U.S. Politics: You Didn't Think It Would Be So Easy, Did You?

[Jace, Extat]

Democracy dies with a whimper, not to thunderous applause.

Meanwhile, I was doing my weekly cleansing of the apartment and started to think about what parts of the Democratic (unofficial) platform I would drown in bleach. Now the war's over, 2020 is a rearguard action to secure my rights to vacation through the middle of the decade as far as I'm concerned.

That being said, I'm not against fun. So I thought it could be enjoyable if we laid out the items we think should or should not be included in the eventual Democratic Platform. A couple of things to remember before we get into this. You can perform the exercise however you like, but I picked what I think is the best path to me being able to visit Ibiza in 2023. And it's the party platform, it doesn't actually matter except for people to feel like the big issue they measure every political reality against is important to their betters.

 

JACE'S 2020 DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM:

IN:

New Green Deal-Folks are waking up to this shit. It's critical enough and salient enough to push forward with now. Sorry, Al. Ahead of his time.

Healthcare- Admittedly this one's just for slogans. Not a damn thing is worth the political fallout of doing Healthcare again, but people like to think it's a priority until it becomes a priority.

Bank/Wall Street Regulation- Layup, don't have to do anything about it. Can't anyway.

Criminal "Justice" Reform- Like Climate Change this one is actually gaining steam and if Dems magicked up a Senate Majority they could have a real shot at passing insignificant changes.

Infrastructure- This one could actually happen. Like, solid 35% chance that a Democrat President and House could make this one happen with at least some percentage of the money going to fix a bridge somewhere in Jim Jordan's district on an exclusive contract with his biggest campaign donor. (Future Speaker of the House can't have a bridge fall in his district, now)

Federally Mandated Voting Standards- Hard, but if there was a half-court miracle shot worth taking to actually try and save the "Republic" it'd be this one. Universal ID standards, Federally procured MODERN voting equipment with paper trails for auditing. That kinda stuff.

OUT:

Guns- Just stop, it'll never happen.

Abortion- Shoulda voted in 2010.

DACA- If it helps, the vast majority of Americans will pat themselves on the back for feeling bad when they're all deported.

Free College/General Education Reform- Yikes! Just c'mon! I'm cool with paying lip service to this one (which I wholeheartedly believe in) as long as it's not included in the platform.

 

 

 

 

Huh, I think that's it... I'm sure I'm forgetting a whole bunch of vestigial polyps on the body of the party, but if it's not on the IN list it probably needs to go.

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

So I thought it could be enjoyable if we laid out the items we think should or should not be included in the eventual Democratic Platform.

That is interesting.  If I cared about policy.  I don't, and I don't think that's how races are won anymore, for the most part.  But I'll try to participate at a later date, because I do think that's a fun game.  Currently partaking as much as possible to handle the abject disappointment of that in two and half hours.

[Jace, Extat]

20 minutes ago, DMC said:

That is interesting.  If I cared about policy.  I don't, and I don't think that's how races are won anymore, for the most part.  But I'll try to participate at a later date, because I do think that's a fun game.  Currently partaking as much as possible to handle the abject disappointment of that in two and half hours.

I forgot to put Make HBO ReShoot Season 8 on there. Can you believe that petition has over a million signatures? What a wild world we live in! 

People are silly sometimes. 

And I know it's a silly premise and spoiler alert: policy don't matter to me neither, but I think it's revealing as far as how you approach electability vs purity.

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

but I think it's revealing as far as how you approach electability vs purity.

That's definitely true.

[Fragile Bird]

The NYT is reporting that in 2016 and 2017 Deutsche Bank’s specialists on money laundering identified numerous transactions involving Trump companies and Kushner companies to senior management as transactions that should be reported to the federal government. Senior management overruled all the reports, saying ‘further investigation’ found nothing untoward. 

[Zorral]

If policy matters not at all, what's the point of candidates and elections?

If you all are saying you're interested in nothing but power, even though you all don't have any and won't have any, OK.  Though again, if that is the case it still seems pointless for you to even care.

[Jace, Extat]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

If policy matters not at all, what's the point of candidates and elections?

If you all are saying you're interested in nothing but power, even though you all don't have any and won't have any, OK.  Though again, if that is the case it still seems pointless for you to even care.

Assuming DMC and I are speaking from the same place, I think a more exact statement would be "currently politicians' campaign policy proposals are fantastical to the point of practical irrelevance".

But that's wordy.

 

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

If policy matters not at all, what's the point of candidates and elections?

If you all are saying you're interested in nothing but power, even though you all don't have any and won't have any, OK.  Though again, if that is the case it still seems pointless for you to even care.

Aye, I suppose I should clarify.  When I say "I don't care about policy," I don't actually mean I don't care about policy.  Of course I care about policy, and all the differences a Democratic president could make.  What I'm saying is I don't care about the candidates' policy, only they're electability.  And everybody defines that last one in their own way, so..I dunno if there's much to talk about until next February.  Watch the ebb and flows, I suppose.

[The Anti-Targ]

7 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

 

Free College/General Education Reform- Yikes! Just c'mon! I'm cool with paying lip service to this one (which I wholeheartedly believe in) as long as it's not included in the platform.

 

Quote

Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class at historic black college

Robert Smith makes pledge to eliminate students’ debt estimated at $40m at Morehouse, Martin Luther King’s alma mater

Nice gesture, but doesn't deal with the problem of student debt, and too bad if you were class of 2018 or will be class of 2020.

