Political Randomness

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Tue Mar 21, 2023 12:37 pm

I was listening to The Beatles song Revolution. Always been one of my favorites I think because I had the 45 growing up. Anyways I found the words to be very poignant for our current political times. I think the rioters, protesters, and MAGA GOP should really take a look at and listen to those words.

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out (in)

Don't you know it's gonna be
All right?
Don't you know it's gonna be (all right)
Don't you know it's gonna be (all right)

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're all doing what we can

But if you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait

Don't you know it's gonna be (all right)
Don't you know it's gonna be (all right)
Don't you know it's gonna be (all right)

You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We'd all love to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow

Don't you know it's gonna be (all right)
Don't you know it's gonna be (all right)
Don't you know it's gonna be (all right)

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Fri Mar 24, 2023 2:31 pm

In local news

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politi ... 042340007/

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law Friday Democratic bills to repeal Michigan's right-to-work law that currently allows workers in the state to not pay union dues or fees. She also reinstated a prevailing wage law that requires union-level wages and benefits for state-funded construction projects.

Kurth · Post by **Kurth** » Fri Mar 24, 2023 2:39 pm

I thought there was a “free speech and higher education” thread somewhere, but I couldn’t find it, so I’m just dropping this here.

Popehat’s take on the debacle that was 5th Cir. Judge Duncan’s recent speech at Stanford Law School is a classic. Judge Duncan is a Trump-appointed culture warrior. He’s bad news, so, of course, the Federalist Society at SLS invited him to speak. Shocking to absolutely no one, the speech was vigorously protested and devolved - pretty much out right out of the gate - into student protesters shouting down Judge Duncan. That was followed by an imbecile SLS assistant dean of diversity and inclusion implicitly approving of the protestors’ conduct when Judge Duncan asked for the administration to intervene to quiet the hecklers so he could continue.

The assistant dean (who’s remarks - accompanied by rhythmic finger-snapping by the students - are so cringey I could barely get through them) was disciplined by the SLS President, who is now under attack herself by progressive student organizations at Stanford.

Ken’s piece is titled, “Hating Everyone Everywhere All At Once At Stanford,” and he nails it. He concludes with this:

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE.

Everyone in this story makes me angry.

Judge Duncan is part of a culture of turning the federal judiciary into a conservative grievance LiveJournal. He’s also part of a pathetic culture of conservative victimology and free-speech hucksterism. The American right is trumpeting a purported concern for freedom of speech, based mostly on cries of “cancel culture” and gripes about how other people are using their free speech and association, while campaigning vigorously to use government force to limit speech they don’t like. The Federalist Society is complicit, off the bench and on it.

The right-wing media (check out the links in item 6 on David Lat's update) is campaigning to make money and clicks off of that conservative victimology. In the process it’s undermining everything that was ever admirable or worthwhile about American conservatism and making it into a cult of crybabies. Meanwhile, it’s torpedoing whatever American consensus we’ve ever had in favor of free speech values, conveying to half of America’s youth that free speech is cynical bullshit and to the other half that it’s a bludgeon to own the libs.

Associate Dean Steinbach and her ilk are campaigning to undermine free speech legal and social norms, striving to make someone’s subjective reaction to speech an unquestionable justification for suppressing it. Academic freedom is under state assault and she’s busily undermining it and telling students they have a right to shut people up.

Stanford, and schools like it, are shitting the bed over controversial speakers. Decide that students can shut down speeches they don’t like, if you want to take that path. If not, protect speakers from disruption and have the students escorted out if they shut down a speech. Don’t half-ass it and then apologize afterwards.

And students. Students think that they should be able to dictate which speakers their peers invite, who can speak, what they can say, and who can listen. They’re not satisfied with the most free-speech-exceptionalist system in the world that lets them respond to speech by assembling, protesting, and reviling people of authority like Judge Duncan. They demand the right not just to speak, but to control the speech of others. That’s straight-up thuggish, an aspiration born of a fascist soul. These are law students. They are training to express themselves for a living. If their view is “we can’t respond to awful speech, we can only stop it from happening,” then they’re going to be terrible lawyers.

