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

[Kirby101]

30, I don't think posting the entire article is a good idea. xD

Agreed. We are not Republican voters, we can figure out how to click a link and go to the article if we want to read it.

[Tendrin]

Agreed. We are not Republican voters, we can figure out how to click a link and go to the article if we want to read it.

It's not just that but it probably violates a rule and fair use to reproduce it in its entirety.

[mojotastic]

Well i just read something interesting, Glen Thomas Jacobs, better known as Kane the brother of the Undertake in the WWE, will be running for the mayoral seat of Knox County, Tenesse, as a Republican in 2018, he actually has described himself as a libertarian.

That, is weird but interesting.

[mojotastic]

http://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/2...hett/97394128/

Though the election to replace term-limited Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett is more than a year away, potential candidates are lining up.

The list so far includes a professional wrestling champion, a radio personality, a term-limited sheriff, a longtime county commissioner, and a man who has mostly voted Republican but claims the Democratic party.

The Knox County primary is May 1, 2018, and Election Day is Aug. 2, 2018. In a county that overwhelmingly votes Republican, expect to see the mayor's race decided in the primary.

Republican Burchett was unopposed in 2014, and won in 2010 by a nearly 4-to-1 margin. Before him, GOP Mayor Mike Ragsdale was unopposed in the 2006 general election, after edging Steve Hall in the primary.

Many Republicans have expressed interest in the mayor's seat. One has already announced his intentions.

At-large Knox County Commissioner Bob Thomas is well-known in the county. For years he hosted the "Ed and Bob Show" on WNOX-FM with fellow at-large commissioner Ed Brantley. Both were elected to their first terms in 2014; they've continued the show as they tour the county in monthly constituent meetings.Thomas is expected to have Brantley as a senior staffer in his administration should Thomas be elected in 2018.

Be ready to hear Thomas' radio jingle in the coming months, too.

Thomas said he plans to raise funds in monthly events. That's why he filed his treasurer form and started campaigning, he said.

"We just had to be able to accept funds," Thomas said.

"And I was like, 'I can't take any money'," he said, referring to state election rules requiring a treasurer be in place before a candidate can accept donations.


The other candidate who announced his aim for mayor is Tracy Clough. He filed his treasurer information as a Democrat, he said, but added that he's mostly voted for Republicans. That included a ballot for President Donald Trump in 2016.

"I went ahead and went with the Democratic party because there was less resistance with them," he said.

Democrats here know very little about Clough. And outgoing Democratic party Chairman Cameron Brooks said that the party doesn't have any candidates just yet.

"I have talked to people," Brooks said, "but nobody's come forward just yet."

That leaves a raft of potential candidates on the Republican side.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Agreed. We are not Republican voters, we can figure out how to click a link and go to the article if we want to read it.

Well put, Kirby. Well put.

[Mister Mets]

In short most republicans are okay with how shitty he is as a person because they are shitty themselves. Gotcha.

When did I say that?

Mets, we could argue this 'til the proverbial cows come home, but anyone with two eyes and a brain can see what the Republicans are doing with regards to those issues as we speak -- and "protection" isn't involved at all.

Like I said before -- there's not much else to say to you on this issue, and let's leave it at that.

These aren't disputes limited to being between Trump VS Hillary, but between pretty much any Democrat and any Republican. I think that category error has to be avoided.

In the periphery of the opioid crisis...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...aving-medicine

Interesting article on a messy situation involving drug enforcement (Is this readily available substance harmful? Is it helping people with a worse problem?) But what are your thoughts on it?

Meanwhile, Mets keeps arguing that Republican voters HAD to vote for Trump because Hillary didn't reach out to them enough... Why is it that much more appealing to Democrats to vote 3rd party or stay home than Republicans when the candidate isn't perfect enough?

Most liberal voters backed Hillary. If you look at third party candidates, the ticket with two former Republican Governors did three times better than the green party ticket. Another half of a percent voted for two Republican staffers with ballot access to 11 states.

[Mister Mets]

Milquetoast Democrats need to wise up. The more of us who go left, and turn Indie, it's gonna hurt long term.



The actual Poll

http://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-cont...ent-Events.pdf

There is some indication that Democrats are moving left pretty sharply, although it seems to be more of a post-election change. The Atlantic just had a piece on this.

