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

[Jack Dracula]

it is not suppression to restore credibility to our election system.

The Republicans being the only gatekeepers of what’s credible cancels out any credibility allegedly gained.
Credibility would result from a nonpartisan effort with changes resulting from negotiation rather than a lateral move cooked up by a conservative think tank funded by corporations and billionaires.

[Kirby101]

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Sinema's gonna switch parties, isn't she?

No. She’s just going to cash out and leave.

[Kirby101]

Sinema's gonna switch parties, isn't she?

No, she is in a State that is becoming more Democratic and she is already unpopular. She would not win there as a Republican.

[Jack Dracula]

But, someone is wrong on the internet and only I can fix the problem!

[Xheight]

The Republicans being the only gatekeepers of what’s credible cancels out any credibility allegedly gained.
Credibility would result from a nonpartisan effort with changes resulting from negotiation rather than a lateral move cooked up by a conservative think tank funded by corporations and billionaires.

Not a bad idea- if it were possible - not that I am one to tout european anything but something more apolitical would be good if it could not be run by think tanks, by corporations and billionaires and the Super PACs that love them.
We don't want to go about creating another layer of deep state singular thinking though with its own objectives like our intelligence agencies.

[Xheight]

No. She’s just going to cash out and leave.

I really don't understand this hand wringing as it should be a surprise to any progressive that now that the bill has come due on backing Biden for real change he invokes yet again that the Presidency is on the line here.

[kidfresh512]

Facebook just revealed its new name: Meta

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday at the company’s Connect event that the social media platform’s new name will be Meta. “We are a company that builds technology to connect,” Zuckerberg said. “Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology. And together, we can unlock a massively bigger creator economy.”

“To reflect who we are and what we hope to build,” he added.

He said the name Facebook doesn’t fully encompass everything the company does. “Right now, our brand is so tightly linked to one product,” he said. “But over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company.”

Zuckerberg owns the Twitter handle @meta and meta.com, which redirects to a welcome page on Facebook, that outlines the changes.

[Mister Mets]

Texas lawmaker says 850 books ranging from race to sexuality could cause 'discomfort'



What kind of wimpy kids do they have in Texas? Or at least what kind of Wimpy adults who make assumptions about their own kinds being as wimpy and weak as they are, do they have in Texas?

There are a lot of different views on this matter. It isn't just a matter of two clearly articulated sides.

There are plenty of calls for dodgy removals on the left, like the Ottawa school board removing Lord of the Flies from the curriculum because it's too focused on white, male power structures.

Some of the concerns from the right would have more popular support than the most acclaimed books a Texas state representative already on the radar of well-informed progressives wants to go after. For example, there's the Texas public school library that has a graphic novel Gender-Queer, a Memoir which does include explicit scenes of teenagers performing oral sex.

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2021/10/27/...chool-library/

The book has been controversial in other libraries, but the American library association did recommend it as having “special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...c59_story.html

More to ponder of Chapple


so it IS about money and power not rights or punching up or down or any which way.

It can be both.

They want money and power to prevent someone from punching down.

I do think the requests are unreasonable, but it is consistent.

[babyblob]

Facebook just revealed its new name: Meta

I have been seeing a lot of ads on tv from Facebook. They have people who work for the company. One was someone who is in charge of protecting users data and the other was a content supervisor talking about how it is his job to make sure the people only see the most up to date relevant and fair content etc..

Just trying to fix the image I guess but they are so dumb.

[Mister Mets]

Not true - why say that one is effecting the other directly? These articles are laughable in their presumptions. The wealthy in the state also pay high local taxes to exclude and advantage their children in public schools to a staggering degree. The profile of the state has been upper suburban for decades and now empty nest flight is adding to the red blue either or urban vs rural divide that plagues many states. The article points to a sector of the state that yes perhaps is being helped but let one not confuse it with why people move there and leave there.

Relatives I have there figure the are paying for good schools at least compared to the tristate area issues which for me isn't such an issue and the urban life saves me on other costs.

There doesn't seem to be an ideologically consistent reason for bringing back the SALT deductions for the wealthy.

It's a tax on the rich, and the left would argue that the higher taxes improve the quality of life for everyone, so there shouldn't be a federal subsidy for local and state policies.

