Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Lord Liaden]

  

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

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

 

 

As you would know firsthand.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[wcw43921]

Author Of Banned Book "Flamer" Pens Letter To Marietta High Students

[Cygnia]

 

[Cygnia]

And in Peru...

 

[tkdguy]

 

[MrWolf]

Came here to mention that I had to re-check and yes, Ron DeSantis keeps supporting his "slit throats day one" comment and doesn't seem likely to retract it.

 

This is a contender for the Presidency?  

 

I can't even... 

Edited November 6, 2023 by MrWolf

[Lord Liaden]

Far be it for Ronnie to ever apologize or admit he said or did anything wrong, any more than for his role model Donnie.

 

It's sad that he thinks this is what voters want to hear. Even sadder that for today's extreme right-wingers, he's probably right. But DeSantis can never win a nationwide election just with them.

[MrWolf]

At least that's something.  Not sure why it popped back up in my head today and I had to check on it, but it did.

[Cygnia]

 

[megaplayboy]

25 years ago, if someone had polled all voters and asked the question "Would you vote for a convicted felon who hasn't yet served their sentence, to the office of president of the United States?", the percentage of people voting "no" would be well above 90%, and even the "it depends" contingent would be extremely small.  And for most people, the actual response would likely be "i'm not clinically insane, so, no."

And yet, we have nearly half of the country who seem ready, willing and able to jump off that cliff.

[wcw43921]

Mike Johnson And His Son Monitor Each Other's Porn Intake

 

"You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--as if every sound you made was overheard, and every movement except in darkness scrutinized."--George Orwell, 1984

Make no mistake--this is what he wants for all of us. He may be doing it voluntarily, but I doubt he'd extend the privilege of choice to everyone else. You voted for Trump, this is what you voted for.

[Old Man]

34 minutes ago, wcw43921 said:

Mike Johnson And His Son Monitor Each Other's Porn Intake

 

"You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--as if every sound you made was overheard, and every movement except in darkness scrutinized."--George Orwell, 1984

Make no mistake--this is what he wants for all of us. He may be doing it voluntarily, but I doubt he'd extend the privilege of choice to everyone else. You voted for Trump, this is what you voted for.

 

On another level, Johnson uses extremely invasive third party software to monitor all computer and internet activity in and out of his house.  All internet communications for Speaker of the House.

[Starlord]

40 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

On another level, Johnson uses extremely invasive third party software to monitor all computer and internet activity in and out of his house.  All internet communications for Speaker of the House.

 

And on another level, 'Extremely Invasive Third Party' is Mike Johnson's favorite porn category.

[Cygnia]

Moms for Liberty members call the cops on Florida librarians

Quote

Two members of Moms for Liberty, a right-wing activist group, have reported several Florida school librarians to law enforcement. They claimed they had evidence that librarians were distributing "pornography" to minors and requested that law enforcement officers be dispatched. This represents a serious escalation of the tactics deployed by members of Moms for Liberty against school librarians.

On October 25, Jennifer Tapley, a member of the Santa Rosa County chapter of Moms for Liberty and a candidate for school board, contacted the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office. "I've got some evidence a crime was committed," Tapley said in an audio recording of the call obtained by Popular Information through a public records request. "Pornography given to a minor in a school. And I would like to make a report with somebody and turn over the evidence." Tapley made the call from the lobby of the main office of the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office in Milton, Florida.

She told the dispatcher that she did not want to provide her name because she was "afraid of people getting mad at me for doing this." Tapley said that she would tell the Deputy Sheriff her name, but she didn't want "any public records with her name on it because then people could look it up."

In an interview with Popular Information, Tapley said she was "scrolling through Facebook" this summer and saw "a video of a mom reading a book" that was "really disgusting." She later learned that there was a Moms for Liberty chapter in her area addressing the issue and joined the group. As a member of the group, she learned that local schools had "some really shocking pornographic books in our libraries."

Tapley was accompanied at the Sheriff's Office by Tom Gurski, who is also active in the local Moms for Liberty chapter. Soon, Deputy Sheriff Tyler Mabire and another officer arrived and interviewed the pair.

"The only reason we are here: A crime is being committed. It's a 3rd-degree felony. And we've got the evidence," Gurski said in a body cam video of the interview obtained by Popular Information. "The governor says this is child pornography. It's a serious crime," Tapley added. "It's just as serious as if I handed a playboy to [my child] right now, right here, in front of you. It's just as serious, according to the law." The video has been edited to protect the identity of a minor:

The "pornography" at issue is actually a popular young adult novel, Storm and Fury,by Jennifer L. Armentrout. The book, which is 512 pages, is mostly about humans and gargoyles fighting demons. The main character of the novel, Trinity, is 18 years old. There are some passages with sexual themes, including a few makeout sessions, and one where the main character almost has sex. In the 2020-21 academic year, the Florida Association of Media in Education (FAME), a professional association of Florida librarians, recommended Storm and Fury on its "Teen Reads" list. FAME says books on the list "engage" teens and "provide a spur to critical thinking." Barnes and Noble recommends the book for readers 14 to 18. It was also recommended for students by the School Library Journal.

Armentrout told Popular Information that it was surprising to learn we are "living in an era where, apparently, some adults find it appropriate to contact the police over a fictional book involving gargoyles." She said Storm and Fury "is very close to my heart, as the main character has the same degenerative eye disease, retinitis pigmentosa, as I do." Armentrout said she wrote the book "to educate people on a little-known disease in a fun, suspenseful, and adventurous way." The purpose of the book, Armentrout said, was not to "incite sexual excitement."

