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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#104951: Nov 15th 2015 at 1:21:04 PM

For what it's worth, it's kind of like the president getting assassinated. People get murdered all the time, but a president getting murdered is considered, in a way, worse. This is because we can't protect everyone, but we as a society expect the president at least to be safe.

Leviticus 19:34
AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#104952: Nov 15th 2015 at 4:57:30 PM

Also because the motives behind the murder of a president/bombing of a sports stadium with a lot of people tend to be a higher level of terrifying and/or require a higher level of being devoted to a horrific belief or cause from the perpetrator.

storyyeller More like giant cherries from Appleloosa Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
More like giant cherries
#104953: Nov 15th 2015 at 5:24:17 PM

It's worth noting that we tend to treat everyday tragedies — a black person killed here, a Palestinian killed there — as not newsworthy.

Just two weeks ago, terrorists blew up a Russian plane over the Sinai, killing nearly twice as many people as the Paris attacks. That's not exactly something that happens every day.

But of course, the victims were Russians, and it happened in Egypt, and both governments had an interest in downplaying the story, plus we don't care about them as much as France.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#104955: Nov 15th 2015 at 5:41:58 PM

Yeah, they were discussing that almost every day, right up to the Paris attacks. Hell, even the Malaysian flight got back on the news because they found what might be a piece of it on a beach, and that happened over a year ago.

Things where a lot of people die or are hurt tend to get on the international news a lot more easily than single murders, which tend to get onto mostly local news.

storyyeller More like giant cherries from Appleloosa Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
More like giant cherries
#104956: Nov 15th 2015 at 7:09:19 PM

Oh sorry, I don't follow the news closely enough to know much about what gets covered to what degree.

edited 15th Nov '15 7:09:31 PM by storyyeller

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play
Canid117 Since: Oct, 2010 Relationship Status: Hello, I love you
#104957: Nov 15th 2015 at 7:29:16 PM

Then why were you complaining about the (nonexistent) lack of news coverage?

"War without fire is like sausages without mustard." - Jean Juvénal des Ursins
darksidevoid Anti-Gnosis Weapon from The Frontiers (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Robosexual
Anti-Gnosis Weapon
#104958: Nov 15th 2015 at 7:43:07 PM

Viewership for last night's debate was 8.5 million, down almost half from the previous debate.

Once again, thanks DNC!

GM: AGOG S4 & F/WC RP; Co-GM: TABA, SOTR, UUA RP; Sub-GM: TTS RP. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire.
probablyinsane Since: Oct, 2011 Relationship Status: I LOVE THIS DOCTOR!
#104959: Nov 15th 2015 at 8:04:44 PM

[up] Can you provide a summary of what the DNC did?

Right now, I think it has more to do with the Paris attacks grabbing lion's share of attention these past few days.

It's been a while since I used our cable box for BBC and CNN. These days, most of my media and news consumption has been through the internet.

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.
darksidevoid Anti-Gnosis Weapon from The Frontiers (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Robosexual
Anti-Gnosis Weapon
#104960: Nov 15th 2015 at 8:10:59 PM

Politico's story there covers my gripes well enough. The DNC are, of course, the ones who decided the debate schedule, and they scheduled all the debates on days when the absolute minimum number of people are likely to watch. Yesterday's was two hours long and started at 9 PM on a Saturday - not a time when people are likely to be at home or anywhere else watching a presidential debate, even taking into account some more diehard politics junkies (like myself). The next two debates are the Saturday before Christmas and the Sunday night of MLK weekend, which is during the NFL playoffs. After that, no more Dem debates until after primary voting begins.

edited 15th Nov '15 8:12:31 PM by darksidevoid

GM: AGOG S4 & F/WC RP; Co-GM: TABA, SOTR, UUA RP; Sub-GM: TTS RP. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire.
Joesolo Indiana Solo Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Indiana Solo
#104961: Nov 15th 2015 at 8:15:34 PM

[up][up][up][up] this. I've been seeing many people saying things didn't get as much attention as Paris lately, when many things DID. How are you going to say it got less attention if you don't pay attention to the news yourself.

edited 15th Nov '15 8:15:58 PM by Joesolo

I'm baaaaaaack
RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#104962: Nov 15th 2015 at 8:20:57 PM

