U.S. Politics Independance Day edition

[ThinkerX]

48 minutes ago, L'oiseau français said:

Speaking of biggest douches, I see Trump is now claiming people aren’t getting vaccinated because they don’t believe the election results.

Everything is about him!

I do seem to remember political affiliation matching vaccination rates.

or something like that

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

25 minutes ago, DMC said:

He will in terms of the leadership putting him in the primetime positions to douche it up.

Maybe in the short term, but if Gaetz beats his potential charges he will surge into House leadership. It's not like anyone actually likes or thinks much of McCarthy or Jordan to begin with.

[Wall Flower]

1 hour ago, L'oiseau français said:

Speaking of biggest douches, I see Trump is now claiming people aren’t getting vaccinated because they don’t believe the election results.

Everything is about him!

Well Trump is the narcissists' narcissist.

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Maybe in the short term, but if Gaetz beats his potential charges he will surge into House leadership. It's not like anyone actually likes or thinks much of McCarthy or Jordan to begin with.

LOL, Gaetz can't even get a sitdown with Trump.  And if you think more of the House Republican conference would prefer him over McCarthy or Jordan, you don't understand House Republicans.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 minutes ago, DMC said:

LOL, Gaetz can't even get a sitdown with Trump.  And if you think more of the House Republican conference would prefer him over McCarthy or Jordan, you don't understand House Republicans.

I did say if he beats the charges, which would likely flip his inability to get a sit down with Trump into getting his backing. And who the conference prefers only matters but so much. It's not like McCarthy is a skilled leader and he would be an easy person to undercut. 

Frankly McCarthy could leave all of this being rather damaged after he's inevitably called to testify in front of the committee.

And no one likes Jim Jordan. No one! 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And who the conference prefers only matters but so much.

It matters pretty fully when we're talking about the conference electing leadership.  Anyway, you're just prolonging this argument for argument's sake.  The leadership clearly prefer Jordan to be the lead attack dog - and thus the Biggest Douche - and not Gaetz at the moment.  And the reasons for that are obvious.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

23 minutes ago, DMC said:

It matters pretty fully when we're talking about the conference electing leadership.  Anyway, you're just prolonging this argument for argument's sake.  The leadership clearly prefer Jordan to be the lead attack dog - and thus the Biggest Douche - and not Gaetz at the moment.  And the reasons for that are obvious.

Not really, and I did say Gaetz was not the smart bet just a few posts ago. That doesn't say anything about who is the bigger douche, just that Gaetz is still toxic at the moment.

[DMC]

30 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Not really, and I did say Gaetz was not the smart bet just a few posts ago.

And I did say in terms of the leadership giving Jordan the primetime position to be the biggest douche.  Yet you continue to kvetch.

[Varysblackfyre321]

16 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The sarcasm is funny, the parodying of Trumpanistas and their arguments is funny, but it’s just feeding the existing fire.  Sarcasm is lost on these folks.  

There’s a component of that but I don’t think for a large part of them is so much that they don’t understand the sarcasm—they just choose to take it literally and act offended.

A problem can arise when people on the left and liberals too readily change their rhetoric because of the willful misinterpretation done by their opposition.

Which can allow them to control the narrative around a topic.

Also It’s just a meme or a joke is often a defense of the right when responding to criticism to them being bigoted or wrong on something, or authoritarian etc etc.

So I can see the value in simply treating their outrage similarly at times.

It’s just a joke, don’t get offended.

But then some jokes and lines of rhetoric aren’t worth trying to defend and keep up.

Talks of election rigging can be like that. Because it can help consolidate the impression there’s at least a reasonable chance of the election being rigged. Because they may not gleam the joke as a joke before diverting their attention to somewhere else.

 

I remember a Times article where the Headline had similar joke rigging the election by insuring it was secure. It was a pretty long ass article and most people are just going to note the headline and not continue reading.

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 7/18/2021 at 6:24 PM, Martell Spy said:

If only Nazis would come up with a cool new name, people would stop hating them.

 I think to an extent this isn’t far from the truth.

unfortunately there’s not an insignificant amount of People who’d only accept an explicit “I’m racist and hate non-whites” as evidence of a person being racist against non white people.

12 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

What do you think “alt-Right” was supposed to be? Fortunately they’re dumb enough that they screwed it up.

Other attempts are “race-realists.” And “Paleo-conservatives”

They sound more politically correct than white-supremacist.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

It’s just a joke, don’t get offended.

