US politics: Manchin to the beat of a different drum

[butterbumps!]

Question for those in NYC.   Does anyone have thoughts about the mayor primary?  My union endorsed Adams, but NYT and a bunch of progressives in my circle are all about Garcia.  I admittedly haven't done a ton of research yet, so other than having strong feelings that Yang and Stringer (Stringer's sexual assault accusation) not be elected, I'm a little lost in differentiating the candidates. 

This might not really belong here, but it seemed too small a topic for its own thread.   

[Fragile Bird]

Greene called Kevin McCarthy a “feckless c**t” on Twitter yesterday, for all of 6 minutes before taking it down.

Does this mean she has a Brit on her staff who writes her tweets? That’s not exactly an American insult, I wouldn’t have thought she even knew the word feckless.

[kairparavel]

20 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Greene called Kevin McCarthy a “feckless c**t” on Twitter yesterday, for all of 6 minutes before taking it down.

Does this mean she has a Brit on her staff who writes her tweets? That’s not exactly an American insult, I wouldn’t have thought she even knew the word feckless.

This has Katie Hopkins written all over it.

 

[Ormond]

34 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Greene called Kevin McCarthy a “feckless c**t” on Twitter yesterday, for all of 6 minutes before taking it down.

Does this mean she has a Brit on her staff who writes her tweets? That’s not exactly an American insult, I wouldn’t have thought she even knew the word feckless.

I would not be at all surprised if it was some staffer who wrote this. But that doesn't mean the staffer was British themselves. WIth the international nature of the Internet and media today, younger people in the USA have often adopted a lot of "Britishisms" without even realizing it. I still remember how surprised I was when Chris Hayes on MSNBC used the word "cheeky" with no idea that the majority of his American viewers probably would not understand that word. And that had to have been before March 2013 because it was when he still have his morning show instead of the evening one he has now. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

It was a retweet. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

11 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Maybe I'm just too cynical at this point, but I've found a lot of what's going on in liberal politics these days to be rather performative in nature.

Don’t knock performance.  Performance is IMPORTANT, and sustained performance is CRITICAL.  On some level, every social interaction we have is performance.  You present yourself as the person you want to be perceived as rather than the person that maybe you are, but those two concepts aren’t binary, and they merge over time.  I know exactly what annoys people, and I hear it all the time and it annoys me too (buzz words, perceived hypocrisy, posting rather than doing).  But habits of mind are formed by repetition.  Or put differently, if you tell a lie often enough at some point you believe it. So my view is let’s not knock performance, even if you, the audience, don’t love the second act of the play.  Let’s encourage MORE performance and better performance rather than throwing tomatoes.  

ETA two things:

1.  It is now fashionable in certain circles to have exactly this cynicism.  It’s performance as well.  

2.  This isn’t directed at ANYONE in this thread at all, but more on my observations in conversations with people iRL.  I don’t personally like when one person tells another person that their stated beliefs and emotions aren’t real.  Completely off topic, but anecdotally I see this accusation thrown at women a lot.  It sets my teeth on edge.

 

2 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

Question for those in NYC.   Does anyone have thoughts about the mayor primary?  My union endorsed Adams, but NYT and a bunch of progressives in my circle are all about Garcia.  I admittedly haven't done a ton of research yet, so other than having strong feelings that Yang and Stringer (Stringer's sexual assault accusation) not be elected, I'm a little lost in differentiating the candidates. 

This might not really belong here, but it seemed too small a topic for its own thread.   

Yeah, I’m a bit right of you, but I think my votes are McGuire, Adams, Morales, Garcia.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Greene called Kevin McCarthy a “feckless c**t” on Twitter yesterday, for all of 6 minutes before taking it down.

Does this mean she has a Brit on her staff who writes her tweets? That’s not exactly an American insult, I wouldn’t have thought she even knew the word feckless.

16 hours ago, DMC said:

Third, and related to the first one, is that being part of leadership is fairly antithetical to MTG's (Trumpist) brand.  She's an outsider, a rabble rouser, someone that blames not only the pedophile leftists but the weak and feckless leaders of her own party.  Trump, obviously does this as well, and really it gained considerable traction with the crazy right starting with the Tea Party.  You can't be the sole person that can save the country from evildoers and be floor leader of a party caucus.

Ok, yeah, I'm advising her.

22 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Don’t knock performance.  Performance is IMPORTANT, and sustained performance is CRITICAL.

This isn't the dating thread.  Or is it?

[Fragile Bird]

16 minutes ago, DMC said:

Ok, yeah, I'm advising her.

This isn't the dating thread.  Or is it?

Hey, I was talking about the bag of crude called Greene. I wouldn’t expect a numpty like her to know the word! You, sir, are erudite and eloquent.

