General Politics Discussion (IV) [ARCHIVED] • Page 1211

Whatever he has on Manafort must be big.

 

in other news: after listening to trump talk for 10 minutes on the radio today my eye twitch came back.

 

Damn, Jim Risen kicked Greenwald's ass in that "Russia" debate.

I almost feel bad for him. Almost.

 

lol also Max:

Max Boot: America’s military doesn’t have enough money to do its job

 

If he really wanted to fulfill his obvious humiliation fetish, he'd join the Democrats

 

giving me life. I can't wait for november.

 

I never knew about this

 

I use them as cheap gym earbuds

 

YouTube removed InfoWars video claiming Florida student was a paid actor; source says this is InfoWars' first of 3 strikes before YouTube terminates accounts

lol @ this only being their first

 

I might not agree with the political views here, but have a friend that lives 1 block from the school.. These kids arent actors.. He said whole town is obviously heart broken..

 

100% this happened at st bonaventure when i went there

 

Calling them actors is an obvious smear campaign to discredit their message, classic fallacy of attacking the messengers instead of their message, because the message is very hard to attack and gaining momentum, people are very sick of hearing the same bullshit while nothing is done and these shootings keep happening.

 

I don't know what this means, but ...

... no fucking shit.

 

We have 8 months of organizing to go, people are mad as fuck and it better last

 

Lower the Voting Age to Sixteen | Crooked Media

Some young people will take their vote seriously. Some won’t. Some will show up. Some won’t. Some will read every endorsement and argument. Some will forget or say voting doesn’t matter. Some will vote just like their parents. Some will vote to spite their parents and then brag about it at dinner in a way that will be incredibly annoying. In other words, teenagers will vote like the rest of us, except maybe more often over the course of their lives. As Joshua Douglas has noted, whereas 18 is a period of transition, 16 and 17 is often more stable, a time when we are learning civic virtues and when it would be far easier to begin a lifelong routine of voting.

The right to vote was once confined to white men who owned land, and some free black men who managed to cast ballots between eras of prohibition and terror. Over our history, the right has expanded to include native Americans, and those born into a system of enslavement, and women, and young people. It has also contracted. It has been ripped away from southern blacks, denied to former felons, and taken from people swept up in partisan purges of voter rolls. Often, the disempowered who demanded participation in our democracy were told it was absurd until bullied into not asking again. Those who held the franchise held it close because it was theirs and because it was power. Even now we fight to restore the vote to people who served their sentences and paid their debt to society. Even now we see a coordinated effort to manufacture fear of voter impersonation fraud—a practically non-existent crime—that has made it harder for poor and minority voters to cast ballots. We know the power of the vote. It is about more than a tiny say in a contest between just-OK politicians. It is a statement of citizenship. It is a symbol of belonging and of the equal dignity of people who live under rules set by their government. It is the first American spectacle.

There has been so much hand wringing about this up-and-coming generation. So much moralizing about the prolonged adolescence of millennials and those that follow, of delayed marriage and childbirth, of kids staying on their parents’ health insurance, of softness and snowflakes and safe spaces and participation trophies. This is in part the result of a positive shift—a recognition of the arbitrariness of 18 as a demarcation, of the slow and winding process of growing up. But here is a place where we can set one line earlier, not later. We can empower young people to think like citizens and adults. We can say: you are young but you are not without agency in your life or the life of your school, your city, your state, your country. You are young but it is time you get in the habit of democracy. You are young but voting isn’t for other people. It’s for you. It has to be.

One of the many questions those extraordinary Stoneman Douglas students asked was offered by Annabel Quinn Claprood. “I just want to know,” she asked, “Will my school campus be safe when I return?” No one could answer that question to any satisfaction. And not just in the obvious way, that it’s not possible to make such a promise. It was worse than that. No, Annabel, your school is not safe. It’s not safe at all. No school is safe. No concert is safe. No movie theater is safe. No mall is safe. No mosque is safe. No temple is safe. No church is safe. No street is safe. No home is safe.

This country is not safe for you. It’s not keeping you safe from gun violence. It’s not protecting your generation from rising seas and burning forests. It’s not safeguarding your financial future when the government borrows more than a trillion dollars for tax cuts to help corporations and wealthy heirs. It’s not investing in the economy you’ll inherit by building public infrastructure that meet the standards set by other countries. It’s not ensuring your success by helping you afford college. It’s not defending you against the excesses of corporate greed. And you certainly will not be safe from the rot in our political culture—the abandonment of virtue and community and integrity, the collapse of basic decency, that made it possible for someone like Trump to attain the highest office in the land.

In our actions, in our failures, America is sending a message to teenagers: this country doesn’t give a shit about you. Teenagers deserve the vote because the rest of us have proven that we are not adult enough to have their interests at heart. The NRA is right about the importance of self-defense, but wrong about the means. Voting is how America’s young people can protect themselves.

 

i have free time today and i think i have a new project

 

don't go for the throat this dude is agreeing with us

 

I think it's been said a thousand times over in this thread that these kids aren't actors. Only the dumbest of people believe that.

 

There's a history:

 

Was listening to Preet Bharara's podcast yesterday. His comments about the Russian indictments were OK, but then he had an interview with a "moderate" republican that made me turn it off in disgust after she said she was worried that the democrats were moving in the direction of "Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren" as much as she was worried about the GOP heading in the direction of Trump. Don't try and keep the democrats as being a party for moderate Republicans.

If moderate Republicans/Anti-Trumpers actually gave a damn about their principles, they'd start a new party to try to siphon votes off of the GOP. They would definitely make the GOP lose for an election cycle or two... but they'd also offer an alternative vehicle free of the Trump/batshit insane Freedom Caucus, that would have potential to become a new party that caters to their beliefs. This "we'll criticize Trump but fall in line at the voting booth" stuff is pointless.

 

oh.

 

Im not sure if thats history, but ok.. All I was saying is I feel for those kids.. Been through alot and its not getting any better.. Whole thing sucks..