Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Matt the Bruins]

6 hours ago, Badger said:

Pretty sure, entering into the world of politics damns one to hell.

Pretty sure at least Jimmy Carter refutes that.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, csyphrett said:

They didn't learn anything from Steve Bannon, did they? Someone is going to jail over this.

CES 

Not before November, and then not ever. 

[Cygnia]

[DShomshak]

Admittedly, the result would have been the same if the boats had flown Biden or Black Lives Matter flags. As King Canute reminded us, the natural world doesn't give a rat's ass about mortal desires. The tide will come in;  plagues will not magically disappear; and stormy lakes will sink open-sided boats. But Trumpists do seem unusually determined to ignore reality.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Ternaugh]

14 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

Admittedly, the result would have been the same if the boats had flown Biden or Black Lives Matter flags. As King Canute reminded us, the natural world doesn't give a rat's ass about mortal desires. The tide will come in;  plagues will not magically disappear; and stormy lakes will sink open-sided boats. But Trumpists do seem unusually determined to ignore reality.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." -- Stephen Colbert

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

Admittedly, the result would have been the same if the boats had flown Biden or Black Lives Matter flags. As King Canute reminded us, the natural world doesn't give a rat's ass about mortal desires. The tide will come in;  plagues will not magically disappear; and stormy lakes will sink open-sided boats. But Trumpists do seem unusually determined to ignore reality.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

CBS story says the problem was because there were SO MANY boats in the water;  it caused the large wakes.  Ergo, it wasn't the natural world.

[unclevlad]

Trump loves turning a mountain into a mountain range.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-jennifer-griffin-donald-trump-atlantic-war-dead-011443562.html

 

He really should remember the lessons of Joe McCarthy.  Thou Shalt Not Attack (or diss) The US Military.

 

It's unlikely that any single factor could be isolated, should he lose, but it would be very interesting to me to get exit poll numbers about "what led you to switch away from Trump?"  Here's hoping this is the straw to break the camel's back.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

 

CBS story says the problem was because there were SO MANY boats in the water;  it caused the large wakes.  Ergo, it wasn't the natural world.

Many boats that deliberately ignored the speed limit/wake generation rules that were put there for their own safety. The metaphor is almost perfect. 

[unclevlad]

15 minutes ago, Old Man said:

Many boats that deliberately ignored the speed limit/wake generation rules that were put there for their own safety. The metaphor is almost perfect. 

 

I did notice they were moving briskly.

I do have to say, tho, that ignoring basic safety advice is a secondary pandemic, at least in the US.

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

Trump loves turning a mountain into a mountain range.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-jennifer-griffin-donald-trump-atlantic-war-dead-011443562.html

 

He really should remember the lessons of Joe McCarthy.  Thou Shalt Not Attack (or diss) The US Military.

 

It's unlikely that any single factor could be isolated, should he lose, but it would be very interesting to me to get exit poll numbers about "what led you to switch away from Trump?"  Here's hoping this is the straw to break the camel's back.

 

Trump's recent spate of stumbling may be the cumulative effect of how many times he's shot himself in the foot.

[unclevlad]

2 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Trump's recent spate of stumbling may be the cumulative effect of how many times he's shot himself in the foot.

 

Well, the damage can't be cumulative or he'd have another nickname:  Pegleg.

[Starlord]

4 hours ago, Cygnia said:

 

The legend lives on from the Apprentice on down

of the big oompaloompa called Donnie

The Donnie, it is said, always has some bed head

and he's friends with a loon named Giulani

With a MAGA flag load, 26,000 or more stowed, 

than that big, ole fat Trump boat weighed empty

that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed

when the polls of November vote truly

 

 

 

PS - think Gordon Lightfoot....

[unclevlad]

4 hours ago, Starlord said:

 

The legend lives on from the Apprentice on down

of the big oompaloompa called Donnie

The Donnie, it is said, always has some bed head

and he's friends with a loon named Giulani

With a MAGA flag load, 26,000 or more stowed, 

than that big, ole fat Trump boat weighed empty

that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed

when the polls of November vote truly

 

 

 

PS - think Gordon Lightfoot....

 

Wow, are you showing your age..........

So am I cuz I didn't need the hint......

[Lord Liaden]

The classics are ageless.

 

Unlike us...

[wcw43921]

I'd like to think this is a joke, but these days--

[Old Man]

Don’t worry, I googled it. 
 

I think it’s real. 

[Lord Liaden]

My favorite line from that Twitter thread: "When your masculinity is so threatened, you gotta wear a gun on your face."

[Hermit]

Eventually, it's going to give new meaning to the phrase 'shooting your mouth off'.. a far more literal meaning I suspect

[BoloOfEarth]

7 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

I'd like to think this is a joke, but these days--

 

Available now, from the folks who brought you Pointing a Gun At Your Own Crotch...

[Lawnmower Boy]

Calm down, everybody. It's not like random, armed guys are wandering around demonstrations, killing people, or anything like that.

[DShomshak]

Ethnic fears eroding democratic attitudes among Republicans ...

news.vanderbilt.edu/2020/09/04/ethnic-fears...

Bartels began by analyzing the responses of 1,151 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to a January 2020 survey on topics such as violence in pursuit of political ends, respect for the ...

 

Sadly, this should surprise no one here. Prof. Bartels finds that 50.7% pf Republican (and Republican-leaning independent) respondents believe "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." And the #1 traite correlating with antidemocratic views is ethnic antagonism -- beliefs that immigrants, Blacks, Latinos and other "out groups" are taking more than their fair share and eroding national culture. Or as another article on Bartels' findings put it, "Republicans value whiteness more than democracy."

