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

[Johnathan]

The voter suppression laws the GOP are passing are not "so called". They are voter suppression laws pure and simple.

Yeah, this is obvious and a bit hypocritical. If it was voter fraud and Trump didn't really lose the election, then why are the people claiming that passing laws that make it harder for certain groups to vote? It's practically admitting that these legitimate voters are what won Biden the election.

Honestly, I think far more people disliked Trump than really wanted Biden and that is the winning margin - and that even fits into the MAGA narrative that Trump's opponents fomented irrational hatred of his administration.

That's really the basic thing though about the government. We have this perception that good government leads to good society, but obviously, if we have a bad society, then we're going to have a bad government. No one has ever voted themselves into a better government - it's about as successful as all the self-help mumbo jumbo the con men pull on their marks.

The government simply reflects the people it governs, and I don't really think that much of Trump but I don't really blame him for running the White House like an episode of the Apprentice. It's really his voters and supporters in the millions that give us the country we're living in now as well as the failure of his opponents to make better and more appealing arguments (yes, looking at you, Nancy Pelosi).

Honestly, it is going to have to be the next generation in 20 or 30 years that deals with all this. Most of us are just gonna have get too old, get too sick and die for anything to really change.

[numberthirty]

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/10/polit...ion/index.html

Colorado congressman becomes latest House Democrat not to seek reelection

Colorado Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter announced on Monday that he will not run for reelection in November, saying in a statement that "it's time for me to move on and explore other opportunities."

Perlmutter becomes the latest in a long list of House Democrats to decide not to seek reelection in 2022 as House Republicans grow increasingly confident they can win back the chamber currently under Democratic control in the upcoming midterm elections. So far 26 of the 37 members who've announced they're leaving the chamber at the end of the term have been Democrats. Eleven of those members, six Democrats and five Republicans, are running for Senate or governor.

[Catlady in training]

Ummm NO. Ideas don't kill people or take away their money or property. The slippery slope here is in full effect. Hitler didn't come to power on his ideas but by people going into the streets beating people up and the police looking the other way.
[/URL]

Jesus F*cking Christ. I would not have though that you could say something crazier than that stolen election nonsense, but here it is. Of course ideas are dangerous. Why else would we start all history lessons on World War 2 by covering the centuries old animosity towards the Jewish population?

By the way, laws against Holocaust denial are not present only in Germany (though they are probably stronger there). We have them in Slovakia too and a quick internet search shows that they are present in many European countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legali...locaust_denial
And they are sadly needed, as others have already said.

[CSTowle]

I'd disagree laws against Holocaust denial are needed (I like to see the crazies announce themselves, think about those in your personal sphere of experience who have recently revealed themselves to be MAGA/Covid conspiracy theorists that you wouldn't have expected 5/6 years ago) and would go one step further and embrace the old-school liberal way of thinking which had the ACLU defending the rights of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois because we believed both that people should be free to be wrong and also that in the marketplace of ideas ultimately the batshit ones will falter. Can radical ideas become dangerous when enough people adopt them and are moved to action? Of course. But I don't think the answer to combatting that is to try and censor those ideas. You won't stop them from spreading, and will likely radicalize those already on the path to it by giving them further "proof" that they're on the right track. After all, why suppress their crazy thoughts if there's nothing to them?

There are a lot of conversations that need to be had in this country (and others) involving political and racial and class biases/blind spots and that's not going to happen by one group dictating the conversation and setting the parameters. This needs to be opened up and explored so the bile can be exposed and hopefully expunged or at least managed. With demographics shifting to a minority-majority country there's going to be a lot of discomfort and attempts to cope with and hold onto the "good old days" of white/christian/hetero/male rule. I think Trump was and is part of that. Emotional triggering over CRT is another sign of it.

