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

[Tendrin]

It’s not punching down at marginalized groups when they are actually predominant groups of not the government in the countries he’s referring to when he makes his statements. This isn’t calling American Muslims terrorists because you are an uncultured dicko. It’s calling out countries that stone adulterous women and behead gay people in the name of their state run religion out for bad behavior.

And you don't think his castigation and excuses aren't applied to Muslims at large here in the States? You don't think a guy with a platform who shouts 'Actually, Muslims will kill you' isn't doing harm to actual Muslims here in the States, when he's talking to a primarily American audience and saying 'Actually, yeah, you should be scared of them'?

There’s only one faith, for example, that kills you or wants to kill you if you draw a bad cartoon of the prophet. There’s only one faith that kills you or wants to kill you if you renounce the faith... obviously, most Muslim people are not terrorists. But ask most Muslim people in the world, if you insult the prophet, do you have what’s coming to you? It’s more than just a fringe element.

Muslims still take their religion too seriously, whereas we have the good sense to blow it off. Catholics don’t follow the Pope. In overwhelming numbers they divorce, they have pre-marital sex, they masturbate. And unlike the Koran, no one here seriously considers following the Bible literally. Guys don't look over their fence on Sunday morning and see a neighbor mowing the lawn and think, "Working on Sunday? I really should kill him."… But, before I conclude, it should in fairness be noted that, in speaking of Muslims, we realize that of course the vast majority are law-abiding, loving people who just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace.

That’s a massive distinction that is very relevant that you aren’t making.

This isn't just criticizing countries for barbaric laws and backwards cultural mores -- which I should point out are not shared by all Muslim countries or peoples. The distinctions are ones /he/ fails to make. Frequently. To his credit, he /has/ actually gone back on this from time to time inthe past, at times, but his hostility and anti-Islam guests are far more frequent.

And honestly I don’t care what conservatives tell you.

Understanding what people see when they look at you is important if you ever want to win instead of be 'right'.

[Tendrin]

Religulous (2008) showcases the Real Time host theatrically refuting a carefully curated group of believers from the world’s major faiths, usually by way of crudely literal readings of their foundational books. While a portion of the film is dedicated to the evangelical Christianity of the American South — in which Maher confronts worthy and able targets such as a congregation of rural truck drivers at a road stop chapel — something altogether more ugly than typical metropolitan class contempt is reserved for the Islamic world.

Like Sam Harris and his fellow travelers, Maher’s ostensibly universal critique of religion has disproportionately leveled its attacks against both Islam and Muslims, often implicitly or explicitly in defense of neoconservative objectives at home and abroad. As FAIR’s Adam Johnson has observed, Maher has thus played a critical role in normalizing Islamophobic prejudices for a liberal audience.

Echoing a sentiment popular in the New Atheist movement, Maher has depicted Islamic culture as uniformly primitive and backwards. Comparing right-wing and Muslim extremists, he once declared “[while] one is herpes the other is cancer.” Channeling the rhetoric of the neofascist right, he has mused about the supposed demographic threat posed by European Muslims and once expressed alarm about the popularity of the name Mohammed in Britain (“Am I a racist to feel that I’m alarmed by that? Because I am. And it’s not because of the race, it’s ’cause of the religion. I don’t have to apologize, do I, for not wanting the Western world to be taken over by Islam in three hundred years?”). He also zealously joined conservative commentators over the case of Ahmed Mohamed, the fourteen-year-old Texas student who was arrested after bringing a homemade clock to school (“It’s not the color of his skin. For the last thirty years, it’s been the one culture that has been blowing **** up over and over again”).

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/09/b...p-islamophobia

And I don't normally link Jacobin, but the quotes there are real.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

And you don't think his castigation and excuses aren't applied to Muslims at large here in the States? You don't think a guy with a platform who shouts 'Actually, Muslims will kill you' isn't doing harm to actual Muslims here in the States, when he's talking to a primarily American audience and saying 'Actually, yeah, you should be scared of them'?







This isn't just criticizing countries for barbaric laws and backwards cultural mores -- which I should point out are not shared by all Muslim countries or peoples. The distinctions are ones /he/ fails to make. Frequently. To his credit, he /has/ actually gone back on this from time to time inthe past, at times, but his hostility and anti-Islam guests are far more frequent.



