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

speedyboris Since: Feb, 2010
#249126: Jul 14th 2018 at 11:55:58 AM

“I support the First Amendment,” Ted Hickman wrote in his “tongue-in-cheek” column for Dixon’s Independent Voice, “… and support the rights of grown men to wear skin tight short-shorts and go-go boots and don tinker bell wings with wand and prance down the streets of San Francisco.”

[...]

“Now hundreds of millions of the rest of us can celebrate our month, peaking on July 4th as healthy, heterosexual, fairly monogamous, keep our kinky stuff to ourselves, Americans,” Hickman wrote. “We do it with our parades ... We honor our country and our veterans who have made all of this possible (including for the tinker bells) and we can do it with actual real pride, not some put on show just to help our inferior complex ‘show we are different’ type of (stuff).”

Well that's not passive-aggressive at all.

Edited by speedyboris on Jul 14th 2018 at 1:56:31 PM

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
#249127: Jul 14th 2018 at 12:16:00 PM

[up] Honestly that reads to me as an attempt at writing an Onion article that got published in the wrong place. The excerpt, anyway.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
singularityshot Since: Dec, 2012
#249128: Jul 14th 2018 at 2:13:36 PM

[up][up]Somebody get his internet history, stat! You know that somebody that wound up is going to have an interesting online trail.

tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#249129: Jul 14th 2018 at 6:22:21 PM

Elon Munsk outed as a top donor to Republican Super PAC Protect the House.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#249130: Jul 14th 2018 at 6:25:07 PM

Not a terrible surprise but do we have a proper mainstream source so I can share it around?

Oh really when?
tclittle Professional Forum Ninja from Somewhere Down in Texas Since: Apr, 2010
Professional Forum Ninja
#249131: Jul 14th 2018 at 6:31:25 PM

[up]https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-is-giving-money-to-a-gop-pac-because-it-helps-1827604794

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#249132: Jul 14th 2018 at 6:56:12 PM

Honestly the article reads like he's been paying both sides based, at least in part, on who's currently in charge.

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#249133: Jul 14th 2018 at 7:06:27 PM

Which is SOP for a lot of businesses.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#249134: Jul 14th 2018 at 7:07:00 PM

Shit like this is why I cannot stand Elon Musk.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#249135: Jul 14th 2018 at 9:25:01 PM

It's not even something worth being disgusted about, let alone surprised. It's how business operates - you pay money to anyone who will reform it in the form of tax breaks and favored policies that will bring in the bacon.

Hell, Apple is lobbying the Trump Administration and spending record amounts on it. What are they lobbying for? They're trying to protect DACA, or at least get Trump to make more noise about immigration and take less action, because Apple needs skilled engineers, and they want a shot at young immigrants who made it into an STEM field.

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#249136: Jul 14th 2018 at 11:41:07 PM

"If we pay you and wine and dine you enough, maybe you'll consider easing up on DACA?" And then the Republicans just pocket the change and go on with business as usual.

TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#249137: Jul 15th 2018 at 12:33:23 AM

So Trump basically shat over the red carpet May rolled out for him. What a total non-surprise.

Diplomatically speaking, he did far more than that. Not only did he undermine and disrespect her leadership abilities, he also potentially weakened her position as PM, (May's party has a giant freaking fault line over how to conduct Brexit, and three hardline total Brexit ministers (including Trump's pal Boris Johnson) recently resigned from the government over the matter) essentially flipped the bird to English sovereignty, (his comment about refusing to form a trade deal with the UK unless they conduct Brexit the way he wants amounts to saying "Do what I, the leader of a foreign country, say or I'll take a wrecking ball to your economy right when you need my help most") etc.

According to what I read the British stock market dipped and the pound lost about 1% of its value after Trump's comments came out, which doesn't sound like much but is still a far reaching consequence. Not to mention that those threats may scare off investments in England due to fears that a special trade deal with the US won't happen, a prospect that would take a lot of the economic sting out of Brexit. (And as Frum noted in an article shortly before Trump's interview with The Sun came out, Trump encouraged Brexit while on the campaign trail and has been president for a year and a half now and there's no trade deal in sight with the UK, and honestly there's unlikely to be one anytime soon.)

    Trump encouraged Brexit voters and then betrayed them 

In the 1980s, a group of anti-Communist student activists in Poland popularized the slogan “Smile! Tomorrow will be worse.” Those words apply well to Donald Trump’s diplomacy.

On Thursday, Trump brought chaos to a nato summit. Friday will be his day to apply his special touch to the U.S.–U.K. relationship.

