All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[JackDaw]

Without getting too in depth, a friend was almost killed by a pit bull when they were a kid. The dog's owners were good owners and seemingly neighbors of my friend's family. My friend was even friendly with the dog right up until the attack.

So, I'm not seeing "Pretty Clear Cut..."

If other folks do, I can just politely agree to disagree.

Edit:

Just to clarify, I read in what is in blue to be the case. Don't believe that I know enough of the story to say for absolutely certain.

Its usually down to owners and way dog has been trained.

But...its surely beyond obvious that some breeds are inherently more dangerous than others...sometimes just because of size (I "fancy my chances" of fending off a unpleasant Chihuahua rather more than a Rottweiler), but also breed characteristics do vary.

I used to work for Post Office...and saw stats quite often on league tables for which type of dogs featured in attacks on Post men and women... some breeds featured more, year in, year out.

Some dog owners.... just can't accept there are problems with any dog. And most certainly think there's no problem with their particular dog. I do a lot of walking and hear the same old excuses trotted out many times, stuff like "He's just being playful..."

Of course...many years ago when we had a family dog..she was perfect...so I know I am no different to any dog owner when push comes to shove.

[Tami]

Yes the wealthy liberal whose massive company paid no federal taxes and just recently had a bidding war trying to extort cities for a sweetheart deal to the point where it had to pull out of NY because of opposition isn’t “greedy”

I said "As Greedy", at least they aren't taking it to same extremes as Conservative Wealth.

[aja_christopher]

You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. Trust me, they'll keep denying it. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a certain conservative deny it on these very boards by the end of the day.

"Why America still can't face up to Trump's racism"

"The Unite the Right riot in Charlottesville in 2017 was the largest eruption of white supremacist violence in the United States in a generation, if only the most visible of thousands of incidents that followed the 2016 election. August 11 and 12, 2019, mark the second anniversary of the violence, which claimed the life of the anti-racist protestor Heather Heyer and injured dozens of others. Two police officers died in a helicopter crash.

That weekend in August 2017 was also the moment when the so-called alt-right reached a temporary peak of popularity; in the wake of public outrage, lawsuits and even a few FBI investigations, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups fell into disarray, and the most vocal backer of the movement, Breitbart News, went into a swift decline. These groups have yet to stage a similar event—although the terror itself has continued, carried out primarily by radicalized individuals, like the gunmen in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting or the El Paso massacre last weekend.

The partial disintegration and discrediting of the alt-right was one positive outcome of Charlottesville; there have been others. The violence of August 2017 helped galvanize a broad anti-racist political coalition that has achieved some notable successes in the past two years, from the 2018 opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the first monument to lynching victims, in Alabama, to the election of politicians and district attorneys -- like Philadelphia's Larry Krasner -- who are committed to ending mass incarceration, to the first-ever Congressional hearings on reparations for slavery this past June.

The real news, unfortunately, is what hasn't happened: nothing has stopped the march of Donald Trump's white supremacist policies and rhetoric, which have become so folded into the reality of everyday waking life in the United States that Americans -- even the most politically savvy or left-leaning -- are constantly in danger of accepting them as our purported new normal. Trump's latest attacks on four Congresswomen, and his repetition of age-old racist tropes about crime and decay in Baltimore, have only cemented a familiar pattern: commentators on the left and in the center describe his behavior, accurately, as racist, while Republicans, save a few outliers, act as if his statements never happened.

Any observer of US politics can tell you why: Trump is speaking to his base -- roughly a third of the American electorate -- who respond favorably to racist incitement and the outrage it generates on the other side of the political spectrum.

As a white writer who writes extensively about race, I've been observing this situation closely since well before the 2016 election, and I've been dismayed by the unwillingness of so many of my white peers -- people who are personally horrified by Trump and his success -- to come to grips with what is happening in our country.

Among white centrist Democrats and liberals there's been a great deal of talk about the importance of civility and free expression, and an explosion of anxiety about how the Democratic Party has lost touch with a monolithic entity called "the white working class." There's been much less discussion in the national press about the underlying political transformation that made Trump's election possible: the rapid growth in racial resentment and white nationalism as primary issues -- even single issues -- among conservative and right-leaning white Americans."

[aja_christopher]

(Cont'd)

"How did this happen?

In time this may become one of those questions historians ponder for decades, like the exact origins of the Third Reich, or the improbable success of British imperialism in India. My own theory has to do with space and the American landscape: how the growth of suburbs, the ever-creeping sprawl outside American cities, has managed to keep white and nonwhite Americans physically and psychically apart, so that many white Americans my age (born in the 1970s) have grown up in what I call white dreamtime -- never having to think seriously about racism or witness its effects.

For conservative white Americans, this meant that President Obama's election, and the widespread public dialogue about race that followed it, felt like an existential threat -- preparing them to rally around Trump with the intensity that propelled him to an unlikely victory.

But this state of dreamy suspension -- what James Baldwin once called the "sunlit playpen" of white American existence -- also explains why so many of my white liberal compatriots are not able to grasp that racism has become a national emergency, undoing the social fabric and the democratic institutions of the United States. They may be seriously alarmed about Trump's assault on civil rights, outraged about his immigration policies, and willing to call him racist, but they're still hanging on to the belief that one day -- in 2020, or at worst, 2024 -- all this will be over, and the US will have come back to its senses. This is especially true among the kind of white people I spend most of my time with -- professionals, academics, businesspeople -- whose lives haven't gotten measurably worse in the last two years, and in some cases, because of the booming stock market, have improved. If you travel in those circles, it's still possible to believe life is good.

Many of Trump's supporters, on the other hand, are committed to a radical transformation of American society and politics from which there is no going back. They either do not believe, or do not care, that the president was elected in part through the aid of Russian intelligence. They don't mind that he regularly makes remarks about staying in office after his two terms are over. In short, these voters are willing to sacrifice (or at best, make light of) the foundations of American society (democracy, free expression, the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, voting rights for all citizens) in order to keep a white supremacist in power.

Ailish Hopper, a professor of peace studies at Goucher College, recently told me that the United States is devolving into a state of "national ethnic conflict," which puts it on the same footing as 1990s Yugoslavia or Northern Ireland in the 1970s. In other words, we are in the early stages of either an authoritarian consolidation of power or a civil war, or both.

Many voters in Trump's party -- what the GOP has become -- embrace these possibilities. Most Democrats and liberals I know don't want to admit they exist. They're not willing to accept the truth that is staring us all in the face: explicit white nationalist sentiments, like telling an African American to "go back where you came from," actually encourages Trump supporters' embrace of their man. Polls taken after those racist comments showed that approval for Trump among Republicans went up by as much as 5%.

Charlottesville should have been a moral turning point for the right to reject racist politics, but it wasn't. The right has united around a white supremacist president, and the rest of us -- the anti-racist majority -- need to do everything in our power to fight back."

https://lite.cnn.io/en/article/h_79b...1cdc21d2d54418

[babyblob]

Normally I stay away from threads like this. As I come here to relax and news threads dont fill that role. But something is really bugging me. And that is Jeffrey Epstein.

I was in prison for four years. In hat four years we had three suicides. Non of those inmate got an Fbi probe into their deaths. No officer was ever fired or placed on leave. In one case one of the inmate told the officer he was going to kill himself. The officer just laughed and told him to go away. That night the inmate hung himself. He was back at work the next day. Why all the over the top investigation into his death? I know what he did was horrible and he needed to face justice. I mean congress is calling for a probe. What is it about this guy that makes him so special. He is not the first human trafficker to die in prison. Does it have to do with the fact that he was so rich that he is getting treated special? It really upsets me to see this man getting so much special treatment.

[Mister Mets]

Normally I stay away from threads like this. As I come here to relax and news threads dont fill that role. But something is really bugging me. And that is Jeffrey Epstein.

I was in prison for four years. In hat four years we had three suicides. Non of those inmate got an Fbi probe into their deaths. No officer was ever fired or placed on leave. In one case one of the inmate told the officer he was going to kill himself. The officer just laughed and told him to go away. That night the inmate hung himself. He was back at work the next day. Why all the over the top investigation into his death? I know what he did was horrible and he needed to face justice. I mean congress is calling for a probe. What is it about this guy that makes him so special. He is not the first human trafficker to die in prison. Does it have to do with the fact that he was so rich that he is getting treated special? It really upsets me to see this man getting so much special treatment.

He's high-profile, so that means there's going to be lot more scrutiny than usual. It's not about the wealth, as much as it is the idea that he has dirt on important people on both sides of politics.

[Kusanagi]

Normally I stay away from threads like this. As I come here to relax and news threads dont fill that role. But something is really bugging me. And that is Jeffrey Epstein.

I was in prison for four years. In hat four years we had three suicides. Non of those inmate got an Fbi probe into their deaths. No officer was ever fired or placed on leave. In one case one of the inmate told the officer he was going to kill himself. The officer just laughed and told him to go away. That night the inmate hung himself. He was back at work the next day. Why all the over the top investigation into his death? I know what he did was horrible and he needed to face justice. I mean congress is calling for a probe. What is it about this guy that makes him so special. He is not the first human trafficker to die in prison. Does it have to do with the fact that he was so rich that he is getting treated special? It really upsets me to see this man getting so much special treatment.

It's because he's so rich, and had connections to not only other very rich individuals, but also the current and former presidents, the british royal family and so on. It's why there's so much attention, and so much conspiracy theory, exploding from his death.

[Jim Kelly]

I've been asking myself why Donald Trump is bothering to run for a second term. He's gotten what he wanted. He's not going to be thrown out of office before this term ends--and after this term is over, he can sit back and make millions from having been the President. And he won't have to even visit the White House again--he can go back to the golden thrones he loves to occupy and play golf at his private links. There's nothing personally for him to gain by continuing as president and it could just get worse for him and become even more of a chore than it already is. So why is he doing something that puts him in so much danger?

But I've realized, he's been backed into a corner, with no way out. If he leaves the White House, he has good reason to fear that there will be a concerted effort to put him in prison and to go after all his enterprises. Holding the presidency, for as long as he can, might be the only way he can hope to survive. And he might owe so many favours to others, that he can't get out. He's actually trapped in the White House and has to carry on with the charade, even if it kills him. Which it probably will.

[Tami]

I've been asking myself why Donald Trump is bothering to run for a second term. He's gotten what he wanted. He's not going to be thrown out of office before this term ends--and after this term is over, he can sit back and make millions from having been the President. And he won't have to even visit the White House again--he can go back to the golden thrones he loves to occupy and play golf at his private links. There's nothing personally for him to gain by continuing as president and it could just get worse for him and become even more of a chore than it already is. So why is he doing something that puts him in so much danger?

But I've realized, he's been backed into a corner, with no way out. If he leaves the White House, he has good reason to fear that there will be a concerted effort to put him in prison and to go after all his enterprises. Holding the presidency, for as long as he can, might be the only way he can hope to survive. And he might owe so many favours to others, that he can't get out. He's actually trapped in the White House and has to carry on with the charade, even if it kills him. Which it probably will.

That's pretty much about it as I, and others I've read, see it. If his tax returns see the light of day, it's possible (not definite) that this will be made more clearer. At the very least, the potential criminal charges against him on both the State and Federal Levels could destroy him.

Though he has also apparently also deluded himself into thinking that 'Everyone loves him'. Thing is, he doesn't have the cult of personality that other dictators do. At most his isi very small, ev eryone else is just using him for their own reasons.

McConnell and the Federalist Society just want him as a tool for filling up the courts with ultra conservative judges
Evangelicals just want him as a tool for overturning Roe v Wade
The Wealthy 1% are using him as a tool to get even wealthier
Putin and his cabal of Russian supporters are using Trump as a tool to disrupt American Democracy and get us out of the way while they seek control over other countries
and so on

[Tami]

‘The Family’: The Evangelicals Trying to Turn America Into a Theocracy

According to The Family, Netflix’s unnerving new five-part documentary series, the most powerful club in America is a consortium of religious true believers bound by their fanatical love of Jesus. It has no official membership and requires no dues. It works overtime to avoid publicity. Its ranks are comprised of both Republicans and Democrats.

And it seeks the eradication of the separation of church and state in its quest for its most coveted asset: power.

Available now on the streaming service, Jesse Moss’sminiseries is an adaptation-cum-expansion of The Family (2008) and C Street (2010), two nonfiction books penned by Jeff Sharlet, whose experiences with “the Family”—often also referred to as “the Fellowship”—provide a window onto an invisible world, and movement, hiding in plain sight.

As Sharlet himself explains at length, the Family is a coalition of elite evangelical Christian men who hold positions of governmental authority both here and abroad. They organize the annual National Prayer Breakfast that’s hosted every American president since Eisenhower, and they establish and run Bible-study groups around the country. Driven by the belief that they’re God’s “chosen,” hand-selected by Him to lead, they spread the gospel far and wide—and, in doing so, shore up political and social influence right beneath the population’s nose.

Their unabashed goal is a global Christian theocracy—no morality, or democracy, required.

Think of it as a Christian mafia endeavoring to create a global theocracy under Jesus, with grassroots enclaves around the USA (and planet) and a commitment to conducting “non-consensual diplomacy” with tyrants—by elected American officials who claim their overseas efforts are just “Jesus stuff”—as part of a “worldwide spiritual offensive.” With a depth and breadth that amplifies its terrifying conclusions, The Family lifts the veil of secrecy surrounding this shadowy outfit, and what it reveals is a new world order that’s not only on its way—it’s already here.

[Michael Watkins]

I've been asking myself why Donald Trump is bothering to run for a second term.

do you think he'll accept being President for less time than Barrack Obama? he only ran because Obama made fun of him.

[Jim Kelly]

do you think he'll accept being President for less time than Barrack Obama? he only ran because Obama made fun of him.

I think if there was a very real chance that he could lose--and if it was up to him--he would prefer to say he was leaving the office because he had better things to do. He hates to lose. Better to go out on top than to go out a loser. But I don't think it's up to hm anymore--the only way out is to go through.

[Michael Watkins]

I think if there was a very real chance that he could lose--

there isn't. he would quickly deflect to "they cheated." he was saying it before the first election; that everything was rigged and that the democrats planned to steal the election from him. that's part of his pathology. he can't accept loss. so he won't lose. i half expect him to try to rig the election as well; outside of the gerrymandering and russianbot stuff.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I've been asking myself why Donald Trump is bothering to run for a second term. He's gotten what he wanted. He's not going to be thrown out of office before this term ends--and after this term is over, he can sit back and make millions from having been the President. And he won't have to even visit the White House again--he can go back to the golden thrones he loves to occupy and play golf at his private links. There's nothing personally for him to gain by continuing as president and it could just get worse for him and become even more of a chore than it already is. So why is he doing something that puts him in so much danger?

But I've realized, he's been backed into a corner, with no way out. If he leaves the White House, he has good reason to fear that there will be a concerted effort to put him in prison and to go after all his enterprises. Holding the presidency, for as long as he can, might be the only way he can hope to survive. And he might owe so many favours to others, that he can't get out. He's actually trapped in the White House and has to carry on with the charade, even if it kills him. Which it probably will.

Part of why Trump is running for a second term comes down to simple ego: He's allegedly the most powerful man on the planet, he's certainly the most talked about, almost 24/7. Love him or hate him (there's no middle ground whatsoever), there's no avoiding Trump, he makes damn sure of that. For an out of control narcissist like Trump, being President of the United States is the ultimate high, one he's loath to give up under any circumstances. As for the legal entanglements, yeah, staying in the Oval Office probably is the only way Trump can avoid that inevitable trial on his dirty dealings and, more than likely, prison. I've already said that the one thing in the world Trump fears more than losing his wealth or celebrity, is losing his freedom, I have little doubt he can't handle incarceration, not even if he does time in a country club lockup for white collar criminals, put him behind bars, and he'll off himself like Jeffrey Epstein in short order. That's why Trump will do all he can to stay in office, whether it's by hook or crook, in his warped mind, his very life depends on it.

[wjowski]

Wealthy Liberals aren't as paranoid or greedy about their cash as are Wealthy Conservatives.

Bezos is no liberal.