All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[Carabas]

Congressional staffers are rarely hired from just the Washington DC area, so DC being a diverse city doesn't quite mean anything. Staffers come from all over.

I can't even imagine a more diverse place than "from all over".

[ZombieHavoc]

Despite terrible policy positions, Bernie was right on the Dems last 15 years and he is right about Amazon too:

http://www.businessinsider.com/berni...too-big-2018-4

I think most people would agree Amazon is too big.

I assume Trump is jealous of the power guys like Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg wield though.

[Dalak]

That is a potential criminal penalty for serious crimes.

Out of curiosity, are there any other acts fully protected by law that you think should be a serious crime as well? I'm not talking about loopholes or technicalities either, I'm talking about something firmly entrenched in legal precedent similar to how Abortion is.

[thwhtGuardian]

Yes. A national campaign where he knew people were watching.

I asked about his congressional staff. Nice deflection though.

It's not as if his congressional staff is secret, it's a matter of public record available right on his site. Just going off of the names I recognize here are some of the people on his staff who are not white vermonters: Jacob Gillison, Britt Weinstock and Donni Turner. And those are just the ones I remember, you can google the whole staff if you like.

[PaulBullion]

That is a potential criminal penalty for serious crimes.

He also specified that the method of execution should be hanging.

I think the technical term for that kind of writer is "a sick ****."

[PaulBullion]

It's not as if his congressional staff is secret, it's a matter of public record available right on his site. Just going off of the names I recognize here are some of the people on his staff who are not white vermonters: Jacob Gillison, Britt Weinstock and Donni Turner. And those are just the ones I remember, you can google the whole staff if you like.

If he has been hiring a more diverse staff, than that is a step in the right direction and I apologize for having faulty information on that. Thanks for the clarification.

[PaulBullion]

And another good news item about hate mongers:

The internet’s biggest Nazi websites are facing a financial meltdown

Both Stormfront's and the Daily Stormer's days might be numbered.

[Mister Mets]

Out of curiosity, are there any other acts fully protected by law that you think should be a serious crime as well? I'm not talking about loopholes or technicalities either, I'm talking about something firmly entrenched in legal precedent similar to how Abortion is.

I want to clarify one thing: I don't think obtaining an abortion should be treated as a serious crime. My view on the controversy is that the belief that abortion should be a serious crime should not be considered to be so outside the pale as to be a cause for denying employment, especially when the specific goal was to get a diverse array of opinions.

I can't even imagine a more diverse place than "from all over".

Washington DC is 48% African-American, so it does have a higher percentage of minorities than the entire country.

There are some nuances to discussions about hiring policy in congressional offices. It can be argued that someone who comes from a small liberal state should widen the net of potential recruits to include people from conservative states who would rarely have the opportunity to work for a liberal statewide officeholder from their state, as well as people who come from larger states, where there's more competition for each position in a Senate staff that has the same size, but it seems like a new standard by which to hold politicians.

[thwhtGuardian]

I want to clarify one thing: I don't think obtaining an abortion should be a serious crime. My view on the controversy is that the belief that abortion should be a serious crime should not be considered to be so outside the pale as to be a cause for denying employment, especially when the specific goal was to get a diverse array of opinions.

Washington DC is 48% African-American, so it does have a higher percentage of minorities than the entire country.

There's a big difference between being pro-life and expressing an opinion that women who've had abortions should be killed; the former is not out of the pale of an open discussion while the latter is filth that taints the entire conversation by just being entertained as a serious view point.

[Mister Mets]

There's a big difference between being pro-life and expressing an opinion that women who've had abortions should be killed; the former is not out of the pale of an open discussion while the latter is filth that taints the entire conversation by just being entertained as a serious view point.

There is a key distinction here that might not matter for many.

My understanding of his comments was that it was about a policy going forward, with the understanding that this would be unlikely to actually be put into law, rather than an explicit endorsement of ex post facto or extralegal punishment. I don't know how much this matters to anyone, whether there's someone else who thinks the idea that in the future abortion can have the maximum criminal penalty possible is acceptable to discuss, but advocacy of prosecuting anyone for things they did in the past when these were legally and fully protected by the law is going too far.

