Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Cancer]

Meanwhile, front-runner in Argentina's election wants to "privatize science"

 

I.e., end public funding for it.  Even though Argentina is near the bottom in GDP percentage spent on science world-wide.

 

Go ahead.  Eat your seed corn.  Just do it.  You know you want to.

[Pattern Ghost]

I wonder what took this so, so very long:

 

 

Of course, it's "breaking news," so that means "take with a grain of salt."

 

Edit: Also, is that NY Representative wearing a freaking tracksuit top under his suit jacket? They need to get on that dress code ASAP.

Edited October 27, 2023 by Pattern Ghost

[unclevlad]

Because the SERIOUS!!! charges are more recent...and their support (underlings pleading guilty) is robust...that's recent.  The charges were filed, by his speech, on October 10th, IIRC...after the coup.  Basically nothing can be taken up when there's no Speaker...that was where the notion of formally allowing McHenry to conduct normal business drew from.  

[Cygnia]

 

[Lord Liaden]

As long as the penalties for violating many laws are just fines, they amount to licensing fees for rich people to do whatever they want.

[Starlord]

16 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

I wonder what took this so, so very long:

 

 

Of course, it's "breaking news," so that means "take with a grain of salt."

 

Edit: Also, is that NY Representative wearing a freaking tracksuit top under his suit jacket? They need to get on that dress code ASAP.

 

We tracked down Mr. Santos in the NY Knicks locker room after he had just finished scoring 8 touchdowns and 3 home runs on NBA opening night.  When asked for comment, Mr. Santos replied "I'm actually a senator, not a congressman, so they cant expel me from the House."

[csyphrett]

Santos had cover from McCarthy for a long time. As soon as McCarthy was dismissed, a lot of the other people from NY posted up a resolution to expel Santos. They were trying to put it up so the new speaker would help get rid of him. And then he was indicted again but the crimes were fraud and theft.

CES 

[DShomshak]

On 10/26/2023 at 3:38 PM, Cancer said:

Meanwhile, front-runner in Argentina's election wants to "privatize science"

 

I.e., end public funding for it.  Even though Argentina is near the bottom in GDP percentage spent on science world-wide.

 

Go ahead.  Eat your seed corn.  Just do it.  You know you want to.

I just checked, and Argentina has defaulted on its sovereign debt 9 times since its independence in 1816, 3 times in the last two decades alone. Nigh-suicidal economic mismanagement isn't an aberration, it's tradition. Making it even more difficult for a sci/tech sector to develop, moving away from the boom-and-bust economy based on commodity export, seems quite in character.

 

They've been eating the seed corn for *decades.* But the IMF keeps supplying more seed corn in the form of debt restructuring and making more loans. As the third largest economy in Latin America (after Brazil and Mexico), I suppose Argentina is "too big to fail."

 

The same sources say that 100 years ago, Argentina was in the top 10 countries for per capita GDP. Which shows that any country can ruin itself with sufficiantly bad leadership, maintained long enough.

 

Dean Shomshak

[unclevlad]

On 10/26/2023 at 7:13 AM, Cygnia said:

Another mass shooting, this time in Maine.

 

Manhunt underway after Maine mass shootings

 

NYT reports the body of the shooter has been found, at a recycling center where he used to work.  Initial report:  self-inflicted gunshot wounds.  Time of death not determined at this point, altho there's a press conference that may give more details.

 

The big point, of course, being that the ******** is dead.

[tkdguy]

On 10/25/2023 at 8:15 PM, Lord Liaden said:

Mind you, I don't think that matters to that faction of the GOP. All they seem to want is to posture for their base of support, apparently under the assumption that socia-media Likes means their "policies" are popular, and that they'll translate to votes.

 

I argued with a bunch of conservatives in the LOTRO chat. I don't usually do that, but sometimes you just need to call out their BS. Some of them at least seem to think tv ratings equals the truth. They still hate Twitter/X despite Musk's actions.

[Lord Liaden]

There's a fellow with a channel on YouTube who used to do "reactions" to old-school music, the kind most of us here grew up with. Black, around age 40, self-confessed exclusive R&B/rap guy until a few years back when he started the channel. Cool, fun dude. I watched a number of his reactions and found them quite enjoyable.

 

Over the past year or so he's gone full alt-right propaganda and conspiracy theory on his channel. That's the only kind of video he reacts to now. The way he responds, it's like he doesn't see what I see in those videos. A couple of times I tried to inject another perspective and urge him and his viewers to confirm what's shown with other sources. What I posted was either ignored or casually dismissed. They're convinced that they have The Truth, and any sources other than the ones confirming what they believe are lying to them.

