Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

Nah just on my mind

 

Just try to avoid going all Willie Nelson about Trump...I realize it's hard...

[TrickstaPriest]

28 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

 

Just try to avoid going all Willie Nelson about Trump...I realize it's hard...

 

I literally thought lying about an actual pandemic would be the end of a presidents' popularity... and his entire party / news network.

[Lord Liaden]

Truth has become what enough people say it is. Which, to be fair, has been the case through most of our history.

[Lord Liaden]

I debated putting this in the "Random Videos" thread, but I think we need it here more.

 

 

 

[Pariah]

Moscow Mitch is moving to kill the $2000 direct payments that both the President and Democrats are asking for by tying Section 230 rollbacks and voter fraud investigations to them.

 

McConnell moves to combine Trump asks in potential 'poison pill' for stimulus checks

 

 

[Old Man]

1 minute ago, Pariah said:

Moscow Mitch is moving to kill the $2000 direct payments that both the President and Democrats are asking for by tying Section 230 rollbacks and voter fraud investigations to them.

 

McConnell moves to combine Trump asks in potential 'poison pill' for stimulus checks

 

 

 

Spoiled for language.

 

 

Spoiler

 

[Cygnia]

[unclevlad]

But this is a case where Mitch is trying to rein in spending, at least.  

 

And don't innocently believe Trump is going populist.  IMO he was trying to embarrass the Republicans for their lack of support on the election fraud farce.  It backfired in the House;  IIRC beyond the 100 or so Republican votes to override the defense spending veto, there were close to 50 Republican votes for the $2000 stimulus.  So what Mitch is trying is to flip it on its ear...saying, if you want to go with what Trump wants, well, how about ALL of it?  Knowing it'll never fly.  Remember:  there's an absolute drop-dead time deadline here.  Congress is dissolved come 3 January, per the 20th Amendment.

 

So we now have cat fighting between Trump and McConnell.  Fitting closure, I would say.

[Pariah]

2 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

So we now have cat fighting between Trump and McConnell.  Fitting closure, I would say.

 

Unfortunate that the closure involves getting rid of only one of them, though.

[Old Man]

5 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

But this is a case where Mitch is trying to rein in spending, at least. 

 

Lol the same McConnell who fast tracked a $1.5T tax cut in January and $3.1T in corporate COVID assistance in April?  It's no longer a question of which party is financially conservative, it's a question of who gets the money--us or the billionaires.

[unclevlad]

And the farce will continue as long as possible.

 

Josh Hawley of Missouri is apparently intending to object to the Electoral College results, which will force votes.  He might be talked out of it in the meantime, but it was a public announcement so...it'd be embarrassing to pull back from it.  Bad move.  He's a first-term Senator, and challenging the leadership on this, putting his colleagues in awkward positions, is not how one gets ahead in the Senate.  No matter who ends up in the majority.

[Lord Liaden]

This goes beyond the stimulus bill, or control of the Senate, or electoral college votes. This is a power struggle for who controls the Republican Party for the foreseeable future, McConnell or Trump, with factions of the GOP lining up behind either.

 

McConnell isn't trying to reign in spending. He supports lower taxes and massive spending to boost the profits of corporations, which can weather COVID fallout far better than individuals, because they put money in his pocket. Trump's call for bigger individual stimulus checks and his veto threat after the package was negotiated was a challenge to McConnell's authority. It's forcing Republican legislators to declare with whom their loyalty lies. Same with Trump's continuing dispute of the election result -- you're either with him or with McConnell.

[csyphrett]

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

And the farce will continue as long as possible.

 

Josh Hawley of Missouri is apparently intending to object to the Electoral College results, which will force votes.  He might be talked out of it in the meantime, but it was a public announcement so...it'd be embarrassing to pull back from it.  Bad move.  He's a first-term Senator, and challenging the leadership on this, putting his colleagues in awkward positions, is not how one gets ahead in the Senate.  No matter who ends up in the majority.

SCOTUS has already said all of these challenges are bogus. I wish people would quit electing imbeciles as senators

CES

[Ragitsu]

 

[Dr. MID-Nite]

22 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

 

 

It won't. The envelope has been pushed so far that the 1% now knows they're basically invulnerable to anything except a widespread revolution. They'll continue to abuse the system until it breaks...don't you worry.

[archer]

Breaking: Republican Georgia Senate candidate Perdue just went into quarantine after 'close contact' with staffer who tested positive for COVID-19.

 

Not where you want to be less than a week from your election.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/perdue-in-quarantine-after-close-contact-with-staffer-who-tested-positive-for-covid-19/ar-BB1cnYZw

[csyphrett]

1 hour ago, archer said:

Breaking: Republican Georgia Senate candidate Perdue just went into quarantine after 'close contact' with staffer who tested positive for COVID-19.

 

Not where you want to be less than a week from your election.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/perdue-in-quarantine-after-close-contact-with-staffer-who-tested-positive-for-covid-19/ar-BB1cnYZw

How close a contact?

CES 

[Duke Bushido]

Two disclaimers:

 

1) I purposely do not read this thread / subforum thingy.  It's better, I think, for my mental health to actually _not_ know the political leanings of every random stranger whose company I otherwise enjoy.  Even as I type this, I am making a forced effort to not look at so much as even the post directly above this reply box.

 

2) (perhaps 1b; I don't know)  I am not at all certain that this is the correct forum in which to post this, but it seemed a safer bet than the Funny Pictures thread, given the nature of it.  If I am wrong, it was not an attempt to start something so much as it was a misunderstanding of the interpretation of "political" around these parts.

 

If I have erred, I encourage the first moderator to find this to delete it immediately.  I am sharing it because, politics aside, it was damned funny.

 

 

That is all.

