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

[worstblogever]

Child porn found on phone of Pennsylvania state Sen. Mike Folmer: prosecutor

Has WBE put this piece of work in the queue?

He's kind of a lock for it, really.

[SquirrelMan]

Child porn found on phone of Pennsylvania state Sen. Mike Folmer: prosecutor

A lot of the articles I see about that are not even mentioning his party affiliation, like here:

He is, of course, a family values Republican who taught Sunday school.

However, every single story about scummy Ed Buck finally getting arrested leads with him being a "Democratic Donor." He never even ran for any office.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

A lot of the articles I see about that are not even mentioning his party affiliation, like here:

He is, of course, a family values Republican who taught Sunday school.

However, every single story about scummy Ed Buck finally getting arrested leads with him being a "Democratic Donor." He never even ran for any office.

Hmm! It's almost like the media doesn't want the public to know what sort of perverted, degenerate scumbags Republicans are. But, hey, both sides are just as bad, yo!

[Tami]

Trump, Carson reject California's request for federal help on homelessness

At the same time that President Donald Trump and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson are promising federal action to intervene in homelessness in California, they're rejecting requests from local officials for help and escalating the blame game between the federal government and the state.

California Gov. Newsom and local leaders. including mayors of the state's 13 largest cities. wrote to Trump this week to ask for more federal funds to expand programs like housing vouchers that help people get off the street into stable living situations.

“We can all agree that homelessness is a national crisis decades in the making that demands action at every level of government – local, state, and federal. In California, state and local governments have ramped up action to lift families out of poverty by investing in behavioral health, affordable housing, and other homeless programs,” they wrote. “In contrast, your Administration has proposed significant cuts to public housing and programs like the Community Development Block Grant.”

The Trump administration has rejected that request.

[GindyPosts]

Trump, Carson reject California's request for federal help on homelessness

Remember that one nutjob user who talked about how Trump was gonna be the best thing for the downtrodden after years of Democrats taking advantage of them, particularly in California?

[worstblogever]

Remember that one nutjob user who talked about how Trump was gonna be the best thing for the downtrodden after years of Democrats taking advantage of them, particularly in California?

We actually might be seeing less support for Trump because a lot of his die-hard supporters are literally dying hard, still waiting for him to give them that hand up that will never come.

[worstblogever]

Also, Trump has returned to trying to get Rep. Ilhan Omar assassinated by an Islamophobe, he just retweeted someone claiming that she "partied" on 9/11.

[BeastieRunner]

Why doesn't Twitter just take his account away?

[JCAll]

Why doesn't Twitter just take his account away?

Money? Trump drives traffic. Before Trump Twitter was just another social media platform, now it's the place where the President speaks.

[Nine Crocodile]

Money? Trump drives traffic. Before Trump Twitter was just another social media platform, now it's the place where the President makes speaks.

Very likely. I also suspect they fear the major backlash that would probably occur if they did anything.

[numberthirty]

Child porn found on phone of Pennsylvania state Sen. Mike Folmer: prosecutor

YORK, Pa. – A Pennsylvania state senator has been charged with possession of child pornography, according to the state attorney general’s office.

Republican state Sen. Mike Folmer, 63, represents parts of Lebanon, Dauphin and York counties.

According to a release from Attorney General Josh Shapiro's office, Folmer was arrested Tuesday night after images of child pornography were found on his phone when police searched his home after obtaining a warrant.

The investigation began after a tip reported that an individual had uploaded an image of child pornography to the social networking website Tumblr.

Folmer was charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and criminal use of a communication facility, Shapiro said in the release.

A lot of the articles I see about that are not even mentioning his party affiliation, like here:

He is, of course, a family values Republican who taught Sunday school.

However, every single story about scummy Ed Buck finally getting arrested leads with him being a "Democratic Donor." He never even ran for any office.

When it comes to this subject and affiliation...

The only reason we even know about the images on Folmer's phone or Buck is because they slipped up.

While I don't disagree about that there's a slant, I'd imagine that a magic spell where we could see a skull and crossbones on the shirt of every person that has the sort of thing Folmer had on his phone might net quite a few folks from every corner of political affiliation.

Probably be enough to make you just want to walk out into traffic.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Very likely. I also suspect they fear the major backlash that would probably occur if they did anything.

Which, by the way, is the same reason Republicans won’t speak out against him, not even when he says or does something stupid and/or dangerous, like with Ms. Ilhan. They fear backlash as Trump can literally end careers with a tweet.

