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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
So, remember when Ocasio-Cortez caught a lot of heat for supporting Brent Welder, a typical Sanders candidate over Emily's List candidate Sharice Davids, an LGBT Native American woman, in Kansas's 3rd district?
Well, the results are in and Davids has taken the nomination despite them.
She will move on to compete against incumbent Republican Kevin Yoder in the general election.
This being Kansas, that might seem like a hopeless case, but District 3 actually voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a single percentage point. Davids observes that the people of northeast Kansas are tired of their state being defined by bigotry and divisiveness. Between this and the generally positive trend of Democratic performance, she might have a real shot at winning this thing and becoming the first Native American woman ever elected to Congress.
In fact, a lot of Emily's List candidates crushed it
on Tuesday, with 27 out of 28 winning their primaries while Sanders-boosted challengers continued to fail around them.
Eh, that race seemed like a case of two decent candidates. Congrats to Davids.
Though Sanders-backed candidates didn’t do great overall, from the few races I’ve had a chance to look at, there seems to be an trend of the Sanders candidate pulling the winner leftward.
I also think it’s necessary to point out that Emily’s List isn’t... flawless. In general (although not in this case) they have a bad tendency of predominantly backing wealthy white women.
So two stop-complaining-liberals articles today; the first one arguing that nominating Kavanaugh to SCOTUS will be good
- in the long run - for progressives. Just like the Dred Scott decision was.
In The Will of the People: How Public Opinion Has Influenced the Supreme Court and Shaped the Meaning of the Constitution, professor Barry Friedman persuasively detailed how the court generally stays within right-of-center and left-of-center politics. The justices know, in the words of Alexander Hamilton, that they have neither the purse nor the sword, only the confidence of the American people in its decisions and of the executive branch to enforce those decisions.
There have been times, however, when the justices have tried to do too much too soon or moved away from the center of American politics.
In the infamous Dred Scott decision, the court ruled that black people were never and could never be American citizens and that Congress could not abolish slavery in the territories. The majority actually thought its decision would bring North and South closer together. Most historians now agree, though, that the decision moved us much closer to the Civil War.
From 1900 to 1936, a Supreme Court composed of men who came of age in a preindustrial, rural economy struck down many progressive laws, including statutes regulating minimum wages, overtime, and workplace safety conditions. After the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, angry at the justices for impeding his New Deal program, threatened to pack the court. Eventually the court backed off, and the justices have not used the logic of this Lochner era court—whose dominant conservative block eventually became known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—since then.
Today, many conservatives and libertarians argue that the court went too far in accepting the validity of economic legislation and argue for a new “judicial engagement.” But there can be no debate that the court’s almost complete deference in this area of constitutional law for decades was a backlash to the court’s hyperaggression for the first 30-plus years of the 20th century.
The third example is the most recent. Regardless of how one feels about Roe v. Wade, the court’s entry into abortion politics has substantially affected not just constitutional law and interpretation but also local, state, and federal politics; judicial nominations; and quite possibly presidential elections. In the words of perhaps the most important proponent of equal rights for women over the past half-century, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Roe was too much too fast. She has criticized the decision for trying to resolve the abortion issue in “one fell swoop.”
This history brings us to President Donald Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh. This nomination is quite different from the previous one, when Neil Gorsuch was nominated by Trump to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia; Gorsuch’s ascension did not change the balance of politics on the court because both were solidly conservative justices. Kavanaugh, however, appears to be much more conservative than his former boss Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose seat he would fill if confirmed. With Kavanaugh, the court would be solidly conservative probably for generations. This would likely lead to a liberal backlash both in our politics and in our courts that may well make the Warren Court look moderate.
Ultimately, our country is much better off with a Supreme Court that “follows the election returns,” not one that distorts those returns. When the court strays too far from majority opinion, there is almost always a strong backlash or, worse, a constitutional crisis. Whatever you think of the abortion and gay rights rulings themselves, Mitch Mc Connell’s decision to deny President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland even a hearing could be viewed as a direct response to those decisions. It is not likely Mc Connell could have pulled off the stealing of a Supreme Court seat without the controversies around those cases.
Now, a Supreme Court with five conservative Republicans (Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh) will likely enter a period of conservative judicial aggression. This past term, when Justice Kennedy turned far right for the first time in decades, the justices struck down four important state laws. These cases demonstrated the court’s political nature, with the losers being unions, gay and lesbian people, and women seeking abortions.
A new moderate justice might temper the court’s aggression, but Kavanaugh is no moderate, as many have observed. Although the GOP and political conservatives might think a far-right court will serve their ends, the reality is that there will inevitably be either a strong backlash or a new constitutional crisis, which will damage both Republican politics and conservative causes.
