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

[JackDaw]

What I’m saying is these people weren’t convinced to change their minds by debating strangers on the internet.
When I said “this never happens” that’s what I was talking about.

Have you never changed your mind about a single issue as a result of discussion on this thread?

Or been influenced about something by internet debate elsewhere?

[CaptainEurope]

Oil Companies are raising prices for gas based on the price of oil. WHICH THEY PRODUCE! So they get money from both ends.

The price of crude oil actually went down significantly over the past 10 days or so, but prices at the gas station remain high. And that almost always happen: They try and see if people will drive less because of the prices or if they can get away with it a little longer.

Here in Germany, driving behavior has not changed at all. So they keep the prices higher.

[CaptainEurope]

Part of that is also the profiteering from large corporations. Despite the record inflation, many corporations are also reporting record profits, which is only possible if they are passing any increased costs onto customers and then some more on top of it. This is even more effective when stupid people blame Biden over it and not, you know, the profiteering executives.

The new German minister of economics has activated our Anti-Trust Agency to look into price gouging oil companies yesterday.

[CaptainEurope]

It's a very stupid list.

Some of it is just plain wrong. Lies.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Here's some chicanery from the Ivans. A sign of desperation perhaps since the war hasn't so far gone according to script for Putin:

Bad Deepfake of Zelenskyy Shared on Ukraine News Site in Reported Hack

A poorly done deepfake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asking civilians to lay down their arms to the Russian military was circulated on social media in March 2022. In addition to getting some views on social media, a summary of this video was also broadcast on a Ukrainian news station after it was reportedly hacked. The running text at the bottom of this broadcast mentions the message from Zelenskyy’s deepfake video.

[CaptainEurope]

Just a reminder to readers that no credible evidence has ever been presented that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen.

The above post and any others from this poster and others that make such claims are repeating false information.

The Big Lie has been debunked so many times, the fact checkers got a free latte.

[Spidey5640]

Nobody cares about your Fox News BS talking points.
After 1/6/2020 Republicans went from being annoying obstacles to enemies of democracy. You now march side by side with NeoNazis and Proud Boys.
If that’s the party you support nothing you write is even worth reading.

Thanks for providing further proof of the closed liberal mindset

[CaptainEurope]

According to CBS, 5k-6k Russian soldiers have been killed in under two weeks; by a military that is supposed to be inferior to them and civilians that are not trained for combat. In 20 years of the Afghan war, nearly 2500 US soldiers were killed. I didn't think the Russian military would be this unprepared for war.

I think the motivation of many of the Russian soldiers is different from, say, the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 80s. Ukrainians are so much like them. It's much more difficult to "other" them, look them in the eyes and kill them. The Ukrainians are fighting for their home, their freedom, their identity. What are the Russian soldiers fighting for? Against?
We know some of them were told they were only sent to a military exercise and they were stunned to find themselves in a war zone. And for those of them who may, initially, believe their leader that they are freeing Ukraine from "drug addicted Nazi gangsters" - how do they reconcile that with flattening a school, shooting a babushka?

All of those things can make soldiers hesitate. And hesitation will get them killed, no matter what the preparation was.

[CaptainEurope]

If Trump runs again in 2024, he would most likely win the Republican nomination.

I think Putin's attack on Ukraine changes the likelihood of many things, including that one.

There was a historian on German TV who said that in all this tragedy, the one thing he is feeling relieved about is that finally, finally the "Putin kitsch" in many circles has largely come to an end.

