Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[BoloOfEarth]

Frickin' finally!

 

Sen. Tommy Tuberville drops his hold on hundreds of military nominees (msn.com)

[Old Man]

14 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

Johnson says GOP staff is blurring participants' faces in Jan. 6 tapes to protect them from DOJ

 

Accessory to insurrection?  Destruction of evidence?

[unclevlad]

16 minutes ago, BoloOfEarth said:

Frickin' finally!

 

Sen. Tommy Tuberville drops his hold on hundreds of military nominees (msn.com)

 

MOSTLY releases.  He's still not allowing the most senior leaders' nominations to proceed.  So, he's still a jackass, IMO.  

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

 

MOSTLY releases.  He's still not allowing the most senior leaders' nominations to proceed.  So, he's still a jackass, IMO.  

 

He's not (just) a jackass.  He's holding these positions open so Trump can immediately fill them with loyalists when he returns to the White House. 

 

Also note that I didn't say anything about winning elections there.

[unclevlad]

NYT's The Morning newsletter today was mostly a recap, and a warning.

 

The recap:  things Trump has said he'd do, and public comments he's made about people.  

The warning:  don't think it's hot air.

 

Quote

More specifically, he has promised to use the powers of the federal government to punish people he perceives to be his critics and opponents, including the Biden family, district attorneys, journalists and “the deep state.” He has suggested that Mark Milley, a retired top general, deserves the death penalty. Trump has called President Biden “an enemy of the state” and Nancy Pelosi “the Wicked Witch.” He has accused former President Barack Obama — “Barack Hussein Obama,” in Trump’s telling — of directing Biden to admit “terrorists and terrorist sympathizers” into the U.S.

 

The list goes on and on.  The message also notes just how far Trump and his allies intend to go, to ensure personal loyalty to Trump among the senior members of government.  We can presume a push to name a solid, no quarter Trumpist to become Speaker, should the Republicans keep the House in '24.  Presumably in the Senate as well, if that flips.  I doubt McConnell would be the Majority Leader.

 

There is also a massive, DEEP op-ed dive in The Atlantic.  The entire Jan-Feb issue has 24 stories based on their staff's views of what would happen If Trump Wins.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/toc/2024/01/

 

And figure...his entire first term was a dress rehearsal.  If he gets a 2nd one, he (and his cronies) will be much better poised to smash things through.

[BoloOfEarth]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

 

MOSTLY releases.  He's still not allowing the most senior leaders' nominations to proceed.  So, he's still a jackass, IMO.  

 

Neither I nor the article said he was releasing all of his holds.  As to the final sentence, I didn't figure that was in doubt, but FWIW, I agree.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Johnson says GOP staff is blurring participants' faces in Jan. 6 tapes to protect them from DOJ

 

“We want the American people to draw their own conclusions. I don't think partisan elected officials in Washington should present a narrative and expect that it should be seen as the ultimate truth,” said Johnson.

 

The magnitude of bare-faced hypocrisy and condescension toward the intelligence of the American public in that statement leaves me absolutely sickened. 

Edited December 5, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Lord Liaden]

Yet another iteration of that classic political strategy: Is your leadership of the government in your home country in trouble? Threaten a neighboring country.

 

 

[DShomshak]

And allege insults to your country's "dignity" to distract people from your government's brutality, corruption and incompetence at providing basic services. All the years of crisis and shortage the presenter mentions? All the result of Maduro's own policies.

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

4 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

The magnitude of bare-faced hypocrisy and condescension toward the intelligence of the American public in that statement leaves me absolutely sickened. 

As I have said before, there can be no hypocrisy if one's only principle is power.

 

Okay, that's not fair. As a report on today's All Things Considered discusses, Mr. Johnson does have principles, in that he is a group with explicitly totalitarian goals that can only be achieved through the acquisition of absolute power. Say hello (again) to Dominion Theology:

 

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/05/1217452058/speaker-mike-johnson-draws-scrutiny-for-ties-to-far-right-christian-movements

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, DShomshak said:

As I have said before, there can be no hypocrisy if one's only principle is power.

 

 

There I have to disagree. Johnson and other far-right politicians are using crude rhetoric to obscure from their supporters that they are exactly what they accuse their opponents of being. Hypocrisy by definition is a pretense of being other than what you are. Intent is not definitive, and hypocrisy for a purpose is still hypocrisy.

[Lord Liaden]

Stay for the last line.

