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

[4saken1]

To be clear I deleted the Rodney King reference because that shouldn't have anything to do with Simpson's case -- even though it did due to context.



The issue is much larger than just that case and some people felt -- unjustifiably or otherwise -- that acquitting OJ was "payback" for the aquittal of the Rodney King officers.

Not to be cliche but an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

The natural modern context for this was the death of George Floyd -- and subsequent international protests -- yet Republicans continue to block any attempts at police reform to this very day.

Trying to avoid another cliche but those who don't learn from history...

I agree. The King verdict had a definite impact on the OJ verdict, and the OJ verdict has had a lingering effect on many white Americans to the detriment of PoC.

[Dalak]

We USED to teach civics in high school. And had classes in woodworking and metalworking and ACTUAL home economics. We used to educate students in HOW to think. Not WHAT to think, but how to approach a subject critically, how to do research, how to tell when someone is using manipulative language or imagery.

Now, our schools are overcrowded, underfunded (unless they’re in wealthy, primarily white neighborhoods), and just teach kids how to memorize short term facts for tests, and how to fill in forms. Our leaders (not the politicians so much as the people who OWN those politicians) don’t want competent citizens who understand and are enthusiastic about their role in politics. Those leaders just want mindless consumers who will buy the latest trend without thinking, do what they’re told without hesitation, and work themselves to death to make a few extra dollars for the dragons on their money piles.

Teaching people how to use their minds instead of just memorizing test answers is something I've encouraged since I was in school and noticed the same things you bring up here.

With the crazies in the GOP looking to boot out Mike Johnson I was wondering what you guys thought.

If it comes to a vote should the Dems vote to help him keep his job as speaker?

I think they should.

That depends on whether or not one of the rumors I am hearing is actually true - that a few Republicans have stated if there is a push for that vote they will resign, effective immediately, and by doing so create a majority for the Democrats.

Spite - it's a powerful thing, although little good tends to come from it.

I suspect the Nutbag Caucus is too far gone to care, so it doesn’t matter what their fellow Republicans do, hell, they might even dare those recalcitrant GOPers to do their worst.

I would say yes. Going through another Republican Speaker and the ensuing chaos of finding another one who will appeal to both moderate and far right Republicans will make them look fractured and no doubt hurt them this Election.

I don't trust any GOPers to stick to principles given the evidence of the last 2 decades, so I don't trust Johnson to keep any deal he might make to stay Speaker. The second the pressure is off he'll do whatever is necessary to show the extremists following Trumps every whim that he's still loyal, but it'll already be too late.

If this shakes out and we get a Dem Speaker I will laugh until I hurt.

While this point is relevant data shows that education does help to counter racism and prejudice.

The perfect is not the enemy of the good -- anything that can be done to fight bigotry should be done given what we have seen of the alternative.

<SNIP>

Likewise, there are many different types of education and courses specifically aimed at addressing historical inequalities could easily cover the most relevant topics.

In reality Republicans attack this sort of education as "critical race theory" and "LGBT indoctrination" regardless of its effectiveness in addressing bigotry.



It could easily be argued that they attack "liberal" education precisely because it is effective in countering their prejudices.

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https://journalistsresource.org/econ...ity-prejudice/

I don't think that anyone has claimed that education will stop assholes from being assholes, just that it makes them less likely to fall for the basic traps of bigotry and such as you've shown. People are still people and we know exactly how bad they can be at their worst, but that's a reason to strive to be better than we were yesterday instead of saying it's a wasted effort.

I'm shocked you guys.

*Totally* shocked.

https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/resea...down-economics

All tax cuts for the rich do is further distort and bend both the financial and political economies towards the needs of the wealthy.

All countries of the world should make pay the rich. These latter shouldn’t have a haven nowhere…

Agree, but, of course, never likely to happen because individual countries see the advantage of having incredibly rich individuals and companies based in their manor, and seek to attract them by sweetheart deals.

And incidentally some of the countries that do it most never ever get criticised on this thread.

For example, Ireland has been wonderfully efficient at getting major multinational companies to base themselves there by offering low rates of corporation tax. (Then the companies concerned move a lot of their revenue there by various transfer pricing mechanisms to take advantage of the low tax.)

Singapore (or Singawhore, as my lovely Singaporean friend calls it) is also extremely guilt of this.

I know, I know… I put that next “it would be a good idea to avoid buying anything with plastic” and “people should stop throwing cigarette stubs on the ground”…

I think the benefits of having more higher-income people pay their fair share would outweigh the benefits of a few obscenely rich people/companies simply existing there, and we've previously discussed how little effort for how much return Billionaires could have working to benefit society without hurting their net worth in any appreciable way. The fact that they don't do this is evidence that they aren't truly good people, regardless of what philanthropy they do engage in.

Chaya will absolutely get someone killed eventually.

I mean, she did inspire a social media post by a mass shooter.

