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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I always find it hilarious that Trumpists completely miss one of the basic tenets of a dictatorship. what's the first thing you do as a dictator (apart form quashing resistance, ofc)?
Claim any media you don't own/publish is fake news.
And yet they claim to be "protecting democracy."
Semper Fi. Semper Paratus. Vigilo Confido.If there's one thing I've learned over my life, it's to never underestimate the stupidity and ignorance of people.
Semper Fi. Semper Paratus. Vigilo Confido.Well, that's definitely in contrast to my life, where the prevailing lesson was to never underestemate the haye people bear.
My musician page@pendrake
I can add to that. My area is heavily Republican. This past week, a bar owner got arrested (multiple times) for letting people eat and drink inside his bar, which currently is against the law in NYC because COVID. This lead to people, the same people that touted "BLUE LIVES MATTER!", turning against the cops they initially supported while calling the mayor and governor commies.
Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.uh, Raining? a lot of the rest of Canada would disagree with that XD
That said, this is the US politics thread, so that's neither here nor there topic wise.
(Albertan by birth, here.)
Edited by Pendrake on Dec 7th 2020 at 5:11:40 AM
Semper Fi. Semper Paratus. Vigilo Confido.Do you think that the Biden administration might revisit this ruling
in light of this year's pandemic crippling the movie theater industry and bolstering streaming services?
Essentially, United States v. Paramount Pictures, otherwise known as the Hollywood Antitrust Case of 1948, was about film companies owning movie theaters with exclusive access to exhibiting the movies produced by those companies. The ruling was that film companies already in charge of the production of movies can't also own the means of distributing those movies. It's pretty much exactly the same situation we're in right now, just swap "movie theaters" with "streaming services".
And frankly, the same problem has existed with video game companies for a long time now, producing consoles with exclusivity on the games produced by those same companies.
Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Dec 7th 2020 at 6:17:45 AM
Last page, re: California's 4 Congressional districts that Democrats lost. California, despite being very Democratic at the statewide level, actually has pockets of very Republican areas. Just because it's California doesn't mean its uber-liberal. And these four districts were historically either swing districts or had Republican roots - all four of them had Republican Reps. from 2010 until flipping narrowly in 2018.
And young Asian Americans (presumably many of them second-generation), voted overwhelmingly for Biden this year, like more than 80%. And native-born citizens were less likely to vote for Trump than naturalized citizens. So I'm not sure the idea that second-generation immigrants are particularly vulnerable to Republican messaging plays out IRL. There were reports of waves of misinformation through non-English media that Democrats need to work on fighting, though.
There is some evidence that the Republican strategy of nominating minorities/women in swing districts is working - of the 12 seats Republicans flipped, all of them were by women or non-white candidates.
Edited by nova92 on Dec 7th 2020 at 5:25:58 AM
NYT:
Biden will nominate General Lloyd Austin, former Iraq Commander, as his Secretary of Defense
Politico has this
to say about him and his history. Basically a solid general with an established career.
Not too much remarkable to say other than the fact that he'll be the first black man to serve in the position, and that he was a safe fallback after the first choice of Jeh Johnson fell through due to some of Johnson's hawkish tendencies, which is I guess a good thing that the Biden administration is making an effort to avoid hiring people complicit in potential war crimes?
That said, this is the US politics thread, so that's neither here nor there topic wise.
(Albertan by birth, here.)
Fair enough if you just go by the politicians. In terms of everyday life, things seem to be more or less serene from my observations. And I've noted that my viewpoint is very much the exception to the rule.
ASAB: All Sponsors Are Bad.Florida COVID-19 dashboard creator’s home raided after department of health complaint
:
Rebekah Jones was fired from the Florida Department of Health in May after she says she declined to "manipulate" state virus numbers. Gov. Ron DeSantis' office says Jones was fired for insubordination. Jones later started her own competing dashboard at floridacovidaction.com.
