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

[numberthirty]

Grifter that suckered some folks into believing that he would "Prosecute..." Trump gets jail time.

News at 11...

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/08/mich...tion-case.html

Disgraced Trump foe Michael Avenatti weeps as he is sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for Nike extortion scheme

[worstblogever]

Due to a state of emergency in Japan because of the virus, fans have been banned from the Olympics:

https://apnews.com/article/tokyo-lif...4a633cbd0d907e

Hosting an Olympics is often economically devastating for a city under normal circumstances.

Take away all the tourism coming in? And holy s***, this is going to kick Japan in the ass for at least a decade.

[Mister Mets]

We talking "More Important..." than -

- Actually getting every single American citizen affordable access to healthcare coverage?
- Actually investing in notable improvements in the treatments of/cures for Alzheimer's Disease/ALS/Diabetes/Parkinson's Disease?
- Actually getting even remotely serious about cyber security nationwide?

Without hesitation.

[numberthirty]

Without hesitation.

While I'm not saying you are kooky? That is easily one of the most kooky things that I have ever read.

[Mister Mets]

The Republican Party latches onto Pink Elephants as if they were real, instead of a mass delusion.

It's not that there isn't such a thing as 'Critical Race Theory', it's that it isn't what they imagine it to be.

There is a whole long list of these full on hallucinations and half-truth delusions. Maybe someday I'll either find or make a list of them.

What do you think the argument's about?

What do conservatives imagine Critical Race Theory to be, and what you think it is?

I don't know how to make what I said more clear?

The first part refences this post.

The second post outlines part of my reasoning / opinion.

The third post answers your question you asked me about what I think, which I stated clearly as an opinion.

Trump family members seem to think Ivanka flips and those Feds/DAs/etc. seem to think Ivanka is the big fish, since she got paid the same way the other guy did that was arrested. The two opinions are not to be conflated.

Which is why *I* think Jared flips. He's been MIA for months and has legit familial wealth to protect (the latter of which Mary Trump thinks why it will be Ivanka).

Not trying to sounds like a jerk, mind you. Just trying to communicate clearly.



One of the previously linked articles states that they think Ivanka is the Big Fish.

And again, I am on the side of IF not WHEN. IF Ivanka or Jared are indicted, I stated what *I* THINK will happen.

EDIT: Links broke, give me a minute to fix.

I'm curious if you're willing to commit to a number between 0 and 100 percent on the odds of Ivanka or Jared flipping. I get that you think it's 100 percent if they get indicted, although what do you think are the odds that they'll be indicted?

[Mister Mets]

While I'm not saying you are kooky? That is easily one of the most kooky things that I have ever read.

I think those things are important, but education is more important.

I'm curious if we're talking past one another in the comparison here.

If education sucks, people are not going to be able to reach their full potential. It will hinder the country significantly.

And you're going to have less people capable of improving ALS (which affects 1 in 50,000 people), Alzheimers (which affects 1 in 9 elderly people), Parkinsons (which affects 1 in 100 people over the age of 60), Diabetes (a largely manageable condition that affects just over ten percent of the population) or to deal with the cybersecurity threats generations from now.

[AnakinFlair]

Hosting an Olympics is often economically devastating for a city under normal circumstances.

Take away all the tourism coming in? And holy s***, this is going to kick Japan in the ass for at least a decade.

It baffles me why they didn't just cancel the Olympics. Between the pandemic and all of the recent controversies, they should have called it a day and come back in four years.

[numberthirty]

I think those things are important, but education is more important.

I'm curious if we're talking past one another in the comparison here.

If education sucks, people are not going to be able to reach their full potential. It will hinder the country significantly.

And you're going to have less people capable of improving ALS (which affects 1 in 50,000 people), Alzheimers (which affects 1 in 9 elderly people), Parkinsons (which affects 1 in 100 people over the age of 60), Diabetes (a largely manageable condition that affects just over ten percent of the population) or to deal with the cybersecurity threats generations from now.

Put simply, no one(that I have seen...) has asserted that.

Having established that?

Focusing on some sort of educational equivalent of "Candyman..." like it amounts to anything like an actual issue?

That is not even as important as an ethics probe into if government should be handing money over to a former President's company for housing the agents who make up his protection detail.

[numberthirty]

I think those things are important, but education is more important.

I'm curious if we're talking past one another in the comparison here.

If education sucks, people are not going to be able to reach their full potential. It will hinder the country significantly.