And we on the left have our own blind spots, including not trying to empathize with those who hold opposing views or attempting to dehumanize them and instead labeling them and dismissing them without engaging, secure in the knowledge that somehow in all of the world and human history they've arrived at a point of logical and moral clarity that can not only not be questioned but are shocked and offended when someone tries. We all have ignorance. We all have biases. In 50 years I promise you there are things you are certain of now that others will cringe to read about. The right has no monopoly on religious/magical thinking, and I'm seeing more and more arguments phrased in ways that remind me of talk of "blasphemy".

[4saken1]

That's what I am saying - there are facts but the decisive ones that might have greater objective value are blocked by the court or declared valid by law and are non-falsifiable. It is more than a feeling.
How do you feel? Would Biden have still won if there had been no provisions for vote by mail or drop box? You are okay with not knowing if they were real or fake even though millions were spent on lawyers in various states to make sure that such provisions would go through but also mix the ballots with in-person tabulations like they did in Georgia?

Did Georgia mix its mail-in and day-of ballots so there was no way to tell them apart? No.

The problem with the way people like you believe in conspiracy theories is that they believe them with every fiber of their being. When these ridiculous notions get disproven or shown that the chances of them being true are so infinitesimal that the absurdity that anybody still believes them becomes mind boggling, do they admit that they were wrong about that particular bit of evidence or that it might invalidate all or even part of their argument in any way? **** THAT!!! That would be a sign of weakness. They simply move on to the next bid of phony bullshit which will help them keep on believing that very same lie, as if their credibility in any public forum hasn't been utterly destroyed by their complete and utter inability to separate fact from fiction.

[Malvolio]

I'd disagree laws against Holocaust denial are needed (I like to see the crazies announce themselves, think about those in your personal sphere of experience who have recently revealed themselves to be MAGA/Covid conspiracy theorists that you wouldn't have expected 5/6 years ago) and would go one step further and embrace the old-school liberal way of thinking which had the ACLU defending the rights of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois because we believed both that people should be free to be wrong and also that in the marketplace of ideas ultimately the batshit ones will falter. Can radical ideas become dangerous when enough people adopt them and are moved to action? Of course. But I don't think the answer to combatting that is to try and censor those ideas. You won't stop them from spreading, and will likely radicalize those already on the path to it by giving them further "proof" that they're on the right track. After all, why suppress their crazy thoughts if there's nothing to them?

There are a lot of conversations that need to be had in this country (and others) involving political and racial and class biases/blind spots and that's not going to happen by one group dictating the conversation and setting the parameters. This needs to be opened up and explored so the bile can be exposed and hopefully expunged or at least managed. With demographics shifting to a minority-majority country there's going to be a lot of discomfort and attempts to cope with and hold onto the "good old days" of white/christian/hetero/male rule. I think Trump was and is part of that. Emotional triggering over CRT is another sign of it.

And we on the left have our own blind spots, including not trying to empathize with those who hold opposing views or attempting to dehumanize them and instead labeling them and dismissing them without engaging, secure in the knowledge that somehow in all of the world and human history they've arrived at a point of logical and moral clarity that can not only not be questioned but are shocked and offended when someone tries. We all have ignorance. We all have biases. In 50 years I promise you there are things you are certain of now that others will cringe to read about. The right has no monopoly on religious/magical thinking, and I'm seeing more and more arguments phrased in ways that remind me of talk of "blasphemy".

Yes. When the left tries to censor something on the right, I sometimes think that they lack confidence in their own argument, or they think that some people are too stupid to see how wrong the thing being censored is. Either way, it just leads to resentment. I see it myself when I come into a story in the middle and ask why a certain thing is considered offensive, and someone immediately attacks me as if my ignorance of the issue is a sign that I'm defending the allegedly offensive thing. I don't like simply trusting that something is offensive. I like to know the back story before I jump onboard the bandwagon.