Already, moderate Republicans are creating primary ads, using their MAGA opponent's support of Putin against them. This could even give Mitt Romney another shot at the presidency because he was right about Russia.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” ran a profile of Clifton Johnson, a candidate for U.S. Senate from Nebraska in the 2014 elections. Johnson’s best, and possibly only qualification for elected office was the fact that he bore a striking resemblance to our first president, George Washington. He tried to parlay that uncanny likeness into framing himself to be the candidate in the race who would best serve the principles of our Founding Fathers (like his idea to abolish the IRS and establish a “consumption tax”, where you would be taxed not on what you earn, but what you spend), and thus ride to victory on the strength of the Tea Party movement. Unfortunately, Johnson’s actual message was an incoherent mess, including an immigration policy that would have 8 U.S. Soldiers placed at every mile marker along the U.S./Mexico border. He refused to do press interviews, which is understandable because the recurring statements he would make seemed to only be that “George Washington is back, and he’s upset.” Johnson only won 2% of the Republican vote in the primary in that election and has disappeared from the political scene since.

On this date in 2016, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” posted a profile of Elbert Guillory, who In the 2015 elections, gave up his seat in the Louisiana State Senate to make a run for Governor of Louisiana, finishing a distant fourth, with only about 8% of the vote. Guillory likes to work on behalf of Republicans to perpetuate the myth that Republican policies actually do better by African Americans, by declaring that he was “leaving the plantation”, and that Democrats are the “Party of Jim Crow”. This, of course, fails to recognize the fact that the Southern Democrats who favored Jim Crow left the Democratic Party over the passage of the Civil Rights Act and switched to the same Republican Party that Guillory finds himself in. Y’know, the one whose party platform advocates for strict Voter ID Laws that serve as a 21st Century Jim Crow. But anyway, that’s just the tip of the iceberg with Guillory. In May 2015, he actually argued in defense of a law on the books in Louisiana that allows teachers to promote Creationism or other unscientific theories as an alternative to teaching evolution by claiming there was a time when scientists thought the world was flat, and when religious people tried telling them it was round, it was the religious people who were burned at the stake for their heretical stance against science. Unless Elbert Guillory was born on Bizarro World, I have no idea what his problem is. Maybe it’s just that he’s worried what the voodoo houngans might think. (No, we’re serious. When that law for teaching Creationism popped up originally he argued in favor of it by referencing voodoo.) But back to Elbert Guillory commenting on race… When you’re talking about political discourse in this country being at its most polarized point… Guillory sure does his part. Take his starring in a campaign ad in North Carolina in the 2014 elections to take shots at Sen. Kay Hagan in her bid for re-election where he said that Democrats were “limousine liberals who have become our new overseers”. Or how prior to the 2015 election in Louisiana, when he ran an ad to campaign against Kip Holden, a Democrat running for lieutenant governor, by running an ad where he just straight up looked in the camera and used the N-Word. Guillory’s inflammatory racial rhetoric is far from his only controversial issue, as one of his biggest legislative efforts since taking office was to push hard for the legalization of “chicken boxing”, which he insists should not be cast aside because it’s a whole different, classy sport and unrelated cockfighting (the non-sport that’s actually animal abuse). And his passion for chicken boxing got Guillory noticed by Steven Colbert, who ran a segment on him in April of 2014. As recently as January of 2016, Guillory was still putting out videos to attack Democrats that were mired in conservative fantasy-land, including one about how, in Guillory’s warped mind, President Obama is tougher on American gun owners than he is ISIS (last I checked, Wayne LaPierre wasn’t the target of a drone strike, so…)
In the 2016 elections, Guillory tried to get elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in Louisiana’s 4th Congressional District, but managed to finish a distant fifth in the primary, earning about 8% of the vote.


