U.S. Politics Independance Day edition

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

If im prez I'm initializing "the draft" immediately after inauguration, but it's just kegs of old recipe Newcastle on tap at all federal properties. 

We really need another beer summit?

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, A True Kaniggit said:

So I don't get to invade anyone?

Has that been your plan this whole time? To get my hopes up, only to dash them?

 

That cuts real deep, and I respect that.

It's true, I've been casting myself as a lord of war ready to extract labor and resources from the global south by force, and making a ruckus about doubling funding for the MIC in my presidential bid.  Meanwhile, gonna do this.  Gotcha.  

 

[ants]

5 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Soooooo……
 

J.D. Vance is an idiot?

Edit:  Ugh. I just read his Wikipedia page. I gotta quit doing these things to myself. 

Does anyone else reading that name have to make themselves recall "J.D.Vance isn't Jack Vance"? 

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, ants said:

Does anyone else reading that name have to make themselves recall "J.D.Vance isn't Jack Vance"? 

yes.  although a couple of Vance's characters displayed a similar morality

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

https://www.kron4.com/news/politics/inside-california-politics/exclusive-poll-californians-split-on-newsom-as-recall-election-nears/
 

Well this is depressing but a welcome jolt for me to actually vote. I’ll admit to having thought it’d be in the bag for Newsom to the point where I could forgoe voting.

But no. I really do dread the possibility of a Republican governor in California it will invigorate the right’s efforts if it’s not a solid defeat.

[Paladin of Ice]

11 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

It's true, I've been casting myself as a lord of war ready to extract labor and resources from the global south by force, and making a ruckus about doubling funding for the MIC in my presidential bid.  Meanwhile, gonna do this.  Gotcha.  

 

You magnificent bastard. We should have been reading your book.

[Zorral]

13 hours ago, ants said:

Does anyone else reading that name have to make themselves recall "J.D.Vance isn't Jack Vance"? 

I didn't, which is worth about what? less than 2 cents doubtless!   

However, I hate that J.D. Vance effer so there it is.  OTOH, depending on how something is written or phrased I do need to stop on occasion and figure out that Cyrus Vance, who let off a lot of people as he shouldn't have, and now claims to have seen the light, isn't J. D. Vance. 

[argonak]

19 hours ago, DMC said:

It should also be noted that it appears J.D. Vance doesn't think George Washington and James Madison should have had the right to vote.  Both had stepchildren but apparently those don't count.

Perhaps Vance may be responding to a recent study that found 27% of respondents were "childfree," meaning they do not have kids and don't want them (as opposed to the "childless" who don't have kids but want them).  That survey found the childfree are just as happy/satisfied as those with children, which must of rankled the judgmental and devout like Vance.  The survey also found - 

While it's much worse for women, as a member of the childfree I am hardly surprised by this.  

I have two kids, and my opinion is if someone doesn't want kids, they probably are right and shouldn't have them.  its a huge responsibility and many people aren't up to it.  The resulting demographic problem would only be a problem for a relatively short period of time, and would leave the earth better off after wards.

If anything its OLD people who shouldn't be allowed to vote, because they don't have to live with the results. 

[Ormond]

20 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Put Vance in a steal cage with my step-brother who doesn't have kids, but is an Army drill sergeant, and let the winner have one vote between the two of them. 

 

And who is going to steal the cage?

[Zorral]

https://slate.com/culture/2021/07/stop-insulting-trump-voters-washington-post-wise-brilliant-great-advice.html [paywall]

Quote

 

On Thursday, the Washington Post published an opinion piece by columnist Gary Abernathy arguing that Americans need to stop insulting Trump voters lest we fail to achieve “what’s necessary for our nation to survive.” Easily the greatest work on the importance of being nice to Trump supporters that the Post has published since Kathleen Parker’s “Progressives’ Shaming of Trump Supporters Won’t Work” (Aug. 9, 2019) or James Hohmann’s “Liberal Hostility Toward Trump Aides Could Galvanize the GOP Base” (June 25, 2018) or Michael Gerson’s “Stop Sneering at Trump. It Won’t Help” (April 20, 2017), Abernathy’s essay is a timely reminder of the importance of historical amnesia, and the urgent need to treat Trump voters with civility and respect and deference and reverence and adoration, no matter what they’ve done.

