All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Kirby101]

This is hysterical, you post this is GIANT LETTERS:

Washington Post Correction Triggers Furious Debate About Whether False Report Influenced Georgia Senate Race

And then say that this statement being completely wrong has nothing to do with the story.
ROFL

[numberthirty]

Again, they did not have the tape, they were quoting a source who heard it. Not a lie, that is why they corrected it,

You do realize that means that there is not way that the outfits who said that they had looked into it actually could have? No way that they could have established what was actually said.

Right?

Never mind that the actual reality is more like "I Believe That It Was Not A Lie?..."

Because, if you cannot prove that it wasn't someone lying to further an end?

Why should I give them the benefit of that doubt?

[numberthirty]

This is hysterical, you post this is GIANT LETTERS:

Washington Post Correction Triggers Furious Debate About Whether False Report Influenced Georgia Senate Race

And then say that this statement being completely wrong has nothing to do with the story.
ROFL

Negative.

Actually more like...

"Well, correct or not? Doesn't really look like press on this is happening at the direction of FNC..."

[Kirby101]

And the WP should have never written a single story about Watergate then.
Neither should any story quoting a White House source ever be published.

[Kirby101]

Negative.

Actually more like...

"Well, correct or not? Doesn't really look like press on this is happening at the direction of FNC..."

No, its the Washington Post that issued the correction, something Fox or The NY Post rarely does,

You want to say the two different quotes are so different as to mean entirely different things, and shows Trump was not interfering with the election be my quest.
I see them as close to the same and the actual tape shows a crime.

[numberthirty]

And the WP should have never written a single story about Watergate then.
Neither should any story quoting a White House source ever be published.

If a news outfit is(since we now know that this was not the truth...) bending the truth about someone directing another politician to fabricate proof?

Sorry, but there is a pretty basic need to actually hear exactly what was said there.

Certainly not report it as an exact quote that you have factual proof was said.

[numberthirty]

No, its the Washington Post that issued the correction, something Fox or The NY Post rarely does,

You want to say the two different quotes are so different as to mean entirely different things, and shows Trump was not interfering with the election be my quest.

I see them as close to the same and the actual tape shows a crime.

Politely, I am looking at the house across the street.

While you have a pretty tight focus on Trump?

I am pointing to that someone seemingly felt the need to lie in order to pad was already a problematic discussion.

That said?

Yeah. A Direct order(which, apparently, never actually took place?...) to fabricate evidence is different.

[Powerboy]

What I meant was that Carano was a fringe celebrity, not that her opinions were necessarily fringe because, let's get real, it's only in the last few years that transphobia became socially unacceptable, and even then only in some places. The difference now is that conservatives have gotten it in their heads that THEY are the ones rebelling against the system by being hateful and intolerant, and if we are going to push back on that we have to do more than just ineffectually tut-tutting them without addressing the root causes of the problem.

And the thing with the culture war is, conservatives are always going to end up losing and they know this. The homogeneous white suburban Christian nuclear family culture that they are trying to defend never existed to begin with, and indeed much of what they take for granted as core elements of the "American" culture and lifestyle can be attributed to people that they would've considered to be degenerates. What conservatives will never quite grasp is that the things they take for granted all came about through the same kind of social upheaval and cultural clashes that they try so hard to push back against, and that whenever their ideas actually win out, society inevitably stagnates and loses all of its momentum and creativity, creating the exact kind of degeneracy that their values and traditions are supposed to defend against. So even if they win the culture war, they still end up losing anyway.

Absolutely. The times in American history and the cultures that Conservatives seem to perceive as a golden age (say, the 1950s) were built on the backs of people who benefited the least during those times.

Right now, and perhaps always, Conservatism seems this movement that feels the most secure when it exists by denying the basic human freedoms and respect to those they perceive as "other" when any reasonable person would say that this is a situation where compassion costs you nothing and cruelty gains you nothing.