On this date in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Bob McDermott, who has served in the Hawaii House of Representatives since winning office since 2012 (after several years away), who moved to the Aloha State from Pennsylvania and quickly rose in the ranks of the GOP there for his brazen opposition to LGBTQ rights. Bob McDermott was trying to ban gay marriage in Hawaii as far back as 1998, when he served two terms in office before disappearing from the Hawaiian political scene for a decade. In 2014, was trying to still filibuster attempts at legalizing same sex marriage in the state, and falsely claim that Hawaiian citizens voted to ban same sex marriage in ’98. Among the bills he’s introduced include an amendment to the state constitution to “reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples” (that would be immediately overturned as unconstitutional via the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling), a bill to redefine the term “place of public accommodation” to allow religiously-affiliated organizations including hotels, restaurants, movie theatres, hospitals (!), retail stores, and mortuaries to deny services to LGBTQ people. How self-righteously stupid is it to try something like that in Hawaii? Let’s put it this way…Neither of those McDermott bills has even a single co-sponsor. McDermott has also proposed a bill focused on limiting the Department of Education’s ability to implement sexual health education programs which he hopes will eliminate all mention of LGBTQ people in public classrooms, and is also currently at the forefront of the Hawaii’s GOP’s attempts to prevent their Democratic counterparts from a bill to ban public school teachers from promoting ‘gay conversion therapy,’ a practice discredited by all leading national medical and psychological authorities because it is ineffective, risky, and can be harmful. If you ask McDermott, though, it’s the “gay cure”, which would then mean yes, he views homosexuality as a disease. The bigoted rhetoric for him knows no boundaries for taste, either. In January of 2014, Bob McDermott hosted a press conference where he decried gay sex in a long rant, that featured a big focus on anuses. No, really, he spoke, “The anus is presented as genitalia, just another sex organ. This is another example of forced ‘equality’ by ignoring the natural function of the rectum and anus. Therefore ‘political’ correctness dictates that the male rectum and the female vagina are ‘equal’ in terms of being sexual organs. This totally ignores the obvious facts of human biology and reproduction.”

Of late, Bob McDermott’s fanaticism has begun to even carry over to what few colleagues he has in the state legislature. In early February 2017, the Hawaii GOP voted to oust their own House Minority Leader, Beth Fukumoto, for the grievous offense of having attended a women’s march to protest the presidency of Donald Trump the day after his inauguration. McDermott chastised her for this on the floor of the Hawaii House, saying, “You are speaking not for yourself anymore. It is a high-level responsibility.” At that point, Fukumoto took stock of her party, rallying around a misogynistic orange bigot, and with her main ally being a deranged wild-eyed homophobe obsessed with anuses only slightly less than the mad scientist from the film Human Centipede and opted to switch to the Democratic Party.

McDermott continued in his anti-LGBTQ extremism in 2019, voting against a ban on gay conversion therapy and voted against a bill that would establish a non-binary gender option on state IDs. Bob McDermott still, sadly, won re-election in 2020 with 58% of the vote.

And, for whatever reason, he thinks he has a chance of winning a statewide election in 2022, and is running as a challenger to Democratic Senator Brian Schatz. While the thought of this homophobic bigot in the Senate is a little worrying, Hawaii seems like a safely blue Senate seat and it just means McDermott will end up out of office come the start of 2023. A scenario which we are greatly looking forward to.

[babyblob]

I think Putin's attack on Ukraine changes the likelihood of many things, including that one.

There was a historian on German TV who said that in all this tragedy, the one thing he is feeling relieved about is that finally, finally the "Putin kitsch" in many circles has largely come to an end.

Already, moderate Republicans are creating primary ads, using their MAGA opponent's support of Putin against them. This could even give Mitt Romney another shot at the presidency because he was right about Russia.

I would like to see this as true. But there have been way more GOP members talking about how this would have never happened on Trump's Watch. When Trump is elected Putin will pull all troops back to Russia because of his fear of Trump. Biden is super weak and this is all his fault, etc...

And there are still so many GOP candidates at least here is Ohio that are kissing Trumps ass hard. Trump is so great, they are friends of Trump, they have the same vaules and plans as Trump. All that crap.

So yea most of the GOP is not moving off of Trump any time soon despite what is going on.

[Dalak]

Regarding our last exchange, I don't think I have anything to apologize for, nor am I aware of anything I said that was especially disrespectful.

I understood a comment in a particular way.

For context, we were discussing a recent book by Abigail Shrier.