This is a moment when America’s closest security partner badly needs American help. In 2016, 51.9 percent of the British public voted to quit the European Union. The leaders of the “Leave” campaign assured voters that the U.K. would easily and speedily negotiate a favorable new relationship with the truncated EU. They promised, too, that a post-EU Britain would negotiate new trade pacts with the United States and Canada. In the words of the Vote Leave campaign’s manifesto:

We will negotiate a new UK-EU deal based on free trade and friendly cooperation. We will carry on trading with Europe but we will also be able to negotiate trade agreements with other countries. This will help our economy grow and create more jobs …

The UK is the EU’s single largest export market in goods, taking a larger share of EU exports than even the United States. It is in everyone’s interests, particularly Germany’s, to negotiate a friendly UK-EU free trade deal ...

If we Vote Leave and take back control of our trade policy, we can speak for ourselves and sign new deals with countries all over the world, creating new jobs and new investment opportunities.

The Brexit champion Boris Johnson expressed the promise more vividly. Acknowledging that in the interim Brexit might cause “some plaster to come off the ceiling,” he foresaw a glorious new era of U.K.-negotiated trade deals: “Think what we can do when we have free-trade deals with America, where they still have a ban on British haggis. Think of our potential whiskey sales to India if only we could negotiate a cut in their duty of 150 percent on Scotch.”

Twenty-five months later, there has been scant to zero progress on those former high hopes. As things stand, the U.K. is headed toward the hardest of hard exits at the deadline of March 29, 2019.

The British have made this bed, but it is not in America’s interest to abandon them to lie in it.

A more normal U.S. president would have already accepted responsibility for the EU–U.K. problem as a major foreign-policy challenge—and would have intervened to help America’s friends on both sides of the impasse. But Trump is not normal.

Every U.S. president from Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama favored an integrated European economy with Britain on the inside. President Trump favored Brexit in 2016. Having gotten his wish, he has turned his back on his Brexiteer friends. The Leave campaign imagined that Brexit Britain would seamlessly transition from the EU to a new Anglosphere trading future. Instead, negotiations with the United States have barely begun—no surprise in this chaotic administration. (The chief trade negotiator for agriculture did not even take office until March 1.)

As Thomas Wright noted in Politico, rather than negotiate a U.S.–U.K. free trade pact, Trump has hit Britain with bogus national-security tariffs on steel and aluminum. His administration offered the U.K. an open-skies agreement on passenger aviation inferior to what the U.K. had enjoyed as a member of the EU, and is dropping broad hints that Britain may have to dismantle important elements of its cherished National Health Service as part of any future U.S.–U.K. trade deal.

Some other news items:

For those who truly believe in single payer health care, if a candidate or pundit talks about backing Medicare for All, be sure they mean what you think they mean.

Apparently there's an effort going around for candidates and pundits to pay lip service to the slogan while attempting to redefine Medicare for All as turning Medicare into a buy-in program, (in essence a replacement for the public option that was originally supposed to be in the ACA before Congressional wrangling forced it to be removed) and otherwise leaving the current private market system largely intact

Warning: opinion piece

    Always check the fine print 
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat 10-term House Democrat Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th District — the political upset of the year — in part because she championed Medicare-for-all (in addition to free college tuition and a jobs guarantee, among other progressive policies).

Immediately, some pundits began to try their best to explain her victory in a light most favorable to moderate liberals.

Part of their agenda involved watering down what “Medicare-for-all” means. It is very important that Medicare-for-all advocates resist these efforts and clarify exactly what we’re fighting for.

Vox’s Dylan Scott recently quoted one activist (Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee), describing the “pleasant ambiguity of Medicare-for-all.” Green suggested that there was no downside to letting voters hold different definitions of the phrase in their minds, at least during campaign season. Meanwhile, Paul Krugman described Medicare-for-all, in his New York Times column, as a “deliberately ambiguous phrase.”

“In practice,” Krugman wrote, presumably to reassure centrist readers, “[Medicare-for-all] probably wouldn’t mean pushing everyone into a single-payer system. Instead, it would mean allowing individuals and employers to buy into Medicare — basically a big public option. That’s really not radical at all.”

It’s correct that Democrats diverge on the issue of health care. Yet despite the musings of Krugman and others, there’s nothing ambiguous about the Medicare-for-all legislation Ocasio-Cortez supports and that appealed to the people who voted for her. She was referring to two specific bills, Rep. Keith Ellison’s H.R. 676 and its companion, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s S. 1804, both of which would create a single-payer health care system and both of which share clear principles.

Yet as public support for Medicare-for-all rises, establishment think tanks and lobbyists are floating proposals designed to capitalize on its momentum while diluting its content.

In February, the Center for American Progress released a plan called “Medicare Extra for All,” a particularly shameless attempt to co-opt Medicare-for-all’s popularity. It would create a public option similar to what Krugman describes — it would allow people to buy into a public “Medicare Extra” plan while leaving in place the privatized, multi-payer system that drives our health care struggles.

