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

[Catlady in training]

The rational part of me says there is no way they Nuke Ukraine. Because if they launch nukes, the world would HAVE to retaliate. Because if the world allowed Putin to nuke Ukraine and get away with it, then there is no guarantee that he wouldn't launch nukes at any other country he suddenly felt like invading.

However, I don't think Putin is rational. I think he wants to bring back the USSR, no matter the cost, and he doesn't care how many of his own people have to die for that sick goal. I also think he wouldn't hesitate to launch nukes at the US if he is given the slightest reason.

Another thought I keep having is that they are trying to intentionally damage Chernobyl to cause another nuclear incident that they can try and pass off as an accident.

I don't think there is any rationality left in Moscow leadership. Keep in mind, they don't care one bit for the lives of their people, as leaders of countries should. They might not care about potential retaliation if they are safely hidden with enough supplies. Also, the response from the West is not guaranteed, since they don't want worldwide nuclear war.

Regarding Chernobyl, I've read some statements from proffesionals that say that any potential damage would be only local. Other nuclear facilities are a different matter though.

[Tendrin]

Senate Republicans don’t have the votes to take down Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, but they’ve used her confirmation process to broadcast their intention to roll back decades of civil rights progress.

In public remarks, leading Republicans have almost casually and with little fear of political recrimination begun to relitigate same-sex marriage, contraception and interracial marriage. With a robust 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the GOP’s ambition to rework the privacy jurisprudence underlying many of the civil rights gains of the last 60 years isn’t idle aspiration but a very real threat.

If Republicans retreated on gay marriage over the past decade, it was a tactical retreat only. They’ve renewed their focus on 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that established the right of same-sex couples to marry. Senate Republicans characterized it as precedent wrongly decided, as an unenumerated right spun out of thin air.

“They’ve been targeting Obergefell since the day it was decided,” David Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline Law School, told TPM. “The right-wing legal movement has never moved on.”

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/j...riswold-loving

Elimating rights to privacy so they can legislate Christian Dominionism into your life is the goal of these Republicans.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/j...riswold-loving

Elimating rights to privacy so they can legislate Christian Dominionism into your life is the goal of these Republicans.

Well, at least that puts to bed the lie about the GQP demanding to keep government out of the lives of the people.

[Tami]

Why Russian troops are using tree branches for camouflage in Ukraine

Russian troops in Ukraine have scrambled to avoid detection and attack by using tree branches and straw, even swaths of carpeting, to conceal tanks and other armored vehicles, in what analysts call a surprising lack of sophistication for such an advanced military and further evidence of how ill-prepared some commanders were for the sustained fight that has unfolded.

Camouflage, whether for personnel or equipment, is a fundamental part of warfighting, even as technological advances such as drones, satellite imagery and infrared scopes have made it harder to hide on modern battlefields. It works by distorting shapes and reducing heat signatures, in effect fooling the eye to create doubt and confusion.

Yet to some observers who’ve closely tracked the conflict in Ukraine, Russian forces, despite their military superiority, have exhibited a breathtaking degree of amateurism. They point to videos circulating on social media showing an array of contrivances.

In one, purportedly captured mid-firefight by a Russian soldier seeking cover amid a cluster of idling armored transports, a patchwork of what appear to be pine saplings is visible along one of the vehicle’s flanks. It’s a sight that “smacks of desperation,” said Mike Jason, a retired U.S. Army armor officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

U.S. military tactical procedure, Jason noted, is to shroud entire vehicles with lightweight camouflage netting when they’re not moving, even if it’s only for short durations. Ukrainian units have been seen using combinations of netting and foliage to help break up the shape of armored vehicle hulls. Pine saplings, Jason assessed, are “better than nothing,” but would seem to indicate the unit involved lacks a basic competence for using camouflage or simply didn’t have the right equipment to begin with.

