All purpose news and politics thread part VII: News & Politics Total Landscaping

[CaptainEurope]

Jesse Singal believing something makes it less likely to be true.

You know, I wasn't going to say anything to all that, but you summarized my thoughts well. I snap my fingers in appreciation of your post.

[zinderel]

I thought that was a debunked urban myth?

I haven’t seen anything that debunks it. OBVIOUSLY it’s not the sole, or perhaps even main reason. But it did play a role. No one likes to feel taken for granted.

Of course, if it HAS been debunked, I’m more than happy to admit my error!

[CaptainEurope]

Abortion has been legalized in France decades ago… Maybe it is what is happening in the US that made them to enshrine it in the Constitution.

Yes. It doesn't change anything for women now... But if LePen ever becomes president and her Rassemblment National has a narrow majority, they can't take away the right to choose now.

[CaptainEurope]

I haven’t seen anything that debunks it. OBVIOUSLY it’s not the sole, or perhaps even main reason. But it did play a role. No one likes to feel taken for granted.

Of course, if it HAS been debunked, I’m more than happy to admit my error!

Hillary Clinton disputes one of the most common critiques of her campaign in her new book

One of the first things Hillary Clinton decided to address in the "What Happened" chapter on why she lost the election was one of the most common critiques of her campaign: That she didn't put forth enough effort in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Critics of Clinton's campaign strategy have said her efforts (or lack thereof) in those three states — traditional Democratic strongholds that were carried by President Donald Trump — highlighted the Democratic presidential nominee's biggest problems as a candidate.

Losing those three states cost her the election. Each state was decided by a razor-thin margin, which allowed Clinton to win the popular vote by roughly 3 million votes yet still lose in the Electoral College.

In "What Happened," Clinton's recently released campaign memoir, she addressed this critique at length.


"If just 40,000 people across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had changed their minds, I would have won," Clinton wrote. "With a margin like that, everyone can have a pet theory about why I lost. It's difficult to rule anything out. But every theory needs to be tested against the evidence that I was winning until October 28, when [former FBI Director] Jim Comey injected emails back into the election."

"For example, some critics have said that everything hinged on me not campaigning in the Midwest," she continued. "And I suppose it is possible that a few more trips to Saginaw or a few more ads on the air on Waukesha could have tipped a couple thousand votes here and there."

She insisted that he campaign "knew the industrial Midwest was crucial to our success," adding that she and her team "didn't ignore those states."

Critics point to her lack of a trip to Wisconsin following the party conventions as proof that she did not take the idea of potentially losing those crucial states seriously, but Clinton said that idea is without merit, saying "we didn't ignore those states."

The former secretary of state wrote that in Pennsylvania, her team had 120 more staffers on the ground than President Barack Obama did four years earlier and spent 211% more on TV ads. She noted that she held more than 25 campaign events in the Keystone State while having major surrogates like Obama and Vice President Joe Biden make appearances as well.

She also noted that in Michigan, she had about 140 more staffers on the ground than Obama in 2012, spent 166% more on TV ads, and made seven visits during the general election campaign.

"We lost both states, but no one can say we weren't doing everything possible to compete and win," she wrote.

On Wisconsin, Clinton said it was the "one place where we were caught by surprise."

She said her team deployed 133 staffers to the Badger State and spent $3 million on TV ads, "but if our data (or anyone else's) had shown we were in danger, of course we would have invested even more."

"I would have torn up my schedule, which was designed based on the best information we had, and camped out there," she wrote.

Clinton pointed to new voter ID laws in the state as a strong reason for why she lost Wisconsin.

...
"Here's the bottom line: I campaigned heavily across Pennsylvania, had an aggressive ground game and lots of advertising, and still lost by 44,000 votes, more than the margin in Wisconsin and Michigan combined," she continued. "So it's just not credible that the best explanation for the outcome in those states — and therefore the election — was where I held rallies."

Seriously, does anybody think people going to rallies aren't the most energized already? A strong ground game and ad buy seems much more effective.

[JCAll]

Why is Trump suddenly polling so high? Do people really want a dictator that much?

Yes, desperately. The GOP has been distilled down to nothing but their revenge fantasies now.

[CaptainEurope]

Retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig on Monday called the Supreme Court decision allowing former President Trump to remain on the presidential ballot “stunning in its overreach.”

In an interview on CNN’s “The Lead,” Luttig refrained from criticizing the decision to let Trump stay on the ballot, but he said the Supreme Court’s expansive decision concerning other constitutional matters “was both shocking and unprecedented.”

“Not for its decision of the exceedingly narrow question presented by the case, though that issue is important, but rather for its decision to reach and decide a myriad of the other constitutional issues surrounding disqualification under [the] 14th Amendment,” Luttig told Jake Tapper.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that Colorado cannot disqualify former President Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban.

