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

[Tendrin]

I don't think people on this forum who describe themselves as hardcore lefties are the types who are going to have the Jacobin magazine on there night table, and lay down and read Slavoj Zizek before going to bed....and I think your well aware of that

The Jacobin left is a joke and is largely defined by contrarian anti-anti-Trumpism, not unlike Greenwald's 'intercept'.

They're widely despised amongst a lot of leftists I know, both for being run by a bunch of trust-fund kiddies and for their red-brown-alliance garbage takes. These are the same people who take Cornel West getting an approving nod from Tucker Carlson to mean their arguments are strong, and thn Tucker goes right back to spouting racist vitriol the next night.
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[BeastieRunner]

Jacobin is Breibart for the left.

I hate it, especially when people use it as a way to justify an attack, to claim moral high ground when they think they are to far lost to win their argument.

It is a shite publication that travels in pseudopoli-sci, much like Breibart.

"See!? This is what you stand for! It is a pseudo academic magazine! I win."

Take that nonsense to the Fox News comment pages.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I don't understand conservative types, certainly not the intellectual kind (which is a pretty rare breed nearing extinction these days). They seem to think that every leftist goes over Das Kapital or Communist Manifesto before going to sleep when most leftists know fully well that conservatives and right wingers care about guns, god, unborn foetuses, white supremacy and letting the poor die rather than William F. Buckley or Edmund Burke.

Ideology isn't really intellectual. Most republicans oppose democrats for tribal reasons and other reasons rather than because they are intellectually dedicated to some principles or the other.

Democrats it's somewhat similar albeit with the dems since they are anchored to reality it's a bigger and more individual variety than others.

Most dems or most people who identify as left don't read Jacobin, they most likely heard Green Day and rocked to it when they are young during the Bush years, they followed Colin Kaepernick and his journey from NFL outcast to prophet ahead of his time, for them, having no memory of the Soviet Union and so on, Bernie Sanders is socialism, AOC is socialism. Since the arts are mostly liberal these days, they got into it from their movies, music, books, theater and so on.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Jacobin is Breibart for the left.

I wish it was. The sad truth is it isn't.

Breitbart is politically noxious yes but it has access, it has funding, it's heard in the halls of power and it breaks out stories. It's not reliable but as a source it's anchored in reality far more than Jacobin is. A Breitbart of the left could be useful in theory, though in practice it would be bought out and hollowed up by advertising and sell out pretty quickly...which again gives right wingers advantage since they have no principle but power and "owning de libs".

Instead the left has to rely on the mainstream media even if, in the case of WaPo it's owned by Jeff Bezos which is a "conflict-of-interest" waiting to happen somewhere down the line, or the New York Times, or the Boston Globe, or ProPublica or The Guardian (in the UK, the rest of the British Press is mostly terrible). Or among magazines, stuff like The Atlantic (which is politically all over the map but tilted a little left of center recently).

Jacobin didn't publish Ta-Nehisi Coates' landmark "The Case for Reparations", The Atlantic did that. Nor have they published a single piece of journalism as intellectually and culturally a landmark as that. And the writers and editors there don't seem to have ambition to do that.

I do like some Jacobin articles but it's not where I go to to learn how things work.

[The no face guy]

Ah I rest my case It is good to see that people on this forum are familiar with more than just the CNN, the Huffington Post, & the Guardian though.

I can't say I read it myself, though I have had Slavoj Zizek on my night table

[numberthirty]

Good to see this happening. While I'd like to see Madigan out of the picture, it's hard to tell if it's going to actually happen...

https://patch.com/illinois/aurora/ma...urora-area-rep

Madigan To Face Challenge For Speaker Role From Aurora-Area Rep

[JCAll]

FWIW, the bottom of the forum front page says "Members: 98,016"

Nice! Take That...Random Magazine...That people actually pay money to read...
We're number 1!

[worstblogever]

I don't think people on this forum who describe themselves as hardcore lefties are the types who are going to have the Jacobin magazine on there night table, and lay down and read Slavoj Zizek before going to bed....and I think your well aware of that

The Jacobin left is a joke and is largely defined by contrarian anti-anti-Trumpism, not unlike Greenwald's 'intercept'.