[Tendrin]

Facebook hired a Republican consulting firm to run a campaign aimed at generating outrage and scrutiny of TikTok. Some of the harmful TikTok "trends" pushed by the firm were in fact false rumors or trends that actually started on... Facebook. *chef's kiss* https://washingtonpost.com/technolog...geted-victory/

https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/s...7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Reported in the WaPo but behind the pay wall.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/techn...geted-victory/

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Why Russian troops are using tree branches for camouflage in Ukraine

Whoa! Talk about amateur hour. Hard to believe that’s a professional army in the 21st century.

[AnakinFlair]

Well, I don't think I've seen this here yet:

Trump asks Putin to release any info about Hunter Biden

By Zoë Richards

Amid widespread criticism of his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin, former President Donald Trump publicly called on Putin on Tuesday to release any dirt he might have on Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

Trump, in an interview with Just the News, seized on an unsubstantiated claim about Biden’s obtaining a hefty payment from Elena Baturina, the former wife of the late former mayor of Moscow, and asked Putin to provide details.

“She gave him $3.5 million, so now I would think Putin would know the answer to that. I think he should release it,” Trump said. “I think we should know that answer.”

Trump was referring to information from a partisan Senate report published just weeks before the 2020 election, which also focused on Biden’s role on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Hunter Biden’s legal team told NBC News in 2020 that Biden had “no interest” in that firm that received the money, so “the claim he was paid $3.5 million was false.”

Jesus Christ....

[Malvolio]

Well, at least that puts to bed the lie about the GQP demanding to keep government out of the lives of the people.

They never wanted to keep government out of people's lives. What they wanted was to keep the government from regulating corporations. And they've largely succeeded in that goal.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Well, I don't think I've seen this here yet:

Trump asks Putin to release any info about Hunter Biden



Jesus Christ....

So, a former president asked a head of state who launched an invasion of a neighboring country for dirt on the son of the current president. Good Lord. If THAT doesn’t disqualify Trump from running for office in 2024, nothing will.

[babyblob]

So, a former president asked a head of state who launched an invasion of a neighboring country for dirt on the son of the current president. Good Lord. If THAT doesn’t disqualify Trump from running for office in 2024, nothing will.

Sadly it wont. And Fox news and I am sure a couple of members here will fall all over themselves trying to explain why this is okay.

There is already the defending of the missing phone logs.

"It is okay for Dems to get upset at the GOP for Clintons Emails and yet they can go on and on about the phone logs. Double standard."

[achilles]

Bruce Willis is quitting acting. Yes, I made that joke too, but he's quitting because he has some disease...aphasia or something that hurts his cognitive abilities. Basically, he's having trouble remembering words and thoughts....pretty nasty stuff.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60934576

[JackDaw]

Bruce Willis is quitting acting. Yes, I made that joke too, but he's quitting because he has some disease...aphasia or something that hurts his cognitive abilities. Basically, he's having trouble remembering words and thoughts....pretty nasty stuff.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60934576

I actually think he was a top notch comedy actor which is maybe a better indicator of exceptional acting ability than action man roles.

Sad to hear this, of course. Really hope it’s not as extreme as the similar affliction that struck Terry Prachett. Life is darn tough at times.

[seismic-2]

Bruce Willis is quitting acting. Yes, I made that joke too, but he's quitting because he has some disease...aphasia or something that hurts his cognitive abilities. Basically, he's having trouble remembering words and thoughts....pretty nasty stuff.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60934576

As the article mentions, this difficulty in remembering words (even the names of common objects around the house) is often the aftermath of a stroke or other brain injury. It is understandable that he would feel unable to make movies, and I hope he will be successful in what is usually a lengthy and difficult process of physical therapy. The inability to communicate is a terrible loss.

[Mister Mets]

There's zero reason to comment about the person herself as that just creates argument. A press release is a simple statement, not a commentary; it's meant to be short and declaratory in tone. You go in, make your statement and get out and that's exactly what they did. They observed actions that didn't meet their ideals so they declined to consider that author's work for an award. There is no reason to say more than that...and it's not on them to do so, and nor are they alone in keeping it short and sweet. You'll notice the Academy of Motion Pictures didn't go into details of what happened at the Oscars, thy simply said, " The Academy condemns the actions of Mr. Smith at last night's show.We have officially started a formal review around the incident and will explore further action and consequences in accordance with our Bylaws, Standards of Conduct and California law."