Obama administration alumnus Andy Slavitt’s United States of Care initiative, on the other hand, promises to “put health care over politics” — an obvious impossibility — with three extremely vague “principles”: giving Americans “an affordable regular source of health care”; protecting them from “financial devastation” as a result of medical bills; and, the giveaway that Slavitt’s organization will settle for less than what voters are demanding, requiring legislation to be “economically responsible” to “win ... political support.”

Benchmarks as vague as that prevent any accountability, ensuring that, whatever inadequate plan might be passed, these experts will be able to congratulate themselves.

In contrast to such vagueness, Democratic Socialists for Medicare for All (for whom we work) — a campaign organized and paid for by Democratic Socialists of America, working in coalition with National Nurses United and Labor Campaign for Single Payer — has defined its five core demands as follows. They dovetail with the Sanders and Ellison bills.

Long story short: remember that the most primary rules with politicians are to watch for Weasel Words and to force them to give specifics and details rather than just relying on claims made.

Speaking of Occasio Cortez, as the article above does, it seems that Joe Crowley, who she defeated in the Democratic primary, will appear on the ballot on the Working Families Party due to NY election laws and Crowley refusing to withdraw his name from the WFP line, despite the WFP asking him to drop his name.

Link

    Power is a tough drug to give up 
It appears Joe Crowley may not be ready to give up his spot atop the Queen's machine just yet—or maybe he is, and the state's election rules were just designed to be as confusing as possible. It's not really clear.

Despite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's stunning victory in last month's congressional primary, Crowley has reportedly refused to vacate the Working Families Party line, which means he could still appear on the general election ballot in November. His unexpected defiance has flummoxed leaders of the political party, who had assumed Crowley would immediately remove himself from the ballot, according to the Times.

"You’d think that given the moment we’re in that Democratic leaders would want to help progressive forces to unite," Bill Lipton, state director of the Working Families Party, told the newspaper. He added that he reached out to Crowley about conceding the third-party nomination, but the campaign declined.

Shortly after the Times story came out this morning, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that Crowley had repeatedly reneged on his initial offer support her candidacy. "So much for 'Born to Run,'" she noted, referring to Crowley's live performance of the song, which he dedicated to Ocasio-Cortez, after the race was called.

Crowley, meanwhile, fired back on Twitter that he's actually "not running," and that the only reason he hasn't been removed from the ballot was because he has "lots [of] questions about the WFP line." According to New York state election law, a candidate can only be removed from a party's ballot if they die, leave the state, are convicted of a crime, or accept a nomination for another office. Crowley says he doesn't plan on running for office elsewhere—or dying, for that matter—and thus can't actually remove himself from the ballot.

We've reached out to the Working Families Party to see how that square's with Lipton's claim that Crowley is working against progressive forces, and to both campaigns to see who is dodging calls from whom. We'll update once we hear back.

UPDATE: The Working Families Party is now calling on Crowley to register to vote in Virginia in order to take himself off the ballot line, but a spokesperson for Crowley says the congressman finds that suggestion "unacceptable," NBC News reports.

"It is disappointing that Crowley has refused to vacate the Working Families Party ballot line," Lipton said in a statement. "The only remaining way for Crowley to do the right thing is to switch his residency to Virginia, where his family resides and his children already go to school. It would fix the problem he created in an instant."

Politicians gonna politician, I guess. If Crowley acts like a jackass and goes through with this, he'll throw legitimate fuel on the fires of every half-baked conspiracy theory about how establishment Democrats are working against anyone further to the left.

Lastly, a quick note on poll numbers: on 538's site Trump is now 11 points underwater in presidential approval polls with the general populace (53% disapprove, 42% approve) although with likely/registered voters, the numbers are a little tighter, with only a 9% difference. Which underlines the core of 2016, that if you don't vote everywhere, every time, you're basically saying "whoever the other people pick for me is fine by me."

Meanwhile, 538's polls on Congress have a generic Democrat up 9% against a generic Republican. Hopefully that's enough to look at snatching back the house. Meanwhile a lot of Senate races are looking close. Democrats have a legit chance at picking up a seat in Arizona and Nevada, and Tennessee is an outside possibility with a popular ex-governor running on the Democrat side vs a Tea Party firebrand that makes some people uncomfortable.

Democrats are really going to have to put in the work or hope circumstances break their way to hold onto Heitkamp's seat in North Dakota, Donnelly's seat in Indiana, and McCaskill's is Missouri, although the corrupt GOP and scandals in Missouri are doing their best on McCaskill's behalf, just as they have in the past.

