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

[Tendrin]

And he’s still leading on many polls because you know, Biden is too old.

What's funny is the Hur report is the Barr characterization of the Mueller report all over again, with the press gleefully licking it up. Hur tossed his credibility out the window and lit it on fire, but he magically left the Justice Department and he'll have a cushy, golden job that'll pay him a lot of money to float on to.

[Deathstroke]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-nomin...200002143.html

The GOP is a full on freak show at this point, but the NC GOP is definitely trying to take the lead.

Kind of wondering if her BS statements rise to the level of threatening the life of a president in regards to Obama. Or is that only when they are actually in office?

[Mister Mets]

People were pretty awful in every era. The difference now is the internet makes it more apparent by giving everyone the opportunity to be awful immediately to everyone everywhere.
It also removes the corrective action to personal attitudes that shaming by families and friends used to provide. No matter how awful someone’s beliefs and opinions are they can now find an online community who will respect and reinforce those beliefs. They’re rewarded that wonderful hit of dopamine when some faceless, nameless entity compliments or simply “likes” whatever awful comment they make. That reward prompts them to escalate the awfulness resulting in a downward spiral.

Have a great day everybody!

Something to keep in mind is the extent to which the physical community reinforces some of these beliefs. Statistically speaking, rural areas are not enlightened on cultural issues, so you weren't always going to get the corrective action.

The national media environment has led to some polarization, since people around the country can follow the same narrative. But awful people often found support within their communities. Consider the popularity of the KKK in the South post-World War One.

Why would he support the guy who wanted to hang him alive, and he was a few feet from dying if he just went a few more feet down the hallway?

In fairness, he probably doesn't think either of those is true, even if he doesn't like Trump.

Pranksters dupe Tucker Carlson into believing they edited Princess of Wales photo

That's funny.

Or trot out the time a democrat wore a t-shirt, because ‘both sides are equally bad’…

The media does this now?

And he’s still leading on many polls because you know, Biden is too old.

One potential trap is that if all Democrats do is call Trump out for his rhetoric, which was disgusting, they're not saying what they're doing to reduce border crossings.

Beyond this case, I think a larger discussion needs to be had on how to regulate porn online.

I think porn is far too readily accessible for kids these days. I don't even know why people pay for it, there are thousands of sites that carry it.

I think porn was easier to control when it was strictly on home video. Kids had to go out of their way to get it but these days, all major search engines and even some social media sites carry it. One doesn't really have to look deep to gain access to it.

I really don't know how to approach this and I'm not saying that a flat-out ban is the way to go, just that content moderation is something that needs to be discussed regarding the internet.

There's not going to be a flat-out ban, but there may be restrictions on the ability to access it anonymously.

Some potential questions involve the legal response. What will judges rule? How does it intersect with existing law?

Another potential question is the response of voters. This could very easily motivate people who are typically voting on different issues. Maybe parents of ten year olds will be more conservative, and guys who have a tough time logging into their favorite NSFW websites start being more progressive.

You weren’t the only one to make that observation.

Is it “right” to support the policies of the political party that helped drive this individual towards suicide while turning a blind eye to Republican bigotry that led to that choice?

And to continue to show little to no concern for the victims of anti-LGBT violence?



From both a moral and an objective standpoint the answer clearly is “no”.

There is a stark difference between being right and ignoring and deflecting when one is wrong.



This is a basic Republican tactic that has been the standard since Reagan and most egregiously abused when Bush joked about not finding WMDs after launching the War in Iraq against the protest of allies and millions of American citizens.

They treat this like a game and ignore the real toll it has on human lives.

At least you're trying to ask me questions before criticizing a lack of response, although these are still loaded, with some controversial presumptions. Often we're going to have different conclusions.

I don't know what drove Nex Benedict to suicide. We don't even know for sure if the kid was bullied for being trans. The main thing we know for sure is that Nex Benedict did one of the dumbest things a person can do, and we should discourage others from following in their footsteps. There is something really unsettling about the coverage, and the message that teenagers who kill themselves will get national attention for their cause. Their lives matter more than that.

It’s just more deflection from the real issue of why this bullying was allowed to continue — if not encouraged by Republican political policies.


