TrickstaPriest

Time to see if I suddenly can't vote anymore next month...

Definitely some of that going on, reminds me of Lindbergh and other pro Fascism elements during WW2. I would not overestimate the devotion those folks have to Putin personally though, any foreign dictator will do. I believe Ergodan is their latest fetish, and while he’s playing this for personal gain and is certainly personally detestable, he’s on the side of NATO in this one.
 
 I don’t count on the Republican even in foreign intervention these days to pick the right side. I do expect the Democrats to do so, thereby affirming my choice to vote for them. The other guys have lost that.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/politics/congress-democrats-reaction-ukraine-strategy/index.html
 
I hope that we maintain our resolve on this issue. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine and are guilty of numerous war crimes, many of which are too horrific to describe on this Board. They’ve terrorized and murdered, and are doing their level best to eradicate the very concept of a Ukrainian people.
 
We do not have boots on the ground, this is money well spent for our National interest in my opinion. Putin will not stop at Ukraine, he’s resolute in the desire to recreate the USSR. This may be the biggest positive foreign policy accomplishment of this administration if they succeed in blunting those ambitions.

You can't.  This is Soviet-style oligarchy and control of the press.  Repeat a lie often enough and people will come to believe it.  Bigger lies are easier to believe.  Especially effective are lies about elections, which not only make people believe a particular election was stolen, it causes them to lose faith in the democratic process entirely.  And that's working on both sides, because while Republicans believe elections were stolen, the rest of us can't help but see the gerrymandering and voter suppression and foreign assistance that the Republicans are using to stay in power.  Because they want us to see it and lose faith in the democratic process.
 
This isn't going to get better until Citizens United is repealed and the Fairness Doctrine is reinstated.  Or billionaires cease to exist.

I'll believe it when someone actually handcuffs the man.  He's been boasting about his crimes now for six years and he literally tried to overthrow the government.  Nothing.

To review the online speculation I've been seeing around this:
The martial law and "evacuations" are a cover for mass abduction of Ukrainian civilians and for the impending retreat from right bank Kherson Kidnapped Ukrainian men might be mobilized to fight against their own country Thousands of mobiks are being ferried into right bank Kherson to serve as literal meat shields for the not-totally-untrained conscripts that are withdrawing across the river at the same time Russia has been laying the propaganda groundwork for a false flag op to blow the Khakovka dam, flooding Kherson and preventing the UA from pursuing across the river Russia is evacuating the area around the Zaporizhzhia NPP for unspecified reasons Putin puts all other Bond villains to shame.
 
 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fbi-email-jan-6-rioter-sympathy_n_634ad223e4b03e8038d495d7
 
 

There's a saying I once heard: "The candidate who promises to rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on Paul's vote."
 
The GQP has framed pretty much everything in this election as a zero-sum game. Namely, that any advances in rights or opportunities for immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ, or any other minority group must necessarily mean that Conservative white folks somehow have less. 
 
There are still enough Conservative white folks who buy into this line of reasoning to support the strategy. Which is why the January 6th Party still uses it.
 
Honestly, I don't know what the correct strategy for opposing this is. Education sounds like a good idea, but you can't teach anybody anything if they think they already know everything. You especially can't teach people anything if they've been conditioned to see educated people as elitists and/or the enemy. Isaac Asimov's old bit about the cult of ignorance grows more relevant every moment.
 
Appealing to emotion sounds like it should work. But the fact is you can't generate an emotional response powerful enough to overcome the hatred, isolation, and mistrust they've been force-fed for the past X number of years. 
 
Beyond trying to take care of my health so that I can live long enough for most of them to die off and let the people whe replace them actually get some things done, I'm not sure what kind of strategy I have left.

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.

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*.

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

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.

Is still the right thing.

Statistics are useless without peer/like groupings controlled by rigorous protocols.
 
There are legal, and medical definitions here.  18 years of age is the legal age of majority, they are adults.  The American Association of Pediatrics sets it at 21 (https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/140/3/e20172151/38333/Age-Limit-of-Pediatrics?autologincheck=redirected?nfToken=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000).  Which value should we use?  Should we disenfrancise anyone under the age of 21 based on that?    Are military deaths/injuries to 18 years by guns included in that study?  If not, why not?  That's violence.  What is the definition of violent crime, even?  There have been several situations with various police agencies under reporting certain crimes, by classification (even the FBI).
 
 

Two points. One, "If we don't do it the other guy will" is part of the mindset that got us into the mess we're in now. For decades, governments have been waiting for the other guy to make the first move on pollution, on climate change. Now, it's very nearly too late. Everyone has to do whatever they can to ameliorate the situation as much as possible. Canada can't do anything about what Mexico chooses to do, it can only choose for itself.
 