Plus, as far as the Russian plane goes, there's still some uncertainty about whether it was blown up on purpose or just suffered a mechanical breakdown. As far as I'm aware, the forensic evidence has been conclusive yet, and so far no terrorist group has come forward to claim responsibility.

edited 15th Nov '15 8:21:23 PM by RavenWilder

Artificius from about a foot and a half away from a monitor. Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Norwegian Wood
#104963: Nov 15th 2015 at 8:23:56 PM

Representative and DNC chairwoman Schultz is playing a very dangerous game for the Democratic party. Whatever the case of the candidates' merits, she's betting that her preferred candidate won't be too damaged by protective underexposure in the primaries to win the White House in the general. Hopefully the insurrection doesn't spill over until after the election, but I'm ambivalent. Would it be better to gamble on her getting kicked upstairs in the aftermath of a Clinton win or that her apparently draconian policies were publicly challenged before the presidency is risked? The former seems safer, less likely to blow up and discredit the party at a really bad moment.

How would the party get her to step down anyway? I'm not finding much on the DNC machinery in Google.

edited 15th Nov '15 8:33:48 PM by Artificius

"I have no fear, for fear is the little death that kills me over and over. Without fear, I die but once."
SciFiSlasher from Absolutely none of your business. Since: Dec, 2011 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
#104964: Nov 15th 2015 at 8:55:56 PM

[up][up] Didn't ISIS affiliates say that they blew up the plane? I mean, it would be reasonable retaliation for Russia's intervention in Syria.

"Somehow the hated have to walk a tightrope, while those who hate do not."
darksidevoid Anti-Gnosis Weapon from The Frontiers (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Robosexual
Anti-Gnosis Weapon
#104965: Nov 15th 2015 at 9:08:48 PM

[up][up]I would be able to answer that question for you, except that the DNC's charter and bylaws are inaccessible on the national site! Great going, DNC! Stellar transparency!

GM: AGOG S4 & F/WC RP; Co-GM: TABA, SOTR, UUA RP; Sub-GM: TTS RP. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire.
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#104966: Nov 15th 2015 at 10:10:07 PM

Y'know, after the debate, I'm struck with a thought about Sanders' greatest weakness in general. He's exceptionally focused on systemic functions, to the detriment of both his ability to get off a good sound bite and his ability to see a short-term problem as something that needs to be dealt with.

"Climate change is the greatest driver of terrorism because it leads to droughts in Third World countries that topple governments." Great (if implied) analysis. So what is his plan for stopping ISIS now? "The locals are going to have to step up more." Um, what the christ, the local Muslim countries are all pushing to the limit of their abilities and most of them are pushing in different directions because they have different dogs in the fight (in particular, there's a Saudi Arabia vs. Iran proxy fight going on in Syria).

It's why #BLM can get at him for trying to solve black problems by fixing the War on Drugs. Yeah, he's largely right that colorblind mechanical tweaks can solve most of the root problems, but it's not saving young black men who run afoul of police officers now.

RavenWilder Since: Apr, 2009
#104967: Nov 15th 2015 at 11:07:46 PM

It's why #BLM can get at him for trying to solve black problems by fixing the War on Drugs. Yeah, he's largely right that colorblind mechanical tweaks can solve most of the root problems, but it's not saving young black men who run afoul of police officers now.

Thing is, changing how the War on Drugs is handled is something the President can actually do. The screening, training, investigation, and prosection of local police officers? Those are all carried out by local governments. Unless there have been some controversial police shootings involving agents from the FBI, DEA, or other Federal agencies, it doesn't really seem like the President has jurisdiction here.

FFShinra Since: Jan, 2001
#104968: Nov 15th 2015 at 11:59:30 PM

[up][up]This is what is starting to sour me on Sanders. Foreign Policy is the one arena the president has any semblance of true control. By laser focusing on the economy, he's shooting himself in the foot otherwise.

If he doesn't course correct, he's dead in the water by the end of this year.

BlueNinja0 The Mod with the Migraine from Taking a left at Albuquerque Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
The Mod with the Migraine
#104969: Nov 16th 2015 at 12:20:12 AM

Isnt that how people felt after 9/11? It sounds kinda paranoid and overreactive
It is paranoid, but it's a very human response. Parisnote  are our "in-group," of sorts. Beirutnote  are not what Americans think of as "people like us," unless they're directly related to those countries.