But then some jokes and lines of rhetoric aren’t worth trying to defend and keep up.

Talks of election rigging can be like that. Because it can help consolidate the impression there’s at least a reasonable chance of the election being rigged. Because they may not gleam the joke as a joke before diverting their attention to somewhere else.

I’m a little confused.  Are you agreeing with my point that sarcasticly fanning the flames of Trumpanista rage is a bad idea or is your point that anything anyone does that detracts from the Trumpanista narrative is going to piss them off?

[DMC]

Interesting poll showing "wokeness" is actually more popular than it is unpopular - with a plurality not giving a shit either way.  32 percent of respondents consider themselves to be "woke" compared to 23 percent that do not.  13 percent are unsure and another 31 percent don't know what "woke" means.  Additionally:

Quote

In the new poll, however, many more people familiar with the term thought it was a good thing than a bad thing.

Thirty-eight percent of voters said being woke is a good thing while 21 percent said it is a bad thing, specifically.

Forty-one percent of respondents said it is neither.

It's almost as if those that harp about "wokeness" being a pervasive problem throughout society are simply a distinct minority that like to whine about anything that allows them to hear the sound of their own voice.

[argonak]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Interesting poll showing "wokeness" is actually more popular than it is unpopular - with a plurality not giving a shit either way.  32 percent of respondents consider themselves to be "woke" compared to 23 percent that do not.  13 percent are unsure and another 31 percent don't know what "woke" means.  Additionally:

It's almost as if those that harp about "wokeness" being a pervasive problem throughout society are simply a distinct minority that like to whine about anything that allows them to hear the sound of their own voice.

I find that I can sometimes have success with talking to my conservative colleagues complaints about "political correctness" and "wokeness" by telling them that, to me, those words just mean "being kind to people," which "Jesus would have supported."  At the heart of it, that's all it is.  Being kind and fair.  They usually sputter a bit about it and try and find some other BS, because they don't actually know what any of those words mean.  And playing the Jesus card is always hilarious because its one of their brainwashed points.

The Right has given up on policy and platform, and all they have now are code words and memes to drive their moral panics.  Its the same with "critical race theory" and socialism.  None of them know what these words mean, to them it just means "bad thing."  They've all been so brainwashed that they look for the TV before they make a decision on whether an event is good or bad.  

And if you haven't been brainwashed with all the code words, then you're more open to seeing what people actually mean by these words.  Which, for the most part, is just "be kind to people."  

[Martell Spy]

Opinion | Why the GOP Made a Mistake Killing Off Biden’s IRS Plan
We ran the IRS under Republican presidents. Tax collection is unfair, and this plan actually gets the policy — and the politics — right.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/07/20/actually-republicans-should-get-behind-bidens-irs-plan-500208

Quote

 

The point of Biden’s plan wasn’t to boost audits but to close the “tax gap” — the amount of taxes currently owed but not paid. We know firsthand that it’s a gigantic number — in 2019 alone it totaled $574 billion, and it’s estimated to reach $7 trillion over the next 10 years. In perspective, that’s equal to the amount of federal income taxes that the bottom 90 percent of individual earners pay in federal taxes on an annual basis.

Closing the tax gap doesn’t require siccing the IRS on hard-working families and small business owners. Quite the opposite: Most of the people who don’t pay their fair share are upper-income people who use financial vehicles to avoid tax bills. Fixing the tax gap is good politics for both parties because it reduces pressure to raise taxes on law-abiding taxpayers.

Here’s an amazing stat: Workers who get a W-2 pay 99 percent of the taxes they owe. It’s those who funnel income through financial vehicles the IRS doesn’t or can’t monitor who pay as little as 50 percent of what they owe. The tax gap has grown because an increasing number of filers, particularly upper earners, do not receive W-2s or other forms that report their income. This is fundamentally unfair and unsustainable.

Biden’s idea for strengthening the IRS wasn’t to add audits, but to improve technology — which is a smart use of federal money to bring in revenue. When we were at the IRS, audits were pretty much the only tool we had to find most of that missing income. But it was and is an inefficient tool. While there is an essential role for audits, they bring in less than 0.5 percent of IRS revenue, and 20 to 40 percent of audits produce nothing.

