymore, I'll take inclusion equality and social justice now.

To that certain segment of the populace (they know who they are), the eight years a black man spent in the Oval Office was, to them, absolutely intolerable, literally a hell on Earth. To them, “Make America Great Again” was a dog whistle meaning that the country would be great after a white man reclaimed the White House. That’s how I viewed the situation then, and still do today.

[Spike-X]

That's a fucking lie.

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...ng#post6020531

I'm so sorry I didn't remember that one time six weeks ago when you weakly slapped with a wet lettuce leaf your party's despicable behaviour of using charges of "grooming" to incite violence against anyone even mentioning to kids that LGBT people exist.

I can't even be fucked addressing the rest of your apologist horseshit, and insistence that the same things be posted over and over because apparently you missed them the first dozen times. And these 'lurkers' you claim to be so concerned about are just as capable of using Google as anyone else. I don't see a need to post a comprehensive list of every fascist statement made and action taken by Obergruppenführer DeSantis every time his name comes up.

[Tendrin]

DeSantis Is SO mODerATe

DeSantis: As president, I recognize that the woke mind virus represents a war on the truth so we will wage a war on the woke. We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of congress.

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1665086349483835392

[Vakanai]

DeSantis Is SO mODerATe



https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1665086349483835392

I wish every journalist within shouting distance of this blowhard, from now until forever, asks him to actually define what woke is, because it seems to me this "mind virus" he's so afraid of is the notion that lgbt people exist and have rights.

[CaptainEurope]

DeSantis Is SO mODerATe



https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1665086349483835392

Ron DeSantis' pastor says gay people should be "put to death"

The pastor who delivered the invocation at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s (R) second inauguration has said that gay people should be put to death.

Tom Ascol — senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, Florida — made his comment on Twitter while criticizing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). On Monday, Cruz issued a tweet criticizing Uganda’s new “Anti-Homosexuality Act,” a law that punishes “aggravated homosexuality” with death.

Ascol disagreed (with Ted Cruz), writing on Tuesday, “Tell it to God, Ted.”

The pastor then cited Leviticus 20:13, the Old Testament verse that says, “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.”

Two hours later, Ascol tweeted, “Amazing how many professing Christians, even self-designated ‘conservative’ ones, are embarrassed by God’s Word. Just quote some unpopular words of God & watch what happens. Many so-called Christians react the same way that unashamed unbelievers do. It’s a commentary.”

[thwhtGuardian]

Wait, so all the links and comments people have posted about Desantis aren't specific enough? I don't get it.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I wish every journalist within shouting distance of this blowhard, from now until forever, asks him to actually define what woke is, because it seems to me this "mind virus" he's so afraid of is the notion that lgbt people exist and have rights.

Oh, journalists can ask, but, what are the chances Wretched Ron will give them an answer? Not good, I’d say, either because he doesn’t know himself, or refuses to take anything he sees as bait to get him to say something his enemies can use against him.

Ron DeSantis' pastor says gay people should be "put to death"

Damn nice guy, this pastor. Yet another reason I have no use for religion if asshats like him are preaching industrial strength hatred against a marginalized group of people.

[Ragged Maw]

An interesting take on the dept ceiling deal from the comment section of a recent Guardian article (yes, I found it more interesting than the actual article itself).:

"At a time when this country is rapidly moving toward Oligarchy, with more wealth and income inequality than we’ve ever experienced, I could not in good conscience vote for a bill that cuts programs for the most vulnerable while refusing to ask billionaires to pay a penny more in taxes. Wall Street and corporate interests may be enthusiastic about this bill, but I believe it moves us in exactly the wrong direction."

This is not a new development, it has been going on for the last forty+ years with an algorithmic efficiency. The code could be summarized as:

For each Presidential election cycle:

If president = Republican
Then
Cut taxes for the rich
Implement austerity
Cut social programs

Else if president = Democrat
Then
Get played by Republican obstructionism
Implement austerity
Cut social programs

Outcome in either case:
Redistribution of wealth upward
Dismantling of social safety net
Evaporation of the middle class / further impoverishment of the poor

Rinse/Repeat Cycle

If progressives protest, centrist voices (dominant forces in the Democratic party and mainstream punditry) will rise in defense of the centrist Democratic president and call the objectors childish and irrational and unrealistic and against moderation and compromise in a democratic system and finally the worst insult of all: populist. Hence inevitably the military budget expanding and social welfare shrinking budget will pass yet again, and the pundits will declare the result another win for moderation and democracy as the very foundation of the system continues to deteriorate.

It is a mistake to consider the Democrats as innocent victims of Republican machinations, this is in practice a bipartisan tet-a-tet with a sadomasochistic undertone (it is clear who are the sadist and who the masochists). Forty years is too long a period to think that one party could consistently fall for the other's tricks without a degree of complicity. Fortunately various rounds of tax cuts and the shrinking of the welfare state have left the most deserving members of society not only unaffected by the resulting societal carnage but astronomically better off: the top economic tiers that, incidentally, constitute the donor class for both parties. Intoxicated by the dominant fumes of neoliberalism that had taken wing in the late seventies, the Ds advertently or inadvertently played into the Rs' hand by shouldering the task of reducing the deficit created by the preceding R-president's massive tax cuts. The effect of the resultant force of the R and D bad cop/good cop routine over the last forty years has been the continual disintegration of the welfare state, evaporation of the postwar middle class, and a gaping increase in wealth and income inequality.

That small part in bold I'm fairly certain is a typo.

[Adam Allen]

I don't think it does. It doesn't seem to be equivalent of a weird trend where teen girls started imitating the habits of a British tiktoker with Tourettes.

https://www.indy100.com/news/doctors...-tics-b1941305

It doesn't seem to be an example of emotional contagion, behavioral contagion or memetics.

Okay. I mean, this response leans hard into the idea that the internet is making teenaged girls act weird; and that emotions/behavior can spread through populations.

But I will acknowledge that you technically said you don't think the seeming increase in trans folk is "social contagion".

[Tami]

What Happened When a Brooklyn Neighborhood Policed Itself for Five Days

Several times a year, workers from Brownsville In Violence Out stand sentry on two blocks for five days. The police channel all 911 calls from that area to the civilians. Unless there is a major incident or a victim demands an arrest, officers, always in plainclothes, shadow the workers.

The civilians have no arrest powers. But they have persuaded people to turn in illegal guns, prevented shoplifting, kept a man from robbing a bodega and stopped a pregnant woman from hitting a boyfriend who had not bought a car seat and a stroller as he had promised.

They are part of the Brownsville Safety Alliance, a group of neighborhood and city groups, police officers and members of the Kings County District Attorney’s office that is trying to ensure that fewer people are arrested and entangled in the criminal justice system.

[Gray Lensman]

Ron DeSantis' pastor says gay people should be "put to death"

Speaking as someone who was partially raised by a preacher (when my father was overseas my grandparents had temporary custody early on my childhood) anytime anyone uses the Book of Leviticus to justify anything they have lost me. That's the same book that bans eating pork, eating shellfish, and wearing blended fabrics. All things those using it to rail against homosexuality ignore. No one has ever answered what makes that one line so special to Christians when nearly everything else in that section has effectively been circular filed.