 

I've given up trying to pull people on the Internet out of that rabbit hole. I don't have the time and energy it would take to reach even one of them.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[csyphrett]

Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to censure Rep Rashida Tlaib for calling for a cease fire from Israel. Rep Becca Blaint filed a censure resolution on Greene for being a liar.

CES

[Starlord]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

There's a fellow with a channel on YouTube who used to do "reactions" to old-school music, the kind most of us here grew up with. Black, around age 40, self-confessed exclusive R&B/rap guy until a few years back when he started the channel. Cool, fun dude. I watched a number of his reactions and found them quite enjoyable.

 

Over the past year or so he's gone full alt-right propaganda and conspiracy theory on his channel. That's the only kind of video he reacts to now. The way he responds, it's like he doesn't see what I see in those videos. A couple of times I tried to inject another perspective and urge him and his viewers to confirm what's shown with other sources. What I posted was either ignored or casually dismissed. They're convinced that they have The Truth, and any sources other than the ones confirming what they believe are lying to them.

 

I've given up trying to pull people on the Internet out of that rabbit hole. I don't have the time and energy it would take to reach even one of them.

 

Does he have more or less viewers than before?  Nowadays, 'influencers', podcasters, bloggers, etc., don't even believe half of what they're saying themselves...they say and do what they have to for clicks, views or likes to feed their ego and bank account.

 

My son is friends with 2 guys who have a video game channel.  It began as a fun hobby but started making so much money that they quit their regular jobs.  They say they dont even enjoy the channel anymore but it makes so much money they can't stop. 

[Cancer]

Filled out my ballot.  Will drop it in the box later today.  Only some state judges (running unopposed) and city offices and school district commissioners on this one.

[Cygnia]

The Christofascism of Mike Johnson

Quote

It took Mike Johnson just a couple days last week to rise from a relatively obscure Louisiana congressman to House speaker. Suffice it to say his background and policy positions did not hold up well under their first exposure to national attention.

Johnson is an opposition researcher’s goldmine. Even over the weekend, news reportsand video clips steadily trickled out exposing the new speaker for embracing views that are far out of step with mainstream America.

In particular, Johnson is deep in the Christofascist derp. And if you didn’t know that already, it became clear last Thursday during his first big TV interview as speaker, a spot on Sean Hannity’s show where he explained that his position on any issue comes straight from the Bible.

“Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview; that’s what I believe,” Johnson told on Hannity, with a proud little head tilt.

Johnson’s statement is difficult to credit. The Bible is a heterogenous document with a long, complicated interpretive tradition, and lots of odd little injunctions tucked away. Johnson has not, as far as I know, come out strongly against mixing fabrics.

But it might be more comforting if he had. Because what Johnson means when he says that his worldview is that of the Bible is not that he’s going to make a good faith (as it were) effort to follow biblical prescriptions. Rather, it means he’s certain that his own particular white evangelical Christian nationalist tradition is sanctioned by God, and that, therefore, whatever smug and barmy thing comes out of his mouth is divinely inspired.

And much of what has come out of Johnson’s has been barmy indeed — not to mention smug, and often terrifyingly cruel. Based on his stated supposedly biblical positions, the Bible in Johnson’s head is a silly, vicious farrago of ignorance and bigotry, and a blueprint for Christofascist tyranny.
 

Young-Earth Mike

Does Johnson think the earth is 6,000 years old? Reporters haven’t found any direct quotes where he’s said so publicly. But there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that he does based on his longtime association with the cause of young Earth creationism. That’s an evangelical movement that claims the Bible’s account of history is literally true, and tries to square that with the fossil record. Young Earth creationists can be found debating whether brontosaurs could fit on Noah’s ark.

One of the leaders of the young Earth creation boondoggle/movement is Ken Ham. Ham is the founder of the Ark Encounter Theme Park and the Creation Museum, two young Earth creationist propaganda institutions located in Kentucky. Johnson’s nonprofit legal ministry Freedom Guard, where he was chief counsel, represented Ark Encounter in lawsuits over its tax exempt status, which Kentucky withdrew because the park required employees to hold young Earth creationist beliefs.

Johnson has done podcast interviews with Ham and called him a “dear friend.” He referred to Ark Encounter as “a strategic and really a creative means to defend and advance the truth of scripture in our time,” which is not what you’d say if you held the (accurate) view that Ham was a grifting doofus spreading pseudoscience. Johnson also made some young-Earth-positive noises in a 2016 sermon after a school shooting. At that time he said that gun violence in schools was the result of teaching children they “evolve from the primordial slime.”
 