And when she does (Again?), not only will she dodge any responsibility for it but so will all of her fans, sychophants, and defenders. Until the law changes to acknowledge stochastic terrorism and clarifies what 'Incitement' means in regards to online behavior to address this, she is within her legal rights to whip up her hate mob.

Green is after the Speakership herself so that she can inDICK a lot more of her headline grabbing list.

I don't think she could sucker the rest to vote for her at this point.

[CaptainEurope]

He was right when he said every set of new charges gained him more support. Be that in the polls or from fundraising. I would think a guilty verdict gets him the more votes. His cult seems to love the whole him vs the crooked Biden machine story he paints.

Biden hast been improving in the polls since Trump's criminal trial started.

[CaptainEurope]

I'm a bit torn. I think the biggest impact from the trial is that he needs to sit there, so he doesn't have that time to campaign and fundraise. I don't think the verdict itself will impacting his voting.

Now, if he's found guilty on Georgia election interference and/on on Jan. 6th, I think that hurts him tremendously. I saw a poll about that some months ago, I'll try to dig it up.

The criminal trial will have on a sizable block of American voters: low information voters. It's harder to ignore this, so every day, hundreds of potential voters are finding out he is scum.

[Mister Mets]

An odd recommendation is the first 20 minutes of Joe Rogan's interview with Tucker Carlson.

It just shows how insane Carlson is. He talks about how he got radicalized by intelligence agencies investigating Donald Trump as well as his belief that UFOs are something demonic from Earth, and there's a conspiracy within the government to cover this up.

[Kirby101]

One has to differentiate between the MAGA cultists and independent voters. The MAGATs are a lost cause and nothing that Trump does or says will hurt their support. They will vote for him even if he is jail. But that is perhaps 35% of the voters. And frankly what they think or say is of little importance. It is the independent, fickle voters who will decide this. They were the ones who gave Trump that small victory in a few States to win in 2016, and moved to Biden in 2020. Yes, as crazy s it sounds, there were Bush-Obama-Trump_Biden voters. They are the ones who will make the difference. They are low information voters who "don't care about politics". I wish the media would spend more time talking to them and less time concentrating on Trump cultists.

[Username taken]

An odd recommendation is the first 20 minutes of Joe Rogan's interview with Tucker Carlson.

It just shows how insane Carlson is. He talks about how he got radicalized by intelligence agencies investigating Donald Trump as well as his belief that UFOs are something demonic from Earth, and there's a conspiracy within the government to cover this up.

I don't know if Carlson really believes the stuff he's saying but even the Joe Rogan audience seemed pretty shocked at his nonsense.

I've only seen clips but Carlson sounds like he's off his rocker.

[kidfresh512]

A headline for low information voters

Trump Was Warned to Return Records to Archives, Unsealed Documents Say

In late November 2021, as officials at the National Archives were trying to persuade former President Donald J. Trump to return a trove of records he had taken from the White House when he left office, one of Mr. Trump’s associates advised him in the sharpest terms possible to give the materials back, newly unsealed documents show.

“Whatever you have, give everything back — let them come here and get everything,” the unnamed associate told Mr. Trump, according to an interview the person gave the F.B.I. “Don’t give them a noble reason to indict you, because they will.”

Less than two years later, that admonition proved prescient. Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Trump last June with violating the Espionage Act, accusing him of illegally holding onto more than 30 highly classified documents and obstructing the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.

A summary of the associate’s interview with federal agents was among nearly 400 pages of investigative records that were unsealed on Monday by the judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s classified documents case. The associate’s identity was redacted from the summary.

The unnamed associate who warned Mr. Trump about the threat of an indictment — identified in the unsealed records as Person 16 — described approaching the former president in a card room or library at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, as Mr. Trump was dressed in golf attire.

Person 16 told the F.B.I. that Mr. Trump reacted to his warning with a “weird ‘you’re the man’ type of response” and left the impression that he would in fact return the materials to the archives. Their conversation was interrupted when a Mar-a-Lago club member and a “much younger woman” walked up, Person 16 recalled, and asked to have a photo taken with Mr. Trump.

Person 16 also suggested that some of Mr. Trump’s children had been enlisted in the task of persuading him to return the presidential records to the archives. The person recounted to the F.B.I. that one of the children was told: “There are issues with the boxes. They belong to the government. Talk to your dad about giving them back. It’s not worth the aggravation.”

Person 16 also suggested to the F.B.I. that Mr. Trump may have told his personal aide, Walt Nauta, who was ultimately charged as a co-defendant in the case, that he would receive a pardon if Mr. Trump was elected again.

“Nauta was also told that even if he gets charged with lying to the F.B.I., FPOTUS” — an abbreviation for former president of the United States — “will pardon him in 2024.”

Again most of us know this stuff. But, the whole victim narrative for the classified documents case that he was raided unnecessarily etc has ben completely debunked several times now. Even as they try to do what about Biden on docs etc. That also keeps falling apart quickly with all the evidence of Trump being asked to return everything. Being warned at every step that he needed to give it back. And the raid was just the final step because the requests and orders to return the governments property were being ignored.

