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

[Madam-Shogun-Assassin]

Why is there such an obsession with restoring in-person dining at restaurants when we already know that’s one of the most unsafe activities you can do? Why would we encourage eating indoors with people “outside your bubble”? What is the scientific basis for these capacity? I feel like Disaster Dominoes are incoming to be frank.

[BeastieRunner]

Oh. So more like a psychological/sociological examination of adherents than “read this manifesto in order to win at life”.

Couldn’t bring myself to do that, but I’ve been lurking White Nationalist boards a lot in order to get insight into what drives their extremism and find out their perspective on things.

I have been reading:
- We Are The American Zombies by Max Meeks (okay read, author was more into his sardonic prose that proving a point)
- Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them by Joseph E. Uscinski (very academic and dry at times but a fascinating look from a behavioral scientist point of view)
- The Nature of Conspiracy Theories by Michael Butter (focused more on the nature of conspiracy theories and their internal logic systems)
- Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories by Rob Brotherton (evidence-based research into why we believe in conspiracy theories like Alex Jones, Donald Trump, JFK, and even 9/11 ... lots of ancient and modern methodology here. The best of the conspiracy lot I have read so far! The main thesis is while conspiracy theorists maintain that their theories arise from evidence, there's more at work in our brains than we are aware of. Humans need to keep these factors in mind as we evaluate the world around us as we make ourselves more human)
- Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy by Talia Lavin (HOLY $#!=burger! This book peeled back the layers of the alt right and white supremist culture by showing how they radicalize on the web. Very unpleasant to read at times. This information needs to get out. Quick read, too. Mapped out the Jan 6th attack and this was published in OCT 2020. Insanely insightful.)
- White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones (I have been obsessed with American Christianity's role in US white supremacy. The book talks about the who, what, where, when, and why of the Confederate monuments being erected in the South. Government buildings, public squares, in the churches of many Christian denominations, in known hangouts of POC. Most were erected after 1900. The sickening trifecta of Southern Christian Churches, white supremacy, and the alt-right is fueling a neo-Nazi movement largely online is the thesis)
- The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory by Adam H. Domby (a bit dry and academic but very insightful. Full of evidence and citations. The main crux of the book is that the losers of the US Civil War had to change the narrative afterwards in shame of their defeat. So every step of letting people keep "Southern Pride" was the white supremacists' couching others in a giant lie)
- The Sin of White Supremacy: Christianity, Racism, and Religious Diversity in America by Jeannine Hill Fletcher (Quick read with a very targeted audiance; White Christians. Heavy on history, lacking in a thesis or punch other than, "White Christians need to clean out the muck in the pigpen of America.")

And as always, I am on my fourth re-read of White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo.

I would highly recommend reading the above-mentioned Culture Warlords by Talia Lavin and White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo if you only read 1 or 2 books on those subjects.

I have Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman and You'll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches by Josephine Wolff in my to-read list.

[Immortal Weapon]

I was watching Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC discussing the GameStop situation. She had two guests, one was a CEO of one of the App companies, the other was the founder of the Reddit board where this all began.

One thing that struck me was that, while the Trading App Rep and Ruhle were going over how this system works and what caused the temporary shut down of trading, basically that you can't trade if you don't have the money to back it up and that there are clearinghouses and other issues to deal with, and they admitted to weaknesses in the system...the guy behind the Redit board was like, 'Who Cares?' No one cares about how the system works, they just want to trade and make money, like playing a game or going to a casino.

If App Companies are driven out of business, then what are these traders going to use? I just didn't like his attitude.

A casino is how the henge funds and other top level investors treat the market. It's called wall street bets for a reason. They are playing the game just like they do.

[BeastieRunner]

Beastie's Cartoons of the Week

[Rob Allen]

Arizona GOP lawmaker introduces bill to give Legislature power to toss out election results

OMG... I went to college with her husband, who's now on the Arizona Supreme Court.

[rogersmcfeely]

Why is there such an obsession with restoring in-person dining at restaurants when we already know that’s one of the most unsafe activities you can do? Why would we encourage eating indoors with people “outside your bubble”? What is the scientific basis for these capacity? I feel like Disaster Dominoes are incoming to be frank.

Do you mean, like, forever or just for the duration of the Covid pandemic?

