Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

In my opinion, they are worse by far.  I consider Fox and media outlets like it to be the single biggest threat to democracy on Earth.

 

Agreed.  Fox News is spewing *broadly* damaging lies, such as supporting the election steal.  Charlatanism would be, oh, pushing the Obama birth certificate issue.  On a 1 to 10 scale, that's a 2 or 3, as are many individual campaign claims they like to use.  But the election, the rejection of Covid being a threat and vaccines being a good idea, the push to overturn the election, the whole "Jan. 6th was just harmless citizens exercising their rights of free speech and assembly"...those are 10s.

 

And Mr. P, I think you're not appreciating the long-term, deliberate demonization of anything remotely progressive.  IMO, Trump doesn't become President without right-wing media's groundwork for the last 20 years, and Fox has been in the forefront in that time frame.  I've said over and over here:  little that flourished under Trump, actually started with him.  It didn't start with Fox News, either, but they perfected the delivery.

 

And worse, I honestly believe they KNOW they're lying...and don't care.  Lies are part and parcel of their path to power.

[Ranxerox]

A Distracted Russia Is Losing Its Grip on Its Old Soviet Sphere

 

tl;dr - Since invading Ukraine, Russia has been ignoring its role of providing security and stability to the Collective Security Treaty Organization.  As a result, the other members are getting into armed conflicts with one another and experiencing internal unrest, leading to China and even the US inserting themselves into the security vacuum.

[Lord Liaden]

I don't think Putin realized how big a house of cards Russia really was. Now that he's pushing it, the whole thing is collapsing.

[Old Man]

13 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I don't think Putin realized how big a house of cards Russia really was. Now that he's pushing it, the whole thing is collapsing.

 

I actually think he did know, but his biggest miscalculation was the condition of his own forces versus the resolve of the Ukrainian people.  On February 23rd the conventional wisdom was that Ukraine didn't stand a chance against the Russian juggernaut of one hundred thousand troops with hundreds of tanks, APCs, and missiles under complete air superiority.  No sane Ukrainian would dare resist.

 

But they did, and in so doing they revealed that the Russian juggernaut literally had flat tires, flammable tanks, no comms, no logistics, and no morale.  Now the Russian Army is a laughingstock.  Putin is being flatly disobeyed by the other leaders in the house of cards, and near as I can tell the only reason he's still in power is the threat of his network of assassins.

[DShomshak]

In various books such as Balkan Ghosts and The Ends of the Earth, writer Robert D. Kaplan coined a phrase for decrepit empires: "A corpse in armor." Enough military force to withstand threats from without and within, but also thereby insulated from any apparent need to reform themselves. Rulers enjoy the spoins of power while governance drifts, infrastructure decays, culture stultifies and the people become apathetic. Russia seems to be an extreme case: Even the military is decayed, because what does it matter as long as they have nukes?

 

One of Kaplan's paradigmatic cases for an imperial corpse in armor is the Assyrian empre. It was mighty and brutal for a thousand years, until it wasn't and fell. Two centuries later, as Xenophon was leading his troops on their Anabasis out of the Persian Empire, he couldn't find anyone who could read the Assyrian monuments he encountered. Assyria was that thoroughly forgotten.

 

But corpses in armor tend to emit cultural toxins as they decay. The former Yugoslavia was a smaller corpse in armor, the mutual resentments of its component nations repressed by Tito... only to erupt, more vicious than ever, when Tito died and Yugoslavia fell apart.

 

Russia's decay began long before Putin; in some ways he is a product of the USSR's longstanding rot. But I suspect he is leading Russia to a ruin more terrible than he can imagine.

 

Dean Shomshak

[BNakagawa]

17 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

I actually think he did know, but his biggest miscalculation was the condition of his own forces versus the resolve of the Ukrainian people.  On February 23rd the conventional wisdom was that Ukraine didn't stand a chance against the Russian juggernaut of one hundred thousand troops with hundreds of tanks, APCs, and missiles under complete air superiority.  No sane Ukrainian would dare resist.