This seems to be another case with so much evidence. He could easily have avoided by just giving the documents back when asked.

[Mister Mets]

One has to differentiate between the MAGA cultists and independent voters. The MAGATs are a lost cause and nothing that Trump does or says will hurt their support. They will vote for him even if he is jail. But that is perhaps 35% of the voters. And frankly what they think or say is of little importance. It is the independent, fickle voters who will decide this. They were the ones who gave Trump that small victory in a few States to win in 2016, and moved to Biden in 2020. Yes, as crazy s it sounds, there were Bush-Obama-Trump_Biden voters. They are the ones who will make the difference. They are low information voters who "don't care about politics". I wish the media would spend more time talking to them and less time concentrating on Trump cultists.

The media will have a tough time reaching people who don't care about politics, since by definition, they're the ones not currently watching the programs dealing with current events.

If the media wanted to focus on programming that's more interesting to swing voters, they may lose existing viewers who are already partisans. And the swing voters, who may not be as appealing to most advertisers (political ads are a different story) aren't going to necessarily learn that CNN now caters to their interests.

The media may be able to make some changes that will lead to wider appeal if there wasn't as much groupthink behind the scenes, but in addition to likely internal pushback (the type that has led to editors and producers getting fired or pushed out), there is also the issue of audience capture, since viewers often want people who agree with them.

Another potential solution to the same problem would be for Democratic politicians and their campaign surrogates to make more of an effort to go where the swing voters are. Come to think, the Obamas would be very useful for this, since they're broadly popular, many programs will be happy to have them on, and it's not going to lead to compromises on policy.

An example of something I'm thinking of here would be Bill Clinton making a cameo in a cop drama (maybe there can be a scene where police are providing security when the former president is in town) and later doing a campaign event with a progressive actor from the show.

Of course there are distinctions. The main point is that "not guilty" ≠ "innocent of the crime they have been accused of".

A Guilty verdict is going to be worse than a Not Guilty verdict. In addition, there isn't much of a sense that there's bias in favor of Trump in the Manhattan case.

I don't know if Carlson really believes the stuff he's saying but even the Joe Rogan audience seemed pretty shocked at his nonsense.

I've only seen clips but Carlson sounds like he's off his rocker.

I don't see why he would lie about it.

But the comments were weird. There's a difference between "there are things we can't explain in this world, and I believe some of the answers are in scripture" and "UFOs are demonic forces, and there's a conspiracy in the government to cover this up."

Come to think of it, I don't get why the government would cover it up. An announcement that there's evidence of interdimensional beings coming out of the water to observe humanity would be a major justification for all sorts of spending.

[Kirby101]

The News should be telling people what they need to know, not what they want to hear. One is journalism, one is infotainment.

[Dalak]

The News should be telling people what they need to know, not what they want to hear. One is journalism, one is infotainment.

Before News was expected to turn a profit this was closer to the norm. Now, they are putting a finger on the scales in Trump's favor by giving him so much free coverage, the unending negative Biden coverage, and refusing to hold so many conservative politicians & political experts accountable for their own words.

[ed2962]

I don't know if Carlson really believes the stuff he's saying but even the Joe Rogan audience seemed pretty shocked at his nonsense.

I've only seen clips but Carlson sounds like he's off his rocker.

I doubt he believes much of it. Remember he called his own audience in an inter-company email "cousin f*ck*rs and terrorists"...this all about getting views from the lowest common denominator for Tucker.

[Catlady in training]

One has to differentiate between the MAGA cultists and independent voters. The MAGATs are a lost cause and nothing that Trump does or says will hurt their support. They will vote for him even if he is jail. But that is perhaps 35% of the voters. And frankly what they think or say is of little importance. It is the independent, fickle voters who will decide this. They were the ones who gave Trump that small victory in a few States to win in 2016, and moved to Biden in 2020. Yes, as crazy s it sounds, there were Bush-Obama-Trump_Biden voters. They are the ones who will make the difference. They are low information voters who "don't care about politics". I wish the media would spend more time talking to them and less time concentrating on Trump cultists.

This is a good point.

Is it reasonable to think that Biden should perhaps concentrate more on the moderate/centrist voters than on the far left? In situations when he can't appeal to both, I mean.

[Kirby101]

This is a good point.

Is it reasonable to think that Biden should perhaps concentrate more on the moderate/centrist voters than on the far left? In situations when he can't appeal to both, I mean.

Where has Biden been appealing to the "far left"? Abortion? Marijuana? Israel? None of his position are far left.

[Catlady in training]

Where has Biden been appealing to the "far left"? Abortion? Marijuana? Israel? None of his position are far left.

I'm not saying he has, I'm asking if he should. I don't think they are either, but it seems there's a lot of people online saying he's not left enough for them to bother voting.