Post your random thoughts.

The 80s were big on 50s nostalgia for some reason, but when I was growing up in the 90s, it was 60s and 70s stuff. Then the 80s came back in the 2000s, and now it's definitely 90s trends.

That hour went by surprisingly fast. :S

Watching The Secret of Nimh for the first time,it's great!

I'm glad Doug Jones won in Alabama. He's a Freedom Fighter!

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's new class is nice, but I'm disappointed at no Judas Priest or Link Wray. No diss to the 5 who made it though, the all deserve it.

And a big RIP to freedom of internet, because I know that the protest didn't work.

I have no idea what's going on in Alabama right now

White voters got in line behind an accused child molester who is not welcome at a mall because of his behavior because he's a Republican, and therefore those allegations and the record of his ban from the mall must be fabrications made by the fake news liberal media to discredit him. Black voters came out in droves to do the right thing, and as a result, the margin of victory was smaller than the write-in vote.

That's what is still sad about all this. Despite a Democrat winning Alabama for the Senate seat for the first time since 1992, the vast majority of racial and political problems are still happening. Just like it was a fluke that Trump became president, it feels like a fluke that Jones won. It FEELS LIKE he won purely on luck, that the black votes were large enough to JUST MAKE IT over the 49 percent of Moore voters. We cannot keep depending on luck to get the right people in the government!

edited 13th Dec '17 6:04:20 PM by kyun

Racial and political problems are gonna happen regardless of how many Democrats are elected into the Senate/House/etc. Democrats aren't magicians who can just wave their hands and fix America.

Speaking of Congress, they made a bill that would keep the FCC from making a vote on net neutrality rules, which are required for a free and open internet... and said vote is expected to come up with "repeal it" as an answer. Tomorrow. Be very afraid, folks.

Oh, and be sure to give this fine site a visit while you're at it.

Trump at least only won the electoral college, not the popular vote. And by a ridiculously wide margin for electoral votes to flip the results.

Democrats are at least working on changing the systems that keep minorities held down, and just fighting voter suppression is a big step to fixing the system. Alabama had a very active suppression campaign against black voters (closing government offices in mostly-black areas so people can't get ID cards, false or at least confusing notifications that people's polling stations had changed, etc) and they still turned out in massive numbers.

edited 13th Dec '17 6:49:03 PM by TParadox

I resent the implication that "white voters" are all Moore supporters, and "black voters" are universally the good guys. Sounds a lot like racism to me.

...how?

72% of white men and 63% of white women voted for Moore, compared to 6% of black men and 3% of black women.

I didn't mean to imply that every single white person voted for Moore, just a supermajority of them.

Black people tend to vote overwhelmingly Democrat, which in this case was seriously holy cow you guys the only decent move.

edited 13th Dec '17 7:24:17 PM by TParadox

Simple: by lumping people into groups identified primarily by race. Racism against white people is still racism.

Still a supermajority, and a kind of disturbing supermajority at that.

The "voter" part of the phrase "white voter" is important here. I don't have the data on hand, but it would not surprise me if a lot of would-be voters who didn't want to vote for a Democrat but also couldn't in good conscience support Moore simply stayed home.

But, the numbers are pretty plain. The sentence "white voters in Alabama overwhelmingly voted for Moore" is factually true, and while it's equally true that there were plenty of white voters who didn't, that's not really relevant to large-group demographic voting strategies.

As for the idea that saying "white voters mostly went to Moore" is racist, I'm sorry but that's just plainly silly.

edited 13th Dec '17 8:56:08 PM by Bep

I mean why do we need to bring race into this at all? Why not "Moore supporters" vs "people with actual morals"?

Because of how strongly the race was divided along racial lines. Because both parties know how reliably black voters vote Democrat and acted on that knowledge.

Seriously, it's noteworthy when black voters in an electorate flip to Republicans. It means the Democrats have seriously screwed up. And right now, voting Republican in most races is like a human covered in bloody cuts voting for the sharks.

edited 13th Dec '17 9:04:45 PM by TParadox

Heyyy, this seems like something to talk about on PM or OTC.

I'd like Rob Halford to know I really appreciated him visiting my dreams to hand me a kitten named Pipi to look after.

Because the vote—among people who actually did vote—broke up pretty cleanly along racial lines.

There's a chart here you can look at. Moore pulled over 60% of white women and over 70% of white men who voted.

On the flip side Douglas pulled over 90% of black voters, both men and women. If the margin was much more narrow this'd just be a piece of politics geek trivia, but it's large enough that there's a pretty clear trend.

Turnout was a factor too. From what I've been reading voter turnout in black communities was unusually high for this kind of election (~75% of turnout for the presidentials last year, which is absurd), and not nearly as high in white areas, especially rural ones (only ~50% or so of the turnout for last year).

Lastly, this is not a matter of "bringing race into" anything. Moore's campaign was (in addition to a slew of other problems) predicated on the sort of barely-veiled racism that the worst of the GOP's farthest-right wing like to indulge in, race was already a factor. To deny its impact on the election is to deny pretty bare facts.

edit: In any case has a point. I will be bowing out of this conversation.

edited 13th Dec '17 9:08:17 PM by Bep

There was a veil?

a human covered in bloody shark marks is not very much better than what the Republicans are doing in the White House.

I agree, this conversation is not likely to lead anywhere productive; better to just drop it.

So how about them sports guys huh?

I'd say "did you see that ludicrous display last night?" but that could be considered on the same topic.

Dalshabet are leaving Happy Face Entertainment. They say they're not disbanding but they also say they don't know what's happening next or when they'll be on stage together again. And once again I can't feel anything... is it me that's broken or is it the world?