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

[WestPhillyPunisher]

No Paid Leave In Latest Relief Bill Fails Women, Public Health And Common Sense

Republicans show no interest in extending emergency paid sick and family leave, even though the successful programs are vital in a pandemic. And yet, Republican women continue voting for these misogynists. Well played, ladies.

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Florida Megachurch Pastor Tells Evangelical Congregants Not To Take COVID-19 Vaccine

“Believe in the blood of Jesus. Believe in divine immunity,” King Jesus International Ministry’s Guillermo Maldonado said in a sermon. This is just me, but I prefer to put my faith in science instead. No wonder Florida has been and remains a fetid COVID cesspool.

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More Than 3,100 Dead From COVID-19 In U.S. In Grim Single-Day Record

The United States is on track to surpass 300,000 deaths from the coronavirus by the end of the year. And Trump, having made like Pontius Pilate, long since washed his hands of anything regarding the virus.

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In continuing post-election madness:

Washington Post Editorial Board: ‘Danger Is Growing’ From Trump’s Election Lies

The newspaper’s board warned that Republicans must stop enabling the president “before people get hurt.” This presupposes the GOP actually cares about denouncing Trump's lies. Newsflash: they won't.

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Lindsey Graham Says Stacey Abrams Tricked Republicans Into Helping Biden Win

The GOP senator knows he’s spreading dangerous lies about voter fraud. But he’s staying in Trump’s good graces, so it’s worth it. Yeah, Grouchy Graham will remain Trump's spineless, ass-kissing lackey to the very end.

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Delusional Trump Tells Hanukkah Party Guests ‘We’re Gonna Win’ Election He Just Lost

Guests at the White House party chanted “four more years” in response to the president’s latest bogus claim. Oy vey! How sad.

[The no face guy]

See, that kind of puts a finer point on it.

When it looks like protecting what you see as "The Science..."/"The Facts..." is a higher priority than being able to seriously consider if a ref let a trans woman take a beating because she was a trans woman?

The priorities are all jacked up.

You might not be actively "Anti-", but it feels a whole lot like there is a situation where you'll look past the specific issue that a trans person might be facing.

Wanting to focus on one aspect of a trans woman in combat sports while choosing to completely refuse to even take a look at another aspect seems like pretty odd approach to being for trans rights.

As I stated time and time again, science and empirical facts must always be placed before politics. Irrationalism is the road to political extremism.

Anyways I won't be coming in here anymore, I've sat by and watched people who state they are liberals act like dogmatic authoritarians by ganging up on a person in a five to 1 ratio, because they have a dissenting viewpoints that don't tow the ideological line in this form, and I'm disgusted by it, and don't want to be associated with that kind of political intolerance....and no I'm not referring to Mister Mets, who afterall is just moderate a republican.

Finally, I don't need my unexamined views to be examined to make sure I adhere to some sort of liberal ideological purity test...that's the hallmark of totalitarianism.

Best of luck guys, take care.

[JCAll]

I take it on the chin because as a liberal, I feel it is my job to marginalize the far left in my party. It doesn't bother me to get labelled a transphobic by someone I know is a political extremist, who is either my way or the highway.

I have been on University campuses and seen professors bullied and intimidated by radical extremists because they will not cater to every whim of their political dogma. I have also seen people on here who are liberals bullied in the same fashion, I don't put up with it. Now imagine the dogma I would have to go through if I was a moderate conservative?

You can't just keep calling everyone else extremists. So far what people are telling you is completely rational, probably because we've all seen this exact same argument about trans athletes being played out again and again. It's just a wedge to divide people.

[Tendrin]

You can't just keep calling everyone else extremists. So far what people are telling you is completely rational, probably because we've all seen this exact same argument about trans athletes being played out again and again. It's just a wedge to divide people.

Calling people 'extremists' is just a useful way for someone to dismiss what they're saying without engaging with it.

[OopsIdiditagain]

Connecticut will become the first state to require high schools to offer Black and Latino studies in fall 2022

[JackDaw]

You can't just keep calling everyone else extremists. So far what people are telling you is completely rational, probably because we've all seen this exact same argument about trans athletes being played out again and again. It's just a wedge to divide people.

To be fair I think it’s more than a “wedge to divide people”.

There’s only a handful of sports where men and women can compete on equal terms. So there needs to be some debate at which point of transition process individuals can take part in various levels of women’s sports...I assume no one really wants to see an individual who’s a top level male boxer, who’s transitioning to a woman take on women boxers until physical transition is complete, for example.

I can see why top level athletes would be really concerned whether authorities controlling their sport get this right and want to express caution on how fast rule changes are made. I really don’t think that the great majority of athletes who have expressed concern are doing it from a feeling of ill will.

[Mister Mets]

What's the bad/contentious version of that?

The legislation required to significantly reduce the number of gun-related deaths or just homicides would have to go significantly further than what is commonly proposed (background checks for new purchases, bans on so-called assault rifles that only responsible for about four percent of gun homicides.)

The United States would have to make civilian ownership of guns really hard, and do much more to remove existing firearms. This is a defensible policy, but it will be quite controversial.