[Jack Dracula]

The internet changed the speed information gets disseminated and social media and search engine platform algorithms guide people in directions the wouldn’t ordinarily travel exposing them to ideas they wouldn’t normally come into contact with.
Allowing racist and alt-right websites to proliferate lends legitimacy to their ideas and creates an echo chamber where they are reinforced. For example, where someone with violently racist viewpoints may have had a difficult time finding people who shared their views and so would’ve been more susceptible to societal pressure to critically examine those views, they can now easily enter a network of like-minded people who support and encourage them.
It’s a different world and thinking of the communication of ideas in the old context isn’t likely to help the situation.

[Jack Dracula]

I don't think there are sufficient fixes to prevent bad people from getting elected.

It'll happen every now and then.

One step towards preventing it is to hold them responsible for telling lies and spreading misinformation.
We already have defamation lawsuits. What Trump is essentially doing is defaming the democratic election process. If he can’t produce irrefutable evidence to support his argument as a public figure, he should be compelled to cease and desist.
Admit it. I’m not wrong.

[Scott Taylor]

The concept many of us grew up with was that the court of public opinion was strong enough to counteract people that tried to spout conspiracy theories, election fraud conspiracies or things like Holocaust denial. But that was when information was more slow to pervade the public consciousness. Now a bit of bad information can spread faster than ever before but it still takes time to effectively and methodically disprove some of the crazier stuff. So the crazies have a short-term advantage. Sadly, I'd like to believe that truth ultimately wins out, but examples seem to prove otherwise over and over again.

[JackDaw]

Boris Johnson is starting to look like Trump-lite….maybe a bit more amusing speaker than the Donald, but probably an even bigger liar, and I think has an even bigger contempt for public opinion.

Looking on the bright side, once he loses an election he will be finished in frontline UK politics…the U.K. system is far more brutal in the way it deals with election losers than in US, lose one and you’re finished.

I even think there is a chance the Conservative Party will jettison Boris as leader before the next election…his leadership is patently toxic to their chances of winning next election.

[Kirby101]

Starting? Johnson has acted like Trump from the beginning. But his Brexit fiasco (thank you Putin) will hurt Britain far longer than what Trump did, though God knows Trump tried to permanently damage the Country.

[worstblogever]

In 2015, 2016, and in 2017, on this date, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled former Oklahoma State Senator Don Barrington, whose biggest claims to fame are introducing a law in 2015 to ban hoodies, presumably as a response to people protesting the death of Trayvon Marin. His voting record also features him trying to restrict abortion including supporting state Personhood bills, voting for a law to prevent minors from buying emergency contraceptives, preventing the passing of a minimum wage, allowing for open carry everywhere in the state, voting for “Stand Your Ground” in Oklahoma, trying to restrict collective bargaining rights, voting for harsher Voter ID restrictions, and trying to pass a unnecessary ban on Sharia Law. Barrington was forced out of office by term limits in 2016.

It was on this date in 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Gerald Gay, a former engineer who worked for oil companies who became a three-term member of the Wyoming House of Representatives first arriving during the 2010 Tea Party Wave. Gay was adamant that he hated same sex marriage to an extent where he repeated it like a mantra in his 2014 re-election campaign, including a campaign video where he was dressed up like Yosemite Sam’s homophobic brother. We’re honestly surprised he never changed his surname. We also can’t say he’s too level-headed about people on government assistance, as Gay also sponsored legislation to drug-test welfare recipients during his time in office. Well, it seems Gay was also obsessed with people who aren’t white men abusing the system wherever possible, because when he was asked by Better Wyoming what his thoughts were on the pay equality gap between men and women, he went on a bizarre, ill-informed rant about how it was necessary because women call in sick too much, complaining about maternity leave in particular. When asked to clarify his views by the press, Gay made it worse by claiming not only do women call in sick more than men, but that they were faking it just to take their kids to activities. Rather than accept any responsibility for his comments, Gay blamed the media for taking him out of context. The ironic part was that Gay himself had repeatedly taken days off in the legislature for medical reasons of his own, and missed plenty of votes. All that sexism may have been the deciding factor for voters in Wyoming’s District 36, who voted for his opponent, Democrat Debbie Bovee by 212 votes.

