US Politics: Birthing Again

[Fury Resurrected]

2 hours ago, Lollygag said:

I know Dems don't want to hear this, but part of the voter rights movement has to include getting people the proper verification (birth certificates, driver's licenses, social security cards, addresses, whatever) to make sure they can't be obstructed from voting.

Hoping that one day Republicans will suddenly see the light and stop using these tactics is absurd. Just going to have to buckle down and make the tactic irrelevant.

And this is horrible PR that just feeds their base rocket fuel. Most Republicans live in a bubble where documentation isn't an issue so to them this argument just registers as blatant avocation of voter fraud which is used as a rationalization for them committing it. There's no good way to spin letting people vote without verifying who they are even it's all just voter suppression and invalid.

 

Yeah, there’s a ton of flaws with this logic. Sometimes when you interact with police, they take your ID (I had a lot of clients who couldn’t get tattooed because the cops never returned their IDs after protests in Minneapolis). If you get mugged you might lose your ID- does that mean you should lose your right to vote until you can get an ID (currently taking about two months here in MN). And tons of indigenous people don’t have this type of ID (see the Voter ID laws in the dakotas that are specifically meant to exclude tribal ID). There was an amendment on the ballot several years back here to require voter ID along with a marriage amendment banning same sex marriage. The voter ID measure was voted down even more handily than the marriage one. In states where voter ID is not required, people understand and like it

[JGP]

1 hour ago, Week said:

 

I was just looking at this on Twitter and was coming to share. I wonder how it correlates by area, county, and state. Could be pretty damning.

[Fury Resurrected]

2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

I would like to apologize to Fury and to other members readers of the thread. I acted out of turn yesterday, and I'm sorry for that. I don't like Fury, she doesn't like me. I honestly don't remember what exactly our original beef may have been, but that's beside the point and in further honesty I probably antagonized the fuck out of her.  I make a lot of enemies. Waddaya gonna do?

To Fury, if you read this, I'm sorry. I don't think much of you or many of your argumentative tactics, but I also do not want to demean or disparage you in any way that has to do with your ethnicity. That's wrong. You're right, I did a little Ben Shapiro bit there. I wanted to get a cheap rise out of you, and lessened myself for the effort. I'm sorry. I genuinely apologize for engaging you as I did, and with just a little reflection I can see why and how I crossed the line from personal disagreement (admittedly with a flair towards the dramatic) and frothing at the mouth bitch. My little antagonistic shtick was way out of bounds regarding the subject at hand, and I shouldn't have treated things that are immediate and important to you like they are irrelevant just because I'm full of poison. I shouldn't have done that, and I'm sorry. And I want to be clear in my apology, doing a Shapiro bit at you was racist. I didn't for one second think about that while I was doing it, but that's being ignorant. I wanted to hurt you and didn't stop to think how the tool I was deploying might look to someone else, someone to whom Shapiro and his ilk are a more immediate concern. That's not just fucked up, it's lazy. For my part I would only like you to know that I don't like you or the way you present your arguments, and I somehow expect that feeling is mutual, but I was in the wrong yesterday and I'm sorry for that.

The rest of you can take it for what it is or however you prefer.

While I do very much appreciate and accept that you recognize the shitty racism in what you said, it’s not much of a personal apology where you have to multiple times within it underscore how much you don’t like me. I don’t dislike you, I don’t know you at all. Your post wasn’t very surprising or different than your other posts which led me to put you on ignore in the first place because I just don’t like to see someone mostly popping up to insult people. Do I think that’s your real personality? Probably not, I hope not. An internet character that mostly contributes hurt feelings isn’t one I want to watch. I don’t enjoy seeing people get insulted, whether it’s me or others. So I just choose not to see it unless someone else quotes and responds to it, which is when it might be a comment that adds something to the conversation instead of aiming to make someone feel bad. Maybe you’d be better off and happier blocking my posts too if you dislike me and them enough they make you meanspirited. It wouldn’t offend me or bother me in any way if you did. A meanspirited vibe in the threads is just something that kills my enjoyment of the board, which I’ve participated in for the past 20 years aside from my hiatus. So, I don’t really know how I’m supposed to react to an apology that’s still gotta contain that sort of thing. 

[Fragile Bird]

That was very ungenerous of you, Fury, and not what I expected from a great person like you.

[Fury Resurrected]

11 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

That was very ungenerous of you, Fury, and not what I expected from a great person like you.

