US Politics: compromising positions

[aceluby]

17 minutes ago, Week said:

I took her meaning to be broadly about the sacrosanct support of Israel in the US broadly -- to incorporate (truly, probably the focus) anti-BDS legislation in (primarily to start) Red states as well as the right-wing evangelical support. I did NOT interpret it as primarily directed at American Jews. Not sure whether that is the correct read or my bias in reading her comments.

Also, I agree with Tywin -- @DMC h/t for the "Making Billy Joel a liar" line. Bravo.

Yeah, it seemed to me she was talking about politicians and not all American Jews.  Specifically, politicians that are taking lots of money from AIPAC and in turn do things like pass laws making it against the law to criticize Israel.  

[Fez]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

1. Contacting your representatives usually just means talking to an intern, so no, it doesn’t do anything unless there is a high volume of other constituents contacting them about the same issue.

I know the deal, I was an intern on the Hill once myself. It only matters if enough people are calling and if the calls are from people who don't usually call. But I never call and there's not going to be a high volume if no one calls.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

44 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I would be really surprised if Omar is not receiving an elevated amount of death threats, and they are inevitably going to be linked to these comments since they have dramatically increased her profile in Congress.  She is a Muslim woman who speaks her mind.  There is a large subset of the country that hate all three of those things.  I think that the GOP's comparing Omar to 9/11 terrorists is more than enough for Harris to say what she did. 

I doubt she’s getting many from the fifth. But right next door is MN CD-6, i.e. Michele Bachmann country. Those people are totally insane, and they are trashing her left and right, so I would not be shocked at all if those hicks are making death threats. On one statewide campaign, during are morning team meetings, one long running joke was asking the field organizer for that area how many death threats he got yesterday. The answer was often some.   

[Mexal]

17 minutes ago, Fez said:

Here's the thing that bothers me the most, and, again, it's not even directly about Omar. If I were any other minority and said I was feeling threatened by something a politician or public figure said, most folks on the left would be falling over to defend me. Even if people thought I was making too much of the issue, there'd still be tons of talk about the difficulties minorities face and how we need to be more sensitive to their perspective; which is all true. However, because I'm Jewish, all I hear is how we need to listen to what the politician/public figure said, or even that they are right, and my concerns are dismissed out of hand as being a pro-Israeli reactionary. There is no attempt to understand why I feel threatened and certainly no defense of me; except from the right wing, are fucking hypocritical insane nonsense people.

So my problem isn't really with Omar, it's with the large group of the left that just immediately took her side and abandoned me. It's especially galling because I even agree with her underlying sentiments about Israel. I think their government is terrible and there is no excusing basically anything they've done since 2005. Jews are always the first group that are abandoned, and they always have been. Seems that some things never change.

I'm an American Jew who was just in Israel 5 months ago and I don't feel threatened by Omar's comments or by certain Democratic politicians saying defending her right to talk about it. After spending some time with Palestinians to hear their side, I think we absolutely do need to speak about it and I very much believe that the Israeli lobbying and the reactionary "anti-semetic" labeling of any little bit of criticism of the Israeli government is making the entire situation there worse. 

Also fuck the right wing defenses. It's unhelpful and it's hypocritical. That's not how I want to be defended, especially since it's their rhetoric that allows true antisemitism to flourish.

[Spockydog]

20 minutes ago, Fez said:

Here's the thing that bothers me the most, and, again, it's not even directly about Omar. If I were any other minority and said I was feeling threatened by something a politician or public figure said, most folks on the left would be falling over to defend me. Even if people thought I was making too much of the issue, there'd still be tons of talk about the difficulties minorities face and how we need to be more sensitive to their perspective; which is all true. However, because I'm Jewish, all I hear is how we need to listen to what the politician/public figure said, or even that they are right, and my concerns are dismissed out of hand as being a pro-Israeli reactionary. There is no attempt to understand why I feel threatened and certainly no defense of me; except from the right wing, are fucking hypocritical insane nonsense people.

I haven't walked in your shoes, so I can't understand your experience. But how can someone saying that some Jews have more allegiance to Israel than the US make you feel personally threatened? This, obviously, in the context of Trump and the resurgence of actual, real Nazis?

 

[mormont]

I don't want to derail the topic so I won't comment beyond this, but it is worth saying that Spockydog's assertion in passing that the allegations of anti-Semitism in the UK are all ginned up to discredit the left is a dangerous knee-jerk reaction and quite untrue. Not all of those allegations are serious and not all are made in good faith: but the vast majority are, and it is unfortunate that people prefer to dismiss them out of hand because they find them uncomfortable. 