Open societies require protection from people like you. People who would gladly trash democracy when it doesn't go their way. Your guy tried to hold a coup on 1/6, and here you are trying to convince us that the election was 'stolen' by a DNC that couldn't even deliver a working majority in the Senate and anything more than a razor thin margin in congress.

You're not the majority. You will never be the majority again. You might get to wield political power by ensuring only the *right* people get to vote and with gerrymandered districts and a system that favors land over people in the Senate, but a majority of the populace has rejected what is on sale here, and will well into the future.

His side will likely win at some point. And then lose. That's how American politics goes.

Democrats had united control in 1993 and 1994.
Then, we had split government from 1995-2000.
Republicans had united control from 2001-2006 (with a slight period of split government for a few months due to a Senator changing parties.)
Then we had split government from 2007-2008.
Democrats had united control in 2009 and 2010.
We had split government from 2011-2016.
Republicans had united control in 2017 and 2018.
We had split government in 2019 and 2020.
Democrats have had both branches of Congress, and the presidency this year, but it's unlikely to last.

Open as an clique that enforces its way of thinking you mean. As to being glad what do you think drives the anger of Jan 6? Pure Trumpism? The Democratic party has moved from Majority rule to Majoritarianism as its tool to power no different from the collapse of the Roman Republic to Imperial use of the masses. I am not a majority person to begin with so it is not power that I seek to reclaim but protections of my individuality even if you find them loathsome. And don't talk to me about gerrymandering where Asians in this city have had to share their political clout with every other minority thanks to Democrat machine politics.

I don't think Democrats are going for majoritarianism though.

If they were, they would focus exclusively on things that are popular, rather than trying to appease the base.

A problem in modern politics is that both sides prefer narrow wins with ambitious agendas.

Credibility to whom - Divisive Fiction created by the Democratic party that it is about "wrong people" when it is about deliberation and accountability.

Here I have to disagree.

Nonrandom groups of people are different. Pointing out that vote by mail results are suspicious because it favors Democrats is kinda like a Democrat saying rural votes are suspicious because it's more Republican-leaning than the state or national average.

An additional factor is that Republicans have disparaged vote by mail. The lack of trust is their own damn fault, and not something they should benefit from. It's not something Democrats should reward in any way.

Democrats also sometimes lose opportunities due to a desire for symbolism or some kind of moral victory. Examples would be the Hillary Clinton campaign wasting time and money on boosting the popular vote, or Ruth Bader Ginsburg delaying her retirement because she wanted the first female President to select her replacement.

There are going to be some problems in distinguishing between people you disagree with and trolls, especially if there's a lot of groupthink here.

It's likely better to err on the side of being generous in how you view others, to engage in their arguments calmly and rationally (or in some cases to note how they are acting in bad faith in a way that does not respect the agency or time of others.) If they say something stupid or nasty in response, they look bad.

[babyblob]

My aunt always yelled about that. So do the GOP people I know. Going on about how it is odd most of the mail in votes went for Biden. I asked her and them what about the 6 months before the election where the GOP bitched about how mail in voting is not safe or valid and told people not to use it? So after being told for months not to use it while the Dems were telling people to use it why wouldnt it swing more for Biden?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Facebook just revealed its new name: Meta

Thank goodness Zuckerberg didn’t add that extra ‘t’ to the new handle or Ron Artest (a.k.a. METTA World Peace) would’ve gotten pissed.

[Tami]

Facebook just revealed its new name: Meta

Meta??? Come on, that's just plain Mary Sue. At least he didn't rebrand the company God.

[worstblogever]

Sinema's gonna switch parties, isn't she?

I'm in AZ, and the current word seems to be is she's already set herself up to lose, but head to K Street and cash in as a lobbyist. As in, unofficially, her abandoning her principles was based on the promise of a six-figure a year lobbying deal where some billionaire just hires her as what is a legal bribe.

And yes, there are progressives like Sen. Sanders and Sen. Warren that have pointed out how insane it is that politicians can just do this and be bought so easily.

Sinema, if this is the plan... we're talking about someone who once protested the Iraq War while wearing a tutu as a member of the Green Party. She's always treated politics as theatre, save for in 2018 when she won the lottery of "Blue Wave + Martha-McSally-is-My-Opponent + She Took Herself Seriously for a Full Calendar Year Prior to Election Day". Any one of those three things not being true, she probably would have lost, and not be in the position she is right now to SELL OUT HARD.

It's goddamned disappointing... and that's an understatement.