Look, I know not everyone is cued into it but it is a VERY rough time right now to be indigenous. Racism against us is worse and more normalized than ever, there are more land grabs and pipelines going in and food insecurity and tainted water on the Rez, and an epidemic of our women and children going missing. So when someone who regularly goes out of their way to be unkind and hurt feelings says something racist, it’s not a huge surprise, and when the apology is itself not very kind and apologizes only for the racism and not for the intention to harm- it just isn’t something I can be super thankful for. I acknowledged it and accepted it, and I think that’s fairly generous for that kind of slight. It’s the best I can really do.

[Fragile Bird]

3 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Look, I know not everyone is cued into it but it is a VERY rough time right now to be indigenous. Racism against us is worse and more normalized than ever, there are more land grabs and pipelines going in and food insecurity and tainted water on the Rez, and an epidemic of our women and children going missing. So when someone who regularly goes out of their way to be unkind and hurt feelings says something racist, it’s not a huge surprise, and when the apology is itself not very kind and apologizes only for the racism and not for the intention to harm- it just isn’t something I can be super thankful for. I acknowledged it and accepted it, and I think that’s fairly generous for that kind of slight. It’s the best I can really do.

Fair enough.

[ThinkerX]

3 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Coming across the news ticker that 671 mail processing machines are being removed from high volume locations. Who could ever guess why?

Serious, but not critical.  A few years ago, USPS shut down multiple sorting plants; those of us in the trenches didn't see much difference. 

Also, letter mail (regular envelopes, magazines, catalogs, large envelopes) has been dropping for a long, long time now.  The current route had 350 boxes when I started it ten years back.  It's now in excess of 500 boxes, but the total volume of letter mail is *less* than what it was back then.  Over the past...six months, call it, letter mail has undergone an especially steep drop.   

[ThinkerX]

9 hours ago, Fez said:

All the stories coming out over the past day or two about what's going down at USPS sound mind-numbingly terrible, especially when combined with differences in voting habits this dramatic:

But unlike Twitter pundits, I'm not going to pretend that I know a damn thing about how USPS operations work. Are all these changes going to dramatically subvert the election or is it something that will more hurt around the edges? Either is unacceptable of course, but it would be good to understand the true of scope of the threat.

Any current or former USPS workers with thoughts?

That'd be me.  USPS Highway contractor for the past five years, ran the route as an employee for five years before that, did another route on and off for most of twenty years prior to that.

First: the mail never stops moving. Trucks, planes, and other forms of transportation are hauling mail 24/7, even on Sundays and holidays., even when the post offices themselves are closed.  I don't see this being interfered with, not to a significant extent.  There are occasional delays for major natural catastrophes - floods, forest fires, that sort of thing.  Not sure Team Trump counts as a natural catastrophe.

Second: the people in the trenches - the carriers, the clerks, the people at the sorting plants - tend to be pretty good at what they do.  That said, many, if not most of those people have a low opinion of those further up the chain.  Where I'm at, we regularly have to decipher edicts from 'on high' that were clearly issued by people who had no idea at all what's involved at the lower levels.  A few years back, one such character managed to get himself appointed Postmaster here as part of his grand plan to climb the ranks.  He literally hid from the staff (coming in mostly after hours to do paperwork) rather learn how things actually worked.  The next guy spent months cleaning up the mess he left behind.  Despite that, the mail got delivered.

Third: There is a sort of hierarchy in the mail.  'DPS' - letter mail takes priority over everything save express.  It always goes out, barring a truly epic mess.  Next are 'Flats' - catalogs, magazines, big envelopes.  Much of it is advertising mail.  On a heavy day, if that office is short handed, it can be pushed back.  Usually, nobody cares.  'Full Coverage' goes to every address on the route. (waste of paper in my view) It can be political, but is usually advertising.  I've seen it delayed upwards of a week without issue.  Political mail can belong to any of these categories.  It *always* goes out, because the people who send it out check on it's status.  Political mail that can't be delivered is separated from the other un-deliverable mail for return to sender.  Those pieces get counted.  

I do not believe the current postmaster general can significantly delay political mail without getting major flack from both parties. 

 

 

[Lollygag]

2 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Yeah, there’s a ton of flaws with this logic. Sometimes when you interact with police, they take your ID (I had a lot of clients who couldn’t get tattooed because the cops never returned their IDs after protests in Minneapolis). If you get mugged you might lose your ID- does that mean you should lose your right to vote until you can get an ID (currently taking about two months here in MN). And tons of indigenous people don’t have this type of ID (see the Voter ID laws in the dakotas that are specifically meant to exclude tribal ID). There was an amendment on the ballot several years back here to require voter ID along with a marriage amendment banning same sex marriage. The voter ID measure was voted down even more handily than the marriage one. In states where voter ID is not required, people understand and like it

These are more specifics about what voter rights needs to address, but I was talking more about registration issues. I don't disagree with the problems here, but Republicans will still Republican all the same. Make the tactic less effective rather than *wishing* they'll stop. South Dakota is exactly the reason that proactivity is needed on this. They'll do it again, and at the latest time possible to make sure it can't be complied with.