Edited by TheWanderer on Jul 15th 2018 at 3:54:37 PM

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
TerminusEst from the Land of Winter and Stars Since: Feb, 2010
#249138: Jul 15th 2018 at 4:36:42 AM

As the summit in Helsinki nears, CNN reports on the most relevant of topics; bunkers.

Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#249139: Jul 15th 2018 at 6:03:09 AM

Which is SOP for a lot of businesses.
Exactly, it's the actions of an entity concerned only with their financial interests and nothing else. It shows that Musk does not care about environmentalism or socialism or anything else he's bleated about in the past.

It's not even something worth being disgusted about, let alone surprised. It's how business operates - you pay money to anyone who will reform it in the form of tax breaks and favored policies that will bring in the bacon.

Ha ha ha no.

It's absolutely something worth being disgusted about and "a lot of people do it" has got to be the weakest fucking defense ever.

A bunch of businesses do it because they're entities who primarily care about their financial interests and nothing else, by doing this Musk is clearly showing that any issue he talks about outside of his finances are at best windows dressing and at worst just PR nonsense.

Just because corporations are amoral profit optimizing monsters does not mean that I have to like it or give Musk a pass. Bad is bad and this is bad.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 15th 2018 at 9:06:51 AM

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#249140: Jul 15th 2018 at 6:20:20 AM

Was there ever any indication that Musk wasn't just engaging in PR nonsense before this? It seems odd to make a big deal out of this apparent hypocrisy and/or greed unless it's seemingly out of character for him.

JBC31187 Since: Jan, 2015
#249141: Jul 15th 2018 at 6:29:02 AM

It goes hand in hand with "Sideshow Bob framed me for robbery and sent me for prison, but I'm aching for that tax cut!" The safaris to Trumpland that the NY Times like to publish are full of farmers, industrial workers, and CE Os who admit that it looks bad, and it looks like their financial future is screwed, but they're sure that the worst consequences of their vote will land on someone else.

Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#249142: Jul 15th 2018 at 6:30:44 AM

Was there ever any indication that Musk wasn't just engaging in PR nonsense before this? It seems odd to make a big deal out of this apparent hypocrisy and/or greed unless it's seemingly out of character for him.
Maybe there wasn't, but it doesn't really matter. This is lovely confirmation either way. And useful ammunition against his fanboys (the one's who aren't brogressive or libertarians that is).

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#249143: Jul 15th 2018 at 6:34:21 AM

Hardcore Musk fanboys won't be dissuaded by shit like this, assuming they actually gave a shit about such things in the first place. As long as they think he can send them to Mars with flying robot cars they won't care if he is supporting the GOP.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#249144: Jul 15th 2018 at 6:35:24 AM

[up]When I said "useful ammunition" I didn't mean to convince them, I meant to use against them and convince any less committed observers.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
Grafite Since: Apr, 2016 Relationship Status: Less than three
#249145: Jul 15th 2018 at 7:08:39 AM

In social media, Elon Musk really is idolized to a level where because he's an engine of technological progress, then he must have no flaws. He's a person like any other, except he badly treats his employees and calls media reports he doesn't like false. Ring a bell?

Life is unfair...
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#249146: Jul 15th 2018 at 7:19:19 AM

There's an op-ed out there that outright calls him the Trump of Silicon Valley.

How Elon Musk turned into the Donald Trump of Silicon Valley

Edited by M84 on Jul 15th 2018 at 10:20:16 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
Fourthspartan56 from Georgia, US Since: Oct, 2016 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
#249147: Jul 15th 2018 at 7:22:04 AM

[up][up],[up] Quite so, the dynamics are quite similar. Though as much as I dislike Musk I think he's still more authentic then Donald Trump, which doesn't really say much if anything. Almost anyone is more authentic then Donald Trump.

"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#249148: Jul 15th 2018 at 7:23:10 AM

Elon Musk actually pays his employees and has a consistent record of pushing numerous scientific advances in automobiles as well as space travel forward. He's not the Omnisiah, no, but comparing him to Trump is ridiculous.

He's not even Steve Jobs.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 15th 2018 at 7:22:46 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#249149: Jul 15th 2018 at 7:24:13 AM

The opening paragraph of that op-ed is pretty on point.

He is prone to unhinged Twitter eruptions. He can't handle criticism. He scolds the news media for its purported dishonesty and threatens to create a Soviet-like apparatus to keep tabs on it. He suckers people to fork over cash in exchange for promises he hasn't kept. He's a billionaire whose business flirts with bankruptcy. He's sold himself as an establishment-crushing iconoclast when he's really little more than an unusually accomplished BS artist. His legions of devotees are fanatics and, let's face it, a bit stupid.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Aleistar Since: Feb, 2018 Relationship Status: Hugging my pillow
#249150: Jul 15th 2018 at 9:15:45 AM

I love how, because of the initials, I thought I was going to SMH.com


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