There are two further problems with the Atlantic's decision.

I think people should be honest about the implications of their views, and the decision encourages a moral cowardice in which people are unwilling to say what they believe, or to openly consider the implications. Late-term abortion is a rather icky procedure, and people who advocate for it should be honest about what they want, rather than sanitizing it. People who want police officers to change their procedures and open fire less should be willing to discuss the downside of what they want (greater risk for police officers which does mean more dead cops) in addition to the upsides (other people get to live; probably resulting in a net gain in terms of lives saved.)

The belief that abortion should be treated as a serious crime is one that is held by a non-trivial percentage of Americans. It's not going to go away if there's a refusal to engage it, and when people who hold these positions are marginalized or realize that they should keep quiet, the main result is that the public and the media are less informed.

[ouroboros]

I like to think I'm somewhere in the middle, I don't hate Bernie, but I don't fawn over him either. However, I won't deny I'm tired of the deification of Sanders and the intolerance of ANY criticism against him which, in turn, riles up the haters to level more criticism, resulting in an endless cycle of nonsense.

For whatever it's worth, if Sanders were to run for president again, I suspect he'd fare even worse than Hillary. Republicans would have a field day with him, cranking up their smear machine to churn out bullshit equating Sanders' socialist views with communism, and communism with Vlad Putin and Russia. And voters, gullible as the day is long would fall for that crap hook, line and sinker, meanwhile, Trump would shout from the rooftops: "A vote for Bernie is a vote for communism! He's a bad hombre!" Outlandish? Improbable? Sure, but I could totally see a scenario like that taking place.

I can't tell if you're making mock of the fact that Trump won in spite of his pre-election flirtations with Putin, but regardless, it seems to me that the GOP wouldn't even have to attack Bernie for Communism. They'd just trot out the old "tax and spend Democrat" thing with no risk of bringing up Trump's Russian relations.

Opinion is divided as to why POC voters didn't turn out big for Hillary, but is there any reason they'd turn out bigger for Bernie?

[ouroboros]

Is it the amount of white people on a cast that makes or breaks a movie for you, then?

Nope, it depends on whether a drama actually works as a drama, rather than as a pity party.

BOYS is also better than BROKEBACK, though the latter can't be accused of failing much since it didn't try to be much.

[ouroboros]

Actually I will explain why I thought it was disingenuous...The video maker's hook is that SJWs are out there burning copies of Secret Empire even though he admits he can only find two examples of this. He then goes on a rambling screed about free speech, fascism, identity politics and of all things antifa. He engages in the same stereotyping and identity politics that he pretends to decry and somehow ignores the fact some of his youtube allies burn, rip up, blow up, and flush down the toilet comics they don't like. So yeah..."SWJs are are running around burning comics" is BS and this video is weak proof and I believe the video maker knew it and he made it just to pander to his fanbase. Cool. He has every right to, but it's still BS.



Now, Nichelle Nichol's cheekbones are awesome!

The plain fact that the guy admitted that he only found two Youtubers who did what they threatened marks him as candid rather than disingenuous.

Nothing rambling about his speech to me: he's saying the same thing I've said here, that you can't measure wrong by quantity. Even if there are more anti-SJWs burning comics than SJWs, guess what? It's still a dubious action no matter who does it, not illegal but questionable in its moral compass.

The antifa remark, while not directly relevant to comics, speaks to a repressive mentality in modern liberalism, and so is relevant in a cultural sense.

[Tazirai]

I thought this was a good lil piece of political news.



Saudi Arabia hasn't had a movie theater in 35 years. The first movie to be played? Black Panther!!! Wakanda Forever.

Times are a changing. Conservatives function is to delay change. They serve a purpose I guess. But change comes regardless, thus they always seem like the bad guys.

[Tazirai]

I think I was part of that also. We all got it wrong. Hell even the Prosecutors. Reality strikes and we know the truth now.

It was Terrorism pure and simple.


Everyone Got The Pulse Massacre Story Completely Wrong
And another, smaller injustice was obscured: the sadistic prosecution of Noor Salman.