 

But they did, and in so doing they revealed that the Russian juggernaut literally had flat tires, flammable tanks, no comms, no logistics, and no morale.  Now the Russian Army is a laughingstock.  Putin is being flatly disobeyed by the other leaders in the house of cards, and near as I can tell the only reason he's still in power is the threat of his network of assassins.

 

and nukes. and a seat on the UN security council. and oil.

[Lord Liaden]

18 hours ago, BNakagawa said:

 

and nukes. and a seat on the UN security council. and oil.

 

That's why other countries still treat him seriously. None of those things matter to Russians in terms of Putin staying in power.

[Sociotard]

Elon Musk personally rejected a Ukrainian request to extend his satellite internet service to Crimea, the SpaceX CEO fearing that an effort to retake the peninsula from Russian forces could lead to a nuclear war

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-blocks-starlink-in-crimea-amid-nuclear-fears-report-2022-10

 

Of course him needing Russian nickel has nothing to do with it.

[tkdguy]

Man paints house to raise awareness of women's struggle in Iran

[Pariah]

Tonight is the 4th District Congressional debate here in Utah. Three candidates have been invited to participate: Democrat Darlene McDonald, United Utah Party candidate January Walker, and incumbent Representative Burgess Owens, a Republican. The first two have confirmed their participation; Owens has not. Owens skipped the Republican Primary debate earlier this summer on the advice of the Chair of the Utah GOP.

 

Local news outlet KSL published this bingo card for tonight's event:

 

[Pariah]

Jimmy Kimmel Offers To Make Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Biggest Fear Come True

 

Quote

“You mean to tell me we could swap the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ flags and the alcoholic boat parades, we can replace the anti-vax Facebook groups and the Proud Boy circle jerks with empanadas and crazy soap operas? I’m OK with that ― please! I think the message is: Bring your big hats and your complicated mustaches and your jigs in lederhosen, your fish eyeballs, your soup dumplings, from all over the world and replace away.”

 

[Starlord]

[unclevlad]

A jury has set damages in the Alex Jones defamation case at $1,000,000,000.

 

Yes, I had to write that out.  It's immensely satisfying that way.

 

Now, how much the families will get, remains to be seen, but if his buddies try to bail him out?  This makes it HARD.  And there's gonna be a cottage industry fining his hidden assets.

[Lord Liaden]

I'm sure Jones is going to appeal, but this judgement sets a precedent that will send shock waves throughout the right-wing propaganda machine. They now have to fear their lies and manipulations will cost them the one thing they love, their money. And cost them dearly.

[unclevlad]

25 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I'm sure Jones is going to appeal, but this judgement sets a precedent that will send shock waves throughout the right-wing propaganda machine. They now have to fear their lies and manipulations will cost them the one thing they love, their money. And cost them dearly.

 

Only to a point.  Jones was an utter idiot.  He was claiming that a massively documented event was a hoax.  If we take the election steal, in contrast, sure, the facts don't support them, but I don't think they're pushing any specific claims like that any more.  They're just keeping the pot stirred with an assertion they don't need to support.  With Covid, they're pushing an evaluation...not a fact. 

 

And, who's the victim of their statements?  The truth is not an entity that has standing in a court of law.  Where they'll get burned is with the voting machine issues.  The company has standing, they have been damaged.  Essentially, while they might have to be somewhat more cautious, by and large they'll be covered by the same legal principles that protects their commentators.

 

Or take the gun lobby.  They never deny Sandy Hook, or Pulse, or Mandalay Bay, or any of the countless others.  They piously claim "the current laws weren't enforced" or for Marjorie Stoneman Douglas or Sandy Hook, "arm the teachers, this can't happen."  They *deflect*.

[Tom]

Well, Trump is having another bad day.

 

SCOTUS has apparently declined to involve itself with the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the Jan 6 committee has voted to supoena him.

 

Both breaking news on CNN, the supoena news is also on BBC. 

[unclevlad]

22 minutes ago, Tom said:

Well, Trump is having another bad day.

 

SCOTUS has apparently declined to involve itself with the Mar-a-Lago documents case and the Jan 6 committee has voted to supoena him.