 

 

[Zorral]

Both of these are at the top of WaPo news (though below Bezos’s return from edge of space):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/capitol-riot-defense-trump-election/2021/07/19/e14f665e-d812-11eb-bb9e-70fda8c37057_story.html

So many of those arrested and being tried for aiding, abetting and participating in sedition or whatever January 6th is called by their lawyers are blaming fox news and the internet for their ‘unlikely aberrant’ behavior.  So it should follow then, that fox etc should be broken up and banned, right?  Particularly as these are also the primary sources for anti-vaxxing propaganda and racist and sexist behaviors too. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/07/20/biden-delta-coronavirus-economy/

Today, again, considering the news of the spread of Delta is directly affecting the economy not only of the world but USA, it seems this will finally make federal mandating vaccination and masks possible, if even death for the unvaccinated won't.

Quote

 

A resurgence in coronavirus cases is threatening the Biden administration’s promises of a swift economic recovery, with Wall Street getting battered on Monday and some leading forecasters beginning to rethink their extremely rosy projections.

The administration is closely monitoring the economic risks associated with the delta variant, and senior U.S. officials have in recent days suggested that local restrictions may have to be reimposed in response to the pandemic.

“This virus doesn’t have to hold you back any longer. It doesn’t have to hold our economy back any longer. But the only way we put it behind us is if more Americans get vaccinated,” President Biden said Monday. . . .

 

"Virus Headwinds Hit Wall St. After Months of Smooth Sailing"

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/business/stock-market-today.html

Quote

 

Fear jolted the financial markets on Monday as investors realized that the path to global economic recovery after the pandemic would be anything but straightforward.

For months, investors had been behaving as if they expected a full, smooth rebound from the Covid crisis. From January through June, stocks rose 14 percent, one of the best first-half performances since the late 1990s.

But the virus’s potential to upend life all over again caught up with investors, as a spate of worrying news — in particular, new outbreaks involving the highly contagious Delta variant among unvaccinated people — led to a big sell-off on Monday. The S&P 500 stock-market index had its worst decline since May, sliding more than 2 percent during the day before closing down 1.6 percent. The Dow fell 2.1 percent, its biggest one-day loss this year. Europe’s Stoxx 600 fell 2.3 percent.

“The impact of Covid on the stock market isn’t over yet,” said Lori Calvasina, head of U.S. equity strategy with RBC Capital Markets in New York. “We’re not saying it’s going to derail the recovery. We don’t think that, but we do think it could cause some additional bumps.” . . . .

. . . . The nature of the recovery — one step forward, two steps back — is wearing investors down, analysts said. So is the growing realization that unstinting support from the Federal Reserve, big government stimulus and the availability of vaccines aren’t enough to make Covid a thing of the past. . . . 

 

Nothing trumps what the Markets want and need, when it comes to what the government will do to help out.

Millions dead in India from the virus ... investors can't handle this, especially the bond markets.

[DireWolfSpirit]

MTGreene gets a pathetic slap on the wrist for once again spreading lies about the virus/vaccine.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_60f67913e4b0158a5ed94f1a

Twitter cowardly gives her an entire 12 hour timeout. Just pathetic on their part smh.

[Fez]

Tom Brady has apparently decided it no longer makes financial sense to be pro-Trump...

 

[argonak]

59 minutes ago, Fez said:

Tom Brady has apparently decided it no longer makes financial sense to be pro-Trump...

 

I'm curious what percentage of NFL's target market (the people they think they can get to watch football) are actually red hats.  Football has always been a widely popular sport across a diverse spectrum.  Catering too much to a small minority of loud angry bitter people probably just turned off a lot of other people from the NFL.  

For me its mostly the commercials that turned ME off.  After I got back from living in Japan i couldn't believe just how long the commercials were now in a football game.  Over there I'd watch the game on streaming after it was run and all the commercials were stripped out.  So much better of an experience as a viewer.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, argonak said:

I find that I can sometimes have success with talking to my conservative colleagues complaints about "political correctness" and "wokeness" by telling them that, to me, those words just mean "being kind to people," which "Jesus would have supported."  At the heart of it, that's all it is.  Being kind and fair.  They usually sputter a bit about it and try and find some other BS, because they don't actually know what any of those words mean.  And playing the Jesus card is always hilarious because its one of their brainwashed points.

Even more specifically, it's always baffled me that the same people who are quick to label liberals as social justice warriors are also the same types that love to tell you how much they love Jesus and how that makes them better than you.

[Week]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Tom Brady has apparently decided it no longer makes financial sense to be pro-Trump...

 

Omg, don't let Scot see this. Someone cover his eyes! Take his glasses! Turn the contrast all the way up! Heavens to Betsy!

...I kid, I kid...I'm no longer as annoyed as I was yesterday...