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

wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#247076: Jun 25th 2018 at 8:58:30 PM

[up][up] I’m just going to point out that that comparison is not a good one, even to point out their hypocrisy. Being gay or transgender is an immutable characteristic.

Working for Donald Trump or being a bigot is not an immutable characteristic, it is a choice which certain people make every single morning. More bluntly, a restaurant owner cannot and should not kick out Ben Carson for being black. They can kick him out for saying that public housing shouldn’t try to address segregation and that racism is over.

edited 25th Jun '18 9:04:57 PM by wisewillow

kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#247077: Jun 25th 2018 at 9:01:42 PM

[up]Or that the pyramids were built to store grain. (No, I'm not letting that go, why do you ask?tongue)

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#247078: Jun 25th 2018 at 9:04:22 PM

It's not like Sarah Sanders is just someone who happens to work for the administration to keep the country from falling apart (like the people who "manage" Trump 24-7 in the WH). She actively openly supports Trump by spouting horrible lies.

Disgusted, but not surprised
SilentColossus (Don’t ask)
#247079: Jun 25th 2018 at 9:25:58 PM

It's the hypocrisy of it all. Businesses can choose not to serve anyone they want - meaning you can choose not to bake a cake for a gay couple. But as soon as they choose not to do business with Sanders it's a shit storm.

Not saying anything new here, but it's how you know their "free market" excuses are bullshit.

edited 25th Jun '18 9:28:52 PM by SilentColossus

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#247080: Jun 25th 2018 at 9:30:17 PM

They want to have their cake and eat it too. While denying gay people the cake.

Disgusted, but not surprised
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#247081: Jun 25th 2018 at 9:31:01 PM

It's the difference between holding something against a person that they can't control or change, vs their active beliefs and actions.

I'd say they willfully misunderstand that, but they don't; they just don't like it when it's their views people are expressing ire against.

edited 25th Jun '18 9:51:27 PM by LSBK

SilentColossus (Don’t ask)
#247082: Jun 25th 2018 at 9:50:10 PM

Yep.

They want to be a protected group, while extending that to no one else.

Ingonyama Since: Jan, 2001
#247083: Jun 25th 2018 at 9:56:23 PM

What has me worried about November again is that article from a couple pages back about the SC gerrymandering cases. While it was always a long shot, I had hope at least one of them would come down in our favor, but now...what good do all the special elections and everything else in the Dems' favor do, if voter suppression and gerrymandering can render it all moot? I mean, I read an article today (I want to say it was on 538) saying that because of those factors, the Dems have to have a 61% turnout (which I think translates to an 11 point advantage) to even take the House, let alone put up a good fight for the Senate. All those people out there fearmongering about Russian interference or the Toddler-in-Chief calling off elections are indeed probably worried over nothing...because all that needs to happen to prevent the Blue Wave is the usual gerrymandering, voter suppression, and propaganda/disinformation. And if that does happen so we don't even take the House, all hell will break loose among the enraged Dems.

I know the answer is to just keep campaigning progressively, on local issues, or for something better than 45 depending on the district, and GOTV like never before. But...I still worry. We've really only got one shot at this.

EDIT: Erf...didn't mean that to be a page-topper. >_<

edited 25th Jun '18 9:58:17 PM by Ingonyama

wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#247084: Jun 25th 2018 at 10:06:12 PM

Here’s a twitter thread on the topic of November and strategy.

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#247085: Jun 25th 2018 at 10:20:56 PM

worth a read. (From the NYT)

We Have a Crisis of Democracy, Not Manners

Last year, the white nationalist Richard Spencer was kicked out of his Virginia gym after another member confronted him and called him a Nazi. This incident did not generate a national round of hand-wringing about the death of tolerance, perhaps because most people tacitly agree that it’s O.K. to shun professional racists.

It’s a little more complicated when the professional racist is the president of the United States. The norms of our political life require a degree of bipartisan forbearance. But treating members of Donald Trump’s administration as ordinary public officials rather than pariahs does more to normalize bigotry than exercising alongside a white separatist.

Over the last week, several Trump administration officials and supporters have been publicly shamed. On Friday night, the Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a farm-to-table restaurant in Lexington, Va. That morning, protesters blasted a recording of sobbing migrant kids outside the home of Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump’s secretary of homeland security.