My understanding (and I had no reason to question it) is that you asked a question about the book's subtitle.

You later clarified that you referred to the book by its subtitle, and were asking about the entire book.

I don't think you can fault someone for not realizing that a comment about a subtitle is asking about the entire book.

The problem with this is that I clarified it in a post with your name in it replying to one that had your name in it literally 3 posts later, before you answered assuming I couldn't be asking about more than a subtitle which you also said later was a weak argument you chose to belittle. Rather than asking for clarification like you have with blatant trolls.

The link Mets used also went into how her premise was based on multiple debunked theories and how the writer was upset that she didn't inform her readers of these things and more, despite the fact that he didn't think there was enough hard data on the subject and so wanted to give her a chance. That's why I want to know what nuance there is that he sees.

That is disrespectful in my opinion, then compounded when I replied that you dodged the question in response to you asking if you did so in general, you got mad and said I was being unreasonable and claimed I should have asked a better question rather than admit you made a mistake by being snarky and disrespectful.

If someone asks me a question directly, I'll usually answer.

I'm not going to be able to answer every question. Sometimes I'll miss it when scrolling at work or whatever. But I really doubt that there's anyone here who holds themselves to a higher standard when it comes to responding to comments than they would hold me.

That said, I responded to the point about the subtitle. It's not my responsibility to respond to the best possible steelman version of someone else's argument.

The other post you mention was a response to Tendrin, so I don't think it's reasonable to expect a response to that one. It's certainly not reasonable to view the lack of a response to a post you made to someone else as a character flaw.

As I've said: The initial response is more revealing than what is said after the fact, and I fault you for that more than missing a post. I doubt this will change your view of what happened, which is why I stopped trying earlier

-----

On other points, I do still suspect most people in the GOP are doing what they think is best for the whole country. In some cases, they will be mistaken, but that is a different question from whether they secretly agree with you about policies they implement.

Regarding CRT, it certainly informs decisions made by educators and administrators. So that muddies the argument.

How often has CRT affected grade schools? By that I mean by teachers and administrators who have explicitly studied CRT or are influenced by it rather than doing things based on racial equality and other things that can be lumped into CRT by being well meaning moral person.
How many reports with proof have come out of Texas of parents forcing their children to transition against their will?
How much harm is caused by informing people at work not to be insensitive because racist stuff happened and it affects how others see what you do in the present day?

Honestly it seems like you will never let yourself see the damage they are willfully causing and will thus continue supporting it no matter what they do. That is something I can hardly believe despite seeing the evidence of it every day and it slowly degrades what hope I have left for the humanity of us earthlings in general to last.

[Mister Mets]

If Trump runs again in 2024, he would most likely win the Republican nomination.

Biden would likely win as well.

[Tami]

Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal, and who decides?

Joe Biden called Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” on Wednesday for the unfolding onslaught in Ukraine, where hospitals and maternity wards have been bombed.

But declaring someone a war criminal is not as simple as just saying the words. There are set definitions and processes for determining who is a war criminal and how they should be punished.

Here’s a look at how this all works:

[Tami]

Mass Graves Identified in Syria Could Hold Evidence of War Crimes

BERLIN — By day, the workers used heavy machinery to dig pits and trenches. After dark, the corpses arrived, sometimes hundreds at a time, in the beds of military pickups or in refrigerator trucks meant for transporting food.

As government intelligence officers looked on, the dead were dumped into the ground and buried near the capital, Damascus, according to men who worked at two mass grave sites in Syria. Sometimes, the workers packed the dirt down tightly to keep dogs from digging up the bodies.

Throughout Syria’s 11-year civil war, human rights groups and government defectors have documented the widespread killing of civilians by the security forces as they sought to stamp out any opposition to the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

Now, The New York Times has gathered evidence that sheds new light on one enduring mystery of the war: What happened to the bodies of the many thousands who died or were killed in government detention centers?