Two, the world is moving toward renewable energy in a big way. Public sentiment has shifted away from dependence on fossil fuels. Recent events have only highlighted the outsized economic influence that countries with large reserves of those fuels wield. Major energy companies are investing heavily in developing renewables because they see that's where the long-term profits will be. Among governments, China's is one of the biggest per-capita investors in renewable energy.
 
Countries that focus on renewables now will reap the rewards not far down the road, and for the foreseeable future. Those that continue to focus on fossil fuels will be left behind.

I wholeheartedly concur that restrictions on research for political purposes (as demonstrated with regard to firearms) is unacceptable. Research should not be limited because we don’t like the implications.
 
The massive spike in suicide is worth research separate and apart from gun violence. We’ve seen our hotline calls more than double in the past two years, with much younger demographics (although still predominantly male). I would like to see greater focus on causal factors and potential interventions. I realize that’s complicated and likely political in nature, but without good research it’s very hard to craft interventions (which is literally my job). I know a lot of the historical reasons, they have been stable for 30+ years. Recent increases are likely attributed to social isolation, and other negative impacts of the necessary pandemic response, but interventions have lagged well behind the skyrocketing rates… with mobile response implementations delayed in California until at least 2025. While I understand the reticence to delve into the potentially negative impacts of our other health interventions, the opportunity through the nation wide “988” number shouldn’t be missed. 
 
Anyway, more research and support for social policy based on data is typically a good thing and I would hope for more of it (rather than additional restrictions).
 
 Edit: In case anyone’s interested in a reputable data source. https://suicidology.org

Getting away from the daily outrages, the "Lexington" column in the Sep. 24, 2022 issue of the Economist is titled, "In praise of the deep state." The specific topic is the dinner honoring winners of the "Service to America" medals, or Sammies: bureaucrats who make the bureaucracy work better, from restoring service at the Veteran's Administration to getting the JWST finally launched. A cohort of people in generally obscure jobs, working for a lot less than they could make in the private sector, because they believe they can use government to help people attain decent lives, and by cracky they're doing it.
 
So my personal thanks to all the employees at every level of government who work to keep American society something better than Hobbesian anarchy. Geez, Marvel mutants thing thy have it bad? At least they get super-powers to compensate for "a world that hates and fears them."
 
Dean Shomshak

Yeah, the divorce point's more or less a side show.  It might have play if Greene was viewed as pro-family, but I don't think that's the case.
 
Her ridiculous assertions here are dangerous, IMO.  There might not be that much violence with a partisan basis, but I do believe there's been some...and if nothing else, it radicalizes.
 
Gah...and we don't even have Trump as a declared candidate, and it's a horrible political year.  What does that say about 2024?

Literally the 'pebble in your shoe'.  I run into this so much that it's distressing - the 'reaching out to disaffected young men' to create an abusive anti-woman political community is brutally effective on them.   It's the one thing they have in common with extreme religious groups.  It's how they seized 'the gamer' vote, building that bridge.  And it's why the GOP was so tolerant of Trump's misogyny.  It's literally their political rally point.

The Onion.  
Altho, the point about a hurricane isn't funny when Ian's gunning for Cat 5 status.  

Guy On Doomed Planet Mostly Concerned With Skin Color Of People In Movies

Students Say They Were ‘Duped’ Into Attending Twisted Religious Event
 

Dear God. I knew the Russian materiel situation was poor, but that rifle is more dangerous to the wielder than to its target.
 
Literal cannon fodder.
 
I'm betting this is another situation Putin's corrupt generals didn't inform him about. Putin wanted nothing but yes-men who won't tell him any upsetting truths. This is the result.

If the Arpanet folks had known, I wonder if they'd have unplugged that first node and smashed it to bits.
 

Kind of wild, isn't it.
 
The money changing hands in the Trump family is something like 100 fold of what Biden/Hunter is accused of.  Even cutting out the genuine fake news about Trump, the amount of actual things he's confirmed to have done is easily 10 fold the possible harm of what Biden is being accused of doing.
 
The only way people can get away with this is under-valuing the possible damage of a mob attempting to seize the capitol building (or stealing government secrets) and equivocating BLM rioting (and there was at least some rioting) to it.  That equivocation seems easy if you just evaluate damage across an entire country over months to a single event at a defended stone building that can't burn.  
 
Except the stated goal of the protests wouldn't, you know, completely seize control of the entire country.  The stated goal of stealing government secrets or of getting a 2 BILLION dollar Saudi deal is on another scale compared to trying to sell government influence for your dad (edit: for less than 1% of that saudi deal).
 
It's actually nuts when you look at the point of doing any of those things.  The George Floyd protest was incomparable because it was a half-year long, country-wide (nearly world-wide) protest with the stated goal of stopping police violence on ethnic groups.
 
What was the goal of seizing the capitol building again?
 
Oh, right.
 
When we talk about 'good' and 'evil', we actually care about motives and goals in this country.  Or at least we thought we did.
 
edit:  And to be clear, we also look at scale and degree of harm caused in deciding how dangerous that 'evil' is.