[Fez]

4 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I'm an American Jew who was just in Israel 5 months ago and I don't feel threatened by Omar's comments or by certain Democratic politicians saying defending her right to talk about it. After spending some time with Palestinians to hear their side, I think we absolutely do need to speak about it and I very much believe that the Israeli lobbying and the reactionary "anti-semetic" labeling of any little bit of criticism of the Israeli government is making the entire situation there worse. 

Also fuck the right wing defenses. It's unhelpful and it's hypocritical. That's not how I want to be defended, especially since it's their rhetoric that allows true antisemitism to flourish.

Again, there's a difference between talking about Israel and attacking Jews. I want to talk about Israel too, I want to cut off military aid to them until they make real changes and and an honest attempt at a peace deal with the Palestinians. That can be done without retreating back to anti-Semitic stereotypes.

And I agree about the right wing, fuck 'em. Which is why it's even more painful to see them being the ones trying to defend me.

 

1 minute ago, Spockydog said:

I haven't walked in your shoes, so I can't understand your experience. But how can someone saying that some Jews have more allegiance to Israel than the US make you feel personally threatened? This, obviously, in the context of Trump and the resurgence of actual, real Nazis?

Because it all contributes to the concept that Jews are the "other." They aren't real Americans, they support Israel more, and since they aren't real Americans it doesn't really matter if we start curtailing their rights. We aren't at that point yet of course, but it's a slippery slope that history shows can be fallen down very quickly. Certainly the neo-Nazis are worse, and I denounce them too, of course I do, but it's precisely because they exist that everyone else needs to be even more cognizant of the dangers of cracking open that window of saying that Jews aren't really like us.

[Spockydog]

1 minute ago, mormont said:

I don't want to derail the topic so I won't comment beyond this, but it is worth saying that Spockydog's assertion in passing that the allegations of anti-Semitism in the UK are all ginned up to discredit the left is a dangerous knee-jerk reaction and quite untrue. Not all of those allegations are serious and not all are made in good faith: but the vast majority are, and it is unfortunate that people prefer to dismiss them out of hand because they find them uncomfortable. 

Yes, and it's fair to say that a lot of these cases are similar to when a poster on here recently accused a UK political activist of being a holocaust denier, simply on the grounds that she had once hosted a Facebook group with thousands of subscribers, some of which had posted bollocks about the non-existence of the Holocaust.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

20 minutes ago, Fez said:

I know the deal, I was an intern on the Hill once myself. It only matters if enough people are calling and if the calls are from people who don't usually call. But I never call and there's not going to be a high volume if no one calls.

Honestly I wonder if in 2019, you’re better off trying to get something trending on the Twitter machine.

Also, how often did you open a seemingly normal letter only for it to transition into a diatribe about how you’re a baby murderer who is going to burn in hell? Those ones always made me crack up.

[Fez]

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

Also, how often did you open a seemingly normal letter only for it to transition into a diatribe about how you’re a baby murderer who is going to burn in hell? Those ones always made me crack up.

Those were fun, but the craziest were the pro-horse people. I like horses just fine, but I did not realize how large or passionate a group of people were concerned about protecting horse herds on Federal lands.

Also, I was there in spring 2009 during the debate over the stimulus bill. And after certain Democrats dismissed Republican comments about pork in the bill, the office was overwhelmed for months afterwards with proto-tea party folks sending in hundreds of bags of pork rinds. I believe they were all donated to DC homeless shelters.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

I haven't walked in your shoes, so I can't understand your experience. But how can someone saying that some Jews have more allegiance to Israel than the US make you feel personally threatened? This, obviously, in the context of Trump and the resurgence of actual, real Nazis?

 

I don’t think her criticisms are limited to just American Jews. I see them as also including many on the religious right who put their faith before their country. Because they need Israel to be controlled by Jews so that they can go kick it in the sky with their favorite liberal hipster socialist Jew.