Grubby-government-hands-all-over-your-sex-life Mike

Young Earth creationism is one of the more amusing byways of evangelical weirdness. Evangelical sexual totalitarianism is arguably just as insular, but it’s considerably harder to laugh at. Johnson’s desire to monitor others’ bedrooms has been an obsessive and foundational “biblical” bedrock of his professional career.

Johnson’s first entry into public life was as an advocate for Louisiana’s “covenant marriage,” law, which offered an alternate marriage with a higher bar for divorce for extreme Christian conservatives like him. He and his wife Kelly chose a covenant marriage for themselves in 1999.

“In my generation, all we’ve ever known is the no-fault scheme, and any deviation from that seems like a radical move,” Johnson said. He has since suggested that school shootings were the result of “no-fault divorce laws.”

Again, that sounds ludicrous, but Republicans have been advocating recently to repealno-fault divorce and go back to a time when women were locked into emotionally or physically abusive marriages by law, with no recourse and no escape.

 

[Starlord]

Well, so much for American football then, the Bible really frowns on touching the skin of a dead pig....

[tkdguy]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/26/2201535/-Cartoon-Mike-Luckovich-on-Trump-s-Halloween

[unclevlad]

Oh the irony...

 

Streaming the baseball game.  Between innings.  Info ad...Israel's 11 hours by plane away, but social media gets there in seconds.  Jewish hate is up.  All hate is up.  Stop Jewish hate;  stop ALL the hate.  Pretty good, simple ad.

 

The irony is, of course, this is on a Fox broadcast.

[tkdguy]

Hopefully the message gets through to some regular Fox viewers.

[assault]

The problem is that at the moment, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza is regarded as "Jewish hate".

Edited October 31, 2023 by assault

[Doc Democracy]

Personally I think Israel fumbled the ball with this one.  The HAMAS attack was particularly heinous and broadcast across the world, everyone who did not watch in horror was giving themselves away.  It was something that serious pro-Palestinian nations could not actively endorse or excuse.  I think if Israel had played up the horrors inflicted upon it, called on the wider arab nations to condemn HAMAS, to expel them from their safe havens to face justice for the actions of their organisation and to force HAMAS to return the hostages they MIGHT have broken the back of the HAMAS organisation and potentially began a healing process.  I would have followed it up with a promise to release the non-HAMAS prisoners in Israel and a development promise to improve the infratructure of Gaza.

 

It seems so easy to sacrifice the lives of living soldiers and to excuse the sacrifice of innocent Palestinians when you can blame HAMAS for hiding behind them, but almost impossible to sacrifice the vengence owed to those already dead under horrific circumstances.  It is definitely an easier political line to take, to satisfy the short term demand for justice/vengence.  The current policy seems impossible to me - they will kill many HAMAS fighters, they will degrade HAMAS' ability to operate and attack Israel in the immediate future BUT they will radicalise a whole new generation of Palestinians both in the Middle East and beyond, they will provide "justification" for future horrors in what is a massively assymetric conflict, and the cycle will continue.

 

I think it is too late for a ceasefire - the Israelis are already too far in to withdraw now without significant victories, they have already damaged their credibility as victim and need to emphasise their ability, and willingness, to kill those who attack their citizens as a form of disincentive on future terror.  The disagreements are already too polarised into who you are for and looking for who is the real villain rather than looking for a longer term solution.

 

😞

[Pattern Ghost]

I think that ideal solution requires a degree of rational detachment that simply doesn't exist in any of the parties involved. I also suspect that HAMAS and their allies intended their attack to provoke exactly this kind of response from Israel, to damage their standing on the global stage. I think this conflict is less about waging asymmetrical warfare in the military sense, so much as in the political sense, bolstered by the proven effectiveness of disinformation campaigns.

 

 

 

[DShomshak]

The Economist has of course run editorials urging Israel, Middle Eastern leaders, and American government to be reasonable and seek a long-term, peaceful solution that will make the Middle East better for everyone. Unfortunately, none of those parties are prone to be reasonable.

 

I could go on to discuss Israel's foundation, history, and exaltation of 3,000-year-old mythology at the expense of real, present people, but many people cannot distinguish between criticism of Zionism (a political program) and anti-Semitism (hatred of a people and religion). So I'll stop now\, and merely say that modern Israel's history has been a graphic demonstration that two wrongs still don't make a right.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

I don't think there's any way to explore the underlying causes of long-standing conflicts in the Middle East that won't lead to someone getting banned from this thread.

[Old Man]

16 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I don't think there's any way to explore the underlying causes of long-standing conflicts in the Middle East that won't lead to someone getting banned from this thread.

 

Yes, the topic has been getting people banned in this thread for over two thousand years.