 

-----------------------------------------------------

Changing subjects. Sorta. I was wondering why they'd care about genealogical records so much. If one's citizenship is based on the verifiable citizenship of one's ancestors and birth is no longer deemed sufficient in itself, one can see where this can go, and it's ugly. Republicans are slapping the birth issue on Harris right now, but it's something they really want to get rid of in general.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/29/us/immigration-records-uscis-fee-hike-trnd/index.html

Quote

Unearthing the roots of your family tree is on the verge of becoming a lot more expensive.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that oversees the country's immigration and naturalization system, has proposed significantly increasing fees for a number of applications and documents, including historical records of deceased immigrants who came to the United States between the late-19th and mid-20th centuries.

In some cases, the proposed fees would amount to an increase of nearly 500% -- making what was once a relatively affordable process out of reach for many people.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30571801/stephen-miller-emails-birthright-citizenship-trains/

Quote

In case you missed it, White House blight Stephen Miller never ceases to be struck dumb by brainstorms, some of which he put in emails to Breitbart that were helpfully leaked to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Miller discussed the subject of DACA as it relates to demographic replacement in a March 10, 2015, email while criticizing former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, then widely expected to be a top GOP candidate for president in 2016. Miller condemned his fellow Republicans on the subject of immigration and also birthright citizenship, which the 14th Amendment grants to those born or naturalized in the United States. Far-right extremists want to eliminate birthright citizenship outright. 

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

That was very ungenerous of you, Fury, and not what I expected from a great person like you.

I know Kay has already responded to this, but this seems a really unfair reaction to that post to be. Jace's apology was frank and honest and repeatedly emphasised her dislike of Kay in a way that also struck me as unnecessary in an apology, but also on it still being a clear and genuine apology.

Kay's response was in the same vein of frank honesty and correcting the idea that the dislike is mutual is something that could prevent this kind of thing in the future, the main point is that her ignoring Jace is primarily about the tone wanted on this board and that ignoring her shouldn't be read as anything other than customising her board experience. An approach to ignoring that I thoroughly understand.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I think we can all move past it and get back to the topic at hand. Frankly how an apology works between two people is between them and no one else, even if it's on a public platform. 

[Castellan]

I am sitting here with a blank mind trying to work out what Trump is running on. 

Things he wants to do:

1. Stronger water flow for shower heads

2. Ignore coronavirus, this testing just brings bad news!

Criticism of the opposition

1. He's old; she's not white.

2. She isn't a citizen or if she is, shouldn't be. Clearly something sinister is going on if she can run for VP.

Strategy:

Stop everyone but his base voting or create such turmoil and ineptly run election and disputed results that he can always say he was robbed of his election win, align himself with various sinister forces and fuel enough social division and decline and populist nutbaggery to fuck America up for decades to come. This was the Bannon-esque game plan in the first pace, except he overestimated the America electorate - they voted him in.

Is there more? His policies last time like encouraging business and jobs aren't being mentioned. I guess he's running on his record.

PS. I forgot Getting rid of payroll tax under policies.

[DMC]

Interesting piece on Biden and Obama's relationship, friction, and contrasting styles.  I don't agree with all of it, but some pretty interesting quotes on the record from people that were there:

Quote

Republicans who negotiated with the administration often came away finding Obama condescending and relying on Biden to understand their concerns.

“Negotiating with President Obama was all about the fact that he felt that he knew the world better than you,” said Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader from 2011 to 2014. “And he felt that he thought about it so much, that he figured it all out, and no matter what conclusion you had come to with the same set of facts, his way was right.” Biden, he said, understood that “you’re gonna have to agree to disagree about some things.”

A former Republican leadership aide described Obama’s style as “mansplaining, basically.” The person added that Biden “may not be sitting down talking about Thucydides but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a high level of political intelligence.”

Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s close adviser and family friend, bristled at any suggestion that Obama’s negotiating style was responsible for tensions with members of Congress: “Obama was younger than many of them. He was the first Black president. He wasn’t a part of that club,” Jarrett said.

 

[Fury Resurrected]

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

Interesting piece on Biden and Obama's relationship, friction, and contrasting styles.  I don't agree with all of it, but some pretty interesting quotes on the record from people that were there:

 

I saw him speak when he was on his book tour a couple years ago and I could see the dynamic being taken that way by conservative dudes who don’t necessarily feel comfortable with a younger black guy who was obviously smarter than them and not trying to tone that down for other egos. The Biden I saw them was super engaging and easy to follow, plain spoken but extremely knowledgeable about foreign policy especially. It has not come through at all in the campaign, and I say this as someone who definitely did not want Biden to get the nomination, but at least prior to this campaign, he’s a very likable and convincing guy.