Tapley told Popular Information that any book that has a "sex scene" is pornography and not "appropriate for minors." She did acknowledge that there may be exceptions for "extreme classics." But the books Moms for Liberty is targeting, Tapley says, are "without significant literary value."

Florida law, however, only bans distributing a book or other material with sexual content if it is "harmful to minors," a standard established by Supreme Court precedent. Under Florida law, a book is only "harmful to minors" if it "[p]redominantly appeals to a prurient, shameful, or morbid interest" and is "patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors." Storm and Fury, a book that is predominantly about fighting demons, is routinely recommended by adults for high school students.

 

[Lord Liaden]

I suspect there is massive sexual insecurity and guilt on the part of the plaintiff, behind this complaint.

[unclevlad]

Maybe, but I doubt it's that personal.  For one thing, there are too many similar moves;  I'll grant, calling the police isn't a step one hears often, but I seriously doubt this was the first, nor will be the last, such.  Let's face it...critical thinking is the LAST thing these self-proclaimed guardians of virtue want.  They want little controllable clones, whose only thoughts derive from their particular interpretation of morality and the Bible.

[DShomshak]

Oh, I don't doubt the moral panic is completely sincere. The rules are changing quickly; people like them feel, correctly, that they no longer have the social privileges they once enjoyed. Of course they're lashing out at anything that offends their sensibilities.

 

It's Fundamentalism 101. When you're about to lose everything, you can't give an inch on anything. Double down, even.

 

I am told this is how American Christian fundamentalism came about. (Warning: I recount what I read; I am not myself an expert.) The late 19th century was another time of rapid changes that some Christians thought threatened the underpinnings of their faith and their notions of social hierarchy. So, they doubled down. One result was a redefinition of the Bible: no longer a complex text whose truths might be obscure and subject to re-interpretation, but *inerrant* in every word and *self-evident* in its truth.

 

This created problems because the Bible manifestly holds heaping helpings of poetry, metaphor, parable, dubious history, and outright contradiction. So fundamentalists qualified their claim: The absolute truth of the Bible becomes self-evident to anyone who reads it if they have the Holy Spirit in their heart. Anyone who points out problems like Genesis giving multiple versions of the Creation merely prove they lack the Holy Spirit. In fact, that they are deceived by the Devil.

 

Only this makes further problems, because people will still read this complex and difficult text and reach different conclusions. So who has the Holy Spirit and who is deceived by the Devil? Reason and historical and linguistic study having been ruled out, such contests become political. And this is how the Baptists, who began with the libertarian premise of each believer reading the Bible for himself, ended up with completely authoritarian dogma.

 

It also follows that reading the Bible also no longer becomes necessary. The text is no longer a text: It is a talisman for evoking the Holy Spirit. I suspect the people who mock Speaker Mike Johnson for his Biblical/political claims miss the point. He doesn't need to cite a verse to explain his stance about, say, tariffs or aid to Ukraine. He's guided by his idea of the Bible, which he knows is true because the Holy Spirit tells him so.

 

And I suspect the Moms for Liberty don't need to read the books they want banned, let alone read them critically, because those texts are also seen as talismans -- but for invoking the Devil. But that's just my own guess.

 

Dean Shomshak

[unclevlad]

NYT is forecasting that Ohio Issue 1, which guarantees a woman's right to an abortion at least until the fetus is viable outside the womb, will pass.  As of this moment with 56% of the votes in, it's 56-44.

 

 

[DShomshak]

My newsfeed says Democrat Andy Bashear won re-election as governor of Kentucky.

 

Dean Shomshak

[tkdguy]

 

[Lord Liaden]

Tate Reeves, the incumbent Republican governor of Mississippi, was reelected with 51.8% of the vote. His Democrat challenger, Brandon Presley, had 46.9%. (An independent, Gwendolyn Gray, earned 1.4%.) By county, Reeves won 50, Presley 32.

 

That's in Mississippi.

[Lord Liaden]

11 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Maybe, but I doubt it's that personal.  For one thing, there are too many similar moves;  I'll grant, calling the police isn't a step one hears often, but I seriously doubt this was the first, nor will be the last, such.  Let's face it...critical thinking is the LAST thing these self-proclaimed guardians of virtue want.  They want little controllable clones, whose only thoughts derive from their particular interpretation of morality and the Bible.

 

IME when something relatively innocuous provokes such an intense response from someone, it's not primarily a matter of personal morality or philosophy. Those supposedly objective beliefs are being used to rationalize deep-seated fear, hatred, envy, and in this case probably lust, triggered by anything seen as a challenge to the shaky foundation of said person's sense of identity and self-worth.

 

It's a truism that those who decry sin the most have the most sinful thoughts, but it's a truism for a reason.

Edited November 8, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Cancer]

A corollary of that: Those who baselessly accuse you of gross misdeeds that may not ever have occurred to you before ... are stating what they would have done in their place.

[tkdguy]

AFAIK, USA is an indirect democracy, as opposed to a direct democracy, but you get the picture. Also, I can understand one side being salty about election results, but certain claims are quite alarming, especially when some of them come from elected (current or past) officials.

 

 

[Old Man]

"If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy."  --Conservative author David Frum