Although politics is almost always a short-term business, GOP senators would be wise to look at the bigger picture, learn from history, and try to staff a court that will be right of center but not too far right of center.
And secondly, Alex Jones getting a near-total internet ban was Moving the Goalposts by all of the companies like Facebook and YouTube
, and shame on them for it.
On Monday, Facebook changed its mind. It announced in a blog post that it had taken down four of Jones’ Facebook pages. “We believe in giving people a voice, but we also want everyone using Facebook to feel safe,” the company explained in a blog post.
What changed? Not Facebook’s policies on hate speech, bullying, or graphic violence, which the company says Jones violated. And not Jones, who’s been doing essentially the same nasty shtick for years.
No, what changed was Facebook’s interpretation of the policies—an interpretation that appears to have been driven in large part by public perception. In short, Facebook’s reversal has the whiff of a PR move. And maybe, in a weird way, that’s OK.
In a remarkable coincidence (or not), Facebook’s action on Jones came the morning after Apple took down his podcast (and other Infowars podcasts), and the same morning that Spotify did the same. You Tube quickly followed suit, booting the Alex Jones Channel. Things got so bad for Jones by midday Monday that media platforms were practically racing to take down his content before the news cycle moved on. Even You Porn banned him.
The cascade of crackdowns suggests one of two things. Either Jones was in violation of media platforms’ policies all along, and they never noticed until now; or the platforms moved the goal posts. Neither reflects particularly well on the platforms in terms of the consistency, objectivity, or fairness of their enforcement. Nor does it help that they all seemed to be waiting for one another to make the first move. That’s cowardly.
Jones is already using the crackdown as political fodder, imploring Donald Trump to scrutinize the tech companies’ “censorship” and threaten them with “anti-trust busting” if they don’t back off. There’s an argument to be made that banning Jones plays into his hands, and those of conservative politicians such as Sen. Ted Cruz who accuse social media firms of liberal bias. On the other hand, as my Slate colleague April Glaser points out, the big tech platforms’ dominance is such that Jones is running out of options.
By Tuesday, Twitter was one of the last major platforms where he still had a presence. Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde recently explained the company’s stance in an interview on Slate’s If Then podcast, and a spokesman said Monday that it hasn’t changed. But it wouldn’t be a shock to see Twitter also ban Jones, sooner or later.
Infowars’ banishment was greeted by decent folk across the political spectrum with sighs of “finally.” For Facebook and the other big tech companies, it must come as something of a relief to no longer have to defend the kind of man who attacks the survivors of school shootings. Now that they’ve finally made the obvious right call, we can all move on, right?
Not so fast. Jones won’t go gently into obscurity, and if the likes of Cruz and Trump take up his cause, the fight could get even uglier than it was before. The platforms’ flip-flopping will leave them vulnerable to charges that their policies are arbitrary and their enforcement inconsistent. The veneer of objectivity has cracked.
Right-wing groups will mount pressure campaigns to get them to ban liberal personalities, in the spirit of the recent campaigns against Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn and newly hired New York Times editorial board member Sarah Jeong. Gunn was fired by Disney; Jeong apologized and the Times stuck by her. We can expect similar inconsistencies from the tech platforms as they muddle their way through one controversy after the next.
That sounds bad, and it probably will be. But the reality is that the platforms don’t have it all figured out, and never did. They have objective-sounding policies and some processes in place, sure. But deciding who can and cannot speak on social media is not an easy question, and it can’t be answered without difficult trade-offs. Sooner or later, controversies like this one over Jones were inevitable.
The silver lining behind the fracas is that Facebook, Google, and others are finally being forced to reckon with just how hard these questions are. Making decisions based on public pressure isn’t a great look, but it’s better for giant corporations to be responsive to public pressure than for them to be immune to it. Sometimes that will mean that they make cowardly choices that hurt people unfairly. Other times, it will mean that they realize their policies were flawed and improve them.
It’s a messy process, this taking of responsibility for the content on social media platforms. But it’s a necessary one. And it has only just begun.
Edited by BlueNinja0 on Aug 9th 2018 at 11:28:30 AM
That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - SilaswIt looks like Trump is going ahead with the Space Force after all. [1]
I found this hilarious.
Tribune pulls out of Sinclair merger and sues for breach of contract.
Sinclair flouted norms and antagonized federal regulators, Tribune alleges in its suit, filed Thursday in the Delaware Chancery Court. “In meetings with DOJ, Sinclair invited litigation over station divestitures, summarizing its position to DOJ in two words: ‘sue me,’” Tribune wrote in the court document.