The data scientist posted a video Monday evening showing law enforcement with guns drawn enter her Tallahassee home, where she says her two children, 2 and 11 years old, were inside.
...
According to Jones, she told agents her children and husband were upstairs. FDLE confirmed her family was upstairs when agents made entry into the home.
"They pointed a gun in my face," she wrote. "They pointed guns at my kids."
According to FDLE, agents knocked and called Jones first "in an attempt to minimize disruption to the family. Ms. Jones refused to come to the door for 20 minutes and hung-up on agents. After several attempts and verbal notifications that law enforcement officers were there to serve a legal search warrant, Ms. Jones eventually came to the door and allowed agents to enter."
Jones said agents took her computers and cellphone.
"They took my phone and the computer I use every day to post the case numbers in Florida, and school cases for the entire country," she tweeted. "They took evidence of corruption at the state level. They claimed it was about a security breach. This was DeSantis. He sent the Gestapo."
According to the warrant, DOH claims someone accessed an internal web interface used for emergency management communications on Nov. 10.
An unidentified subject wrote, "It's time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be part of this. Speak out before it's too late."
Edited by rmctagg09 on Dec 7th 2020 at 9:02:20 AM
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.![]()
Even worse - a camera in her house captured the start of that warrant serving, and showed officers pointing their firearms upstairs when she informed them her children were up there
. And naturally, the first officer in wasn't wearing a mask.
Today's What the Fuck Just Happened Today?
👑 Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial. “The last act of the Trump presidency has taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House.” (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/us/politics/trump-presidency-election-loss.html
👑 As Trump rants over election, his administration accelerates push to lock in policy and staffing gains. “Over the final six weeks of Trump’s presidency, the administration has no plans to wind down its efforts to remake federal policies and even the government bureaucracy itself, aides said, despite the pending handoff to the incoming Democratic administration.” (Washington Post)
2/ Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger recertified the state’s election results and reaffirmed Biden’s victory after a second statewide recount of votes. The presidential ballots in Georgia have been counted three times. Biden prevailed in all three counts of the vote in Georgia. (Washington Post / ABC News / New York Times / CNN / Politico)
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-updates/2020-election-results-transition/?id=74573672#74585159
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro repeatedly violated the Hatch Act by using his official authority for campaign purposes. Navarro is one of more than a dozen Trump administration officials the Office of Special Counsel has found to have violated the act. (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/watchdog-peter-navarro-hatch-act-569a1de5-347c-49c5-8d19-9e1d9cc88639.html
3/ The Trump administration rejected requests from Biden’s transition team to meet with officials at the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies. The Pentagon’s recently appointed chief of staff, Kash Patel, reportedly “told everybody we’re not going to cooperate with the transition team,” according one former official, and he has “put a lot of restrictions on it.” In some instances, Patel blocked some career officials and experts from providing information about key defense issues to the Biden transition team, telling political appointees to take the lead instead. The Pentagon, meanwhile, pushed back against reports that the Trump administration had intentionally blocked the Biden transition team from meeting with defense intelligence agencies, saying the Biden team had improperly reached out to the agencies instead of the DoD transition team. (Washington Post / NBC News / Politico)
4/ Biden selected California Attorney General Xavier Becerra to serve as his secretary of Health and Human Services. If confirmed, Becerra would be the first Latino to run the health department. Biden’s transition team also announced other key public health roles, including Dr. Vivek Murthy to be surgeon general, Rochelle Walensky to be director of the CDC
, Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith to be COVID-19 Equity Task Force co-chair, Dr. Anthony Fauci to be chief medical adviser on COVID-19, Jeff Zients to be counselor to the president and coordinator of the COVID-19 response, and Natalie Quillian to be deputy coordinator of the COVID-19 response. (New York Times / CBS News / Politico / NPR)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/05/neera-tanden-biden-omb-cap/