 

 

[archer]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

Two disclaimers:

 

1) I purposely do not read this thread / subforum thingy.  It's better, I think, for my mental health to actually _not_ know the political leanings of every random stranger whose company I otherwise enjoy.  Even as I type this, I am making a forced effort to not look at so much as even the post directly above this reply box.

 

2) (perhaps 1b; I don't know)  I am not at all certain that this is the correct forum in which to post this, but it seemed a safer bet than the Funny Pictures thread, given the nature of it.  If I am wrong, it was not an attempt to start something so much as it was a misunderstanding of the interpretation of "political" around these parts.

 

If I have erred, I encourage the first moderator to find this to delete it immediately.  I am sharing it because, politics aside, it was damned funny.

 

 

That is all.

 

 

 

I post the occasional political joke which have taken jabs at each side. More jabs at Trump than at Biden so far but that's because Trump caricatures himself so well that he's a better target than Biden for people who make up jokes or retool old political jokes for our current crop of political tools.

 

I expect Biden jokes to become more popular in the future as people get a better handle on him. But right now most Biden jokes seem to center around his supposed dementia and disability from age. And since I have dementia and disability, I don't find those jokes to be particularly humorous.  And I don't post jokes which I don't think are funny.

 

I'm pretty sure there are some funny Alzheimer's jokes but I forget what they might be.

 

Once just after the election I posted *a lot* of political humor here (because that was all the humor which was being talked about ) and I got a relatively mild protest from someone. But I haven't had any moderator objections.

 

If you're unsure whether a joke would be well received and don't want to post it, feel free to pm me with it. I'll post it up if I think it's funny.

 

 

As for knowing people's political leanings from reading their content here, I think that's been difficult to do these past several years. There's a lot of people who are virulently anti-Trump. But I think that particular agreement is coming from people who have all sorts of political points of view.

 

I'm a constitutionalist and a civil libertarian. That's put me on the opposite side of Trump on almost every issue imaginable, almost to the point of making me break out into hives when I think about him. j/k

 

It also puts me on the opposite side of each party so often that many people can't figure out if I even have a guiding philosophy unless I explicitly tell them "I'm a constitutionalist and a civil libertarian" and they bother to Google what I mean by that. 

 

But it also puts me on the side of each party a good portion of the time as well. 

 

I've tried to take a philosophy on discussion forums of compartmentalizing conversations. The person I disagree with the most on one thing might be the person I agree with the most when talking about the next issue. That frustrates people who are looking for someone who is a staunch ally on every issue and who will back them on whatever they say no matter how "off the deep end they go". 

 

But I think that's a better way to look at political conversations than demanding an ideological purity and/or unwavering support on every issue.

 

No officeholder or candidate is correct on every issue. Neither major party is correct on every issue. There's also no minor party which is correct on every issue.

 

Hell, there's no one who I think is right on every issue except for myself...and sometimes I'm not too sure about myself. j/k 

 

This is a discussion forum. If everyone had the same opinion or was forced to voice the same opinion, it'd make for some pretty boring discussions.

[Pariah]

In terms of Republican vs. Democrat, I self-identify as "Non-binary". Which is a more polite way of saying "A pox on both their [REDACTED] houses".

 

I am in no way trying to say that both Parties are equally corrupt, nor that both are equally responsible for the mess we Americans find ourselves in here on 1 JAN 2021. But I'm not convinced that either Party has all the answers, and I am certainly not convinced that either Party gives the slightest fraction of a damn about my welfare or what I want or need. 

 

I've often joked that "Politics" is best understood if you break the word down into its components: "poly-" meaning "many" and "ticks" meaning "bloodsucking invertebrates". I'm only about half-kidding on that one, as it turns out.

 

I feel like the Two-Party false dichotomy we've come to revere here in the USA is responsible for most of our country's problems. The whole political process has become an exercise in escalation. You send us some wacko from the fringes out on the Right, we counter with someone from even further out on the Left. This polarization makes it increasingly impossible not only for anyone to get anything done, but even for the two sides to talk to each other. Meanwhile I sit here somewhere near the political Center and wonder who's speaking for me. I don't have an answer to that question.

 

So I do what I can do. I live my life. I go to work (with the full realization that I'm damn lucky to have a decent job) and I wear my mask and I make dinner and I take out the garbage and I read to my kids. All the political stuff is way too removed from my daily life--Washington DC might as well be on Uranus. All I can do is what I can do. Stay informed, vote when given the opportunity, support good people doing their best to lead locally. And I try to teach my kids--all 200 or so of 'em--to be good and decent humans. 

 

The politicians will do what they will do for their own reasons and for their own benefit. I can't worry about all of that. I can only worry about me.

 

I've progressed sufficiently for one day, I suppose. As you were, and thanks for listening.

[Ragitsu]

22 hours ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

 

It won't. The envelope has been pushed so far that the 1% now knows they're basically invulnerable to anything except a widespread revolution. They'll continue to abuse the system until it breaks...don't you worry.

 

Another point in favor of accelerationism?

[BoloOfEarth]

23 hours ago, archer said:

I'm pretty sure there are some funny Alzheimer's jokes but I forget what they might be.

 

(ba-dum, TISH!)

 

8 hours ago, Pariah said:

Washington DC might as well be on Uranus.

 

(ba-dum, TISH!)

 

Thank yew, folks, they'll be here all week.  Try the veal, and don't forget to tip your waitresses!

[wcw43921]

Yeah? Well, this doesn't strike me as the way to get everything.

[Ragitsu]

18 minutes ago, wcw43921 said:

Yeah? Well, this doesn't strike me as the way to get everything.

 

 

[archer]

Q: What’s Mitch McConnell’s favorite movie?

 

A: Kill Bill.