The school to pipeline issue is about racial disparities in suspensions — not defending transphobia.

If Mets can show any proof to back that punishment for these repeated offenses was stifled by these policies then that can be debated — otherwise it is just conjecture that avoids the addressing the clear and often theocratic bigotry behind recent conservative anti-LGBT efforts, especially in the Southern states.

Instead of making excuses for why the bullying and abuse was allowed to continue there should be more concern about how to prevent it in the future — including directly confronting conservative and Republican liars and “bullies” and holding them accountable for their discriminatory actions and policies against fellow American citizens.

It’s disingenuous to pretend the solution doesn’t lie in addressing those who caused the problem.

The problem with the school to prison pipeline isn't just about racial disparities; it's the idea that methods of discipline have consequences and should be discouraged. So we have to consider the response to bullying in that context. The policies would presumably be the same for every student designated a bully.

I don't think the major problem in American schools is that students are too similar to Republican politicians.

[Panfoot]

I don't know what drove Nex Benedict to suicide. We don't even know for sure if the kid was bullied for being trans.

Oh for fucks sake.

[aja_christopher]

At least you're trying to ask me questions before criticizing a lack of response, although these are still loaded, with some controversial presumptions. Often we're going to have different conclusions.

I don't know what drove Nex Benedict to suicide. We don't even know for sure if the kid was bullied for being trans.

The reason some people don’t ask bother to ask you questions is because it’s usually already clear how you will respond — by shirking Republican accountability and ignoring racist and transphobic policies.

Show evidence to back your arguments or you are just — as usual — supporting bigotry via deflection.

——-

“Whenever Oklahoma teenager Nex Benedict was bullied at school for being transgender, their mother Sue Benedict would encourage the 16-year-old to rise above their tormentors.

“I said ‘you’ve got to be strong and look the other way, because these people don’t know who you are’,” Ms Benedict told The Independent in a phone interview.

“I didn’t know how bad it had gotten.”

The bullying had started in earnest at the beginning of the 2023 school year, a few months after Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill that required public school students to use bathrooms that matched the sex listed on their birth certificates.

A few weeks ago, on 7 February, the bullying allegedly erupted in violence when Nex suffered severe head injuries during a “physical altercation” at Owasso High School, according to the Owasso Police Department.

Sue Benedict told The Independent she was called to the school that day to find Nex badly beaten with bruises over their face and eyes, and with scratches on the back of their head.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2501844.html

[Tendrin]

I mean, I've literally posted links to students talking about the climate of bullying non-gender-conforming kids in the same school as Nex, but sure, 'we don't know for sure', even though Nex made statements themselves that this is in fact why they were bullied.

FFS indeed.

[Tendrin]

When Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft jumped into the state’s gubernatorial race last year, the Republican vowed to tackle a slew of culture war issues, promising to fight the “woke politics” of “left-wing” banks and touting how he used his position to enact a regulation targeting those financial firms.

Ashcroft also said candidates shouldn’t focus on issues that let the one percent “force their beliefs on 99 percent of the population.”

While Ashcroft positioned himself as a champion for working class voters, emails obtained by CNN and the progressive watchdog group Documented show that he was steered toward adopting his “anti-woke” investment regulation by a little-known, right-wing think tank with deep ties to conservative billionaires. The communications show that officials with the Foundation for Government Accountability suggested regulatory language to Ashcroft and even wrote an op-ed article that Ashcroft published in a national conservative magazine under his own name.

The emails not only reveal FGA’s influence over Ashcroft, they offer a snapshot of the group’s growing influence across the country, particularly in red states. And that influence can carry a high cost for workers and taxpayers.

The “anti-woke” investment measures have cost states hundreds of millions of dollars in additional investment fees and can lead to smaller returns for public employee retirement plans. One study estimated a 2021 Texas law would cost taxpayers up to $500 million in higher interest rates just on bonds sold in the first eight months after the law passed. Another study calculated that the law cost local governments $270 million a year in added fees, resulting in an annual $668 million in lost economic activity and thousands of full-time jobs.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/emails-sh...055529621.html

[skyvolt2000]

I don't know what drove Nex Benedict to suicide. We don't even know for sure if the kid was bullied for being trans. The main thing we know for sure is that Nex Benedict did one of the dumbest things a person can do, and we should discourage others from following in their footsteps.