[SUPERECWFAN1]

So the funniest , weirdest debate I had today with Trump supporter was the CNN clip from days ago where Biden announced his administration had bought 200+ million more doses of vaccine. To push us at hopefully 600+ million doses by this post for 300 million Americans (which had them point and laugh at then) . The slam was how he'd say 200 in short term discussing it and laughing at him being old and the usual over the dose number and use for Americans.

So I had to break this down that the full clip explains 200 million doses , he just said 200 in short term but fully says 200 million in the full clip. Then that 600 million doses number was actually right. That the vaccine takes 2 doses.


I gotta admit its more fun to watch this and the belief this is some big "slam" on Joe Biden.

[MajorHoy]

Why is there such an obsession with restoring in-person dining at restaurants when we already know that’s one of the most unsafe activities you can do? Why would we encourage eating indoors with people “outside your bubble”? What is the scientific basis for these capacity? I feel like Disaster Dominoes are incoming to be frank.

Don't know where you are, but the options for outdoor dining aren't that good here in the Northeast U.S. at present. (Not when the outside air temperature won't even reach the freezing mark today!)

As for the "obsession", some people who work in / own restaurants are just trying to survive. Even if they didn't have to pay employees who aren't at work, there's still the costs for things like rent, utilities, etc. that have to be paid by the people who own the restaurants.

As for saying "we already know that’s one of the most unsafe activities you can do", well, that's not necessarily true. It depends largely on things like how crowded a restaurant is, how the people (both employees and diners) behave, and other things.

It's all a matter of perspective.

[DrNewGod]

A casino is how the henge funds and other top level investors treat the market. It's called wall street bets for a reason. They are playing the game just like they do.

Funny you say that. One of the guys that revived the popularity of the hedge fund in the 1960s also wrote the book on beating black jack. In both cases (hedge funds and card counting), a bunch of schmucks that thought it looked easy followed his lead and lost their lunch money.

[Username taken]

I honestly don't think reading white nationalist manifestos is useful as an insight to psychology. Most of them aren't close readers i.e. page-to-page. The white nationalist texts they write are not as familiar to them as say, the Harry Potter books are to the HP fandom where they can quote chapter-and-verse, variant spellings across UK/US editions, and illustration by artist. Maybe a few of them read these white-nationalist propaganda novels but that would mostly be on the level of quote mining and using ideas to confirm the stuff they wanted to do and reinforce that.

Ultimately understanding white nationalists and Qanon-ists and other conspiracy-driven advocates of the "Big Lie" isn't hard. In America the "Big Lie" has had long shelf-lives. The "Lost Cause of the Confederacy" was the biggest of "the big lies" in terms of the falsehood it told, in terms of the fact that it has endured for a century-plus, and it was responsible for White Supremacy finding purchase in the North (the Second Klan found bigger membership in Northern States than the first one did), and the fact that practically every Civil War movie until the last decade perpetuated the falsehood that the Civil War wasn't about slavery.

Exactly this.

I pointed this out some weeks back. The creation of parallel narratives isn't something new to the US.

Why it's much more problematic and frankly completely tiring (to me on a personal level) is because we're supposed to be living in the "information age". It's very easy to research stuff and know the truth.

People are literally burying their heads in the sand to project lies to support their bigotry, hate and general discontent.

[Madam-Shogun-Assassin]

Do you mean, like, forever or just for the duration of the Covid pandemic?

The latter obviously

[Madam-Shogun-Assassin]

Don't know where you are, but the options for outdoor dining aren't that good here in the Northeast U.S. at present. (Not when the outside air temperature won't even reach the freezing mark today!)

As for the "obsession", some people who work in / own restaurants are just trying to survive. Even if they didn't have to pay employees who aren't at work, there's still the costs for things like rent, utilities, etc. that have to be paid by the people who own the restaurants.

As for saying "we already know that’s one of the most unsafe activities you can do", well, that's not necessarily true. It depends largely on things like how crowded a restaurant is, how the people (both employees and diners) behave, and other things.

It's all a matter of perspective.

No, People are obsessed with the illusion of normalcy. What they don’t realize is they have been conditioned by capitalism to believe that everything we once considered was normal was valuable.

[Tami]

The Greene Situation is getting Weirder and Weirder

So @RepMTG, what you are saying is that since you denied my daughters murder and I called you out that I am part of a mob and you are equating the value of her life with money? You crazy lunatic. @GOPLeader, was this pathetic letter written before, during, or after your talk?