 

 

[Cygnia]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/police-respond-unlv-shooting_n_6570d7d3e4b0f96b99d9dbad

[BoloOfEarth]

A year or more too late, IMO:  Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy to resign from Congress at year-end (msn.com)

[Lord Liaden]

McCarthy had asserted he wouldn't remain in Congress if the "troublemakers" among the House Republicans weren't brought to account. As much of a failure as he was as Speaker, Kevin's always been a very successful fund raiser for the GOP, and he may have been banking (pun intended) on that for leverage. His move seems to signal that his colleagues believe they don't need McCarthy's financial connections.

 

We'll see.

[wcw43921]

The Multilevel Marketer Rallying Women To Put America In Christian "Bondage"

[Ragitsu]

[Ranxerox]

2 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

The Multilevel Marketer Rallying Women To Put America In Christian "Bondage"

 

Quote

"I just believe what the Bible says," she added. "We're supposed to go onto the Earth; we're supposed to dominate."

 

That is absolutely not what the Bible says.  Has she even read the book?

[BoloOfEarth]

2 minutes ago, Ranxerox said:

That is absolutely not what the Bible says.  Has she even read the book?

 

IME, 90% of the non-clergy people who spout off about what the Bible says, have hardly (if at all) read it.  

[unclevlad]

26 minutes ago, Ranxerox said:

 

 

That is absolutely not what the Bible says.  Has she even read the book?

 

I'd say...the Old Testament, probably.  

And even if she has read it, how much did she really understand?

[DShomshak]

As I've posted before: At least according to one scholar I've read, Fundamentalists/Evangelicals have a somewhat peculiar way of reading the Bible. Fundamentalism was born from reaction against the social and intellectual changes of the 19th century. Part of that reaction was to insist that the Bible was self-evidently true -- that you didn't need to spend years studying a complex text, comparing passages, parsing out meanings and considering historical contexts. Just zip through and the Truth would be irresistibly revealed... if you had the Holy Spirit in your heart. Which meant that if two people read the Bible and derived different messages and meanings, at least one did not have the Holy Spirit and was instead deceived by the Devil. One result being that deriving doctrine from the Bible became an exercise in political skill and charisma in which the text itself is no longer that important.

 

So this person claimed, anyway. I'm afraid I don't remember the author's name as this was a case of Things Found While Looking Up Other Things, and not my primary interest at the time. (IIRC I was researching Gnosticism and, yeah, this approach to the Bible is rather Gnostic -- a mystical revelation that cannot be captured and explained by reason.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[Cancer]

... and nearly everyone overlooks the implications of the critical words "at least one".

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, DShomshak said:

As I've posted before: At least according to one scholar I've read, Fundamentalists/Evangelicals have a somewhat peculiar way of reading the Bible. Fundamentalism was born from reaction against the social and intellectual changes of the 19th century. Part of that reaction was to insist that the Bible was self-evidently true -- that you didn't need to spend years studying a complex text, comparing passages, parsing out meanings and considering historical contexts. Just zip through and the Truth would be irresistibly revealed... if you had the Holy Spirit in your heart. Which meant that if two people read the Bible and derived different messages and meanings, at least one did not have the Holy Spirit and was instead deceived by the Devil. One result being that deriving doctrine from the Bible became an exercise in political skill and charisma in which the text itself is no longer that important.

 

So this person claimed, anyway. I'm afraid I don't remember the author's name as this was a case of Things Found While Looking Up Other Things, and not my primary interest at the time. (IIRC I was researching Gnosticism and, yeah, this approach to the Bible is rather Gnostic -- a mystical revelation that cannot be captured and explained by reason.)

 

Dean Shomshak

 

So the fundamentalists replaced intellectual elitism with spiritual elitism.

[Hermit]

9 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

So the fundamentalists replaced intellectual elitism with spiritual elitism.

 

Well, the latter does seem to require less homework.

 

 

[unclevlad]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/us/texas-abortion-ruling-exception.html?unlocked_article_code=1.EE0.HEyK.6-Iz4ydM45f1&smid=url-share

 

Quote

The Texas attorney general’s office, which argued on Thursday against granting the order, could seek the intervention of a higher court. The office has said that Ms. Cox did not qualify for a medical exemption to the state’s abortion bans. It did not immediately comment on the judge’s ruling.

 

Not qualify.......  I cannot express how loathsome I find that statement.  The article suggests the family here would NOT be interested in doing this, but to me, this case makes a *tremendous* argument that denying the abortion here would be cruel and unusual punishment, thus violating the Eighth Amendment.