Matthew Ygleisas wrote about this a few weeks ago, when analyzing the politics of gun control.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/nationa...ded-re-embrace

And yet in a maddening way, the measures progressives are proposing would not address the policy issue that progressives claim is morally urgent.

Effective gun control would have to be extreme
Here’s the deal: There are about 40,000 firearms deaths per year in the United States and if you could make them go away that would be great.

But a majority of those deaths are suicides. And the homicides are mostly committed by normal, inexpensive easily concealed handguns, not by scary assault weapons. Where do the guns come from? In a 2016 report for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mariel Alper and Lauren Glaze look at a survey of prison inmates and found that 21 percent of all federal and state prisoners said they had a firearm when they committed the offense for which they were serving time in prison. Of those incarcerated gun owners, just “seven percent had purchased it under their own name from a licensed firearm dealer.”

The largest share (43 percent) said they bought the gun on the black market. Another 25 percent say they got it from family or friends.

None of this is to deny that gun control laws could drastically reduce the incidence of firearms death. You might think that potential suicides would just substitute some other means of killing themselves, but research does not bare that out. If fewer guns were around, then fewer people would kill themselves. By the same token, you definitely could drain the swamp of illegally circulating firearms. But the way you would accomplish these things would be by drastically reducing the number of legally owned guns around. Stricter background checks for new purchases just aren’t going to significantly change the situation.

The United Kingdom has drastically fewer gun assaults than we do and that has a lot of benefits. Not only are innocent lives saved, but it allows their police to operate largely unarmed which would greatly ameliorate a tangled nexus of American social problems around racism and police use of force. But the UK didn’t get there with really rigorous background checks, it got there by making civilian ownership of guns mostly illegal.

What’s more: Gun enthusiasts are aware of this. So when progressives talk about the tragedy of gun deaths in America, it doesn’t matter if their actual proposal is a very mild tweak to background checks. When you define “the problem” as gun deaths, you are pushing toward a drastic solution that gun hobbyists don’t want, and they are highly motivated to vote against you.

[mogwen]

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Poor little one! So so sad!

[Mister Mets]

Jane Mayer of the New Yorker writes about an unsettling question: Is one of the most prominent Senators senile?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...nate-democrats

It kicks off with a recent gaffe in which she asked a question twice during a hearing.

It was a good question. Feinstein seemed sharp and focussed. For decades, she has been the epitome of a female trailblazer in Washington, always hyper-prepared. But this time, after Dorsey responded, Feinstein asked him the same question again, reading it word for word, along with the Trump tweet. Her inflection was eerily identical. Feinstein looked and sounded just as authoritative, seemingly registering no awareness that she was repeating herself verbatim. Dorsey graciously answered the question all over again.

Social media was less polite. A conservative Web site soon posted a clip of the humiliating moment on YouTube, under the headline “Senator Feinstein just asked the same question twice and didn’t realize she did it,” adding an emoji of someone covering his face with his hand in shame, along with bright red type proclaiming “Time to Retire!!” Six days later, under growing pressure from progressive groups who were already outraged by her faltering management of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Feinstein released a statement announcing that she would step down from the Democrats’ senior position, while continuing as a non-ranking member of the committee. Feinstein’s office declined to comment for this article.

This has major implications for her ability to do her job.

But many others familiar with Feinstein’s situation describe her as seriously struggling, and say it has been evident for several years. Speaking on background, and with respect for her accomplished career, they say her short-term memory has grown so poor that she often forgets she has been briefed on a topic, accusing her staff of failing to do so just after they have. They describe Feinstein as forgetting what she has said and getting upset when she can’t keep up. One aide to another senator described what he called a “Kabuki” meeting in which Feinstein’s staff tried to steer her through a proposed piece of legislation that she protested was “just words” which “make no sense.” Feinstein’s staff has said that sometimes she seems herself, and other times unreachable. “The staff is in such a bad position,” a former Senate aide who still has business in Congress said. “They have to defend her and make her seem normal.”

Feinstein has always been known as a difficult taskmaster. She is said to have told someone applying for a job in her office, “I don’t get ulcers—I give them.” A stickler for detail, she demanded to see every page going out of her office with her name on it. But with her diminishing capacity, this has become increasingly difficult. The former Senate staffer who still works with Congress declared, “It’s been a disaster.” As the ranking Democrat, Feinstein ordinarily would be expected to run the Party’s strategy on issues of major national importance, including judicial nominations. Instead, the committee has been hamstrung and disorganized. “Other members were constantly trying to go around her because, as chair, she didn’t want to do anything, and she also didn’t want them doing anything,” the former Senate staffer said. A current aide to a different Democratic senator observed sadly, “She’s an incredibly effective human being, but there’s definitely been deterioration in the last year. She’s in a very different mode now.”

Chuck Schumer has had conversations with her, but according to sources, she doesn't always remember it. This is why she recently left her position as top Democrat on the judiciary committee.