On this date in 2019 “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Patrick Little, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in California in 2018, who was out to unseat Sen. Diane Feinstein. Perhaps he was motivated to challenge her because he’s an openly anti-Semitic white supremacist. He is in no way subtle about that, claiming that even the GOP have been overthrown by “Zionist stooges” and dragging around and spitting an Israeli flag around him on the ground after he was kicked out of the California Republican Party’s state convention. Then again, he feels the Neo-Nazi website, the Daily Stormer, is “too Jewish”. Little also refers to Adolf Hitler as “the second coming of Christ”, and would like for the United States to be “free of Jews”.He had plenty of modest and not at all hateful ideas like having the government to grant federal benefits based on merit and to nationalize internet giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter, and making it illegal for people of Jewish faith to take office in government, outlawing foreign aid to Israel and changing the U.S. Constitution to make the U.S. an explicitly an “ethnically European nation.” He also wants to make it illegal for any foundation to raise money for Holocaust education. He, of course, refers to the Holocaust as “a lie”, and bizarrely violated copyright law by sending out a robocall where he discussed his grievances with Jews set to the theme music from the classic sitcom “Friends”. At the point the GOP took measures to not run a Neo-Nazi for U.S. Senate, Patrick Little was polling second behind Feinstein with 18% of the vote. He still managed to get nearly 90,000 GOP votes. He seems determined to not go away, protesting outside the White House for all Jews to be expelled from the United States, and continued touring the nation to outlandishly accuse Jews of raping children or orchestrating murders while occasionally hanging out with the organizers of the “Unite the Right” rally from Charlottesville.



On this date in both 2020, as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who squints hard enough to try and convince himself he’s good at the job he’s held now since he won office in the 2014 elections. Hutchinson also served three terms representing Arkansas’ 3rd Congressional District back from 1997-2001, giving him enough time to have served as one of the impeachment managers during the Clinton impeachment hearings, and ending when he resigned only months into his third term to take the job as the Administrator of the DEA during the Bush administration. After two years in that role, the Bush administration allowed him to fail up into the role of leading the Border and Transportation Security Directorate. He resigned in 2005, because he was determined to become Governor of Arkansas in 2006.

Spoiler alert: He lost that year to Mike Beebe, and ended up kicking around GOP circles for four more years. It gave him time to do things like become a toady for the NRA, and come up with a “solution” after the Sandy Hook shooting that was “why don’t we put guns in schools, then?”

But yes, Hutchison won the race for governor in 2014, and somehow, with seven years of leadership under his belt, his only noteworthy achievement was his desire to execute seven inmates in 11 days. What was the hurry in killing so many inmates on death row? Well, the expiration date on the lethal injection drugs was coming up, and you just can’t let that stuff go to waste, right? This would have been the first executions since 2005, and yet, Hutchison was foiled by the courts, who created stays of execution to prevent him from sending eight men to their graves.

Hutchison truly is a cold-hearted bastard, signing legislation in 2018 to force work requirements on recipients of Medicaid to collect their benefits… even though many of those recipients are disabled, and cannot work. Back in 2015, he released a statement that he would use whatever powers of his office he could to stop the settlement of Syrian refugees in Arkansas.

But of course, Hutchison claims to be “pro-life”. He’s already tried passing extreme anti-choice legislation like fetal heartbeat bills, and already jumped the gun and signed a bill that would criminalize abortion in Arkansas “when Roe v. Wade is overturned”. At this point, Hutchison is a lame duck who is holding the seat once held by loon Mike Huckabee warm until Huckabee could properly groom his daughter as the Trump administration’s biggest propagandist to run for it in 2022, when Hutchison faces term limits. His legacy as governor is that he not only has been unable to take his state out of the Bottom Five in most categories like education, or economic growth, or poverty… he can’t even stop his own son, Asa Hutchison III from being a serial drunk driver (who was only required to serve one of 365 days in jail for his third offense, because hey, it’s the governor’s son.) His nephew Jeremy, of course, wasn’t as lucky, and is likely awaiting a prison sentence for bribery and tax fraud.

