General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 335

Twelve prosecutors in MO are trying to block an initiative to get medical marijuana on the ballot in November, basically by trying to wedge themselves in a lawsuit that New Approach Missouri has filed against Secretary of State Jason Kander and using the same tired false information about the drug. This state is just hopeless, honestly. There is rampant meth and heroin/opioid addiction all over this state and that's what you're worried about, medical pot?

 

Re: focusing more on critiquing liberals over conservatives, Malcolm X said it pretty well 50+ years ago:

“‘Conservatism’ in America’s politics means ‘Let’s keep the ******s in their place. And ‘liberalism’ means ‘Let’s keep the knee-grows in their place – but tell them we’ll treat them a little better; let’s fool them more, with more promises.’ With these choices, I felt that the American black man only needed to choose, which one to be eaten by, the ‘liberal’ fox or the ‘conservative’ wolf – because both of them would eat him. [At least] in a wolf’s den, I’d always known exactly where I stood; I’d watch the dangerous wolf closer than I would the smooth, sly fox. The wolf’s very growling would keep me alert and fighting him to survive, whereas I might be lulled and fooled by the tricky fox.”

 

I also think that the worldview / priorities / proposals of leftists and Democrats/liberals are as distinctly different as the goals of either one and Republicans. They may be closer on the sliding scale of ideology, for whatever that's worth, but the goals of liberals actively obstruct the things I would like to see happen.

 

That's if you're not mixing up goals with what is able to get done. I doubt very much, for example, that the ACA was the "goal" of 'liberals'. The "goal" seems to continue to be a public option.

 

I'm less sure of that--at least, I wonder if there is a true commitment to steering healthcare away from a market-based model. It seems like there have been plenty of Democrats opposed to the creation of a public option in the past, and most of the "liberals" I know (to Richter's initial post asking why leftists dislike liberals so much) refuse to acknowledge the very, very serious problems with the ACA.

 

Gawker Was Murdered By Gaslight

"Somehow, it had become the case that the world was discussing whether a perennially profitable and growing publication could “hope to survive at all.” In one span of a little more than a year, not very long ago, the New York Timesmistakenly accepted (and cheered for) a failed Venezuelan coup, printedfalsehoods that helped carry the case for invading Iraq, and saw its top editors resign after a humiliating plagiarism scandal. No one suggested the paper had signed its own death warrant.

That the New York Times has the right to exist, to rise above its failings, is taken for granted. No one would mistake the Times for Gawker. At the party this month marking the end of Nick Denton’s ownership of Gawker—and, though we did not quite know it then, the end of Gawker.com—a reporter for the Times, the one who would file the story calling our work “mean” and “inconsequential,” dug into me. Why, he wanted to know, did it seem that no one at Gawker was willing to admit any fault?

This was a stupid question, and I tried to tell him so as nicely as I could. The fact of Thiel’s campaign against Gawker made the question stupid on two different levels. One of those levels was simply practical: What the Hogan trial had demonstrated, and what the other Thiel-backed lawsuits were affirming, was that Gawker’s culture of open dispute and self-criticism had become too dangerous. Hostile lawyers were being paid to look for any negative remark any of us might make, to read it into the record against us.

But it was also stupid in its broad themes. The reason why nobody at Gawker was counting up our sins as our doom descended was that we had realized, belatedly, that the sins and the doom were unconnected. We had reckoned deeply with our regrets and our contradictions, and nothing about them began to add up to $140 million.

Still, the Times reporter asked, what were my own regrets? I told him, finally, that I had worked at Gawker Media for five years, and that all I could say was that nothing in that time was as shameful to me as a story the Times had put on its front page the month before, slanting the results of a study to argue that police weren’t really disproportionately killing black people. I would have been ashamed, I said, if we had run that.

For any number of reasons, that quote didn’t make it into the story."

 

Didn't I just hear a convention hall full of Democrats drown out "No More War!" chants with "USA! USA!" a few weeks ago? It's not like I hold, say, George Bush in any higher esteem than I do Hillary Clinton or anything. But GWB and his supporters never pretend that they are interested in representing my political beliefs.

 

I'll always hate Lieberman for grandstanding on that shit. "Oh no, the option might push health insurance companies out business."

 

i hate lieberman, what a fucking shit head

 

This was an excellent piece. A lot of people actually underestimate what sort of precedent this sets.

 

Yep.

Which would never happen. I don't think there's a country in the world where private insurance doesn't exist thanks to a "public option". Only in places like England where there's complete control over the industry.

 

It's been pointed out before, but can't be said enough how troubling it is people push for "Public health insurance" over "public health care"

 

The site has been running some good ones today as a post mortem. I really hope something is done about the Thiel approach sooner rather than later.

 

This video is depressing

 

"Clinton did not offer a departure from either earlier liberal policies that blamed the poor for their poverty or neoliberal economics. Instead, he turned what had been a few piecemeal reforms into a systematic overhaul of federal policy that led to the criminalization of the welfare poor. He redirected state resources away from financial support for the needy and toward surveillance and criminalization.

In an era of market worship, those who couldn’t demonstrate self-reliance or independence were identified not only as unworthy of assistance, but as a potential threat to the core institutions of American society.

Clinton’s dismantling of welfare, couched in a language of personal responsibility and public policy correction, was the culmination of a trend among both Democrats and Republicans to deter and discourage poor women of color from applying for assistance. In this regard, there was little new about the “New Democrat.”



How a Democrat Killed Welfare | Jacobin

 

First learned about global warming +20 years ago in school. It's dumbfounding that there is still a "debate."

 

Is this the most blatant Trump dog whistle ever?

 

Nah, man. See, it's mother nature trying to rid the flee's off her back.

 

I'm assuming he means the myth of Black Panthers intimidating voters?

 

"You'll be able to walk down the street without getting shot. Right now, you walk down the street. You get shot."
- Donald Trump, August 2016

"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."
- Donald Trump, January 2016

 

He's right for the wrong reasons:

Nate Silver: For Black Americans, U.S. Is as Dangerous as War-Torn Countries Like Rwanda & Myanmar

 

Donald Trump Jacked Up His Campaign’s Trump Tower Rent Once Somebody Else Was Paying It