[Tendrin]

Open borders is what the US used to have...for white people.

No surprise that immigration laws became much stricter when brown people started moving in.

US immigration policy comes down to keeping America a white majority country.

I mean, you ain't wrong.

[Mister Mets]

Not putting children in cages to start with. I can't believe that has to be debated. But let's side step, 1,2,3....

But what alternative are you suggesting?

Should undocumented families get citizenship? Should they be allowed to stay in some sort of second-class status? Should parents and kids be deported together?

I don't think we need a detailed immigration policy to someone's satisfaction just for saying that we think murdering people through the current one is bad. There are several good versions of progressive immigration reform out there, none of which include the magic phrase nor are in fact 'open borders', to which are probably better than the current system.

Some policies have bad consequences but remain the least bad option. So we do need a sense of the alternatives in order to determine whether an existing policy could be replaced without getting something worse.

This is a failing on both sides. Democrats decry Republican immigration policy without being clear about their own plans (IE- What does comprehensive reform mean? What limits should there be on legal immigration?) Republicans kept complaining about Obamacare, but didn't have an alternative they could all support.

Whatever it started as, I asked what your personal perspective was in this case. E: To clarify, this case being whether the decrease in Abortions brought about by the Trump Administration is worth the loss of healthcare provided by Planned parenthood and the push to uninsure many millions of Americans and the deaths which it will cause or contribute to.

The chain of posts was about other people's views and how they might interpret numbers. With those numbers, the tradeoff in a reduction in abortions makes up for an increase in deaths, although the latter number is probably exaggerated.

We probably greatly exaggerate the healthcare services provided by Planned Parenthood, as well as the effects of government funding on the organization. Fundraising has been brisk since Trump's election, and their biggest problems seem to be own-goals, like the firing of their president Leana Wen, and the ensuing legal fight.

The one you obviously paid no attention to last week that was being discussed in a Congressional hearing.





So, yeah, GREAT PRO-LIFE PARTY YOU GOT THERE, Mets. Keep fretting about zygotes while your party gets actual children killed.

I was asking what policy you would explicitly advocate for.

There isn’t a proposal for ‘an increase in abortions among African-American women’. The proposal is to take away their options for legal abortions together with other affordable healthcare options:


Via the CDC link you provided, if you look at the section titled ‘Preventing Pregnancy-Related Deaths’ you’ll find the following:

(emphasis added)

Also note that the section also says:


So if ‘half of these [pregnancy-related] deaths are preventable’ and the healthcare options that can (/already do) help reduce that are removed or limited, then it stands to reason that pregnancy-related deaths will increase and, with ‘pregnancy-related deaths for black women’ already being ‘3 to 4 times higher than those of white women’, there will be more pregnant black women dying.

There are around 700 pregnancy/childbirth related deaths a year. As you outlined and linked to before, more black women in the US have abortions (for a host of different reasons) than white women. However, more black women die during pregnancy and childbirth than white women. So, if you take away the healthcare options that can help in black women living through pregnancy and childbirth you increase the chances of black women dying during pregnancy and childbirth.

In balance, there are effectively no lives being saved by removing healthcare options.

The increase in abortion rates is in comparison to the levels of abortion that conservative Republicans want (which varies from none at all to special exceptions like rape, incest and an elected official's pregnant mistress.)

The phrasing in the original post which got you to ask me to explain my understanding was "It seems odd to suggest that Republicans want more black and brown babies as part of a racist strategy" so that's the context of our discussion.

With less abortions, there would be more black babies. Reducing access to abortion does ultimately reduce abortion rates, even if there are all sorts of other consequences. However, the number of prevented abortions is almost going to be more than 700 an year (this assumes that every pregnancy/ childbirth related death is avoidable with Democrats in total control of government which is probably not the case) so it will still result in more black lives.

Hmm! It's almost like the media doesn't want the public to know what sort of perverted, degenerate scumbags Republicans are. But, hey, both sides are just as bad, yo!

Most media sources link the pervert's party, including the first article posted in this thread.

Why doesn't Twitter just take his account away?

They don't want the fight about Silicon Valley censoring a Republican President.

There would also be a lot of ensuing arguments of whataboutism. I'd also imagine that a few partisan liberals at twitter would prefer the President be less disciplined in his communication as that increases the chances of Democrats winning the next election.

[numberthirty]

I mean, you ain't wrong.

I don't know about all that.

It's probably more "Creates A Pool Of Undocumented Readily Exploitable Labor..." when you get down to the actual "Why?" those laws exist.