US Politics: Supreme Courting to insanity.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

26 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

She read a poem

She read a fucking poem 

And I'm supposed to give MORE money to these fucking thieves??? 

 

So you think Nancy's not legit with her poetry slam chops?

 

Anyway, I can see why she (and anybody else) can get the feeling that the gravity of the situation appears to be escaping quite a few folks.

That GOP had their supreme leader stage (an admittedly patheticly executed) coup attempt, and the 6 Mullahs on the Supreme Court (ACB has dubious honour to be first female mullah I am aware of) are happily chucking away at basic human rights, and there's really nothing to stop them, or apparently very little is being done to at least punish the former. And there's no happy ending in sight. 

Histrionics? Not so much. The point where I feel free to mock Colonel Jace is her call to arms, while stressing she personally is against violence. Grand Hotel Abyss reloaded (reference for the sociology/Pol-Sci geeks). Gal, you propose to live by the sword, without picking it up. Throw a molotov cocktail at the next GOP convention, then we'll talk. 

[Mindwalker]

 

[Ran]

12 minutes ago, LongRider said:

In my experience only Dem's discuss bipartinship really.

And yet in polls both Republicans and Democrats prefer bipartisanship. Your experience is anecdotal.

12 minutes ago, LongRider said:

have also seen lots of shit from the Repubs: hold the vote open longer on the Senate floor than the usual time to get more R votes. 

Pretty sure Democrats have done this as well in the past.

 

15 minutes ago, LongRider said:

That's not what I really meant though, I meant the activists who want to Dems to, as we say, run for dogcatcher, so folks can learn the political ropes from the ground up.

Fine, I'm just naming some examples in national politics. But people running for all sorts of offices, local, country, etc., is good.aa

[JGP]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

And yet in polls both Republicans and Democrats prefer bipartisanship. Your experience is anecdotal.

Of course Republicans are for bipartisanship lol

Come on, man.

 

edit: we have the same respectability politics bullshit here in Canada, mind

[Jace, Extat]

Y'all are hopeless. You'd rather tear down the people who are trying to wake you up than look around and recall that this is not normal. You aren't in Kansas anymore. 

Z, you're an historian! This happens, man. Societies collapse backwards and we reading from the future sit there and go "why didn't somebody do something? Oh, well, that would never happen here right?" And we laugh and laugh and laugh at those stupid primitives and their unsettled times. 

Well it's happening. I was born with more bodily autonomy guaranteed by my government than I have today. That happened. And the politicians didn't do a goddamn thing about it but stick out their donation basket for more.

A verifiably delusional demagogue instituted a violent attack on the civil government and the politicians did NOTHING. That happened. And their answer is to stick out their donation basket for more; now in PRIMETIME. 

And you sit there discussing this, this intellectual drivel about some witnesses credibility when we have the guy on tape. We had it on tape the same day. NOTHING HAPPENED. Nothing will come of this sideshow. Your democracy is ceded and you're debating the finer points of who saw it happening first hand vs just being told later. How can that possibly be worth your time when your entire government is proving daily that it is only beholden to extremism? These hearings are a testament to the fact that political violence makes you de facto too dangerous to punish. 

Zorral, what's the historical example of that? What's the historical lesson we can draw from such conditions on a 'Republic'? 

 

 

 

 

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, JGP said:

Of course Republicans are for bipartisanship lol

The majority of Americans -- Republican, Democrat, and Independents alike -- think well of bipartisanship and that it is a good thing. I don't know what to tell you other than it is a fact.

What the politicians do with it, that's something else.

[JGP]

I'd love to see how the questions were phrased, because it smacks both plain and hard of denialism. In ideal times, sure, I'd buy it [after price negotiation] and I'd also love to see some of the same polling conducted now. 

[Martell Spy]

Ted Cruz bashes new Sesame Street video discussing Covid vaccine for children
The Texas senator objects that the spot – in which Elmo’s dad decides to vaccinate his son – cites no scientific evidence

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jun/29/ted-cruz-sesame-street-video-covid-vaccine-children

Quote

 

Within a few hours, Cruz launched his second attack on Sesame Street since November, claiming that Elmo did not cite any scientific evidence for the vaccine. “Thanks, @sesamestreet for saying parents are allowed to have questions! You then have @elmo aggressively advocate for vaccinating children UNDER 5. But you cite ZERO scientific evidence for this,” Cruz posted.

Cruz also linked his response to a press release from his office where he demanded answers from the Federal Drug Administration about the recent vaccine approval.

But he gathered little support on the social media thread, with most replies making fun of him for spending his time bashing a muppet.

“We now understand where you get your health care information,” one user wrote.

“Excuse me, has this episode of Sesame Street been peer reviewed?” another user commented.

 

 

[straits]

6 minutes ago, JGP said:

how the questions were phrased

Good point. Might be that by "bipartisanship", some voters actually mean to say "you should come closer to my position; I'm not moving".