Those kids are not killing themselves for attention.

Kerry Von Erich didn't kill himself for attention.
Lee Thompson Young didn't kill himself for attention.
Chris Beniot did not either.
Nor Jason David Frank (Power Rangers).

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-...22-cdc-report/

Nearly 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

The number of suicide deaths was on a downward trend in 2019 and 2020, but it increased by 5% in 2021, and then further increased by 2.6% in 2022 to 49,449, the CDC found.

"Mental health has become the defining public health and societal challenge of our time," said Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in a statement. "Far too many people and their families are suffering and feeling alone."

we should discourage others from following in their footsteps.

So when will REPUBLICANS leave folks alone???

What group has lead an all out attack on the LGBTQA+ community? WHO?

https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/03/...rsial-remarks/

Mark Robinson faced calls for his resignation in 2021 after a video surfaced on social media of him raging that children shouldn’t learn “how to hate America” before referring to LGBTQ+ identities as “that filth”.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-...enti-rcna34530

The Texas Republican Party unveiled its official position on LGBTQ issues over the weekend, defining homosexuality as an "abnormal lifestyle choice" and also opposing "all efforts to validate transgender identity."

Thousands of Republican activists met at the party’s biennial convention in Houston on Saturday to agree to the party's platform on a range of issues, including the rejection of the 2020 election results and a call to repeal of the 1965 Voting Right Act, which was enacted to prevent discrimination against Black voters.

In a section titled "Homosexuality and gender issues," the party suggested that LGBTQ people should not be legally protected from discrimination and that being gay or trans is a choice.

According to a January report from the Trevor Project, a national LGBTQ youth suicide-prevention organization, 71% of LGBTQ youth said debates over bills affecting how they live negatively impact their mental health — and 86% of transgender youth reported negative mental health repercussions from such legislation.

There is something really unsettling about the coverage, and the message that teenagers who kill themselves will get national attention for their cause. Their lives matter more than that.

So is THIS unsettling????


https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/10/polit...lth/index.html

A Republican senator became emotional as he spoke in deeply personal terms about the importance of mental health care in America.

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is slated to take over in January as ranking member of the influential Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, told CNN’s Pamela Brown, “every single one of us has a family history. A loved one, a friend, someone you know, that has serious mental illness.”

For Cassidy, the issue is personal. His nephew died by suicide decades ago, and the Louisiana senator is “still emotional after all these years. But everybody has such an emotional story.”

A licensed physician, Cassidy previously worked in hospitals for the uninsured. He stressed the importance of treating mental and physical health in tandem, noting that “having serious mental illness often leads to serious physical illness.”

Last year, the US saw 14 suicide deaths for every 100,000 people, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Worldwide, nearly 800,000 people die from suicide yearly, and in 2020, there were 1.2 million attempts globally.

[skyvolt2000]

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/03...e-lgbtq-bills/

“Texas has become one of the most dangerous and hostile places for transgender youth and transgender people and their families in America,” Andrea Segovia, senior field and policy adviser of the Transgender Education Network of Texas, told reporters in February.

The clash came at a time when 72% of Texans support anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people, according to a 2021 survey from the Public Religion Research Institute.

https://www.hppr.org/hppr-news/2023-...-what-theyd-do

LGBTQ activists and many Democratic lawmakers are bracing for a monthslong fight. Many say the proposed measures amount to attempts to minimize queer expression and restrict people’s rights. One such group, Equality Texas, has identified more than 90 “bad bills” filed so far this session, already more than total identified by the group in 2021 during a full session and three special sessions.

Even if only a few of them pass, the damage will be substantial, they say. According to a January report from the Trevor Project, a national LGBTQ youth suicide-prevention organization, 71% of LGBTQ youth said debates over bills affecting how they live negatively impact their mental health — and 86% of transgender youth reported negative mental health repercussions from such legislation.

[PaulBullion]

So Mets is saying Nex might have committed suicide for other reasons, like reading transphobic messages on a comic book forum?

[aja_christopher]

Those kids are not killing themselves for attention.

What group has lead an all out attack on the LGBTQA+ community? WHO?