Asa Hutchinson is currently finishing out his term making the bold decision to keep essential services like water parks open and shrug in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, getting people killed in his inaction. At least he has been kind enough in 2021 to admit he’s failed his state by having fought back against mask mandates, but only after hundreds of people have died preventable deaths.

Too little, too late. Hutchinson will be leaving office around this time next year. Hopefully this is the last time we have to mention him, and the legacy of malfeasance he will leave behind.

[Mister Mets]

One step towards preventing it is to hold them responsible for telling lies and spreading misinformation.
We already have defamation lawsuits. What Trump is essentially doing is defaming the democratic election process. If he can’t produce irrefutable evidence to support his argument as a public figure, he should be compelled to cease and desist.
Admit it. I’m not wrong.

I think our main difference is just in figuring out the right procedures.

It would be ex post facto punishment to create a new law and go after him for something he did in the past. Though he would likely do something bad in the future.

Otherwise, we'd have to demonstrate that he broke existing laws, or is liable in some way that we wouldn't mind setting a precedent for future civil decisions.

I think the main way to win against him is to keep beating him in elections. As a Republican, I would prefer some kind of way to disqualify him so he doesn't win the nomination again and it goes to someone with the potential to be a good President. That's probably not going to happen, though I'm certainly open to the argument.

[Zauriel]

Boris Johnson is starting to look like Trump-lite….maybe a bit more amusing speaker than the Donald, but probably an even bigger liar, and I think has an even bigger contempt for public opinion.

Looking on the bright side, once he loses an election he will be finished in frontline UK politics…the U.K. system is far more brutal in the way it deals with election losers than in US, lose one and you’re finished.

I even think there is a chance the Conservative Party will jettison Boris as leader before the next election…his leadership is patently toxic to their chances of winning next election.

Boris Johnson is as bad and corrupt as Donald Trump but his hair style is much worse.

https://www.nickiswift.com/709774/th...hair-revealed/

[Johnathan]

The internet changed the speed information gets disseminated and social media and search engine platform algorithms guide people in directions the wouldn’t ordinarily travel exposing them to ideas they wouldn’t normally come into contact with.
Allowing racist and alt-right websites to proliferate lends legitimacy to their ideas and creates an echo chamber where they are reinforced. For example, where someone with violently racist viewpoints may have had a difficult time finding people who shared their views and so would’ve been more susceptible to societal pressure to critically examine those views, they can now easily enter a network of like-minded people who support and encourage them.
It’s a different world and thinking of the communication of ideas in the old context isn’t likely to help the situation.

This also depends on who does the "allowing" or, more importantly, has the power to not allow.

Again, it came in during the formation of the FCC and later acts around television. Obviously, television was and still is censored. However, the one thing that gets the least amount of censorship is advertising and consumer culture has only skyrocketed with the internet.

However, television is not necessarily censored by the actual networks and companies running the various channels. It is regulated by the government agencies that technically answer to the people's representatives. Otherwise, they would put whatever gets people's attention - and honestly, they've used the incredible amount of money they make to basically go around the regulators by influencing the politicians that are supposed to represent the people to put friendly people into the agencies. Same with every other industry from Finance to Energy.

With the Internet, the government is telling the sites that they need to police their own users' content while the users of the sites are demanding that they have a right to express whatever they want on these privately owned platforms. While the platforms are really listening mainly to one group - their advertisers and investors, the people paying them.

So, I'd think most people would prefer their representatives to have the power to regulate the content rather than private businesses that don't really care what's on the sites as long as people are using them and it doesn't make them look bad.