“Indeed, Sinclair went so far as to threaten to file its own lawsuit against DOJ,” Tribune added. That’s “the polar opposite of what Sinclair had promised" when it pledged through its merger agreement to "avoid even a threat of litigation with regulators."
Or, to put it another way, they're beimg sued for being so incompetent that even Ajit Pai wouldn't sign off on their deal.
Edited by TheRoguePenguin on Aug 9th 2018 at 11:44:21 AM
I for one am thoroughly grateful for any left wing movement, especially since our economics have become a ridiculous freak show of half baked right wing economic thought where half the ideas being pushed conflict with the other half.
I’m equally grateful if it can be done without some of the more eccentric Berniecrats, as some of them call themselves, getting anywhere near the levers of power. The sort that want free college and legal weed but otherwise can sound awfully similar to Trump supporters with their views on race, gender, etc. This thread has a tendency to reference this fairly often, but still I’m just as happy when nimrods like Jaffe, the Bernie follower who tried to primary Pelosi and said this quote:
[[
“But there is no Old White Guys Democratic Club in San Francisco,” Jaffe decried. “Many claim our government is controlled by old white straight men like me. But in San Francisco’s Democratic Party circles we are subtlely [sic] unwelcome because we are perceived as a politically incorrect liability.”
get their asses handed to them.
If hardcore Bernie followers want to run in primaries and keep Democrats honest, fine, that’s part of what needs to be done to keep politicians answering to you and toeing the line. If they’re competent and have a good message they deserve votes and maybe to win. And if they’re willing to vote for the better candidate after a Berniecrat loses instead of sinking back into apathy, claiming there’s no difference between liberal Democrats and Trump Republicans, etc. then they’re more than welcome to the party and to work on the direction of the future together.
But if they’re being condescending or narrow minded on race and gender and try to lecture on how all concerns besides their own are irrelevant or “identity politics” or throw tantrums when their first choice of candidates doesn’t win, then they can go to hell.
And I must say, considering some of the tone deaf history of Berniecrats on matters of race, gender, and religion, (and sometimes “tone deaf” is the best thing you can say about it) it amuses me that the sole success of Our Revolution on Tuesday was a Palestinian-American Muslim woman.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |We need to stop trying to make congressional races into a Clinton-Sanders redux. I've moved past that, I'll be happy with any democrat that is the most adequate to their district like in this case.
It doesn't represent a blow to socialism or Sanders, it was a case of voters choosing who they thought better represented them in congress. In fact, if you look at the wider picture, you see more and more people on the democratic side openly advocating universal healthcare.
Life is unfair...To put it into context, the military itself is more serious about AI driven weaponry then space force, since as of last week they carved out a whole department for it AND gave it a budget of 1.7 billion a year to get started.
The fact that it is "budget neutral" alone tells you that they don't really care, and are only doing it because they are told so.
Apparently Pence wants the Space Force to be wearing the uniform of the United States of America, even though it has no protection against the vacuum of space: https://twitter.com/VP/status/1027584824016420864
Edited by CookingCat on Aug 9th 2018 at 1:48:40 AM
The article makes a good point, either the Court will do the rational thing and acknowledge the wishes of the public or they'll oppose it and give us the opportunity to pack them. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Ok I'm sorry but this is just a ridiculous way to view his speech, it was all about how the military has previously been the prime mover behind our forays into space and by stating they'll wear the uniform of the US military he was simply saying that they'll continue this tradition.
Of course space personnel will get protective gear.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 9th 2018 at 4:54:30 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangAnd apparently they are letting people vote for the logo of the Space Force: https://twitter.com/Dalrymple/status/1027639828890890240
Edited by CookingCat on Aug 9th 2018 at 1:56:01 AM
I the issue with the space force idea is that is both unneeded and pretty redundant.
First because there isn't a presence in space both in LEO and beyond Earth's orbit to warrant a dedicated force. Secondly because NASA and the USAAF already have their LEO and orbital projects with the US Navy also having anti-orbital assets.
So in terms of actual capabilities, the US isn't really needing any dedicated SPE Zz FOERCE and even the cooler ideas like Rods from God and orbital deployed task forces are either too expensive or not needed at the moment and simply beyond any practical reach to make.
Holy shit, those are...awful.
Edited by AngelusNox on Aug 9th 2018 at 6:00:02 AM
Inter arma enim silent leges

Wrong thread somehow
Edited by megaeliz on Aug 9th 2018 at 11:49:39 AM