CNN dug up an attack she made on AOC in 2019, demanding that AOC be shamed for comparing the detention camps for migrants with camps run by Nazis. How dare she dishonor the sacred memory of the Jews who suffered at the hands of Nazis by comparing them to illegal immigrants! As opposed to, say, comparing vaccine passports with yellow stars Jews were forced to wear, an honorable comparison!

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Hey, I was talking about the bag of crude called Greene. I wouldn’t expect a numpty like her to know the word! You, sir, are erudite and eloquent.

Thanks.  But on behalf of MTG I must emphasize that she is also quite erudite and eloquent, liberals are just unable to see this by focusing on mundane things like what she says and writes.

[argonak]

12 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Maybe I'm just too cynical at this point, but I've found a lot of what's going on in liberal politics these days to be rather performative in nature.

By its nature democratic (small d) politics is always performative.  Politicians ultimately do what they do because it gets them re-elected or is what got them elected.  Occasionally you have people who will step away from that line (Liz Cheeney being an example), but the system corrects for that quickly (Liz Cheeney being an example again).

Either you're elected because the crowd likes what you like, or you're elected because you like what the crowd likes.  If you try to do the "right thing" but the crowd doesn't like it, its very rare they'll continue to support you.

[Fez]

Do you think Lauren Boebert is jealous of how much attention MTG gets or not?

I haven't paid enough attention myself to know whether she's a fellow outright crazy person or just a gun nut.

[argonak]

1 hour ago, Ormond said:

I would not be at all surprised if it was some staffer who wrote this. But that doesn't mean the staffer was British themselves. WIth the international nature of the Internet and media today, younger people in the USA have often adopted a lot of "Britishisms" without even realizing it. I still remember how surprised I was when Chris Hayes on MSNBC used the word "cheeky" with no idea that the majority of his American viewers probably would not understand that word. And that had to have been before March 2013 because it was when he still have his morning show instead of the evening one he has now. 

Come on, anyone who grew up with Thomas the Train (or has had kids in the last twenty years) knows the word cheeky.  

[argonak]

10 minutes ago, Fez said:

Do you think Lauren Boebert is jealous of how much attention MTG gets or not?

I haven't paid enough attention myself to know whether she's a fellow outright crazy person or just a gun nut.

I think social media attention is what drives the majority of Republican "stars" these days.  They don't really care about policies or accomplishing anything.  They just want to get people to smash the like button.

Its so weird.

edit:  Thinking about it, I guess what is really weird to me is that their voters care less about what the politicians accomplish, than about what they say.

[Martell Spy]

16 minutes ago, argonak said:

I think social media attention is what drives the majority of Republican "stars" these days.  They don't really care about policies or accomplishing anything.  They just want to get people to smash the like button.

Its so weird.

edit:  Thinking about it, I guess what is really weird to me is that their voters care less about what the politicians accomplish, than about what they say.

 

Seems like more of an addiction to cash than likes on FB.

 

How Josh Hawley and Marjorie Taylor Greene Juiced Their Fundraising Numbers

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-josh-hawley-and-marjorie-taylor-greene-juiced-their-fundraising-numbers

Quote

 

Two of the leading Republican firebrands in Congress touted big fundraising hauls as a show of grassroots support for their high-profile stands against accepting the 2020 election results.

But new financial disclosures show that Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., relied on an email marketing vendor that takes as much as 80 cents on the dollar. That means their headline-grabbing numbers were more the product of expensively soliciting hardcore Republicans than an organic groundswell of far-reaching support.

Hawley and Greene each reported raising more than $3 million in the first three months of the year, an unusually large sum for freshman lawmakers, according to new filings with the Federal Election Commission. That’s more than the average House member raises in an entire two-year cycle, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. The tallies generated favorable press coverage for Hawley and Greene, and they both seized on the numbers to claim a popular mandate.

Politico called Greene’s result “eye-popping” and “staggering,” a sign that she “appears to have actually benefited from all the controversies that have consumed her first few months in office.”

 

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Don’t knock performance.  Performance is IMPORTANT, and sustained performance is CRITICAL.  On some level, every social interaction we have is performance.

In many ways this is true.  Which is why it's so important to see people of color, people who aren't CIS, people who not Het, people who aren't skinny -- to see everybody, in supporting and and leading roles in all our entertainments.  To have them performing the baddies as well as the good protagonist roles, to have them be the Protagonists, and to have them in supporting roles, about which not much, if anything is made.  Seeing people who are not white, straight, CIS, etc. all the time is essential for most of us in the USA, who do not see and interact with people as the usual, ongoing SOP. It becomes normal.  This is what the white/rethug/fascists fear, as they do hear more and more people in some communities speaking Spanish or one of the Asian languages (even in a service capacity), and see more and more Spanish and Asian and Black heritage people, as the US mode of moving around for work and affordable housing operates. That they see the 'other' only in non-social conditions, they still don't see them as real people, only a threat.  Our class system kicking in then too, simultaneously.  Even when the other is a doctor.  