A few days before that, Nielsen left an upscale Mexican restaurant near the White House after protesters confronted her, chanting, “If kids don’t eat in peace, you don’t eat in peace!” The Trump adviser Stephen Miller was also yelled at in a Mexican restaurant — someone called him a fascist, though he may not regard that as an insult. The same night that Sanders was denied service, Pam Bondi, Florida’s Trump-supporting attorney general, was heckled outside a movie theater where she’d gone to see a documentary about Mister Rogers. Adding to the furor, Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, urged people to keep jeering at members of Trump’s cabinet when they’re out and about, saying, “You tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Naturally, all this has led to lots of pained disapproval from self-appointed guardians of civility. A Washington Post editorial urged the protesters to think about the precedent they are setting. “How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?” it asked.

Of course, this is not hard to imagine at all, since abortion opponents have assassinated abortion providers in their homes and churches, firebombed their clinics and protested at their children’s schools. The Roman Catholic Church has shamed politicians who support abortion rights by denying them communion. The failure to acknowledge this history is a sign of the reflexive false balance that makes it hard for the mainstream media to grapple with the asymmetric extremism of the Republican Party.

I’m somewhat agnostic on the question of whether publicly rebuking Trump collaborators is tactically smart. It stokes their own sense of victimization, which they feed on. It may alienate some persuadable voters, though this is just a guess. (As we saw in the indignant media reaction to Michelle Wolf’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner routine, some pundits project their own concern with Beltway decorum onto swing voters, who generally pay less attention to the news than partisans.)

On the other hand, there’s a moral and psychic cost to participating in the fiction that people who work for Trump are in any sense public servants. I don’t blame staff members at the Virginia restaurant, the Red Hen, for not wanting to help Sanders unwind after a hard week of lying to the public about mass child abuse. Particularly when Sanders’s own administration is fighting to let private businesses discriminate against gay people, who, unlike mendacious press secretaries, are a protected class under many civil rights laws.

Whether or not you think public shaming should be happening, it’s important to understand why it’s happening. It’s less a result of a breakdown in civility than a breakdown of democracy. Though it’s tiresome to repeat it, Donald Trump eked out his minority victory with help from a hostile foreign power. He has ruled exclusively for his vengeful supporters, who love the way he terrifies, outrages and humiliates their fellow citizens. Trump installed the right-wing Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court seat that Republicans stole from Barack Obama. Gorsuch, in turn, has been the fifth vote in decisions on voter roll purges and, on Monday, racial gerrymandering that will further entrench minority rule.

All over the country, Republican members of Congress have consistently refused to so much as meet with many of the scared, furious citizens they ostensibly represent. A great many of these citizens are working tirelessly to take at least one house of Congress in the midterms — which will require substantially more than 50 percent of total votes, given structural Republican advantages — so that the country’s anti-Trump majority will have some voice in the federal government.

But unless and until that happens, millions and millions of Americans watch helplessly as the president cages children, dehumanizes immigrants, spurns other democracies, guts health care protections, uses his office to enrich himself and turns public life into a deranged phantasmagoria with his incontinent flood of lies. The civility police might point out that many conservatives hated Obama just as much, but that only demonstrates the limits of content-neutral analysis. The right’s revulsion against a black president targeted by birther conspiracy theories is not the same as the left’s revulsion against a racist president who spread birther conspiracy theories.

Faced with the unceasing cruelty and degradation of the Trump presidency, liberals have not taken to marching around in public with assault weapons and threatening civil war. I know of no left-wing publication that has followed the example of the right-wing Federalist and run quasi-pornographic fantasies about murdering political enemies. (“Close your eyes and imagine holding someone’s scalp in your hands,” began a recent Federalist article.) Unlike Trump, no Democratic politician I’m aware of has urged his or her followers to beat up opposing demonstrators.

Instead, some progressive celebrities have said some bad words, and some people have treated administration officials with the sort of public opprobrium due members of any other white nationalist organization. Liberals are using their cultural power against the right because it’s the only power they have left, and people have a desperate need to say, and to hear others say, that what is happening in this country is intolerable.

Sometimes, their strategies may be poorly conceived. But there’s an abusive sort of victim-blaming in demanding that progressives single-handedly uphold civility, lest the right become even more uncivil in response. As long as our rulers wage war on cosmopolitan culture, they shouldn’t feel entitled to its fruits. If they don’t want to hear from the angry citizens they’re supposed to serve, let them eat at Trump Grill.

Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#247086: Jun 25th 2018 at 10:28:53 PM

@sggamer82

- Sanders at first, but other Republicans too including ICE with someone threatening an official by leaving the head of a decapitated animal at the front door.

FOX news a while ago mentioned a Democrat congresswoman Maxine Watsrs called for harassment against Trump-appointed politicians and others during a rally... though I’m wondering if it bite the Democrats back.