And you're going to have less people capable of improving ALS (which affects 1 in 50,000 people), Alzheimers (which affects 1 in 9 elderly people), Parkinsons (which affects 1 in 100 people over the age of 60), Diabetes (a largely manageable condition that affects just over ten percent of the population) or to deal with the cybersecurity threats generations from now.

As for this particular observation...

Have a serious conversation with diabetics about the cost of insulin or if that insulin is even covered.

Never mind actually putting more than just cursory thought into the actual "Big Picture..." when it comes to those earlier conditions.

[worstblogever]

It baffles me why they didn't just cancel the Olympics. Between the pandemic and all of the recent controversies, they should have called it a day and come back in four years.

There's apparently some contract language that it's actually up to the IOC if a city can cancel or not once they sign on.

Like... it's a devil's bargain, to be sure... but in this instance, the IOC are really holding them over that barrel.

Starting to think it's a blessing that the U.S. didn't get the 2024 games like Trump wanted. Hopefully the globe will have recovered from Covid-19 by the 2028 version.

[Tami]

What do you think the argument's about?

What do conservatives imagine Critical Race Theory to be, and what you think it is?

Here is a good discussion of the issue published in Education Week

What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is It Under Attack?

Critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies.

The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.

A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to the racial composition of inhabitants. Banks subsequently refused to offer mortgages to Black people in those areas.

This academic understanding of critical race theory differs from representation in recent popular books and, especially, from its portrayal by critics—often, though not exclusively, conservative Republicans. Critics charge that the theory leads to negative dynamics, such as a focus on group identity over universal, shared traits; divides people into “oppressed” and “oppressor” groups; and urges intolerance.

Thus, there is a good deal of confusion over what CRT means, as well as its relationship to other terms, like “anti-racism” and “social justice,” with which it is often conflated.

To an extent, the term “critical race theory” is now cited as the basis of all diversity and inclusion efforts regardless of how much it’s actually informed those programs.

One conservative organization, the Heritage Foundation, recently attributed a whole host of issues to CRT, including the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, LGBTQ clubs in schools, diversity training in federal agencies and organizations, California’s recent ethnic studies model curriculum, the free-speech debate on college campuses, and alternatives to exclusionary discipline—such as the Promise program in Broward County, Fla., that some parents blame for the Parkland school shootings. “When followed to its logical conclusion, CRT is destructive and rejects the fundamental ideas on which our constitutional republic is based,” the organization claimed.

CRT is a Law School topic. Conservatives have latched onto it as a way of scarring White People into believing that their children (It's not being taught in any school other than Law Schools) to hate themselves.

The GOP’s ‘Critical Race Theory’ Obsession

On January 12, Keith Ammon, a Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, introduced a bill that would bar schools as well as organizations that have entered into a contract or subcontract with the state from endorsing “divisive concepts.” Specifically, the measure would forbid “race or sex scapegoating,” questioning the value of meritocracy, and suggesting that New Hampshire—or the United States—is “fundamentally racist.”

Ammon’s bill is one of a dozen that Republicans have recently introduced in state legislatures and the United States Congress that contain similar prohibitions. In Arkansas, lawmakers have approved a measure that would ban state contractors from offering training that promotes “division between, resentment of, or social justice for” groups based on race, gender, or political affiliation. The Idaho legislature just passed a bill that would bar institutions of public education from compelling “students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere” to specific beliefs about race, sex, or religion. The Louisiana legislature is weighing a nearly identical measure.

The late Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell is credited as the father of critical race theory. He began conceptualizing the idea in the 1970s as a way to understand how race and American law interact, and developed a course on the subject. In 1980, Bell resigned his position at Harvard because of what he viewed as the institution’s discriminatory hiring practices, especially its failure to hire an Asian American woman he’d recommended.

Black students—including the future legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who enrolled at Harvard Law in 1981—felt the void created by his departure. Bell had been the only Black law professor among the faculty, and in his absence, the school no longer offered a course explicitly addressing race. When students asked administrators what could be done, Crenshaw says they received a terse response. “What is it that is so special about race and law that you have to have a course that examines it?” Crenshaw has recalled administrators asking. The administration’s inability to see the importance of understanding race and the law, she says, “got us thinking about how do we articulate that this is important and that law schools should include” the subject in their curricula.

Crenshaw and her classmates asked 12 scholars of color to come to campus and lead discussions about Bell’s book Race, Racism, and American Law. With that, critical race theory began in earnest. The approach “is often disruptive because its commitment to anti-racism goes well beyond civil rights, integration, affirmative action, and other liberal measures,” Bell explained in 1995. The theory’s proponents argue that the nation’s sordid history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination is embedded in our laws, and continues to play a central role in preventing Black Americans and other marginalized groups from living lives untouched by racism.