I don't know why your statements above made me think of the Protestant Reformation, which most Conservatives today would consider a good thing but it came about because of a demand for change and changing from the way things "always were" is a Liberal thing. But Conservatives seem to draw the line at anything that goes beyond the way things were when they were growing up or anything that costs them an advantage or, more to the core, anything that changes things. But making the world a better and more fair place is an advantage if you don't always think in terms of your personal individual advantage or if you broaden the definition of "people like you" to mean "people".

[Powerboy]

We're not going to have to explain simple human emotions like basic respect, tolerance, empathy and cruelty to a conservative like they're a new artificial intelligence that's become aware, are we?

YES! [This message expanded to meet the Ten Characters requirement].

[Powerboy]

Your argument is apparently, "Well, I'm willfully ignorant, and won't look up why trans people should have basic human rights and dignity, or why denying them that simple courtesy should affect any potential employment. Also, if nobody does this homework for me to show me how to do the bare minimum to be a decent person with a modicum of tolerance for others, THAT'S ON THEM!"

And we're expected to take this seriously.

One thing that gets me about some of the anti-trans people- and I'm not even talking about the blatantly hateful ones but the ones who say "I'm for trans rights but..." which means they say that and maybe even believe they mean it but then they launch into "Common sense tells us..."- is that they talk and talk about science and research but they never seem to be aware of any science or research that goes against what they already believe.

I'm thinking of people like Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro, maybe J.K. Rowling. A year ago, by default, I had a lot of old ideas about trans people. But all you have to do is look up the best arguments against your point of view, the Scientific Method. How would I falsify what I think? Does it stand up to the best evidence? I wouldn't know if Rogan, Shapiro or Rowling think so because they seem to have no awareness of that evidence. That evidence is readily available but they seem to just stay with their assumptions. To his credit, Shapiro seems to have softened his opinions a bit but still, I see no interest in learning anything that might go against their opinions.

[PwrdOn]

Absolutely. The times in American history and the cultures that Conservatives seem to perceive as a golden age (say, the 1950s) were built on the backs of people who benefited the least during those times.

Right now, and perhaps always, Conservatism seems this movement that feels the most secure when it exists by denying the basic human freedoms and respect to those they perceive as "other" when any reasonable person would say that this is a situation where compassion costs you nothing and cruelty gains you nothing.

I don't know why your statements above made me think of the Protestant Reformation, which most Conservatives today would consider a good thing but it came about because of a demand for change and changing from the way things "always were" is a Liberal thing. But Conservatives seem to draw the line at anything that goes beyond the way things were when they were growing up or anything that costs them an advantage or, more to the core, anything that changes things. But making the world a better and more fair place is an advantage if you don't always think in terms of your personal individual advantage or if you broaden the definition of "people like you" to mean "people".

American conservatism is a fairly strange ideology because America doesn't really have a coherently defined traditional culture to speak of. After all, the 1950s was only a brief era of relative tranquility sandwiched between prolonged periods of social upheaval, and even then the wholesome family friendly image we have was largely a media invention that papered over a lot of troubling underlying realities. The world that Republicans are trying to create would in fact be radically different from anything that people have experienced before, and would likely dissolve in a puddle of its own self-contradictions before long. Curiously, this also means that conservatives are peddling a far more idealistic and unrealistic vision of society than anything liberals have proposed, are we really supposed to believe that we can live in a society where everybody is carrying a concealed weapon and not see mass killings on an epic scale, or that everyone in the country will somehow convert to a single, strictly defined sect of Christianity, even though conservatives can't agree among themselves what true Christianity is?

The thing is, no matter what your personal political leaning is, the world IS changing whether we want it to or not and the best we can do is to try and guide that in a productive direction, not try to force it back into a box that it never fit in to begin with, or to throw up our hands and declare that all of these major problems will somehow solve themselves.

One thing that gets me about some of the anti-trans people- and I'm not even talking about the blatantly hateful ones but the ones who say "I'm for trans rights but..." which means they say that and maybe even believe they mean it but then they launch into "Common sense tells us..."- is that they talk and talk about science and research but they never seem to be aware of any science or research that goes against what they already believe.