Understanding what people see when they look at you is important if you ever want to win instead of be 'right'.

You aren’t winning conservatives over. That’s the number one reason liberals lose. They went for Trump. They aren’t ever going for you.

[Tendrin]

You aren’t winning conservatives over. That’s the number one reason liberals lose. They went for Trump. They aren’t ever going for you.

It's not about winning over the diehardiest of diehards, but understanding them and not giving them evidence to convince the persuadable. And if you can soften some of the sharp edges in the process, even better.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/09/b...p-islamophobia

And I don't normally link Jacobin, but the quotes there are real.

Because one has several nations that are basically theocracies doing **** that we wouldn’t even associate with fringe kooky cults in the west, there’s a difference. When the Vatican and states like Alabama are having state sanctioned beheadings in the 2010’s we can act like it’s equal. It’s not it’s a false equivalence. Radical Christians are as bad as fundamentalist Muslims, but one region of the world sanctions one religion in a non marginalized way.

It’s one thing to call all Muslims terrorist. That is bigoted and wrong. It’s another to say Muslim dominated regions of the world have in greater force accepted radical viewpoints and policies that would be considered human rights violations by any meaningful standard. And this isn’t just some one off country. It’s some of the most powerful and influential countries in that part of the world. Yeah there are a lot of good actors and states that are Muslim dominated that do not have that problem. However it’s just flat out undeniable that it exists on a far more mainstream scale in regions dominated by Islam. We don’t do business with places like North Korea for similar reasons.

And honestly religions are just concepts, I don’t think anybody should feel bad shitting on any single one of them. People can choose to leave their religion if they want or start a strand that isn’t as fundamental (as many Muslims do).

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

It's not about winning over the diehardiest of diehards, but understanding them and not giving them evidence to convince the persuadable. And if you can soften some of the sharp edges in the process, even better.

You aren’t going to. The only thing you are going to do is alienate the people who might support you but are skeptical of you because of the olive branch you are extending to them. If someone can be persuaded to be a conservative then they wanted to be anyways. You don’t believe something unless you want to. They want to believe that rich people should have unchecked power and that poor people leach off Soviet and that anything that isn’t in line with the Christian Evangelical doctrine is not the way we should be governed.

It’s not the diegardist of the diehard. They had a choice between about as close to a center right Democrat you could dream up and Donald Trump. The most left leaning of them picked Trump. They did not budge. The only thing the left did was lose support for trying to cater to this mythical unicorn of the reasonable Republican.

[GindyPosts]

I've always felt Maher was more libertarian than liberal.

Which means he's a hipster conservative who says outrageous things to throw people off the trail. I mean, there are conservative atheists who argue it's liberal atheists that are ruining America.

That's why I don't take anything he ever says at face value.

Anyway... Can we talk about Trump's Latest Manuversory?

[worstblogever]

In 2015, 2016, and as well as 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of Tennessee State Senator Todd Gardenhire, who we noted for his reaching office in 2012 by winning a GOP primary in a conservative-leaning district by a mere 40 votes, and since, his utter dedication to mendacity regarding discussions of healthcare. Gardenhire, after voting to block the Medicaid Expansion in Tennessee, lied and said he wasn't being a hypocrite because he wasn't on government insurance himself (he was). He also lied about the Affordable Care Act, claiming it hadn't also, by extension, allowed him to keep his son covered through his own government medical insurance until he was 27 (it did). When confronted on camera by a constituent who demanded he pull himself from his own insurance plans if he was going to deny coverage to a quarter million Tennesseeans, Todd Gardenhire's reasonable response was, "Why don't you give it up, *******?" But back to the lying... Gardenhire falsely claimed in a hearing on abortion that there were more restrictions on men seeking vasectomies these days than women seeking abortions (WHAT?). Gardenhire also voted for Tennessee's attempts to bring back the electric chair, because they're having a hard time getting phenobarbital to perform lethal injections. He has voted to try and block Tennessee from resettling Syrian refugees. Gardenhire called those who wrote protests on the sidewalk outside his office in chalk “Nazis”, which seems pretty hyperbolic given that we’re pretty sure that actual Nazis used far more heinous tactics. Oh, and in 2017 he became the sponsor of an honest-to-goodness “Blue Lives Matter” bill in the Tennessee state legislature.