I'll credit this as being more than just an ego movie by Robert Smith if it actually leads to long term meaningful change. I think I would prefer to suggest that he offer every student at the school a $1000 annual scholarship for every year they are at college, every year from now on, as long as you get a passing grade average for the year. That way the debt burden of every student now and into the future is reduced by a few thousand dollars.

[polishgenius]

So... anyone up for that war then?

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

So... anyone up for that war then?

Subtext of that tweet:  So hey Iran, please threaten us again.  Not go well here, need help sabre-rattling.

[DireWolfSpirit]

He sounds desperate to get his Obstruction of Justice out of plain sight. Soon I suspect he will be out on the WH south lawn breakdancing for the press ( who are about as hard to distract as my pet cat chasing some yarn).

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

So... anyone up for that war then?

I've never met a war I wasn't ready to let someone else fight!

[DMC]

6 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

 who are about as hard to distract as my pet cat chasing some yarn).

With both the press and your cat, all you need is one good laser pointer.  The cat's usually much more responsive though.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

With both the press and your cat, all you need is one good laser pointer.  The cat's usually much more responsive though.

Cat also knows when to quit.

[lokisnow]

Evangelicals are the best. Did you all know that in response to the changing American politics of abortion, Evangelicals changed the english translation of the bible--leviticus--so that it would mean the opposite of the original text, and now comport with contemporary anti-abortion american politics?

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/03/22/mischief-follows-in-partisan-bible-translations/

Quote

And for anti-abortion American evangelicals, Exodus 21:12-27 was unacceptable. It suggested that striking and killing an unborn fetus was in a separate category from striking and killing a “person.” Strike and kill a free person, you get the death penalty. Strike and kill an unborn fetus, you get a fine.

And so in 1995, like those earlier translators who invented and inserted “Junias,” the translators of the NASB reshaped this passage. “She has a miscarriage, yet there is not further injury” would, in consideration of the changes in American politics since 1977, henceforth be transformed into “she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury.”

Politics — specifically, the political desire to control women — shaped the translation of that text. The translators changed the words of the Bible to make it seem like it supported their political agenda. They changed the words of the Bible so that others reading it would not be able to see that its actual words challenged and contradicted their political agenda.

 

if you need that clarified a bit more by someone who actually speaks hebrew:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1128864334678044672.html

Quote

“When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman’s husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning.” 

In other words...

It’s damages, not murder, y’all. You have to pay a fine. The fetus does not have the status of personhood (subsequent Jewish law is clear on this). Then the verse says, “But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life,” aka if the PREGNANT WOMAN dies... cot’d

Then and only then is it treated as homicide and punishment adjudicated as such.

*snip*

That the chance that this biblical text ascribes personhood to the fetus miscarried is approx zero.

 

 

[Martell Spy]

18 hours ago, polishgenius said:

So... anyone up for that war then?

Bleeding John Bolton Stumbles Into Capitol Building Claiming That Iran Shot Him

https://politics.theonion.com/bleeding-john-bolton-stumbles-into-capitol-building-cla-1834847900

Quote

WASHINGTON—Bursting through the Congressional chamber doors while moaning and clutching his shoulder, John Bolton reportedly stumbled into the Capitol building Friday claiming that he’d been shot by Iran. “Help, help, I’ve just been attacked by a large Middle Eastern country around 636,000 square miles in size,” said the national security advisor, telling those assembled that he’d just been minding his own business when an aggressive Islamic Republic had thrown him on the ground and shot him with a long-range missile.

 

[Zorral]

12 minutes ago:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosis-leadership-team-rebels-on-impeachment-presses-her-to-begin-an-inquiry/2019/05/20/263c11de-7b5b-11e9-a66c-d36e482aa873_story.html?

Members of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s own leadership team confronted her in a contentious Monday night meeting and argued that it was time to begin an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, according to multiple sources in the room.

At least five members of Pelosi’s leadership team — four who also sit on the House Judiciary Committee with jurisdiction over impeachment — pressed Pelosi to allow the panel to start the inquiry, which they argued would help investigators attain documents and testimony Trump has blocked....

[Martell Spy]

Well, I can tell you one thing. If a candidate goes on Fox News to make nice, I will not be voting for them in the primary. So fuck you Sanders and Beto. Why not just don Nazi regalia and march around and then Instragram it? 

[lokisnow]

also, fox news was in very dire shape with its advertisers this spring, and was actually nearer death than many realized. Democrat president candidates going on fox news has allowed the network to repair its relationships with its advertisers by demonstrating "see we are embraced by both sides, no reason for you to fear working with us" and said democrat candidates have more or less singlehandedly revived the network from near death.

But was it worth it? did democrats that went on fox "reach the voters" 

Maybe, for the one to two hours that they were on live.

But for the 144 hours immediately following an appearance (and beyond, but this is the highlight of hate peak period), their interview was chopped up, misrepresented, maligned, mocked and attacked, no rebuttal, all bandwagon, all red meat, all dogwhistles. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week of continual hate and invective and character assassination directed at them, using the content they provided fox by participating with fox.

so they helped the network's bottom line. Saved the network, maybe reached someone for a couple hours, so long as that someone also didn't watch any other fox news coverage of the event that told them what to think. 

and anyone that missed the actual live event has been expertly taught to deeply and profoundly hate and mistrust that candidate as a true and awful evil enemy of america who must be stopped at all costs. Now they are educated via a crash course about who the enemy is, thanks for going on fox and teaching them to hate you.

These democrats that go on fox, they're worse than the oysters willingly going along with the walrus and the carpenter, eager to be eaten.