[JGP]

The first godamn hit lol

---

'According to a new Morning Consult poll, though, Americans aren’t really buying it. When given three interpretations of the word “bipartisan,” only 10 percent of voters said it involved getting broad support from voters across the political spectrum; 32 percent said it had to involve wide support among lawmakers from both parties, while 43 percent said it was best defined as including support from both lawmakers and voters across partisan divides (14 percent didn’t know or had no opinion). The poll didn’t ask voters their views on each of the three definitions separately, so we don’t know whether they would find all of them at least somewhat credible; nevertheless, they were least likely to back the White House’s characterization of bipartisanship.'

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-much-do-americans-really-care-about-bipartisanship/

[Ran]

Just now, straits said:

Good point. Might be that by "bipartisanship", some voters actually mean to say "you should come closer to my position; I'm not moving".

The link I shared from 538 discusses this and other aspects of the poll's findings. Yes, everyone thinks bipartisan means "gets closer to my preferred position", but at the same time even failing that "bipartisan" is generally seen as good.

You can read the full poll with cross tabs here (PDF).

[A Horse Named Stranger]

8 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Ted Cruz bashes new Sesame Street video discussing Covid vaccine for children
The Texas senator objects that the spot – in which Elmo’s dad decides to vaccinate his son – cites no scientific evidence

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jun/29/ted-cruz-sesame-street-video-covid-vaccine-children

 

Ted Cruz attacking another muppet, I think my irony sensors just got overloaded.

[horangi]

1 minute ago, JGP said:

I'd love to see how the questions were phrased, because it smacks both plain and hard of denialism. In ideal times, sure, I'd buy it [after price negotiation] and I'd also love to see some of the same polling conducted now. 

Actually, this is where I think you are missing the bigger picture of the electorate.  Despite the pandemic, despite the war in Ukraine, despite the inflation, the majority, and maybe even super majority of voters are not living in particularly hard times.   This isnt to ignore that 10,20, or even 30% of the voters are in dire straights, but, cynical as it may be, people are willing to support the rights or well being of others right up to the point it risks their own comfortable lifestyle.  People who are not desperate are going to see the 'getting creative' political solutions as something that could risk the system's integrity and most will equate the integrity of the system with their continued prosperity.  To paraphrase the Foundation, you dont change societies by killing their soldiers, or convincing them the logic or virtue of your system, but rather by taking away the middle class housewives' washing machines and automatic ovens.  (latent sexism SIC)

[straits]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-expands-state-power-over-tribes-win-oklahoma-2022-06-29/

I didn't see this get linked earlier in the thread. But this is bad, right? Like settler-colonialism-level bad? Is SCOTUS just an inverted totalitarianism machine?

[Kalbear]

37 minutes ago, Ran said:

And yet in polls both Republicans and Democrats prefer bipartisanship. Your experience is anecdotal.

That preference is also anecdotal, in that it does not appear to actually influence voting outcomes to any major degree on the republican party. More interestingly the Republicans who say they will not reach across the aisle routinely beat those who say that in primaries. 

There are a lot of things like that - including gun control and abortion - where they are largely popular and also do not as a rule correspond to voting choices. 

 

[LongRider]

16 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Ted Cruz bashes new Sesame Street video discussing Covid vaccine for children

Brave brave Ted Cruz really picks the toughest battles. This time he’s going up against…checks notes…puppets. 

[JGP]

4 minutes ago, horangi said:

Actually, this is where I think you are missing the bigger picture of the electorate. 

I got kicked out of highschool and am an artist, so I'm willing to accept this as possibility. :p

Where you run into problems with this kind of polling [and 'logical' conclusions] is how the ruling classes interpret it. What's the polling on bodily autonomy? Gun control? Then what happened? 

 

 

[Ran]

Just now, KalVsWade said:

That preference is also anecdotal, in that it does not appear to actually influence voting outcomes to any major degree on the republican party. More interestingly the Republicans who say they will not reach across the aisle routinely beat those who say that in primaries. 

That would be because primaries may be slanted to the extremes. But they don't necessarily have the same level of success against their opponents after the primaries... and while I've heard of politicians who claim they won't be bipartisan when running who then end up being involved in bipartisan then realizing they have to be bipartisan, I've never really heard of the other side of it, running on bipartisanship and then turning into a firebrand.

Here is an interesting analysis of voting records showing that Democrats and Republicans alike are likelier to vote against their party if they are in competitive districts. It kind of shows that actual politicians recognize the value of bipartisanship for their re-elections. 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

Which underscores the main thing that needs fixing: DEMOCRATS HAVE SHITTY LEADERS AND THEY ALL NEED TO BE REPLACED. Get these old fucks out of here who come from a different time and still want to go about politics the old way. They still think they can work with Republicans. They still want to be their friends. They're clearly not living in the real world. 

Did someone hack your account?  

[JGP]

1 minute ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Did someone hack your account?  

I've dragged Tywin about his political career before, but he seems to be in the right place now.