I'm thinking of people like Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro, maybe J.K. Rowling. A year ago, by default, I had a lot of old ideas about trans people. But all you have to do is look up the best arguments against your point of view, the Scientific Method. How would I falsify what I think? Does it stand up to the best evidence? I wouldn't know if Rogan, Shapiro or Rowling think so because they seem to have no awareness of that evidence. That evidence is readily available but they seem to just stay with their assumptions. To his credit, Shapiro seems to have softened his opinions a bit but still, I see no interest in learning anything that might go against their opinions.

We really have to be honest with ourselves about this too. Maybe some of you guys grew up in ultra-tolerant environments, but among pretty much everyone I ever knew growing up, transphobia was pretty much ubiquitous and being a "tranny" was the absolute worst thing that any of us could imagine, and anyone who showed the slightest sympathy towards them would get piled on just as badly as if they were trans themselves. It is only very recently that they've gotten any kind of mainstream acceptance, and that takes a while to filter down, especially among people who have very strict ideas about gender roles where trans people have no place. This is not to excuse these attitudes of course, but let's not pretend that 10-15 years ago we were all proudly flying the trans flag because that would just not be the case for most people.

[Tendrin]

We really have to be honest with ourselves about this too. Maybe some of you guys grew up in ultra-tolerant environments, but among pretty much everyone I ever knew growing up, transphobia was pretty much ubiquitous and being a "tranny" was the absolute worst thing that any of us could imagine, and anyone who showed the slightest sympathy towards them would get piled on just as badly as if they were trans themselves. It is only very recently that they've gotten any kind of mainstream acceptance, and that takes a while to filter down, especially among people who have very strict ideas about gender roles where trans people have no place. This is not to excuse these attitudes of course, but let's not pretend that 10-15 years ago we were all proudly flying the trans flag because that would just not be the case for most people.

It's true that the trans-gender rights movement has only now gained broader acceptance, but I think you could argue that a lot of the pushback against trans people specifically now has a lot to do with the broader challenge to gender binary norms, as well as conservatives hungry for a new wedge.

[PwrdOn]

It's true that the trans-gender rights movement has only now gained broader acceptance, but I think you could argue that a lot of the pushback against trans people specifically now has a lot to do with the broader challenge to gender binary norms, as well as conservatives hungry for a new wedge.

Well conservatives picked this hill to die on because they are banking on the general public finding trans people too weird and unrelatable to sympathize with, but I think at this point they have massively overplayed their hand, because directing so much hate at a group of people that is so eminently harmless is just revealing too much of their own insecurities about gender.

[Tami]

Eight People Shot To Death At Atlanta Massage Parlors; Man Arrested

At least eight people were killed and another has been injured in a series of shootings at three spas in the Atlanta, Ga, area on Tuesday and one suspect has been taken into custody, multiple news outlets are reporting.

It's unclear if all three incidents, which happened within hours of one another, are connected.

Cherokee County Sheriff's announced Robert Aaron Long, a 21-year-old white man, was arrested at about 8:30 p.m. local time following a chase that led officers into Crisp County — about three hours away from where the first shootings at a massage parlor, WSB TV reported.

The Associated Press says Long appears to look similar to surveillance images released by Cherokee County deputies.

Jay Baker with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office said when officers arrived at Young's Asian Massage, two victims were already dead and another three were still alive, 11Alive reported. The wounded were rushed to a local hospital, but two have since died. One of the victims was a man, as is a survivor, officials said.

The names of the four victims killed at Young's Asian Massage, as well as that of the person who was injured, have not been released by authorities.

About an hour after that shooting, Atlanta police officers were called to respond to a robbery in progress at Gold Spa. Once there, they discovered the bodies of three women who had been fatally shot. Moments later, officers were called to a another shooting across the street at a different spa — Aromatherapy Spa — one more woman was found dead of a gunshot wound.

Authorities said many of the victims appeared to be women of Asian descent.

[Tendrin]

Well conservatives picked this hill to die on because they are banking on the general public finding trans people too weird and unrelatable to sympathize with, but I think at this point they have massively overplayed their hand, because directing so much hate at a group of people that is so eminently harmless is just revealing too much of their own insecurities about gender.

I wouldn't say that's a sure thing. Look at the UK for an example for how it can go.