5/ Rudy Giuliani tested positive for the coronavirus and has been admitted to Georgetown University Medical Center. Giuliani, who has frequently appeared maskless, traveled to Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia last week and met indoors with state legislators to advance Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. The Arizona Legislature, meanwhile, will close for a week “out of an abundance of caution” after Giuliani possibly exposed several Republican lawmakers to COVID-19. And public health officials in Michigan ordered
several state lawmakers to begin quarantining after they were in recent, close contact with Giuliani. “Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!” Trump tweeted. (New York Times / NBC News / Arizona Republic / Washington Post / CNN)
https://www.axios.com/azar-coronavirus-vaccine-axios-hbo-075da60d-b807-43b0-9853-0bfe6c90a678.html
Trump plans to hold a “vaccine summit” at the White House on Tuesday. Both Pfizer and Moderna – the two drug manufacturers likely to receive emergency authorizations for a COVID-19 vaccine – however rejected the invitations. (STAT News / Bloomberg)
https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/07/pfizer-moderna-decline-white-house-vaccine-summit/
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee invited an anti-vaccine doctor who promoted hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment to testify. Dr. Jane Orient is the executive director of a group that opposes government involvement in medicine and views federal vaccine mandates as a violation of human rights. (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/us/politics/anti-vax-scientist-senate-hearing.html
😷 Dept. of “We Have It Totally Under Control.”
Global: Total confirmed cases: ~67,448,000; deaths: ~1,542,000
U.S.: Total confirmed cases: ~14,889,000; deaths: ~284,000
Source: Johns Hopkins University
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Live Blogs: Washington Post / [[https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/07/world/covid-19-coronavirus/ New York Times
/ CNN
/ NBC News
/ ABC News
/ CNBC
/ Bloomberg
/ Wall Street Journal
6/ Attorney General William Barr is considering resigning before January 20. Trump declined to say whether he had confidence in Barr last week after his attorney general said the Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread election fraud. The two later had a “contentious,” lengthy meeting inside the West Wing. (New York Times / CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/06/politics/william-barr-considering-leaving-office/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/politics/trump-administration-soot-regulations/index.html
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully restore the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump tried to end the DACA program in September 2017, and in July Chad Wolf, the acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, suspended DACA pending a “comprehensive” review. U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, however, ruled in November that Wolf had unlawfully ascended to the agency’s top job and vacated his suspension of protections for migrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children. (New York Times / NBC News / Washington Post / Politico / Axios)
Trump ordered the withdrawal “a majority” U.S. troops from Somalia in early 2021. There are currently about 700 troops in Somalia to assist the government fight against Al-Shabab, a terrorist group with links to al Qaeda. (Politico / Wall Street Journal / Associated Press / New York Times)
Melania Trump announced completion of a new White House tennis pavilion. The project refurbished the existing White House Tennis Court and Grandchildren’s Garden, and erected a new 1,200-square-foot building on the South Lawn. (Associated Press / Bloomberg)
https://apnews.com/article/melania-trump-announce-tennis-pavilion-86b3b05efd0b9ebebdbe1ba1528a8857
Edited by sgamer82 on Dec 7th 2020 at 7:20:59 AM
So I'm seeing a fair amount out there suggesting that there's a major pushback from Democrats against Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense, on the grounds that he's a retired general. The argument is that Mattis was only allowed through without a fight because he could potentially temper Trump's idiocy, but a second ex-military civilian head of the military in as many presidential terms would weaken the civilian-military divide too much.
What's weird, though, is that Austin seems to be somewhat less hawkish than Flournoy, who I was a little concerned about given some of her past positions.
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Wow, those kids sure are gonna kill you if you aren't careful, officer. Better be ready to gun them down just in case... >_>
Dumbasses. If you're that worried about dying/being hurt/being scared on the job, maaaybe law enforcement isn't for you? Just maybe?
Edited by Kardavnil on Dec 7th 2020 at 10:44:25 AM
Roll a Constitution saving throw to make it through the year.

There is also a more extensive report on each country, including the US, on that website, for anyone interested.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest times