u.s. politics: molotov cocktail through the overton window

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

42 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Except that the Democrats are even more divided and dysfunction then the Republicans.

Negative.

[Dr. Pepper]

22 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Promoting genocide is a political view?  Hmmm.... I guess that's a new one for me..... 

That apathy of certain members of the left and the insistence that promoting genocide is a valid political view that deserves the same platforms as all others is exactly how we've reached this point.  I often feel we can't move forward as a country until everyone can agree that genocide is a no go.  Supporting genocidal folks is a no go.  Being apathetic to the rise of genocidal folks is a no go.  They are all playing for the same team, maybe different levels, but still playing.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Week said:

Promotion of violence on the left? I'm not sure I follow you here -- 

The nazis might be cosplaying dipshits -- the KKK and their ilk are not. The over-focus on nazis is absolutely a crutch that weakens voices on the left -- I'll grant you that.

If the general public see’s what they perceive as the left promoting violence then they’ll equate that with the more clear promotion of violence by the right.

[Kalbear]

13 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Negative.

Dude, the left and media are condemning Clinton for writing a book, but they're applauding Spicer for appearing on the emmys. 

[Bonnot OG]

Nazism is just another political ideology, why ya guys so mad at it and the people that subscribe to it? I mean it's not like they want to kill jews, people of color, the disabled, the lgbtq community, basically more than half the worlds population. I mean seriously, there totally isn't a difference between wanting genocide vs not wanting genocide. There is totally no automatic moral superiority there.

[Bonnot OG]

BTW, that nazi piece of shit in that video that Manhole is sticking up for, he was harassing people and even threatening some with violence right before this. His preaching of nazism and that armband were clear signs of him instigating and promoting violence given what that ideology preaches and the historical record to back that up. He also got off the bus in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Seattle. He was clearly instigating and trying to terrorize some people and wound up running into someone that was a lot bigger and badder than he thought himself to be. And he got what was coming to him from someone that he wants to wipe off the face of the earth.

This country, hell the world, celebrates a generation of people that killed these people, but lets whine about someone cracking a nazi in the face with their fist and try to falsely equate them to the nazis or say that the tactics are regressive 

You want an intellectual circle jerk? Join a fucking debate club, don't do that shit when people's lives are on the line if these assholes get into numerous positions of power and start to rewrite the laws to fit their ideology. 

But first, stop pushing nazism as just another political opinion that people shouldn't dislike.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Tell me again what you'd like to do to Ted Cruz' face, and why it's acceptable to say that because of someone's appearance but not because of their view that other people should be killed en masse?

That's called a joke. Made pretty apparent by the posting and reposting of a meme that I created in part as an apology to this board for making that joke. I'm 49 years old. The last physical fight I was involved in occurred when I was 25. I'm not a violent person. I don't condone punching Ted Cruz or anyone else in the face. I made the joke that he has quite possibly one of the most punchable faces I've ever seen.

 http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/Lumpy67/media/cGF0aDovRmFjZWdhdGVfenBzOG8xcTB1YnUuanBn/?ref=1

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

That's called a joke. Made pretty apparent by the posting and reposting of a meme that I created in part as an apology to this board for making that joke. I'm 49 years old. The last physical fight I was involved in occurred when I was 25. I'm not a violent person. I don't condone punching Ted Cruz or anyone else in the face. I made the joke that he has quite possibly one of the most punchable faces I've ever seen.

 http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/Lumpy67/media/cGF0aDovRmFjZWdhdGVfenBzOG8xcTB1YnUuanBn/?ref=1

I'm not seeing the disconnect between this and you wanting to punch Ted Cruz, or your advocating it. I see a whole lot of jokes about gassing Jews too. 

As to Nazis that we fought against having weapons whereas these new ones are posers - tell that to Heather Heyer. Tell that to the families that Dylann Roof killed. Tell that to the victims of police brutality - which police are often neo-nazis or KKK.

It is very easy to tell people to be orderly and nonviolent when you can rely on the police to likely protect your interests or at least not actively harm you. It's a smidgen more annoying when you're telling people who are being killed by nazi cops to rely on cops to defend themselves or simply ignore it. 

[The guy from the Vale]

53 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Sure, but equating these cosplaying dipshits to actual fucking Nazis (you know, guys we went to war against, guys who had tanks and bombers, and hand grenades, and death camps) is another false equivalency. 

I recall there is currently a dangerously unstable white supremacist with fascist tendencies with access to nuclear launch codes, something Hitler couldn't even dream of.

More to the point, your perspective on Nazis is only on the late stages of Naziism, 1939 onwards. It's an outsider's perspective, and so you fail to see that you are sitting inside a fascist coup in the making. You are conveniently forgetting that Nazism had six years before the begin of WWII in Germany, and fascists had twenty years in Italy until that point. Trump hasn't been in office for half a decade yet; there's still meaningful internal opposition to him - but since he continues supporting excessive police violence, Arpaio style, and continues seeing "good people" among the "Jews will not replace us" crowd, voicing that opposition may soon get increasingly harder, particularly for minorities. It's these voices that need to be protected, not yours - at least not yet ("First they came for the BLM crowd, and I did not care..."). And since these voices need to be protected from violence, sometimes violence is necessary for that purpose. That said, I'd prefer as little violence as necessary. I just don't think nonviolence is always an option for people whose life, liberty, and happiness are threatened by the KKK or Neonazis, and I'm not going to lame them for taking the steps necessary.

[Week]

1 minute ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

And since these voices need to be protected from violence, sometimes violence is necessary for that purpose. That said, I'd prefer as little violence as necessary. I just don't think nonviolence is always an option for people whose life, liberty, and happiness are threatened by the KKK or Neonazis, and I'm not going to lame them for taking the steps necessary.

This - agree.

[Dr. Pepper]

A few months ago there was an article was published posthumously about a journalist who had a family slave.  He identified her as a slave.  Everything he wrote about her indicated she was a slave.  Yet the public and many here argued that she wasn't a slave.  There was some silly language used about who she didn't look like a slave, that it was cos play slavery or some sort.  People wanted a slave to look a certain way, and the family to treat her a certain way, in order to say, "ok, that's a slave."

It's the same thing here.  Certain folks want neo-nazis to look a certain way and to behave a very certain way before they will understand them as nazis.  As though the absence of a one inch mustache and sending their kids to Trump youth camps en masse means that they can't possibly be nazis.  It's so mind blowingly stupid.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Dude, the left and media are condemning Clinton for writing a book, but they're applauding Spicer for appearing on the emmys. 

And the Republican President is publicly feuding with the Republican Speaker of the House and the Republican Majority Leader of the Senate in a way I’ve never seen before.

[BloodRider]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

I think that's probably what one of the bigger contentions is. Why would it be wrong? Because it's illegal? Immoral? Ineffective?

 

Because Jebus will spank him eternally.

[Bonnot OG]

 

"Seattle police are responding Monday to a viral video of a man wearing a swastika armband getting punched in downtown Seattle.

Police said they they received several reports Sunday of a man wearing a swastika instigating fights at Third Avenue and Pine Street. Police said they were on the scene within five minutes and found the man — with a Nazi flag armband — on the ground.

 

“He declined to provide info about incident & left after removing his armband,” Seattle police said in a tweet about the incident on Monday."

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-police-respond-to-viral-video-of-man-wearing-swastika-getting-punched/



Oh hey, would ya look at that. Punching him in the face worked, and he was instigating as well. But hey, the regressive tactics were punching him, not the preaching of nazism and the nazi trying to start fights.

Not a fan of the headline not calling him what he is though, a nazi, but instead saying he's just a swastika wearing man.

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And the Republican President is publicly feuding with the Republican Speaker of the House and the Republican Majority Leader of the Senate in a way I’ve never seen before.

Is DACA gone?

Is the EPA gutted?

Are local law enforcement issues being swept under the rug?

Are regulations for safety for floods being repealed?

Are regulations against campus rape being repealed?

Is the US doing pay-for-play with foreign nationals on a regular basis?

I get what you're saying, but so far that feuding has not stopped Trump from being as Trumpy as possible, and the resistance doesn't appear to be stopping either Trump or Republicans; what seems to be stopping them is their own damn selves. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Dude, the left and media are condemning Clinton for writing a book, but they're applauding Spicer for appearing on the emmys. 

Freeze peach only applies to men, I guess.

It's funny too, that all these people condemning Clinton not only for writing a book, and what she put into it, haven't actually, you know, read the book. They seem equally ignorant that at least since Nixon, the presidential election losers have invariably written books about their loss -- and that includes even Gerald Ford.

I haven't read it yet either, but will as soon as it arrives.  It's part of US presidential history and as a voter and an historian, and someone who is deeply concerned about the state of our union, I need to read it because so many people are talking about it -- even though they haven't read it of course.  

[Zorral]

27 minutes ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

I recall there is currently a dangerously unstable white supremacist with fascist tendencies with access to nuclear launch codes, something Hitler couldn't even dream of.

 

Um,  Hitler indeed did dream of exactly such a thing, and get it built?  They had a program, from which we happily brought nazi scientists and techs to the US to do it for us instead. 

http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/german-atomic-bomb-project

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

I'm not seeing the disconnect between this and you wanting to punch Ted Cruz, or your advocating it. I see a whole lot of jokes about gassing Jews too. 

As to Nazis that we fought against having weapons whereas these new ones are posers - tell that to Heather Heyer. Tell that to the families that Dylann Roof killed. Tell that to the victims of police brutality - which police are often neo-nazis or KKK.

It is very easy to tell people to be orderly and nonviolent when you can rely on the police to likely protect your interests or at least not actively harm you. It's a smidgen more annoying when you're telling people who are being killed by nazi cops to rely on cops to defend themselves or simply ignore it. 

Not seeing the disconnect between a joke and action? Okay, not sure how to respond to that. If I had posted a video of Ted Cruz getting his ass stomped with the heading "thing of beauty" then yeah, that would be equivalent to what Sword of Doom did. If you can't make the distinction between that and "goddamn but Ted Cruz has a punchable face" then I don't know what to tell you.

 Yeah, I get that Nazis have and still do kill. I'm not discounting that fact, but to compare what's going on the WWII is a false equivalency. If it weren't, simply punching Nazis would be "doing it wrong". You'd want to be stabbing, shooting and blowing up Nazis were that the case.

 I'm not telling anyone to be anything, I'm ridiculing the posting of violence porn with the heading "a thing of beauty" underneath it.   

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

13 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

 

"Seattle police are responding Monday to a viral video of a man wearing a swastika armband getting punched in downtown Seattle.

Police said they they received several reports Sunday of a man wearing a swastika instigating fights at Third Avenue and Pine Street. Police said they were on the scene within five minutes and found the man — with a Nazi flag armband — on the ground.

 

“He declined to provide info about incident & left after removing his armband,” Seattle police said in a tweet about the incident on Monday."

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-police-respond-to-viral-video-of-man-wearing-swastika-getting-punched/



Oh hey, would ya look at that. Punching him in the face worked, and he was instigating as well. But hey, the regressive tactics were punching him, not the preaching of nazism and the nazi trying to start fights.

Not a fan of the headline not calling him what he is though, a nazi, but instead saying he's just a swastika wearing man.

Yes, it worked everybody! This guy will never wear a Nazi armband again! He'll never preach his vile ideology in public! He has learned to love diversity! All it took was one brain-bouncing shot to the face! Witness the miracle of physical violence, brothers! It cures all societal ills! 

[DMC]

12 hours ago, karaddin said:

The only thing that saved the ACA the last time around was John fucking McCain showboating for adulation after he'd just had brain surgery for a tumour.

I don't think that's a fair recounting of history (otherwise known as six weeks ago).  First, we don't know if McCain offered reassurances to like-minded Senators allowing himself to receive all the blame (and momentary "glory" from the media) for killing the bill.  Second, many voted for the bill contingent upon there being a conference committee in which they could basically, ya know, negotiate an entire other bill with the House.  Not that didn't necessarily have to happen - the House could have just passed the skinny repeal themselves and sent it to the president - but this raises another obstacle skinny repeal had, approval from the House.  This current bill, btw, would have to also pass the House by next Saturday as well.  

There are other difficulties to consider - Capito and Portman were courted through increased funding for opioid treatment.  Moreover, the block grant method of Cassidy-Graham may disproportionately hurt their states:

Quote

Based on an early analysis from the left-leaning Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, states like Ohio, West Virginia, and Arizona — all represented by Republican senators who have at times expressed some apprehension about the various repeal plans — would lose hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars under the block grant.

Overall, the strategy for this bill seems to be derived from the same strategically McConnell used in June and July:  we're not sure exactly how to get to 50 votes, but the deadline will pressure Senators get on board.  While that obviously failed then, still, it is time for the resistance to mobilize once again.  Hopefully for the last time.

2 hours ago, Morpheus said:

The guy is a repulsive propagandist and unrepentantly complicit in a lot of garbage, he should not be let in on the jokes. 

Seen a lot of this on the internets, and I think it's pretty damn silly.  Colbert had Spicer come on in a way that was not only making fun of his own ridiculousness, but tacitly admitting the entire administration is a farce.  If you wanna protest "normalizing" Spicer, then protest him getting a Harvard fellowship, not his ability to have a sense of humor about his tenure.