 

Both breaking news on CNN, the supoena news is also on BBC. 

 

Supreme Court's rejection on the documents:

 

Quote

“The application to vacate the stay entered by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit on Sept. 21, 2022, presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the court is denied.”

 

That's it.  No dissents noted.  "Stop wasting our time, clown!!!"

 

EDIT:  from a letter to the editor in NYT:
 

Quote

Please stop calling Alex Jones a “fabulist.” There are so many more accurate words, a few of which are printable.

 

I'm jealous that I didn't say it...

 

[tkdguy]

This makes it more important to vote this November. If the GOP wins the House, the Committee will most likely be disbanded.

[Sociotard]

Tractors stealing tanks, but this, after missiles took out the electricity powering the light rail lines ... I may have to build Tractor Guy as a Dark Champions character.

 

 

[Sociotard]

1 hour ago, tkdguy said:

This makes it more important to vote this November. If the GOP wins the House, the Committee will most likely be disbanded.

If the GOP takes the house they will form a new investigation to investigate this investigation.

[unclevlad]

If the GOP takes the House, they'll probably try to impeach Biden, out of spite.

 

Honestly, if they do get the House and Senate, disbanding the Jan. 6th committee will be among the *minor* impacts.  If they only get the House, it's just likely to be 2 years of complete gridlock.  SNAFU.

[tkdguy]

 

[Iuz the Evil]

It’s not looking good, generic polls have shifted and I don’t understand the strategy from the DNC at all. Is it too late to pull James Carville out of retirement? 
 

It went back and forth the past couple months, but 8.8% CPI, $6/gallon gas, and average household costs increasing $450 year over year… that’s no bueno for the party in power. Yeah yeah, they can say “Pandemic recovery economy” but people are hurting badly. Social policy is what you get to lean on when you manage these very issues, at least historically. We are terribly divided as a nation, and still it’s going to be about individual experiences for the middle class in my opinion. 
 

These are dark days. I’m a classic liberal, the red meat issues are very much on the back burner with regard to wealth disparity, declining incomes and organized labor. Universal healthcare is pretty much over at this point for a decade or more (we “won” that issue in the collective zeitgeist). I’m guessing those aren’t sexy anymore. Abortion rights gave the party a shot in the arm, to be sure. Otherwise? I expect reduced voter turnout, which is going to be rough coupled with the economic pain so many families are feeling.

 

 We will see if I’m right in a couple weeks. I’ll still vote, but I find the recent areas of focus disheartening and in some cases poorly articulated or intentionally divisive.

[Starlord]

[Hermit]

27 minutes ago, Iuz the Evil said:

It’s not looking good, generic polls have shifted and I don’t understand the strategy from the DNC at all. Is it too late to pull James Carville out of retirement? 
 

It went back and forth the past couple months, but 8.8% CPI, $6/gallon gas, and average household costs increasing $450 year over year… that’s no bueno for the party in power. Yeah yeah, they can say “Pandemic recovery economy” but people are hurting badly. Social policy is what you get to lean on when you manage these very issues, at least historically. We are terribly divided as a nation, and still it’s going to be about individual experiences for the middle class in my opinion. 
 

These are dark days. I’m a classic liberal, the red meat issues are very much on the back burner with regard to wealth disparity, declining incomes and organized labor. Universal healthcare is pretty much over at this point for a decade or more (we “won” that issue in the collective zeitgeist). I’m guessing those aren’t sexy anymore. Abortion rights gave the party a shot in the arm, to be sure. Otherwise? I expect reduced voter turnout, which is going to be rough coupled with the economic pain so many families are feeling.

 

 We will see if I’m right in a couple weeks. I’ll still vote, but I find the recent areas of focus disheartening and in some cases poorly articulated or intentionally divisive.

 

 

I'm afraid you maybe right. Unless there's some underground push for younger voters to come out in droves I don't know, like a 'show up at the polls wearing a purple hat' challenge, I don't see it happening. And I mean that in a 'only they can save us way' not a 'darn kids' way. I can't blame them for being discouraged.