Gardenhire, now 70, is not up for re-election until 2020. Hopefully, he’ll choose to retire rather than try and run for a third term.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I've always felt Maher was more libertarian than liberal.

Which means he's a hipster conservative who says outrageous things to throw people off the trail. I mean, there are conservative atheists who argue it's liberal atheists that are ruining America.

That's why I don't take anything he ever says at face value.

Anyway... Can we talk about Trump's Latest Manuversory?

He might have some libertarian views when it comes to drugs, but nobody whose familiar with him would ever say he’s in a way shape or form a cobsrvative that’s just ignorance. He hates the Republican Party. He championed Hillary and panicked that Bernie supporters weren’t getting onboard. He does damage control for Democrats all the times

The only libertarian thing about him is his stance on drugs. And I guess maybe because he’s a comedian he’s anti PC, but that’s more of a profession thing.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

He might have some libertarian views when it comes to drugs, but nobody whose familiar with him would ever say he’s in a way shape or form a cobsrvative that’s just ignorance. He hates the Republican Party. He championed Hillary and panicked that Bernie supporters weren’t getting onboard. He does damage control for Democrats all the times

The only libertarian thing about him is his stance on drugs. And I guess maybe because he’s a comedian he’s anti PC, but that’s more of a profession thing.

I don't get HBO (too many streaming channels on my plate as it is), so I've never seen Maher's show. However, from everything I've read and heard, he sounds like a douchebag I wouldn't waste my time watching.

[Tami]

Now here is a side effect of the Trump mess

FUREY: Someone has to say it – it's time to build a wall at Roxham Rd.

Here’s a crazy idea: What if we actually sent the signal to the thousands of people crossing illegally into Canada that they shouldn’t be crossing illegally into Canada?

Take a look at the Google Maps street view of Roxham Rd., the rural road that runs up to the Canada-U.S. border in Champlain, N.Y., and Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Que. It’s a pretty old image, dated September 2011.

There’s a space of about 10 metres of grass that breaks up the two roads, making it clear this is not a throughway. The grass is very lush. None of it has been tamped down, there’s no natural foot path that’s developed from regular traffic. Because, of course, it’s illegal to cross there, either by vehicle or foot.

That was then. It all looks very different now. We’ve since added trailers, tents, chairs, desks and bathrooms. There’s food available on site. What should only be an empty meeting of two dead roads has since turned into a busy border crossing.

It shouldn’t be this way. Go just four kilometres to the east and you’ll find the official Lacolle crossing. Or go to the west just six kilometres and you’ll come to the official Hemmingford crossing. There is no shortage of real border crossings for people looking to enter Canada.

Yet, the more than 7,000 people who have crossed at Roxham Rd. so far this year have avoided these entry points. They know they’ll be turned away from official ports because while Canada accepts refugees from around the world, we don’t accept them from the United States. However due to a loophole in our agreement with the U.S., they can make a claim if they manage to get across the border illegally.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I don't get HBO (too many streaming channels on my plate as it is), so I've never seen Maher's show. However, from everything I've read and heard, he sounds like a douchebag I wouldn't waste my time watching.

And I think that’s the problem. A lot of people who say things like that, haven’t watched his show and just read articles or listened to sound bites.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

And I think that’s the problem. A lot of people who say things like that, haven’t watched his show and just read articles or listened to sound bites.

Doesn't matter. Life will go on for me without watching him. Maher, Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, I don't bother with any of that stuff.

[4saken1]

It’s not punching down at marginalized groups when they are actually predominant groups of not the government in the countries he’s referring to when he makes his statements. This isn’t calling American Muslims terrorists because you are an uncultured dicko. It’s calling out countries that stone adulterous women and behead gay people in the name of their state run religion out for bad behavior.

I've never heard him call American Muslims terrorists. Pretty sure I've heard him call them out because many of them still think that leaving Islam should be punishable by death and women should be forced to wear hijabs. He does provide actual poll numbers to support his views, but can be very rigid in his interpretation.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The Caramel Conspiracist is at it again....

Trump: ‘Criminal deep state’ caught up in ‘major spy scandal’

President Trump on Wednesday lashed out at the "criminal deep state" and continued to press his claim that a spy was embedded within his campaign, dubbing it "spygate."

"Look how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State. They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before!" Trump tweeted.

"What goes around comes around!" he added.