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#247087: Jun 25th 2018 at 10:46:17 PM

[up]. Im not sure if it's the greatest strategy, but on the other hand, racists are not a protected class of people.

(And in general, Fox News is not a legitimate news outlet. It's mostly Trump propaganda. The only reason to watch it is for opposition research.)

edited 25th Jun '18 10:49:29 PM by megaeliz

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#247088: Jun 25th 2018 at 11:09:03 PM

A couple of pages back re: gerrymandering. It seems like the court was complaining about standing issues, not actually ruling on the maps themselves, if we follow the Washington Post article on it. It apparently follows the pattern of the court ruling on technical issues and sidestepping fundamental questions that has been in force lately.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Ominae Since: Jul, 2010
#247089: Jun 25th 2018 at 11:57:23 PM

[up][up]

True. Even mainstream news like the BBC picked it up.

Ingonyama Since: Jan, 2001
#247090: Jun 26th 2018 at 1:43:20 AM

[up][up]The very fact they're sidestepping is troublesome. And yes that's true, but the problem here is that by the time the lower courts fix or address those technicalities, appeals are made, and the cases make it back to the Supreme Court again, there won't be enough time for any new maps to be applied to the election, even if they do rule against partisan gerrymandering.

TerminusEst from the Land of Winter and Stars Since: Feb, 2010
#247091: Jun 26th 2018 at 12:36:41 PM

White House eyes Helsinki for Trump-Putin sitdown

The White House is blocking off three days on the back end of President Donald Trump’s mid-July trip to the United Kingdom and Brussels, leaving room for a potential summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Plans for a potential sit-down are still being finalized, White House sources warned. But the current front-runner venue under consideration for the meeting, a source familiar with the planning said, is Helsinki, the capital of Finland. The location would offer Putin his desired neutral ground in a country close enough to Russia that he could return to Moscow in time for the final World Cup match on July 15.

This new layout confuses me.

Edited by TerminusEst on Jun 26th 2018 at 12:38:26 PM

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
danime91 Since: Jan, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#247092: Jun 26th 2018 at 12:57:13 PM

Indeed, it's gonna take a while for me to get used to this new format.

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#247093: Jun 26th 2018 at 12:58:32 PM

The only issue for my, which I'll post where appropriate when time allows, is that I prefer Night Vision and when posts here are highlighted it's in a bright blue that makes the text unreadable (or close to)

CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#247094: Jun 26th 2018 at 1:04:05 PM

Maybe increase the spacing between the lines on quotes a couple units. The text is really tightly packed, I feel like I'm reading the New York Times for ants. Anyway, back to politics, the Supreme Court's really throwing a wrench in democracy, huh?

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Jun 26th 2018 at 4:06:30 AM

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
speedyboris Since: Feb, 2010
#247095: Jun 26th 2018 at 1:05:43 PM

So, obviously the big story that broke while the forums were down was that the Supreme Court ruled the travel ban legal. Trump got what he wanted yet again, his fans are gloating. Just another day in Darkest Timeline.

Edited by speedyboris on Jun 26th 2018 at 1:25:10 AM

Raptorslash Since: Oct, 2010
#247096: Jun 26th 2018 at 1:14:26 PM

I get the feeling a lot of this has to do with the seat that was stolen from Obama.

If Gorsuch wasn't here and Garland was, Trump would probably have had more trouble getting things like the travel ban through, which was why Garland was blocked in the first place.

CrimsonZephyr Would that it were so simple. from Massachusetts Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
Would that it were so simple.
#247097: Jun 26th 2018 at 1:21:35 PM

And Gorsuch is far away from dying of old age. Humanity wept.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Jun 26th 2018 at 4:21:19 AM

"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#247098: Jun 26th 2018 at 1:25:55 PM

Most Republican party loyalists see getting conservative justices into the SC as the #1 objective for the Trump presidency. Getting your guys into the SC can tip policy your way for decades, and that's the real goal they're after.

Also, not really feeling this new layout.

They should have sent a poet.
LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#247099: Jun 26th 2018 at 1:43:50 PM

[up]I know, I'm still having trouble logging in on my phone.

Grafite Since: Apr, 2016 Relationship Status: Less than three
#247100: Jun 26th 2018 at 1:45:33 PM

Well, the ruling was 5-4, so I think it's a safe bet to say that if Garland were there, the outcome would've been different. The majority ruled that the ban had nothing to do with discrimination against muslims. You know, despite the fact Trump himself said the opposite.

Life is unfair...

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