The Supreme Court also ruled Congress has exclusive authority to enforce the 14th Amendment to disqualify federal candidates. Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices in criticizing that decision.

“In reaching and deciding those questions unnecessarily, the court, the majority, as the concurrences said, effectively decided that the former president will never be disqualified from holding the presidency in 2024. Or ever, for that matter,” Luttig continued.

“But even more importantly, as the concurrence said, effectively, the court today decided that no person in the future will ever be disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, regardless [of] whether he or she has engaged in an insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution of the United States,” he said.

Judge Luttig reacts to Supreme Court Colorado decision

[aja_christopher]

The open borders thing got brought up by others, who started with the claim that it is outrageous to suggest that people who support open borders are in good standing in the Democratic party, and seem to have shifted to a new claim that obviously good and decent people can support open borders, which I haven't disputed.

Yet another misleading statement.

The open borders issue was originally about your false claim that Democrats want open borders when you were shown factual data and evidence that this was a Republican lie meant to arouse fear and anger in voters — the original discussion was never that no Democrats support open borders but that it is not Democratic policy simply because a prominent politician wore a t-shirt, which was the standard Republican myth that you promoted until proven factually incorrect.



Just as you are now trying to mislead about HR policies instead of addressing rampant Republican white nationalism and their attacks on the LGBT community and other political minorities.

The pattern is to state a false or misleading opinion then argue against all evidence, despite knowing that it is both hypocritical and inherently dishonest to ignore the unethical and illegal activities of those you support while attempting to lecture others about ethics and policy.

If true at all, the story is only about a single HR person not the entire “work culture”.

An attempt to provide evidence that contains no actual data and is little more than an opinion.

Useful for deflection but provides no real objective support for the argument at hand.

That’s the pattern — demand objective unbiased evidence from others yet provide little in return.

France enshrined the right to have an abortion in its constitution today, with a massive majority vote in parliament.

If they sent America another Statue of Liberty modern Republicans would send it back.

[thwhtGuardian]

Policies can differ from workplace to workplace. HR policies you're familiar with may be different elsewhere.

People often get fired for things that have nothing to do with the quality of their work, like budget cuts or mergers resulting in redundancies.

You were dismissive earlier, and responded to a post of mine with gifs, so I do want to resolve an important question. Do you agree that people should be able to assess political bias independent of their own views (IE- should someone who is among the most conservative 20 percent of the population recognize that they're more conservative than the median voter?)

To answer your question, I think she's a whistleblower. She had a complaint, and it seems there's substance to her concerns, in that there were not enough therapists with experience in gender issues to process claims.

If she was complaining about something with a different political salience (police officers drinking on the job) I suspect her current critics would accept this level of evidence that some reforms may be helpful.

One way to consider this is the extent to which a newsroom is politically diverse.

That would help determine if ostensibly mainstream outlets are part of the liberal media.

Good for her.

If the story is real, a few things matter.

It is a bit obnoxious for an HR person to call out a new hire for their preference in sandwiches, and for new coworkers to snap fingers in affirmation.

It does suggest different norms within an ostensibly mainstream media outlet than in the larger population.

It's also important if it happened, and people in the media incorrectly reject it.

For Adam Rubenstein and his friends, it would be a matter of honor if people call him a liar when he's telling the truth.

It's bad if people within an industry don't understand its biases.

It's bad if the media is wrong. Their main job is to be correct, and to not make mistakes ordinary people make because the civilians lack the professional training to avoid blindspots and cognitive fallacies.

The media is also supposed to help people make sense of the world, so it's a problem if many of them don't understand it.

They're not that different, you just don't seem to be very experienced or knowledgeable of the field. Even when the reasons are budget cuts, mergers or redundancies employees are explained why, not just dismissed without a word of why...and the reason is because if they were dismissed without it being laid out and properly documented the company would be open to lawsuits about improper termination. Pn top of that, none of this latest excuse you are providing has anything to do with the situation that began the conversation.

[hyped78]

Even when the reasons are budget cuts, mergers or redundancies employees are explained why, not just dismissed without a word of why...

I'm sorry but this isn't true in all cases, at least not in the US (here in Europe it's different, you can't fire people just because).

Consider the US tech layoffs last year, for example at Amazon - impacted employees were fired over e-mail, a generic e-mail saying "Unfortunately, your role has been eliminated. You are no longer required to perform any work on Amazon’s behalf effective immediately.” (while access to internal systems was revoked, there was no communication/call from HR or from a manager, and consider that most employees were working from home)

https://nypost.com/2023/01/19/amazon...-off-by-email/

Or Google US employees coming into the office, trying to badge in, the badge being rejected, not realizing they had been fired by generic e-mail that they hadn't read yet:

https://www.businessinsider.com/goog...23-1?r=US&IR=T

There's plenty more examples like this.