They're widely despised amongst a lot of leftists I know, both for being run by a bunch of trust-fund kiddies and for their red-brown-alliance garbage takes. These are the same people who take Cornel West getting an approving nod from Tucker Carlson to mean their arguments are strong, and thn Tucker goes right back to spouting racist vitriol the next night.
]

Go figure that there's a perception of reality problem from the person assuming all "leftists" go to this one site that everyone they think is a "leftist" have never even heard of, and those who have think it's bulls***.

[zinderel]

Go figure that there's a perception of reality problem from the person assuming all "leftists" go to this one site that everyone they think is a "leftist" have never even heard of, and those who have think it's bulls***.

Well...remember...one guy wore a t-shirt calling for open borders and we had to deal with that being said to be the stance of ALL 'leftists' and z platform for the Democrats, because the guy was a senator or something...

[worstblogever]

Well...remember...one guy wore a t-shirt calling for open borders and we had to deal with that being said to be the stance of ALL 'leftists' and z platform for the Democrats, because the guy was a senator or something...

...But 50 QAnon supporters can literally run for Congress while touting the conspiracy theory, 18 Republicans already elected to the House can refuse to vote for a resolution criticizing it after a New Jersey Congressman faces death threats over it (roughly 10% of the GOP House Caucus), and that's not reflective in any way of what the Republican Party stands for.

Also, that's not a double standard.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

So, after Trump's little joyride yesterday, that's bound to reinforce the opinions in two different camps:

1) Trump has the virus but put the health of Secret Service agents and everyone around him at risk to get his ego stroked
2) Trump doesn't have the virus, and that stunt demonstrated he's scamming everyone to boost his reelection chances

My opinion? After four years of almost non-stop lies, I wouldn't put it past Trump to fake having the virus as a diversion from his horrific performance during last week's debate, after all, no one's talking about that, or his tax cheating these days. But, if he truly does have COVID, nothing he's done over the weekend surprises me as he's all too willing to put lives at risk for the sake of his own self-aggrandizement.

[worstblogever]

So, after Trump's little joyride yesterday, that's bound to reinforce the opinions in two different camps:

1) Trump has the virus but put the health of Secret Service agents and everyone around him at risk to get his ego stroked
2) Trump doesn't have the virus, and that stunt demonstrated he's scamming everyone to boost his reelection chances

My opinion? After four years of almost non-stop lies, I wouldn't put it past Trump to fake having the virus as a diversion from his horrific performance during last week's debate, after all, no one's talking about that, or his tax cheating these days. But, if he truly does have COVID, nothing he's done over the weekend surprises me as he's all too willing to put lives at risk for the sake of his own self-aggrandizement.

Trump has the virus. The video where they edited out what clearly is a cough. All the people in his orbit who also have tested positive (including Kellyanne Conway getting outed by her daughter). For this to be faked, there's too many people that are "in" on it.

And if it's not faked, there's too many reports of people in the White House being pissed at him for also exposing them. Plus the way Mark Meadows has been savaged for revealing too much.

#1 seems way, way more plausible. #2 is only even a possibility, even remotely because we're all used to him being that much of a liar.

[Mister Mets]

I don't think people on this forum who describe themselves as hardcore lefties are the types who are going to have the Jacobin magazine on there night table, and lay down and read Slavoj Zizek before going to bed....and I think your well aware of that

There is a major distinction between reading something extensively and being familiar with its existence.

Jacobin is Breibart for the left.

I hate it, especially when people use it as a way to justify an attack, to claim moral high ground when they think they are to far lost to win their argument.

It is a shite publication that travels in pseudopoli-sci, much like Breibart.

"See!? This is what you stand for! It is a pseudo academic magazine! I win."

Take that nonsense to the Fox News comment pages.

I'm certainly not arguing that everyone here agrees with the worst take posted on Jacobin, just as I'm sure most of the people who post stupid things said by conservatives aren't claiming that all Republicans agree.

Go figure that there's a perception of reality problem from the person assuming all "leftists" go to this one site that everyone they think is a "leftist" have never even heard of, and those who have think it's bulls***.