I was guided to Bartels' research by columnist David Brooks. I never thught the center-right Brooks was particularly excitable, but he predicts blood in the streets as Trumpian zealots rage at seeing their hero's early lead slip away as mail-in ballots are counted. It is vitally necessary that the Left restrain its own zealots from taking up arms to oppose them: Donald Trump needs to suffer moral defeat by showing anyone undecided that his is the side of lawless violence.

Dean Shomshak

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

Ethnic fears eroding democratic attitudes among Republicans ...

news.vanderbilt.edu/2020/09/04/ethnic-fears...

Bartels began by analyzing the responses of 1,151 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to a January 2020 survey on topics such as violence in pursuit of political ends, respect for the ...

 

Sadly, this should surprise no one here. Prof. Bartels finds that 50.7% pf Republican (and Republican-leaning independent) respondents believe "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." And the #1 traite correlating with antidemocratic views is ethnic antagonism -- beliefs that immigrants, Blacks, Latinos and other "out groups" are taking more than their fair share and eroding national culture. Or as another article on Bartels' findings put it, "Republicans value whiteness more than democracy."

 

 

This isn't Trumpian;  he's taking it to extremes but it's been a part of the Republican party line for a long time now.  "Law and order" is specifically played as racial fears.  

It's also not just racial.  Republican campaigns have been heavily oriented to fear-mongering...you're gonna lose all your guns, the Democrats are Socialists, and on and on.  Yes, you can definitely make a case that the Republican Party has pushed autocratic and plutocratic policies, AND if you want a real Deep State conspiracy...they've worked to ensure they maintain their lead in both areas.

 

One can argue that Trump might be the worst thing to happen to the Republicans, if you buy this storyline;  it may well split the Party.  Because there are many conservative-minded people who would be appalled.

[Pariah]

I grew up in Reagan America. I was a registered Republican--a RINO in many cases--for the large majority of my adult life. I felt like I had no choice but to bail with the inauguration in 2016. It's not the party I grew up with. Or at least not the party I thought I grew up with.

 

At this point, my opinion of the Republican Party is best expressed by Kylo Ren: "Let it die. Kill it if you have to."

[archer]

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/515396-colorado-school-suspends-12-year-old-called-police-for-welfare

 

A twelve year old seventh-grader with ADHD is learning at home in a virtual classroom. He owns a very obviously plastic toy gun with a green barrel and orange tip with the words "Zombie Killer" printed on it in large white lettering. 

 

At one point during the school day, he picks up his toy, fiddles around with it, and the toy is visible onscreen momentarily. 

 

The teacher sees the toy gun and notifies the principle. The school had been secretly recording classrooms and caught the incident on video. Rather than looking at the video and dealing with the matter internally or contacting the parents, the principle notifies the police.  (In the police report, the teacher is quoted as saying that she assumed it was a toy gun but was not certain. In the video which the parents eventually got to see, the green barreled and orange tipped gun with the words on the side is visible. The school refuses to give a copy of the tape to the parents or the media.)

 

Anyway, back to the story. The principle requests that the police go to the student's home and check out the student's home environment.

 

The police go to the kid's home and the parents find out about the "incident" from the police rather than the school. The police threaten the student with arrest as if he had shown up to the school with a gun (real or fake) and threatened to shoot people.

 

The school suspended the student for five days.

 

Okay, everyone still with me? So far, so good?

 

The kid and his family are black.

 

The school admits no wrong-doing and insist that the handling of the incident had nothing to do with the student's race or the fact that the kid is more of a pain in the butt than most because he has ADHD (which doesn't make him an easy student to teach in a distance-learning environment).

 

The school has also announced that it would no longer be secretly or openly recording classes, also without admitting that the secretly taping classrooms was in any way inappropriate.

 

I am highly skeptical that discrimination had absolutely no role in what happened. At the very least, the parents are moving the kid to a different school district. That's something the school would know would happen if they harassed the family. That particular school and the district in general won't have that student dragging down standardized test scores and won't have to put up with a kid who has ADHD.

 

I've got a niece and nephew live in Colorado within 20 miles of this school district. He's a teacher who has taught in several school districts in that area over the last 16 years. My niece is Hispanic. They have three kids of their own and two Hispanic foster kids.  One of their kids is a high IQ ADHD problem student. One of the foster kids has severe behavioral issues but my family hasn't won the fights necessary to get the school district to test and diagnose exactly what that girl's problem is and the foster system apparently won't pay for that kind of testing.

 

Colorado doesn't seem to have many state laws, at least which are enforced, which make school districts attempt to give problem students a decent education. Their family has had to fight like hell and switch schools and school districts several times in order to find a school which will attempt to deal with educating their problem kid (and that with my nephew often being a teacher in that school district) and has had to repeat those fights to get their foster girl educated.

 

Their kids have also faced discrimination and bigotry for being Hispanic (sometimes from other students and sometimes more subtly from teachers and administration).

 

I guess I'm just frustrated. The school calling the police to go harass a black family in THIS environment? And harassing that black family's kid who has a neurological disorder?

 

Like HELL the school district isn't treating this kid differently because he's black and has ADHD. Where's my "really ticked off" emoji?

[ScottishFox]

On 9/6/2020 at 2:57 PM, DShomshak said:

Admittedly, the result would have been the same if the boats had flown Biden or Black Lives Matter flags. As King Canute reminded us, the natural world doesn't give a rat's ass about mortal desires. The tide will come in;  plagues will not magically disappear; and stormy lakes will sink open-sided boats. But Trumpists do seem unusually determined to ignore reality.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

Bad weather also being the basis for Ghosts of Tsushima which is better than anything politics has given us in the last few decades.  Seriously amazing game with a really cool historical basis and a ton of interesting Mongolian lore bits.