The only people who don’t see it are those who choose to ignore it.

[zinderel]

So Mets is saying Nex might have committed suicide for other reasons, like reading transphobic messages on a comic book forum?

I like that he suggests that standing up to bullies is the worst thing a victim can do. And that their suicide probably was more about getting attention than all the documented anti-trans bullying (provoked by ‘conservative’, ‘christian’ Republican talking heads and politicians and leaders) that they suffered.

Classy victim blaming. Opinions like this are why people are so ‘mean’ to conservatives, and why conservatives are so ‘oppressed’.

The only people who don’t see it are those who choose to ignore it.

Conservatives are good at two things: spreading hatred and ignorance under the guise of ‘free speech’ and ‘religious freedom’, and then denying any responsibility for the violence that comes from spreading hate and ignorance.

Oh, I forgot the third thing: profiting from the suffering of the vulnerable.

[CaptainEurope]

So, the polls are closed in Russia. Putin wins with an amazing mandate of 87%.

We do not know, of course, if he cheated. He might just have done it for the attention.

[LoganAlpha30X33]

I wonder if Putin had those in the 13 percent pushed out of a high window by accident or just had them shot...

[Mister Mets]

I mean, I've literally posted links to students talking about the climate of bullying non-gender-conforming kids in the same school as Nex, but sure, 'we don't know for sure', even though Nex made statements themselves that this is in fact why they were bullied.

FFS indeed.

If you have links, post it. It's possible to miss useful information when a lot of the discussion was about things that ended up not being true.

Let's see your earlier comments.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence.


https://www.dailykos.com/stories/202...&pm_medium=web




https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1759549109478871436

The first post has a link to a Daily Kos article that made some serious claims and didn't bother updating claims like "Nex Benedict, a non-binary transgender 16-year-old student at Owasso High School, was brutally murdered in an assault in the girl’s restroom this month." when it turns out to be inaccurate.

As an aside, this seems like an obvious indication that a source is garbage. These types of things can be updated.

One user suggested that as a policy matter the United States should figure out how to put Raichik on trial for murder.

Too bad they can't come up with a legal way to put Raichik on trial for the murder.

The right will, of course, blame the NB murder victim for this.

Nex Benedict wasn't a murder victim, but anyone blaming him for ending his own life did end up being correct.

https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/st...34285527318688

A thread on the death of Nex and Chaya Raichik. Worth reading.

That thread includes a reference to Matthew Shepard. An aside on that one is that Matthew Shepard probably wasn't a victim of a hate crime. It's more likely to have been a drug deal gone bad, with a lawyer thinking gay panic would be a better explanation than saying the defendant shot someone expecting ten grand worth of meth.

https://reason.com/2023/10/12/matthe...ay-hate-crime/

This may be a distinction without a difference, because there have been homophobic murders within the United States.

But it does highlight a problem in civic discussion, if activists are misinformed on something like this.

Another exchange is instructive. I responded to another poster.

This is so sad.

The media is calling it a bathroom fight. It wasn't, it was a bathroom murder.

This is what they want (i,e right wing media and politicians) to demonize transkids and get them killed.

In this specific situation, we don't know what caused the poor kid's death. So far, the medical examiner doesn't think it was caused by physical trauma.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/21/u...teen-dead.html

The details of the altercation are messy. According to texts Nex Benedict sent a relative shortly before they collapsed, the fight occurred after they tipped water on three girls in a bathroom. Obviously, physical retaliation is not an acceptable response to something like that, but it's a reaction that occurs often in schools and elsewhere.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2500209.html

Most politicians with anti-trans views don't think they're hurting trans kids. They view it as the equivalent of a disorder like anorexia. It's not like they secretly beliefve that the people spotlighted on libsoftiktok are right.

You called me a liar, and went after me personally in response to this.

I see Mets is on his usual lies and deflection.

Meanwhile, at least Chaya Raichik is more honest about her goals than Mets is.

Attachment 137929

I hope that you recognize that I wasn't saying that I believed to be untrue.

You should be embarrassed that you called me a liar when you were wrong on the facts, and I was correct to say that we didn't know what caused the kid's death and that authorities were saying it probably wasn't physical trauma.