 

I saw an actually pretty good blurb someone wrote about black support of Biden that he handled deferring to a younger less experienced black man really well, while that would have really rankled a lot of other people. Again, Biden is not my favorite dude, but it was an excellent point about his character.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

I saw him speak when he was on his book tour a couple years ago and I could see the dynamic being taken that way by conservative dudes who don’t necessarily feel comfortable with a younger black guy who was obviously smarter than them and not trying to tone that down for other egos. The Biden I saw them was super engaging and easy to follow, plain spoken but extremely knowledgeable about foreign policy especially. It has not come through at all in the campaign, and I say this as someone who definitely did not want Biden to get the nomination, but at least prior to this campaign, he’s a very likable and convincing guy.

 

I saw an actually pretty good blurb someone wrote about black support of Biden that he handled deferring to a younger less experienced black man really well, while that would have really rankled a lot of other people. Again, Biden is not my favorite dude, but it was an excellent point about his character.

Yeah, I think the contrasting styles depicted in the politico article makes a point, but also does not emphasize enough how much Obama was loathed and ostracized from even having a chance to work with the GOP leadership.  That being said, while I definitely agree with many that due to polarization Biden's "strength" in backdoor dealing will not ultimately matter much in passing legislation or persuading GOP members, that skill should not be completely discounted.  Obama did often come off as condescending and disrespectful - not unlike myself - to Republicans in a way Biden will not.  While it's not gonna lead to them changing their minds on any major legislation, it may help grease the wheels when it comes time to fund the government, or perhaps even if they know the Dems got the votes on an agenda item, maybe netting further concessions.

[S John]

24 minutes ago, DMC said:

Interesting piece on Biden and Obama's relationship, friction, and contrasting styles.  I don't agree with all of it, but some pretty interesting quotes on the record from people that were there:

 

The bit about Obama’s youth is interesting. I could be wrong but I don’t think I generally come off as arrogant either online or in person, but I used to post on another site (sports related but the politics section was bonkers) where I was called that by a handful of posters fairly often for what I felt was just a freakin’ fact based observation. And the people leveling that particular charge were invariably older conservatives. I distinctly remember arrogance being a cited as a mark against Obama from his opponents during his presidency.  I don’t doubt that Biden is more approachable if you are Eric Cantor, but to me the arrogance charge feels like a familiar refrain from conservatives often arguing from a position with only lose ties to reality towards a person telling them some facts they don’t like.

for me this was generally in the context of arguing about climate change and me trying to explain to boomers why it’s not a hoax so I have to wonder what the topic was where Republican staffers were accusing Obama of having a ‘mansplaining style’, like is he arrogantly mansplaining something basic that fucking every other major country in the world accepts as true? Because that is 100% a possibility when dealing with today’s Republican Party. I highly doubt Obama was having hair-splitting arguments about largely agreed upon subjects with Republicans of the type that’s typical on this board.

[Fury Resurrected]

Older conservative white guys seem to kind of expect a kind of deference that I don’t understand. It could be that they are often southern and what is considered respectful manners varies quite a bit regionally. But, less charitably, I think that type of guy is used to being taken more seriously or at least humored convincingly by people who are not demographically similar to them. Essentially, when they say condescending, the word they really seem to mean is UPPITY (followed by an epithet to the offending party’s race or gender)

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Essentially, when they say condescending, the word they really seem to mean is UPPITY (followed by an epithet to the offending party’s race or gender)

Pretty much, yeah.  But still, it's definitely not just old conservative white guys that have criticized Obama and his close advisors (Plouffe, Axelrod, even Favreau) for being arrogant and condescending.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, DMC said:

Pretty much, yeah.  But still, it's definitely not just old conservative white guys that have criticized Obama and his close advisors (Plouffe, Axelrod, even Favreau) for being arrogant and condescending.

Just out of curiosity, do studies show a significant difference in perceived condensation between liberal and conservative orators?  

[DMC]

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

Just out of curiosity, do studies show a significant difference in perceived condensation between liberal and conservative orators?  

I've never seen a study on perceived condescension - albeit that doesn't mean it's not out there, especially if it came out recently (haven't been too diligent on keeping up with the political behavior lit the past 3 or 4 years).  Trying to think of any that would kinda be like that..maybe on specific politicians, yes, but nothing like an overall comparison of something like "do you find Democratic speakers tend to be more condescending than Republican speakers, generally," which I think is what you're asking about.