Schumer had several serious and painful talks with Feinstein, according to well-informed sources. Overtures were also made to enlist the help of Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum. Feinstein, meanwhile, was surprised and upset by Schumer’s message. He had wanted her to step aside on her own terms, with her dignity intact, but “she wasn’t really all that aware of the extent to which she’d been compromised,” one well-informed Senate source told me. “It was hurtful and distressing to have it pointed out.” Compounding the problem, Feinstein seemed to forget about the conversations soon after they talked, so Schumer had to confront her again. “It was like Groundhog Day, but with the pain fresh each time.” Anyone who has tried to take the car keys away from an elderly relative knows how hard it can be, he said, adding that, in this case, “It wasn’t just about a car. It was about the U.S. Senate.”

One of the defenses of Feinstein is that men have been allowed to stay in the Senate well past their prime.

Some former Feinstein aides insist that rumors of her cognitive decline have been exaggerated, and that video clips taken out of context can make almost anyone look foolish. They also bridle at singling out her condition, because declining male senators, including Strom Thurmond, of South Carolina, and Robert Byrd, of West Virginia, were widely known by the end of their careers to be non-compos mentis. “For his last ten years, Strom Thurmond didn’t know if he was on foot or on horseback,” one former Senate aide told me. The former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, is said to have snapped at a staffer who claimed to be relaying what Byrd thought. “Knock it off,” Reid supposedly said. “Everyone knows it’s what you think.” In contrast, one former aide to Feinstein argues that, even if her faculties are diminished, “she’s still smarter and quicker than at least a third of the other members.”

Part of the reason for the pushback from the left is the idea that as the top woman on the judiciary committee, she should have been able to do more to make Amy Coney Barret unpopular. The hearings had the opposite effect, although I suspect that was more of an inevitability with a polite professor on the stand, rather than anything Senate Democrats could have done.

That said, the woman described in the article should probably resign from the Senate. There are probably some questions about whether it was right for people to talk to the New Yorker about this, but it's probably necessary and seems to be truthful.

[Tami]

House GOP ready to sacrifice military bill and troop pay to appease Trump

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) formally announced Tuesday evening that he was for the annual Pentagon policy bill, before he will turn against the measure that provides pay raises for troops and a list of critical new provisions with overwhelming bipartisan support.

As he entered the House floor for that vote, McCarthy told reporters that he would absolutely vote for the National Defense Authorization Act, a yearly exercise deemed so key to basic functions of the military that it has passed for 59 straight years.

However, the GOP leader said, he absolutely would not vote to override President Trump’s threatened veto out of his anger toward social media laws that have no place in a debate about the military.

Furthermore, McCarthy said his official position is to always support Trump’s veto.

Another example of the absurd from the Republicans. It's like a babysitter telling parents that he/she would definitely support their rules about feeding the kid dinner at 6:00 then putting him to bed, that is unless the kid insists on staying up past mid-night and eating junk-food while watching TV.

[Hellion]

Connecticut will become the first state to require high schools to offer Black and Latino studies in fall 2022

I'm all for multiculturalism, diversity, inclusivity, all those chestnuts, but reading the article, it makes me wonder how whitewashed their history/social studies curriculum is there? Because it seems like they're saying they only added this because they couldn't be bothered to teach their mandatory history/ss courses better.

[Hellion]

Ok, everyone, what are your honest opinions on the term "latinx"?

Asking because I was discussing this with my friend from Costa Rica and his response (delivered good-naturedly) was, "We're a culture that conjugates our verbs based on gender, so WTF?" Also throwing it out there because I'd read articles analyzing the election where Hispanic voters ranged from confused to offended over "latinx" because that seems to be a term they don't use themselves, and has been applied to them by political correctness-minded white folk.

[Tendrin]

Ok, everyone, what are your honest opinions on the term "latinx"?

Asking because I was discussing this with my friend from Costa Rica and his response (delivered good-naturedly) was, "We're a culture that conjugates our verbs based on gender, so WTF?" Also throwing it out there because I'd read articles analyzing the election where Hispanic voters ranged from confused to offended over "latinx" because that seems to be a term they don't use themselves, and has been applied to them by political correctness-minded white folk.

According to Google Trends, it was first seen online in 2004, and first appeared in academic literature "in a Puerto Rican psychological periodical to challenge the gender binaries encoded in the Spanish language." In the U.S. it was first used in activist and LGBT circles as a way to expand on earlier attempts at ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx...0attempts%20at

I'm fine with it, but it's not really up to me.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

House GOP ready to sacrifice military bill and troop pay to appease Trump



Another example of the absurd from the Republicans. It's like a babysitter telling parents that he/she would definitely support their rules about feeding the kid dinner at 6:00 then putting him to bed, that is unless the kid insists on staying up past mid-night and eating junk-food while watching TV.

Again, IMO, this isn’t about appeasing Trump, but his fanatically loyal base who’ll still be around after he leaves in 42 days, and have memories that would put elephants to shame when it comes to anyone who displeases Dear Orange Leader.

[PaulBullion]

I'm aware of that farce. I was speaking generally.

Remind me again which side it is that says, all the damn time, that celebrities should not talk about politics? Does "dribble and shut up" ring a bell?

Which side bans books from libraries and curricula?