[Catlady in training]

If the story is real, a few things matter.

It is a bit obnoxious for an HR person to call out a new hire for their preference in sandwiches, and for new coworkers to snap fingers in affirmation.

It does suggest different norms within an ostensibly mainstream media outlet than in the larger population.

I think it is obnoxious to have BS things like "ice-breaker" at work in the first place. You go to work to earn a living, not to make friends. If it happens, it's a bonus, but not everyone wants to socialize at work. I guess the ice was broken in this case.

It's also interesting that the person has already self-censored about his actual favorite sandwich because of its price and lied about his favorite sandwich being from that Chick-something brand. So, he wasn't even "shamed" about his actual favorite food, just a replacement that he said thinking it would make him more.... I don't know, real? Unpretentious? Maybe the moral of the story could be "Don't try so hard to fit in that you lie about yourself, it might not work out the way you expected."

Anyway, the last thing I will say about the Sandwichgate: It's interesting what gets people worked up, isn't it? Some are concerned about women losing autonomy over their own bodies or people losing access to healthcare that greatly improves their well-being. Some are concerned about adults not making friends on their first day at new job. Priorities.

[hyped78]

The Biden vs Trump polling is interesting to say the least. Trump is leading in most polls, and it looks like Biden is only scoring 51% of the Black vote and Trump actually leads among Hispanics. A disproportionate number of young voters are also leaning towards Trump.

I think this will change before election day, but two issues seem to be bad for Biden- 1. Illegal immigration 2. The War in Gaza.

I'm not sure if the Biden team knows how badly these issues are impacting these groups. There seems to be some misunderstanding that minority groups will be more sympathetic than white voters when it comes to illegal immigration which is a complete misread. Most black and hispanic voters are not immigrants and have just as big a problem with illegal immigration as white voters. Young voters have a big, big problem with how the conflict in Gaza has been approached by the US, but I don't really think they have much of a point here because Trump is not going to do better than Biden in this regard (anyone thinking otherwise is living in a fantasy).

I guess Biden has to do something serious about this before the elections because the real black mark on this admin is the mess that is illegal immigration. Whether we like it or not, perception is in many cases reality and it appears that Biden had no plan or even counternarrative regarding this issue.

What poll(s) are you referring to?

I'm asking because the latest CBS poll - Trump 52%, Biden 48% - has the following racial breakdown:
- Black: Biden 76%, Trump 23%
- Hispanics: Biden 53%, Trump 46%

So almost a technical tie on Hispanics (as the margin of error is plus/minus 2.8%), but on the Black vote Biden still leads comfortably. Sure, not as much as he should, but still leads by a lot.

[Zelena]

Yes. It doesn't change anything for women now... But if LePen ever becomes president and her Rassemblment National has a narrow majority, they can't take away the right to choose now.

Marine Lepen, president… It feels so eerie… But there is an anger among the population and some people say “we didn’t try it yet”. As if things cannot get worse…

[hyped78]

Marine Lepen, president… It feels so eerie… But there is an anger among the population and some people say “we didn’t try it yet”. As if things cannot get worse…

Most of Europe has been moving to the right/ far-right. To try to regain that space, center-right and moderate politicians have been veering more and more to the right...

[CaptainEurope]

Most of Europe has been moving to the right/ far-right. To try to regain that space, center-right and moderate politicians have been veering more and more to the right...

A German think tank, the conservative Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, did some research on that and found that strategy has the opposite effect. Apparently, people see certain topics as related with certain parties. If centrist parties start treating immigration as a crisis, it embiggens the problem in the minds of voters, and they are more likely to vote for the far right then.

[thwhtGuardian]

I'm sorry but this isn't true in all cases, at least not in the US (here in Europe it's different, you can't fire people just because).

Consider the US tech layoffs last year, for example at Amazon - impacted employees were fired over e-mail, a generic e-mail saying "Unfortunately, your role has been eliminated. You are no longer required to perform any work on Amazon’s behalf effective immediately.” (while access to internal systems was revoked, there was no communication/call from HR or from a manager, and consider that most employees were working from home)

https://nypost.com/2023/01/19/amazon...-off-by-email/

Or Google US employees coming into the office, trying to badge in, the badge being rejected, not realizing they had been fired by generic e-mail that they hadn't read yet:

https://www.businessinsider.com/goog...23-1?r=US&IR=T

There's plenty more examples like this.

Yeah, so if you read the stories and not the headlines though it's a very small number of people where that occurred so more of a terrible oversight and not the norm and with good reason because firing people with zero explanation opens the company up to the potential wrongful termination cases. If you don't provide any cause as a company then the employee can then claim it was because of their race, age, religion, sexual orientation or gender and then the company has to go to trial(or settle) and prove that it wasn't the case. Companies don't want to do spend the time and money doing that so they document it all to the nth degree when terminating employees.