Two articles here about everyone's favorite part of the US.

First up, homeschooling families in Texas are suing the state, claiming they don't have to teach their children how to read or do math because "they're going to be raptured before they become adults." Emphasis mine.

The parents of nine Texas children are suing the state over the fact that they were asked to educate their children in subjects like math and spelling and not just church hymns and theology. Their argument: Why waste our time on education, when the second coming of Jesus Christ is upon us.

Like many homeschoolers, the Mc Intyre family in El Paso was given wide latitude in their children’s education. They had almost no oversight from educators. They were never required to follow a curriculum or have their children take standardized tests like children in public (and most private) schools do. The results weren’t pretty: The children learned almost nothing they couldn’t learn in Sunday school.

Even when one of the children tried to flee, the ignorance made escaping the situation difficult. The family’s 17-year-old daughter ran away from home after years of social and educational neglect. The state found a public school to place her in, but while her peers were starting their senior year, she was sent to 9th grade, where educators worried she would struggle to keep up.

Other family members of Michael Mc Intyre grew concerned, as well. According to Texas’s ABC Affiliate KRGV, her brother reported to the state that his brother and his wife were clearly neglecting their children’s education – and flaunting it.

[P]roblems began when the dealership’s co-owner and Michael’s twin brother, Tracy, reported never seeing the children reading, working on math, using computers or doing much of anything educational except singing and playing instruments. He said he heard one of them say learning was unnecessary since “they were going to be raptured.”

When El Paso school district, the officials that are tentatively meant to keep an eye on homeschoolers in the area, finally began snooping around and asking the Mc Intyres to prove that they were at least trying to teach their children basic skills, the family sued them for oppressing their right to not educate their children.

The case wound its way to Texas’s Supreme Court, but the Mc Intyres – having been given almost every concession imaginable – are already slamming the (all-Republican) court as “anti-Christian.” They describe the idea that El Paso school district can inquire about the well-being of their kids as a “startling assertion of sweeping governmental power.” The claim, ludicrous as it is on its face, is made more so by the fact that the state’s ultra-conservative governor recently appointed a Christian homeschooler to lead its board of education. Bending over backwards to Christian homeschoolers appears to be high on Gov. Greg Abbott’s administrative agenda. He certainly isn’t targeting them.

There are legitimate reasons for families to have the option to homeschool, but for many conservative homeschoolers, the choice to keep their children out of school is specifically about limiting what sorts of information the kids can learn. Christians who take the tactic of forced ignorance do so to avoid uncomfortable questions that may undermine their ideological convictions. The effects are almost always damaging to the children, who grow up having learned almost nothing that will equip them to compete in the fast-moving, science and technology driven economy we now live.

Occasionally, the isolation gets so bad that the children have almost no connection with the outside world to speak of. In early 2015, a young woman from – you guessed it – Texas had to fight tooth-and-nail to prove that she was a real person. Her parents had never taken her to the doctors, never bothered to get her a birth certificate or social security number, and never enrolled her in school. When she, like the Mc Intyre’s 17-year-old daughter, finally fled, she was left with no identity at all.

Rachel Coleman, the executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, says that conservative lawmakers who constantly try to dismantle “big” government own a lion’s share of the blame for this current inability to control homeschoolers from not educating their kids. After all, according to the new fanatics in the conservative movement, government oversight – even in education – is “tyranny.”

The other comes, not from Texas (shocking, I know) but from Georgia, where the state legislature is going to pass a legal loophole that allows you to beat your wife and/or children without legal consequences, because it's your "sincerely held religious belief." The link includes a video statement from a former attorney general.note  Again, emphasis mine.

Republicans in the state of Georgia are poised to pass a bill that would allow businesses and individuals to openly discriminate against others, as well as allow for domestic abuse against women and children. They are doing this all in the name of “religious freedom.”

Senate Bill 129 known as “Georgia Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” is one of the many similar bills being pushed through in states across the country by the GOP. Republicans have found a huge grass roots issue with “religious freedom,” ever since defeating gay marriage became their top priority. Many feel that the Georgia bill may eclipse all others in terms of damage down to women and children.