When did anyone assume all leftists go to this one site?

Well...remember...one guy wore a t-shirt calling for open borders and we had to deal with that being said to be the stance of ALL 'leftists' and z platform for the Democrats, because the guy was a senator or something...

The "one guy" you refer to was a member of congressional leadership and Vice-Chair of the DNC.

[Mister Mets]

So, after Trump's little joyride yesterday, that's bound to reinforce the opinions in two different camps:

1) Trump has the virus but put the health of Secret Service agents and everyone around him at risk to get his ego stroked
2) Trump doesn't have the virus, and that stunt demonstrated he's scamming everyone to boost his reelection chances

My opinion? After four years of almost non-stop lies, I wouldn't put it past Trump to fake having the virus as a diversion from his horrific performance during last week's debate, after all, no one's talking about that, or his tax cheating these days. But, if he truly does have COVID, nothing he's done over the weekend surprises me as he's all too willing to put lives at risk for the sake of his own self-aggrandizement.

#1 is completely plausible.

#2 has bad timing, requires too many people to be in on a conspiracy, and contradicts known information (IE- other people getting sick.)

If you are interested in long-term policy and so on, the stuff you should be reading is "Lawyers, Guns and Money Blog" (https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/), "Crooked Timber" (https://crookedtimber.org/), as well as the now suspended The Realignment Project (https://realignmentproject.wordpress.com/) whose writers moved on to other stuff. Vox is a fairly centrist online website (founded by Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein former centrist dems who supported the Iraq War but since moved left) but it's not too bad either.

Jacobin is a young person's trendy political online magazine, which tends to do a lot of interesting and quality interviews and some insightful stuff but it reports on happenings more than anticipates or proposes ways of action. World Socialist Website likewise do a lot of quality interviews (it's Art and Film section is quite good and informative especially for the interviews) and it's been pretty honorable about the virus and its outbreak and since it's all-against-all i.e. the ruling classes of all nations it avoids the Putin trap of Putin somehow being a foreign power left parties should be nice to, it's actually not a bad place to look at for unbiased foreign policy stuff. But it does no original reporting...stuff like the Panama Papers or Trump's tax returns, that wasn't broken by the WSWS, that was broken by mainstream press. IF Stone's Weekly was not only openly socialist but provided original reporting and broke stories. Stuff like Jacobin and WSWS unfortunately do not do that, at least not yet.

Thanks for the links.

In the American context, Vox is pretty left-wing. The writers and editors generally do identify as left of center. Granted, my proxy for whether something is centrist is whether they would support moderate blue-state Republicans (if I get the sense that the staff of a magazine would prefer the election of Democratic candidates who fail to get a majority of the vote in Maryland or Massachusetts, it is not centrist.) I quote Vox mainly because I suspect people would trust it more than National Review, as well as their decent editorial standards.

That's an interesting point on the importance of breaking new stories, either through research or providing a platform to candidates/ officials. From my understanding, Jacobin doesn't do that, although its purpose is more about policy arguments than anything else. First person reporting on corruption, or breaking the announcement of a candidate for office, doesn't really fit that.

That's the thing; the Democratic Party has taken the left wing for granted, especially after Hillary. Picking Joe Biden was the safest choice this year, but it wasn't the choice most people had envisioned. Biden wasn't even the first candidate I supported this year. After all, I originally was for Beto O'Rourke, then quit on him since he was out of his element after his first debate, then went for Kamala Harris, then she quit, then thought about Pete Buttigieg for a hot moment before deciding on my better angels and settled on Bernie Sanders since the other options were a guy with some historical problems with minorities and women... and Tulsi Gabbard. And you know if I had to choose between Tulsi Gabbard and something else, I'm picking something else all the time.