[Maithanet]

Once again 538 writes an article about something we discussed weeks ago, namely that the Democratic party would do way better to stop having IA and NH as thier first primaries, since those lily white states are very unrepresentative of the party as a whole.  Thiers has more meat on the bones than our discussion.  Namely, they are looking at the representation of whites with no degree, whites with a degree, black voters, hispanic voters and other voters, as a portion of the Democratic electorate. 

state White, no degree White, with degree Black Hispanic everyone else Similarity score   U.S. 39.7% 23.5% 20.4% 8.9% 7.4% 0.000 1 Illinois 37.0 23.7 22.1 8.9 8.3 0.033 2 New Jersey 34.5 27.4 22.0 8.2 7.9 0.067 3 New York 33.8 26.9 19.3 11.9 8.0 0.075 4 Florida 39.6 18.7 24.3 13.3 4.1 0.083 5 Nevada 44.0 19.4 15.0 11.2 10.4 0.089 6 Pennsylvania 47.4 25.9 18.0 3.2 5.5 0.104 7 Missouri 46.2 23.4 23.1 1.0 6.2 0.107 8 Indiana 48.3 21.2 21.9 2.4 6.2 0.112 9 Delaware 37.9 20.3 29.9 2.7 9.2 0.120 10 Oklahoma 47.3 20.6 17.0 1.6 13.4 0.130

[Maithanet]

Sorry the formatting of the last post got all screwed up, so I'll finish my thought.  According to the 538 methodology, Illinois would be the best state to represent the Democratic electorate as a whole.  But there is a downside to choosing such a large state with the expensive Chicago media market as the first primary.  So a better choice might be a combination of Nevada, Delaware and Oklahoma, with their cheap media markets, and then Illinois.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

21 minutes ago, Fez said:

And I agree about the right wing, fuck 'em. Which is why it's even more painful to see them being the ones trying to defend me.

Are they really defending you though? Because I see their behavior as just using this as an excuse to attack a Muslim woman of color, which their base will eat up. If they were actually trying to defend you, they would also be calling for a rebuke of McCarthy.

21 minutes ago, Fez said:

Those were fun, but the craziest were the pro-horse people. I like horses just fine, but I did not realize how large or passionate a group of people were concerned about protecting horse herds on Federal lands.

Also, I was there in spring 2009 during the debate over the stimulus bill. And after certain Democrats dismissed Republican comments about pork in the bill, the office was overwhelmed for months afterwards with proto-tea party folks sending in hundreds of bags of pork rinds. I believe they were all donated to DC homeless shelters.

The horse business must be specific to whoever you were working for, because I don’t recall that ever being an issue I came across (but yes, people who are into horses are really into horses).

The worst for me was being an intern at the state capital here during the stadium debate. Wholly hell did that have everyone in an uproar.

[Fez]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Are they really defending you though? Because I see their behavior as just using this as an excuse to attack a Muslim woman of color, which their base will eat up. If they were actually trying to defend you, they would also be calling for a rebuke of McCarthy.

The horse business must be specific to whoever you were working for, because I don’t recall that ever being an issue I came across (but yes, people who are into horses are really into horses).

The worst for me was being an intern at the state capital here during the stadium debate. Wholly hell did that have everyone in an uproar.

Well it depends. The Jewish neo-cons I think are trying to defend me in their own bumbling, hypocritical ways, the rest of them though? Not at all.

As for horses, that was the weird thing. This was a northeastern senator, I don't think there were any wild horse herds in the entire state. The calls were always about horses out west. When the callers were out of state we forwarded them along to their senators, but plenty of them were constituents. I assumed since we were getting them, every senator must be getting them. 

[lokisnow]

Per the nytimes (two top stories):

Sherrod Brown is not running! The invisible primary claims another head and we don’t lose a valuable senate seat (if democrats had t moronicly lost the governor race I bet he’d be running)

Biden is staffed up and leaking left and right about his imminent announcement.

(Also, as soon as democrats started fighting amongst themselves the lolly troll stopped trolling democrats. Gee what a coincidence, almost as though sowing division is the purpose of the repetitive confrontation and provocation; funny it was about another issue entirely that successfully caused infighting).

 

 

[Maithanet]

9 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Sherrod Brown is not running! The invisible primary claims another head and we don’t lose a valuable senate seat (if democrats had t moronicly lost the governor race I bet he’d be running)

Good.  I like him where he is.  I also think that while he looks like a good candidate on paper (a midwest liberal who the establishment also likes!) that his candidacy would have been a lot worse in practice.  At this point, I don't need any more senators running.  There's already plenty. 

[DMC]

4 hours ago, Fez said:

I don't particularly care about a single member saying stupid stuff, but I do care about how the party as a whole has reacted to it. I'm especially angry about folks like Harris saying, without evidence, that criticism of Omar is putting her in danger. Even if someone supported Omar's statements, and didn't think they were anti-Semitic, I don't see how they could support that kind of attempted stifling of free speech.