The bill states that:

“Laws neutral toward religion may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise,” and the “government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” without a “compelling governmental interest” and by the “least restrictive means of achieving that compelling governmental interest.” It also defines religious exercise as a “practice or observance of religion, whether or not compelled by or central to a system of religious belief.”

In other words, if someone doesn’t want to serve a gay person at their restaurant because they believe being gay is an abomination then they don’t have to serve them. This isn’t just conjecture, the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Josh Mc Koon fought against any anti-discrimination amendments being added to the final version of his bill.

As if this wasn’t horrible enough, Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, told The Daily Beast that even right wing district attorneys in two Georgia counties oppose the bill because it would give wife and child abusers a religious defense:

“We have found cases where people used their religious views as an excuse to impede an investigation into child endangerment and child abuse charges. They were not ultimately successful, but they did slow down the investigations.”

Even conservative district attorneys can see that this bill will pave the way for abusers to use “religious freedom” as justification for committing crimes against women and children.

Christians often cite bible verses to justify their bigotry, abuse, and violence. This verse requires women to submit to their husbands:

“Ephesians 5:22-24: Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”

There’s also this gem:

''“1 Corinthians 14:34 – 35 34 women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”''

They also quote scripture to justify child abuse:

“Proverbs 23:13-14: Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die. Punish him with the rod and save him from death.”

“Proverbs 13:24: Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.”

If Georgia continues down this path, the people of the state will become subject to the equivalent of Sharia Law by right wing religious conservatives pushing their way of life onto others. This must be stopped hard and definitively by the American people across the nation.

Yes, that's right, the government expecting you to not be an abusive asshole is a "substantial burden upon a person's exercise of religion."

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
Eschaton Since: Jul, 2010
#104970: Nov 16th 2015 at 12:48:19 AM

Yes, that's right, the government expecting you to not be an abusive asshole is a "substantial burden upon a person's exercise of religion."
I've been expecting that line of thinking to gain attention ever since gay marriage was put into the spotlight, and it seems to be playing out.

The anti-intellectualism that is popular in the US certainly contributes, since the thrust of it seems to be "just because I don't have the education doesn't mean that what I think is invalid." Which, to a certain extent, is true.

But more often than not it just ends up being 'I reject your reality and substitute my own.'

edited 16th Nov '15 12:53:19 AM by Eschaton

AceofSpades Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
#104971: Nov 16th 2015 at 2:02:38 AM

I've been wondering why, when all the candidates are willing to be in more debates, the DNC hasn't decided to schedule a couple more. Pretty sure they could find a place to do it.

Heck, the most exposure I've gotten was the forum hosted by Maddow, which was on at a time when people would be home. Some, anyway. Did the DNC schedule that, too?

3of4 Just a harmless giant from a foreign land. from Five Seconds in the Future. Since: Jan, 2010 Relationship Status: GAR for Archer
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
#104972: Nov 16th 2015 at 2:12:01 AM

I'm not a legal expert in any way, but that Georgia bill kinda sounds like it's text fails the Federal Constitutions "No state religion!", with the whole "Laws neutral to religion" bit.

I.e. it attempts to prevent the Laws from affecting people based on religion, thus creating essentially setting religion over the Laws which means the state just gave religion the deciding right over the enforcement over some of its laws.

If that makes sense...

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Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#104973: Nov 16th 2015 at 2:34:51 AM

As long as it's not tied to a specific religion it might be arguable, now it's still a massive overeach of what religious freedom means, but it's not a state religion unless an actual religion is specified, I think.

However the answer is thus obvious, have someone who isn't an evangelical protastent use the law as a defence and it will get removed, as the makers of the law wouldn't want their law to protect say a Muslim.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Medinoc from France (Before Recorded History)
#104974: Nov 16th 2015 at 2:47:13 AM

[up]IIRC, The Satanic Temple makes a point of doing this.

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
probablyinsane Since: Oct, 2011 Relationship Status: I LOVE THIS DOCTOR!
#104975: Nov 16th 2015 at 4:36:29 AM

they don't have to teach their children how to read or do math

( blinks owlishly at statement )

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

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