Two decades ago, or even one decade ago, most Americans had a mix of conservative and liberal views. That’s increasingly not the case. Today, 97 percent of Democrats are more liberal than the median Republican—an even more extreme concentration (by a hair) than across the aisle, where 95 percent of Republicans are more conservative than the median Democrat.

Digging into Pew’s numbers, something notable emerges. Starting around 2015, views among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters (I’ll just refer to this group as Democrats from here on out) tend to change sharply. For example, here are Democrats’ view on immigrants, perhaps Trump’s No. 1 target on the



My colleague Peter Beinart has written about how the Democratic Party’s views on immigration went from heterogeneous to peculiarly single-mindedly in favor, but this chart illustrates just how dramatically the trend accelerated from 2015 on, when Trump came out slurring Mexicans as rapists and criminals. Democrats reacted to Trump’s rhetoric by sprinting in the opposite direction.

Or how about the idea that discrimination holds African Americans back? The discourse around “white supremacy” has gotten louder in recent years, along with a focus on police violence against people of color, but Trump was also busy with racial dogwhistles. Look at the sharp curve in Democratic opinions:



How about the value of diplomacy? It had risen somewhat since 1994 overall, but from 2015 to present, the trend gets steeper, just as Trump dismissed diplomatic methods:



These are merely the most drastic examples, but there are several other cases where Democratic sentiment turns dramatically around 2015.

These results don’t really falsify the argument that Ornstein, Mann, and other pursued. For one thing, not everything they identified as a problem hinged on polarization per se; norms are also an essential part of the equation, and there’s no Democratic equivalent of Donald Trump. The asymmetric polarizers also focused most of their attention not on the general public but on the way that legislators voted, and this data is about the general populace.

[Mecegirl]

When did I say that?

That is what your explanations boil down to.

[TheInvisibleMan]

I will not be voting for any 80 year old white guys (Biden, Bernie) or billionaires in 2020 (sod off Zuckerberg or Cuban)

[Mecegirl]

I will not be voting for any 80 year old white guys (Biden, Bernie) or billionaires in 2020 (sod off Zuckerberg or Cuban)

Amen to that. Hell I'm somewhat wary of 60 and 70 year olds. About the only person listed who I could go for is Biden but that may be actually because he had the sense to stay home with his family after the loss of his son. I already had a high opinion of him but that amped it up a lot. I doubt he will run though. He will have too much mess to clean up.

And I think the idea of a billionaire(or more specifically a billionaire without experience in politics.) is just a bad idea. Our political system has too many moving parts. It can't be run like a business. Outside of that larger business aren't always good for their employees. The profits get stuck at the top.

[Malvolio]

Astros Player Banned From 5 Games For Racist ‘Slant-Eye’ Gesture

Yuli Gurriel apparently made the gesture in reference to Yu Darvish, who was born in Japan. Five games at the start of NEXT season is bullshit! That assclown should've been suspended for the rest of the Fall Classic. While I originally didn't have a horse in this race, now I'm rooting for the Dodgers to win it all! FUCK the Astros!

**********

Here's the problem I have with punishing Gurriel. Darvish himself came out and said that we should all more or less calm down about it. So when white sports journalists are outraged on the behalf of a Japanese athlete who isn't quite that outraged himself, it smacks of paternalism.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Here's the problem I have with punishing Gurriel. Darvish himself came out and said that we should all more or less calm down about it. So when white sports journalists are outraged on the behalf of a Japanese athlete who isn't quite that outraged himself, it smacks of paternalism.

Maybe it does, but, as a black man, I have ZERO tolerance for racial insults, and people should pay the price for committing them, and I don't mean some deferred nonsense like with Gurriel. And seeing that Gurriel is himself a minority, he should know better than to make fun of another race. That annoys me even more.

[SquirrelMan]

So...

Nina Turner.

Nina.
Ms Turner.
Not Tina, Nina.

Nee Nee.

Republican plant, or so full of irrational hatred for Hillary Clinton that she is willing to keep Trump in office longer buy supporting his talking points?



In the end, does it make a difference which one she is?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

i wonder if anyone demanded that Turner provide facts to back up her ridiculous assertion other than she heard it on Faux News?

[PaulBullion]

Trump's net approval rating dropped from minus 9 to minus 20 in just one month in the conservative leaning NBCNews/WSJ poll.

Once the ridiculous outlier poll from Emerson (-6) drops out of the average (it's currently the oldest poll counting), Trump will be at his lowest approval rating ever in the poll of polls at RCP. He's damn close already.