After all, the 2020 election is over, and so is the violent attack on the capitol Trump incited in a futile attempt to cling to power, and even if people are still dropping like flies from the deadly pandemic Trump catastrophically mismanaged, there’s no reason to be rude. You wouldn’t treat someone like a moral leper just because they root for the Orioles instead of the Nationals, so why would you judge someone for handing the country over to a pack of racist crooks who promptly got more than half a million Americans killed? Trump voters would prefer not to think about whether or not they bear any responsibility for the awful things done in their name by the people they explicitly told to go do awful things in their name, and it’s important for those of us on the left side of the aisle to respect their culture.

As we all come together to clean up the mess that some of us deliberately caused, it’s clear that insults will get us nowhere. Calling Trump voters “dumber than a bag of hammers” only reveals that you are unserious about moving forward as a country. Going on to clarify that you meant to say that Trump voters were “to a person, dumber than the dumbest bag of hammers at a hammer store that used to specialize in selling extremely dumb hammers before the health department shut it down for selling bags of hammers that were so dumb it was against the law” will do very little to reach across the political chasm. It may feel good to insult the people whose stupidity, hatred, and fear caused untold suffering all over the world. It may feel great. It may feel like sitting on the porch and taking your first sip of an ice cold beer after a hot day, or finding a $20 bill in your coat pocket, or seeing the face of an old friend who’s been gone for a long time. It may feel so, so great. But consider this: Don’t?

Instead, try listening to Trump voters and their concerns as though you were plucked from the cabbage patch this very morning, fresh as the dew, with no memory of what happened when we spent several years listening to Trump voters and their concerns. While you’re listening, you can show your commitment to democracy in America by murmuring things like, “I see,” or nodding your head in an understanding manner. Do not do that thing where you pretend like you’re coughing and bark, “Bullshit!” into your fist when the Trump voter you are listening to says that of course they didn’t approve of everything Donald Trump did. Do not accuse them of enabling a nihilistic death cult that is steering the entire planet into a lake of fire. Do not throw pies or fruit or bricks. Do not say, “What’s that? It seems like you’re trying to talk, but all I can hear is a thick, clotty bubbling sound, because you’re up to your eyebrows in the blood of your fellow citizens.” Shaming will never work!

There’s no big mystery to effectively communicating with Trump supporters. Just make it clear from the outset that you will always love them unconditionally, even when you are mad at them, and that nothing they could ever do will change that, even if they do it to you or your family or your country over a period of several years. Make sure to bring plenty of healthy snacks so you can redirect their attention if they start whining about cancel culture or wind turbines. If they’re getting really fussy, try defusing the situation by asking, “Does the widdle baby need its binkie?” and shoving a pacifier in their mouth. Above all, manage your expectations. We’ve all had plenty of time to learn who Trump supporters are and what they are and aren’t capable of. Expecting them to engage in self-reflection at this point is just an insult to everyone’s intelligence.

 

 

[Zorral]

Is it not astonishing how much the so-called reasoning of the J.D. Vance proposal to weaken and limit the voting of 'libs, Dems and leftists' builds on that of the Southern slave owners' demands that their representation for Congress include the 3/5th clause of the enslaved for representation, since w/o it They would lose the power to legislate as They chose to the rapidly increasing population of the non-slave New England states?

Asked if such a move would “mean that non-parents don’t have as much of a voice as parents” and “that parents get a bigger say in how democracy functions”, Vance said

Quote

that though he expected criticism from “the Atlantic and the Washington Post and all the usual suspects”, the answer was yes.

Children are as much appendages of the true white male as are slaves, w/o autonomy or choice of their own, is another way of putting it, probably? Which presumably means the wife/mother's votes go to the family's patriarch as well?

[DMC]

Thoughtful and interesting piece on why the GOP running on "tough on crime" may not be the golden ticket it was in the 70s and 80s (and even 90s):

Quote

More to the point, vast demographic changes over the past 50 years have re-sorted the American population. Today’s swing voters are affluent suburbanites, not working-class residents of transitional urban neighborhoods. The places where violent crime is on the rise—namely, cities—are deep blue and unlikely to change. The places where violent crime is not on the rise—namely, suburbs—are the new political battleground.

Polling consistently shows that while a majority of Americans believe crime is a very, or even the most, serious problem facing the country (59 percent in a recent Washington Post/ABC poll), very few believe it is a problem in the places they actually live (only 17 percent).