I'm generally happy to get out of your way and let you get pissed about her comments even though I disagree, but get the fuck out outta here with this.  Even ignoring the Orwellian hypocrisy of your "stifling of free speech" comment.  First of all, there is evidence:

Quote

Omar gets death threats. The FBI is looking into the “Assassinate Ilhan Omar” threat someone scrawled on a bathroom stall in Rogers this week. She was accused of anti-Semitism before she so much as set foot in Congress. A fight broke out in the West Virginia statehouse this week over a poster someone hung in the rotunda, linking Ilhan Omar — somehow — to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Other Minnesota politicians have taken on the pro-Israel lobby without it turning into a national incident. Next door in St. Paul, U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum barred American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists from her office after they accused her of supporting “terrorists” when she balked at legislation that slashed humanitarian aid for Palestinians in 2006.

Second of all, handwaving away the consistent and blatant anti-Muslim attacks Omar has been subject to since the moment she was elected severely undermines any moral credibility to the righteous indignation a bunch of people all of a sudden have when someone makes any criticism of the Israeli lobby.  Seriously, the comments Omar made that are found offensive wouldn't even register comparatively if you leveled such a criticism about Islamic influence.  The double standard is laughably obvious, exactly what the right is going for, and shameful for anyone to play into.

Third of all, such disproportionate outrage accordingly emboldens the right to up the ante with disgusting attacks like this:

Quote

Soon after, Fox Business host Stuart Varney invited Ballabon to commenton the matter, asking if there was room for both Omar and Jewish voters in the Democratic Party. Ballabon said there isn’t. “The problem is that her beliefs are deeply rooted in hatred and anti-Semitism,” Ballabon said. “She is a hater. I’m going to say it, she is filth.”

Varney noted that “filth” was a very strong word to use.

“Yes,” Ballabon agreed. “She is a filthy, disgusting hater. So what if she’s in Congress? That’s the problem.”

2 hours ago, aceluby said:

Yeah, it seemed to me she was talking about politicians and not all American Jews.  Specifically, politicians that are taking lots of money from AIPAC and in turn do things like pass laws making it against the law to criticize Israel.  

Yes, she was explicitly referring to AIPAC in the most recent comments that caused an uproar (and, really, all of her recent controversial comments).  Interesting everyone ignores that.

2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Sorry the formatting of the last post got all screwed up, so I'll finish my thought.  According to the 538 methodology, Illinois would be the best state to represent the Democratic electorate as a whole.  But there is a downside to choosing such a large state with the expensive Chicago media market as the first primary.  So a better choice might be a combination of Nevada, Delaware and Oklahoma, with their cheap media markets, and then Illinois.

That was an interesting read and good way to think about it.  Hm.  I think if I was going for three states I definitely wouldn't only focus on small states like your NV, DE, and OK.  I agree that large states with huge media markets should be avoided, but mid-level states can act as a good barometer to test the candidates' ability to compete in all components of a presidential campaign.  So I think my first three would be Missouri,  Nevada and Indiana, in that order.  My only qualm is including both MO and IN undermines the geographical diversity I'd wanna emphasize.  Maybe consider a Northeastern or Southern state to replace Indiana.

10 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Sherrod Brown is not running! The invisible primary claims another head and we don’t lose a valuable senate seat (if democrats had t moronicly lost the governor race I bet he’d be running)

Biden is staffed up and leaking left and right about his imminent announcement.

Yeah I think all this bailing by potential "moderates" is a clear preamble to Biden's official announcement.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

Well it depends. The Jewish neo-cons I think are trying to defend me in their own bumbling, hypocritical ways, the rest of them though? Not at all.

I think that’s the right conclusion.

Quote

As for horses, that was the weird thing. This was a northeastern senator, I don't think there were any wild horse herds in the entire state. The calls were always about horses out west. When the callers were out of state we forwarded them along to their senators, but plenty of them were constituents. I assumed since we were getting them, every senator must be getting them. 

Probably. They must have signed up for some news letter urging them to call on the issue. That said, it’s bizarre. And hilarious. I’m picturing a room with like ten people in their early 20’s puzzled out of their mind.

[Fragile Bird]

I am always puzzled when I see Republican attacks against Omar while Trump has openly talked about people in Congress who hate the USA. So Omar gets attacked for talking about people loyal to other countries while Republicans cheer Trump for saying "fill in the blank" Americans (ie Muslims) are disloyal to America.

Anyone who walks onto a stage and essentially masturbates on a US flag the way Trump did at CPAC (and where else, was it at the Republican convention?) is an effing nut case.