Fixed that for you. Calling it "fear" of communism is bullshit; it's the kids of Rich Cubans upset that they don't get to be violent oligarchs like their grand parents were. People seem to have forgotten that after the US invasion in 1898, the country was basically under the rule of a revolving door of violent warlords who were backed local oligarchs and whom turned over Cuban businesses to US based companies under lucrative contracts. Castro wasn't a good person or leader, but the Cuban Revolution happened for a reason and many people who fled Castro's rule were related to parties responsible for the conditions that instigated it.
Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
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figmentPez
Staff member
It shouldn't be. We need to stop the idea that money is protected speech.
This is of course the reason nobody wants to change. The kids of today's rich want their implied chance to exercise their privilege to be assholes, and today's poor adults don't want everything to suddenly get better without some kind of compensation for all that time they spent miserable.
--Patrick
Well don't forget all these people who will be rich someday and don't want to have to pay those extra taxes. My parents love to scream about being taxed 80% of your income (which is already false because marginal tax rates), but they get even more annoyed when I say things like "I'll never make $10 mil a year, but if I did, I would have no problem with it because I don't see the need to have that much money."
You mean the Garland stolen seat, or the RBG stolen seat? Or the one where the judge resigned to help his son's career?
Any less than 6 is too good for the republicans.
While I tend to agree, not necessarily.
Look at it without the elections - how long would an appointment take? On average, about 2-3 months. So it's perfectly feasible to claim that, 8 months out, Garland would've easily been passed, while at the same time, ACB wouldn't have been confirmed before the elections.
If a rule were made "everything more than 6 months out still gets decided by the old bunch, anything closer is decided by the new", you're wrong. Both of those decisions should've been the inverse of what they were.
As soneone who does IT work for nursing homes, I have had to assist in facilitating hundreds of these calls, so this ad hits me very hard emotionally:
This is why I get so viscerally upset when people tell me they are still voting Trump. I understand your political concerns, yadda yadda, but go fuck off on this election.
This is why I get so viscerally upset when people tell me they are still voting Trump. I understand your political concerns, yadda yadda, but go fuck off on this election.
Can we also count the 200+ federal justice positions that Mitch held hostage for 8 years while Obama was in office that they immediately rushed through unqualified candidates as soon as Trump won?
Yeah we might have a republican slanted court.
I'm not saying they are right, just telling you what it is. I'm not supplying judgement on it, just facts.
I'd say that your neck of the woods is crazy, but we elected Glenn Grothman AND Ron Johnson. Don't really have a leg to stand on.
GasBandit
Staff member
On top of everything else we've gone over in the various threads, I think there's also a problem where some people tune out politics and only focus on the irritants of their own personal life are.
Dude I quoted doesn't care about concentration camps on the border because he doesn't see it and it doesn't inconvenience him. He doesn't care about Trump being an old senile pedo accused of sexual assault because from what he's heard, Biden is also an old senile pedo accused of sexual assault, and neither involves him or any of his loved ones, so they're de facto equivalent and he doesn't care enough to allocate the mental bandwidth to learning more nuance. The accusatory noise from both sides drown each other out, so that doesn't sway him either way. He doesn't care about Trump having said 20,000 falsehoods because all politicians are liars. And so on for just about anything else.
But he wants to go shoot his AR at the gun range, and he feels the bite of the ammo all being sold out because everybody's afraid Dems are gonna make it so you can't, and his buddies have told him (accurately) that Biden has promised to put Beto in charge of gun control (and Beto got up in front of all of Texas and literally said "I'm going to take away your ARs"), so, there, that's something he cares about, and that's enough for him. Everything else is noisy window dressing.
figmentPez
Staff member
I wish I knew any Republicans who had the slightest ability to recognize irony.
Saw this posted on Facebook:
“The real problem is that when human societies lose their freedom, it’s not usually because tyrants have taken it away. It’s usually because people willingly surrender their freedom in return for protection against some external threat. And the threat is usually a real threat but usually exaggerated.” Lord Sumption about COVID-19
It was really funny seeing this posted by someone who thinks if Biden is elected that: the economy will crash, they'll be forced to get a vaccine that will kill more people than the virus, criminals will move into the suburbs, armies of immigrants will march across the Mexico border, everyone will pay more in taxes, businesses will leave the country en masse, churches will be shut down, wind power will kill all the birds and cause cancer, etc, etc, etc.
No exaggerated threats there, no....
figmentPez
Staff member
But the country isn't actually split. It's only gerrymandering and the two-party system that makes it seem that way. The country isn't 50% ultra-conservative Republican. Most people don't actually fit well in either party, partly because most people hold views that are self-contradictory, but also because most political issues have more than two sides, and there's no other viable choices out there. We shouldn't have to settle for having judges that only represent the most polarized views possible.
figmentPez
Staff member
On the hand...
The youth vote in Texas is up by more than 600% from last presidential election
"In Texas, as of Friday, 753,600 voters cast a ballot in the 2020 election. During the same time period in 2016, only 106,000 Texans younger than 30 had voted, according to the analysis, representing a 610% increase. "
"No state has made a larger gain in youth voting than Texas."
Fox News demands to repeal the 26th amendment in 3... 2... 1...
figmentPez
Staff member
Nah, they've still got the "faithless elector" option. Should the long-shot of Texas tipping in Biden's favor actually happen, and attempts to somehow skew the ballots in Trump's favor fail, then I fully expect that a large number of Texas's electoral votes will still go to Trump.
Didn't the courts rule that out not too long ago? Or are you expecting a "just try to enforce it" play?
figmentPez
Staff member
Some states have rules against it, and last I heard the SCOTUS ruled that states govern themselves in this matter. Texas has no rules against faithless electors, as far as I can tell.
I read an article recently that really put into focus that our country isn't really split red and blue, but political versus non-political. Half of the country gets really into politics and the other half mostly does not care, or think it does not matter for them. Then the political half is split further to red and blue and pushes more to extremes every year. It was an interesting read.
Honestly my biggest hope after Biden is elected is re-establishing a stronger version of the Fairness Doctrine. First, it would force all news station, even ones for "entertainment" like Fox News, to better balance their coverage with different voices. It will force pundits, left and right, to claim at the start of the show that all info they will go over is opinion, and not unbiased. It should also force tech companies to loosen their algorithms so that people who lean one side or another don't suddenly find themselves locked into an echo chamber. Preferably, considering how important news is, it would be regulated to be completely nonpartisan, only going on facts and stats, but I know reaching that would be impossible.
We are getting pushed farther and farther apart because it's more profitable to just pick a side and ramp up the focused programs for that narrow group, and it's what I feel got us into the terrible place we are now.
That was the subject of the latest Hidden Brain podcast. Which I love if you can’t tell...
It’s definitely worth the listen.
Not at the Dinner Table - Hidden Brain - Omny.fm
We typically divide the country into two distinct groups: Democrats and Republicans. But what if the real political divide in our country isn't between "left" and "right"? What if it's between those who care intensely about politics, and those who don’t? This week we talk to Yanna Krupnikov, a...
omny.fm