Which is why it seems that racism in the USA will never end with white people because most white people don't have even a single real friend who is not white.  Unless a white person participates with other people, within 'their' cultures, we cannot ever truly be friends and colleagues.  Part of this tragedy is that so much of what is the best and most glorious of what we think of as our national culture here in the USA is directly out of African American culture and experience, starting from the moment the first Africans were driven off the ships in Virginia and Plymouth.

This is why it's essential for all of us, whether with families who have lived here for generations, or are first and second generation immigrants, learn Black History.  One cannot understand this country w/o that. Which, of course, is why the latest addition to the rethug/right's armory of weaponized culture, is "Critical Race Theory."  Lordessa forebear we learn the truth.

 

[Zorral]

Also, the protests over a year have made a vast difference, I think, at least in our region.  Which were not riots, btw.  They were daily, peaceful, massive protests of YOUNG people of all heritages.  One highly doubts those surveys contacted them.

There are generational differences here, which naturally the older generations who hold power, and the frackin' media, somehow overlook, as they have always overlooked when watersheds of political and cultural tipping points are reached.

Many members of the younger generations here in New York at least, have been living multi-cultural lives from birth, whether African American, Asian, White, Whatever.

The differences in understanding and experience between these kids and a white middle-aged US fantasy novelist living in England and proudly documenting how she went outside to dance her Racism in America is Dead on the night Obama won the election are so vast as to not be quantifiable.

[Ormond]

2 hours ago, argonak said:

Come on, anyone who grew up with Thomas the Train (or has had kids in the last twenty years) knows the word cheeky.  

I still had to explain it to undergraduate college students in my classes in Nebraska within the last few years. 

[Week]

On 5/26/2021 at 2:17 AM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

“If there was riots—not saying there was—they were only the result of right wing provocateurs  who either tricked or masqueraded as people I agree with on a particular topic.”
This post reads overly defensive. People who were outraged about Floyd’s murder and other perceived mistreatment. It’s not the first time an instance of brutality against a black person had kickstarted a riot by itself.

Listen I understand fascists did try to exploit the outrage to try to incite a race war.

But I think it’s really unwise to try to deny the rioters were a thing or a wholly a concoction of right-wing provocations.

First bold -- what? Where is this quote from? I did not say this nor did either link.

Second bold -- what? Again, fortunately not something that I said.

This seems to be a consistent pattern for you where, frankly, you don't seem to have a coherent point of view other than arguing the "argument" -- as you frame it -- to the absurd. I'm not interested in playing that game after your entire response here is a nonsense sandwich with the point that I was making in the middle.

[Altherion]

5 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

Question for those in NYC.   Does anyone have thoughts about the mayor primary?  My union endorsed Adams, but NYT and a bunch of progressives in my circle are all about Garcia.  I admittedly haven't done a ton of research yet, so other than having strong feelings that Yang and Stringer (Stringer's sexual assault accusation) not be elected, I'm a little lost in differentiating the candidates. 

This might not really belong here, but it seemed too small a topic for its own thread.   

If you have a couple of hours to spare and want to differentiate the candidates, try watching their May debate. I saw some of it live and they're actually quite different. Adams is fairly strongly pro-police (not surprising given his background). I remember he mentioned bringing back the plainclothes police unit, but doing it right this time which made the more left-wing candidates quite angry.

Garcia is interesting in that she deals with pressing issues (lead paint, COVID food relief) and does it relatively well which makes her a natural choice for the current era. She is also the most environmentalist of the candidates.

The others are all different in a variety of ways (in addition to the police, the debate discussed education, COVID recovery and a few other issues). I think you get to rank your top 5 choices, but I would just go with Garcia first and maybe Yang second.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

8 minutes ago, Altherion said:

If you have a couple of hours to spare and want to differentiate the candidates, try watching their May debate. I saw some of it live and they're actually quite different. Adams is fairly strongly pro-police (not surprising given his background). I remember he mentioned bringing back the plainclothes police unit, but doing it right this time which made the more left-wing candidates quite angry.

Garcia is interesting in that she deals with pressing issues (lead paint, COVID food relief) and does it relatively well which makes her a natural choice for the current era. She is also the most environmentalist of the candidates.

The others are all different in a variety of ways (in addition to the police, the debate discussed education, COVID recovery and a few other issues). I think you get to rank your top 5 choices, but I would just go with Garcia first and maybe Yang second.

I want to think strategically how I rank my top (I have 4 right now, but might put in a fifth) candidates within the ranked choice rubric. I probably shouldn’t try to game the system, easier just to actually rank them, but ranked choice is like a new toy and I can’t resist.