Fox News gave only passing thought to critical race theory until last year. The first mention on the network occurred after Bell died, in 2012. A video of President Barack Obama praising him 21 years earlier began circulating online. “Open up your minds and your hearts to the words of Mr. Derrick Bell,” Obama said. That introduction was followed by a hug between the two men, which Fox cited as further evidence of Obama’s tendency to consort with radicals. A guest on Hannity offhandedly alluded to the theory during a segment on George Zimmerman’s trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2014; network regulars briefly referred to it twice in 2019. Then, in 2020, after Derek Chauvin was captured on video kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, and the United States became awash in anti-racist reading lists—some of which included books and articles that discussed critical race theory—Fox suddenly took a great interest in the idea. It became the latest in a long line of racialized topics (affirmative action perhaps being the most prominent) that the network has jumped on. Since June 5, 2020, the phrase has been invoked during 150 broadcasts.

A month later, Rufo employed the term for the first time in an article. “Critical race theory—the academic discourse centered on the concepts of ‘whiteness,’ ‘white fragility,’ and ‘white privilege’—is spreading rapidly through the federal government,” he wrote. He related anecdotes about training influenced by critical race theory at the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, and the Treasury Department, among others. In early September, Tucker Carlson invited him on his Fox News show during which Rufo warned viewers that critical race theory had pervaded every institution of the federal government and was being “weaponized” against Americans. He called on President Donald Trump to ban such training in all federal departments.

“Luckily, the president was watching the show and instructed his Chief of Staff to contact me the next morning,” Rufo wrote to me. (He would agree to be interviewed only by email.) Within three weeks, Trump had signed an executive order banning the use of critical race theory by federal departments and contractors in diversity training. “And thus,” he wrote to me, “the real fight against critical race theory began.”

[BeastieRunner]

What do you think the argument's about?

What do conservatives imagine Critical Race Theory to be, and what you think it is?



I'm curious if you're willing to commit to a number between 0 and 100 percent on the odds of Ivanka or Jared flipping. I get that you think it's 100 percent if they get indicted, although what do you think are the odds that they'll be indicted?

Ivanka I would say ... 33% chance indicted.

Jared ... 14% chance.

You need a slam dunk on them to indict. Which is why IF they are ... they flip on daddy.

I however think that harassing surrogates will be the NYDA play till the Trumps leave America due to bleeding too much money. It is smarter and the base will not like that he fled the country.

I would put Rudy on 55% though ... Given all his disbarments.

He might be the better cog to break.

[The Cool Thatguy]

There's apparently some contract language that it's actually up to the IOC if a city can cancel or not once they sign on.

Like... it's a devil's bargain, to be sure... but in this instance, the IOC are really holding them over that barrel.

Starting to think it's a blessing that the U.S. didn't get the 2024 games like Trump wanted. Hopefully the globe will have recovered from Covid-19 by the 2028 version.

I respect the ability of those who compete, but I have to wonder if it's ever really 'worth it' to keep the Olympics around at all.

[worstblogever]

I respect the ability of those who compete, but I have to wonder if it's ever really 'worth it' to keep the Olympics around at all.

It's a luxury, at this point. It's proven to be a burden upon the host city economically for the past twenty years of summer and winter games at least...

But it's a stage for the best in human physical achievement and competition. I'm like, "yeah, expensive, but... I wanna see Simone Biles defy the laws of gravity and Usain Bolt give us the closest human equivalent to the Flash and the like."

The only reason people want to host them is to be able to cheer on their own countrymen without traveling. But with television... streaming, etc.... that's not really a concern in the modern era. Thus why the economic impact of the games has changed. It's all in the TV deal, which I believe the IOC milk the money out of, not the host city.

[Tami]

It's a luxury, at this point. It's proven to be a burden upon the host city economically for the past twenty years of summer and winter games at least...

But it's a stage for the best in human physical achievement and competition. I'm like, "yeah, expensive, but... I wanna see Simone Biles defy the laws of gravity and Usain Bolt give us the closest human equivalent to the Flash and the like."

The only reason people want to host them is to be able to cheer on their own countrymen without traveling. But with television... streaming, etc.... that's not really a concern in the modern era. Thus why the economic impact of the games has changed. It's all in the TV deal, which I believe the IOC milk the money out of, not the host city.

If there was a viable neutral place, like, say, Antartica, then I'd be in favor of holding the Olympics in that one place every time. But that won't work.