There's no context, no details, no he said-she said, just a concise statement of what their actions will be...and it was the same with the Lamda's statement.

That you want more for some reason, or think that their should be more doesn't mean that they should have included more or that they erred in not doing so as your wants fly in the face of the standard operating procedure of every publicist out there. I can post literally hundreds of more similarly worded releases if you really want...but I think you know how they are usually formatted, and you're just trying to deflect from the fact that the article you linked to didn't provide quotes of her comments.

And you were duped, that's not a subjective opinion it's just a flat fact.

That you didn't go looking for the comments yourself when they strangely weren't included in the article but believed the article's message any way is the evidence that you bought the narrative.

You just have to admit you were wrong here, you thought because it was in the Times it must have been trust worthy and didn't stop to think that it strangely didn't even try to even pretend to be objective and only reported one side of the issue.

It happens, we see something that agrees with our bias and just go with it...but this is a case where doing so just slapped you in the face. Own that, promise to do better in evaluating your news sources in the future and move on.

The Academy doesn't need to say what Smith did, because there were a lot of witnesses.

Hough didn't commit assault.

There were some silly arguments that the Academy should take away the best actor trophy from Will Smith, but they recognized that the trophy is for the quality of the work, so anything off-set doesn't matter.

I guess you’re assuming that an organisation that makes such a simple declarative statement actually has sufficient evidence to actually make it practically certain it’s true?

Otherwise your suggested line is a recipe for allowing large powerful organisations to make damaging statements against less well resourced people through malice or carelessness with little chance of redress.

If the organisation is challenged by the individual concerned saying something like “Provide the evidence for that damaging statement” would you tell the organisation “Ignore that request, that’s best PR practice”? If you wouldn’t take that line…what would your line be?

This may be where I'm arguing past him. This didn't seem to be an organization that had evidence of clear wrongdoing.

Not at all, I'm merely saying that it isn't standard practice for such press releases to include details. And one should absolutely ask questions...and one should look for answers on their own as well, the issue is that Mets did neighter and he took the absence of details in the press release as confirmation that they acted improperly rather than looking for the tweets in question himself.

I think you're missing the context of the conversation:

Mets quoted an article from the New York Times on an issue where a literary group declined to consider an author for an award after she behaved badly online, and several posters called him on taking the article at face value in its assertion that the literary group was contributing to "cancel culture" despite the fact that it did not include any of the tweets in question. Instead of pausing to think, "Hmmm, maybe I have it wrong" when this deficiency in journalism was brought to his attention his response was that it wasn't the article's fault for not including both sides it was the statement from the literary group's fault for not including such details in their statement...which is just a piss poor and obvious deflection instead of admitting that he didn't stop to verify his source when it presented only one side of the issue.

This wasn't relevant to mention before, but I did look up stuff related to the story.

I will note that the New York Times is a reputable organization, and not exactly known for its right-wing bias, so it wouldn't be wrong for someone to only read an article in the Times and post it in a political discussion thread.

However, this was covered elsewhere in the media I follow. It was a topic on the Across the Movie Aisle podcast, where the Republican, Democratic and libertarian commentators agreed modern publishing is a cesspool. I looked at some of the criticism of the article on Twitter, where some people made some provably fake arguments (IE- that the decision to not nominate her was independent of her comments) and posted what they said were the deleted Twitter comments, which I didn't interpret to be particularly outrageous. I didn't see the point to sharing that, as it's possible that there were some different comments that were transphobic (hadn't seen it yet, but it's possible) so it seemed premature to respond to preemptively respond to points people hadn't made yet.

[achilles]

I actually think he was a top notch comedy actor which is maybe a better indicator of exceptional acting ability than action man roles.

Sad to hear this, of course. Really hope it’s not as extreme as the similar affliction that struck Terry Prachett. Life is darn tough at times.

Yes, he could bring it when he wanted. From what I understand, it can be dealt with if it's the result of a stroke or some other similar thing, but not if it's a result of dementia or something similar.