Twitter Link

She wrote a 'Message to the Mob', and yeah it's crazy.

[Kirby101]

No, People are obsessed with the illusion of normalcy. What they don’t realize is they have been conditioned by capitalism to believe that everything we once considered was normal was valuable.

There are great many people without jobs who work in the food trade. It is probably the hardest hit sector in the country. So a return of safe indoor dining would help these people and the economy. Also some of us like eating at good restaurants. It has nothing to do with some capitalist conspiracy, it is about a one of the experiences that make our life good. I don't want to go back to restaurants to feel normal, I want to go back because I enjoy it. But I am not risking it if I feel it is unsafe.

[worstblogever]

In 2015, in 2016, and in 2017, “Crazy Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Sally Kern, who has voted in favor of every anti-choice bill in the Oklahoma legislature, no matter how extreme, voted for a ban on Sharia Law in the Sooner State, a bill to make it more difficult for people to get a divorce for incompatibility, and a bill to allow Creationists to teach “pure science” in class. In spite of being the wife of a pastor, and practitioner of a religion whose Savior was put to death, Kern is not just in favor of the death penalty, but would like it applied to second offense sex offenders (they’re scum and all, but come on, that’s a bit much). Kern had, on three separate occasions, sponsored or co-sponsored legislation to nullify federal law, and even sponsored a bill to prohibit compliance with the United Nations Agenda 21 conspiracy, presumably because she’s convinced it’s a plot for world domination. Even with all that, Sally Kern’s real bread and butter issue is LGBTQ rights, because she’s such a homophobic bigot that she’s said that homosexuals were destroying the United States and are more dangerous than terrorists (and vowed never to apologize for that statement), blamed the economic woes of ’07-’10 on same sex marriage, claimed gays are looking to exploit legalized gay marriage to also legalize polygamy and pedophilia, and longs for “the good old days when gays would get thrown in jail.” Kern has also commented on race and gender in the same speech in uncomfortable ways, saying that there is a larger percentage of African Americans than whites in prison because they “don’t work as hard in school” and that women don’t deserve equal pay to men because “they don’t work as hard”. In 2015 alone, she supported three radically anti-gay “religious freedom” bills, one to make it legal for businesses to discriminate against gay people, one that would prohibit judges and clerks in Oklahoma from issuing marriage certificates to same sex couples, despite federal court decisions that already struck down Oklahoma’s gay marriage ban, and a third to allow for the “freedom” for individuals to seek out gay conversion therapy. We are relieved, however, to report that Sally Kern faced term limits in 2016, and is no longer a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. To the end, she was a homophobic loon, as even in her farewell speech, she took time to insist that “the homosexual agenda is worse than terrorism”. She then called for homosexuality to be outlawed, and described herself, literally, as a “victim of anti-Christian persecution”.

On this date in both 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled the former U.S. House Representative from Illinois’ 14th Congressional District, Randy Hultgren, who first arrived in Washington D.C. in, yes, the Tea Party Wave in 2010 after he spent twelve years floating around the Illinois state legislature with a meager 51% of the vote. After redistricting his district was redrawn to +5 Republican lean, aiding him to hang onto what was once a swing seat for far longer than he deserved to. And that’s a shame, because the last thing the country needs is a man who consistently denies facts and science being given a leg up on being re-elected without effort. Hultgren wanted intelligent design taught in schools, a violation of the separation of church and state and also touted a bill he wrote that would allocate over half a billion dollars to grants to promote “abstinence only” education in schools. He also claimed the Obama administration was enacting “dangerous and experimental” sex education programs for “younger and younger children” (because that isn’t a lie made to sound more sinister), and that there were “incredible success records” for abstinence education. And… that’s completely false, as studies show precisely the opposite, and that abstinence only education is a failure. Rounding things out, Randy Hultgren is a climate change denier, as he expressed in this interview back in late 2009, where against all evidence, he tried claiming that the Earth was entering a “cooling period”: As a legislator, Hultgren frequently voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, twice voted to Defund Planned Parenthood, against the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, against disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Harvey, and for the 2013 Government Shutdown. In 2017, he voted for the GOP’s massive Tax Scam, and for the repeal of Dodd-Frank Wall Street Financial Reform. Mercifully, in the 2018 elections, Randy Hultgren was swept out of office by the Blue Wave, with Lauren Underwood overcoming the +5 Republican lean to defeat Hultgren 52.5% to 47.5%.