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Thoughtful and interesting piece on why the GOP running on "tough on crime" may not be the golden ticket it was in the 70s and 80s (and even 90s):

 

I hope Dems take a lesson from this.  As a whole they are way too quick to want to be 'tough on crime'.  While the GOP paints Dems as soft on this shit history shows that Dems love prisons and police and locking people up for petty shit as much as the GOP, or near enough as makes no difference.  The whole idea of "freedom" in the US is laughable when you look at our justice system.

eta: most of this isn't a response to you, @dmc, but to the "what is centrism" Q that came up earlier... centrism is prisons, the military industrial complex, being held in jail without a conviction, lack of healthcare, forever wars, and corporations over people.  these are the things that both parties defend when shit gets gritty.

edit 2: and we can throw in supporting the fossil fuel industry, racism, supporting right wing dictators over seas, and fucking over indigenous populations with all that too

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

eta: most of this isn't a response to you, @dmc, but to the "what is centrism" Q that came up earlier... centrism is prisons, the military industrial complex, being held in jail without a conviction, lack of healthcare, forever wars, and corporations over people.  these are the things that both parties defend when shit gets gritty.

edit 2: and we can throw in supporting the fossil fuel industry, racism, supporting right wing dictators over seas, and fucking over indigenous populations with all that too

There's a lot to unpack there, but focusing on the electoral aspect, I definitely agree the Dems should not be reticent to run on criminal justice and prison reform.  These are issues they now can win on despite the fact they got clobbered in the Reagan era on it, which is basically the point of the article.  Sure, significant legislation is still never gonna happen unless the filibuster is axed, but the strategy should certainly be emphasizing a rationale alternative as opposed to the equivocation or "triangulation" pursued in the 90s.  

[Larry of the Lawn]

Is there going to be any real effort from the Biden administration to give us a public option?  

I'm not optimistic.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Is there going to be any real effort from the Biden administration to give us a public option?  

I'm not optimistic.

Why sink the time and political capital into it if the votes aren't there? 

[Larry of the Lawn]

21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Why sink the time and political capital into it if the votes aren't there? 

Lol.  Why aren't the votes there, and is there anything that a president could do about that?

Like, you're not even going to try to fix shit?  I thought Biden was supposed the experienced guy who knew how to get shit done.  Oh, he's also the insurance industry shill that doesn't actually give a fuck about working class people.

[Fez]

39 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Is there going to be any real effort from the Biden administration to give us a public option?  

I'm not optimistic.

Not a chance that the Biden administration is going to get into a health care fight before the midterms, aka the thing that helped sink Democrats the last two times they had the trifecta.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Lol.  Why aren't the votes there, and is there anything that a president could do about that?

Like, you're not even going to try to fix shit?  I thought Biden was supposed the experienced guy who knew how to get shit done.  Oh, he's also the insurance industry shill that doesn't actually give a fuck about working class people.

As of right now I don't see a path forward in the Senate, and if it could be achieved through reconciliation, it would have to wait until next year because the one remaining shot at that for this year is going to be used for the bigger infrastructure package.

I don't think people fully appreciate the time and energy that goes into researching, crafting and politicking behind the scenes for legislation that's relatively minor, let alone something massive like this, and how demoralizing it can be doing that work when you know the bill is all but DOA before it's even reviewed in a subcommittee.  

[Larry of the Lawn]

16 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

As of right now I don't see a path forward in the Senate, and if it could be achieved through reconciliation, it would have to wait until next year because the one remaining shot at that for this year is going to be used for the bigger infrastructure package.

I don't think people fully appreciate the time and energy that goes into researching, crafting and politicking behind the scenes for legislation that's relatively minor, let alone something massive like this, and how demoralizing it can be doing that work when you know the bill is all but DOA before it's even reviewed in a subcommittee.  

when did they become aware of this?  isn't this ostensibly something they've been planning for since 2010 or so?  the Democratic party doesn't actually care enough about this to fight for it.  

wow!  researching ,politicking, and and crafting is hard?  you'd think there would have been a bunch of NGOs, and interested MOCs ready to move in what was a big plank of the president's platform.  

23 minutes ago, Fez said:

Not a chance that the Biden administration is going to get into a health care fight before the midterms, aka the thing that helped sink Democrats the last two times they had the trifecta.

See here's an honest answer.