Yet, I believe this is due to the Democrats buying into the Republican and conservative spin machine that if you're "liberal" or "progressive", you're a danger to society, that you're going to turn America into this dystopic wasteland that we have seen in Bolivia and Venezuela, in which those countries embraced a socialist government by abandoning everything that was in the past, including the safety nets the previous system had to prevent a total collapse. But only a small portion of Americans fully believe in socialist ideals, and of those, many believe in it thanks in large part due to unchecked capitalism and lack of government oversight. Regardless, this fear of association forces the party to move center, ostracizing the more left-wing members and forcing them to either compromise (which means you essentially invalidate your purpose as a left-wing politician), accept status as an oddity in the party (which results in less support financially), or drop out and go it alone as a third party member (where you can kiss your hopes of being on the national level goodbye).

It's a weird structure in America, where we always like to argue that it's "left" vs. "right", but in reality, it's "center" vs. "right", with "left" being forced to scavenge for the leftovers, and "center" having to play both offense and defense while "right" blames the "center" for everything the "left" is despite the actual "left" having no real say whatsoever.

This reminds me of a criticism that there are two types of elected Democrats; one group wants to go with left-wing policies, which requires party control, while the other tries to go with a coalition between the more moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans to pass its legislation.

I can't say I've heard of them either. Someone earlier said they had a subscriber count of 60K, that's not small but it's not exactly a household name.
Doesn't anyone know how many subscribers the CBR forum has? I'd love to know how we stack up.

The current number of paid subscribers is a different thing than people who have ever posted on a free forum.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Arizona’s 6th Congressional District, David Schweikert, a former real estate vulture capitalist arch-conservative who consistently votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, defund Planned Parenthood, fails to understand how the debt ceiling works, referred to the 2013 Government Shutdown as "my idea of fun", and was once recorded on video high-fiving Rep. Ben Quayle on the floor of the house after denying a pay increase to active duty soldiers fighting the War on Terror. If that isn't tacky enough, he also showed a lack of character when he then turned around after redistricting and ran against Quayle in the 2012 GOP Primary in Arizona's 6th District, instead of the 5th, because he preferred how gerrymandered it was compared to where he started. Schweikert managed to defeat Quayle in part by running campaign ads that insinuated he was bisexual, and as a result, the rest of the Congressional delegation from Arizona has turned their backs on him, and John Boehner removed him from all his committee assignments because, as one GOP staffer said of Schweikert, he's "one of the most egregious ***holes in the party". This is what his OWN party thinks of him. Democrats don't disagree, and certainly unions don't either, with Schweikert having compared them to Nazis, saying, "Goebbels would be proud of them."

As stated, Schweikert's Arizona district is supposed to be one of the more conservative in the state, and he won re-election in 2018 with only 55% of the vote over Anita Malik, after talking down to Malik and telling her that “87 is more than 84”, during their debate leading her to snap back, “Yes, I know 87 is larger than 84, so thank you for that condescension.” Schweikert has resumed his career in Washington as an egregious ***hole:

• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Schweikert voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: David Schweikert votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Schweikert votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• April 4th, 2019: David Schweikert is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• May 17th, 2019: Schweikert votes against The Equality Act, which would have prevented discrimination towards Americans based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.
• June 4th, 2019: Rep. Schweikert votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• December 18th, 2019: Schweikert ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Schweikert votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Schweikert’s relationship with those constituents has soured, as he has dodged town halls and seen constituents host ones with him in absentia, and his home office in his district has responded to those who brought cookies and hoped to set up meetings with him... by calling the police and trying to have them arrested. For sharing baked goods, apparently. He's was fund-raising in 2018 by claiming Democratic organizations in his district who want to flip his seat are "inciting violence" and "setting cars on fire". Big surprise, that's not based in reality, unless maybe you get your news from Alex Jones or are a character in the Escape from New York franchise, in which case you aren't based in reality anyway.

David Schweikert has a serious Democratic challenger in 2020 in Hiral Tipirneni, a doctor who’s the kind of person you’d rather have in office during a pandemic, you know? Tipirneni is currently holding his feet to the fire over the fact that he was forced to admit to 11 ethics violations in his attempts to win office in the first place, most of which included a refusal to diagnose loans and campaign contributions along the way. Schweikert got fined $50,000 for the offense, and honestly, it's more that he's guilty of corruption than anything. We’re curious to see if Arizona’s voters jettison Schweikert next November, or if he’s left scrambling after redistricting in 2022.