Law students also persist in imagining that they invented the world. They believe they discovered that free speech laws and norms protect awful speech and awful people. They believe they discovered the plea “yes, but what you don’t understand is that this speech is really bad.” They believe that they are so self-evidently right, good, trustworthy, and noble that it’s obvious that we should let them decide who talks and who doesn’t. And they are too hubris-swollen — not too stupid, but too drunk with self-righteousness — to see that exceptions to free speech have always been used most harmfully against the powerless, and always will be. They’re too full of themselves to see that “let a crowd decide who is allowed to speak” is a horrific norm to promote with grotesque historic resonance. Some of them will grow out of this.

Spot on.

Kurth · Post by **Kurth** » Sat Mar 25, 2023 4:18 pm

Just a quick update: SLS Dean Martinez published a letter responding to the Judge Duncan debacle and the subsequent protests of her apology and the disciplinary measures being taken against the Associate Dean for DEI who failed to respond appropriately at the event.

I’m really happy to see that Dean Martinez isn’t backing down an inch. She’s standing her ground, and rightfully so.

Popehat put out another take on this, and, as usual, Ken nailed it.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Sun Mar 26, 2023 11:43 am

I'm putting this here because it's a policy choice

https://twitter.com/artwalaszek/status/ ... 4205431809

Americans’ life expectancy is plummeting. The graphic is stunning.

“American life expectancy is lower than that of Cuba, Lebanon, and Chechnya.”

Why?

“Yes, Americans eat more calories and lack universal access to health care. But there's also higher child poverty, racial segregation, social isolation, and more. Even the way cities are designed makes access to good food more difficult.”

Interestingly, the US “has higher rates of cancer screening and survival, better control of blood pressure and cholesterol levels, lower stroke mortality, lower rates of current smoking, and higher average household income.”

But it’s not enough to offset the many other factors.

Max Peck · Post by **Max Peck** » Sun Mar 26, 2023 3:21 pm

It's almost like something significant happened 2 or 3 years ago.

Alefroth · Post by **Alefroth** » Sun Mar 26, 2023 4:12 pm

Most other countries bounced back from that. We didn't.

Jaymann · Post by **Jaymann** » Sun Mar 26, 2023 5:21 pm

Alefroth wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 4:12 pm Most other countries bounced back from that. We didn't.

They bounced back from TFG?

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Sun Mar 26, 2023 6:17 pm

Opioids and other Rx drugs, suicide, car crashes, alcohol, COVID...

It's not what old people are dying from that brings down life expectancy, it's what young people are dying from.

25 - 44 top three, in order:
Poisoning, Suicide, Road Traffic Accidents. COVID in the top 5 for both.

45 and up, COVID is in the to 3 for all demographics.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Sun Mar 26, 2023 6:40 pm

wrong thread

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Thu Mar 30, 2023 9:37 am

Ah, yes, the slippery slope of 'but if we feed the hungry children, then what? Where does it stop?!

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/statu ... 65536?s=20

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Thu Mar 30, 2023 9:48 am

Kids going hungry isn't the problem of the school district. Students going hungry is.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:03 am

I used to believe very strongly in the role of personal responsibility, and that was the guiding principle of why I was a conservative and voted Republican. I believed in it so strongly, in fact, that I was willing to overlook the Republican party's social agenda which I largely always disagreed with.

It really wasn't until I understood the concepts of inequity and inequality that I was able to break free of that mindset. Personal responsibility only works if everyone starts from the same baseline, and obviously they don't. Personal responsibility doesn't magically generate money for food when you're born into poverty and were never given a chance to get an education.

These folks just don't have the ability to put themselves in another's situation. The lack of empathy is the single biggest flaw I see with most conservatives I know. And that's not something easy to learn, it's psychologically baked in to a large degree. I still don't consider myself a naturally empathetic person, I have to work at it.

Kasey Chang · Post by **Kasey Chang** » Thu Mar 30, 2023 12:29 pm

This editing job as satire is so brilliant, I'm at a loss for words:

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Thu Mar 30, 2023 9:35 pm

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1641115 ... ba2320171c

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Apr 09, 2023 11:35 am

Two houses a few blocks from me sprouted lawn signs overnight: "Trump: The best is yet to come." I thought, "yeah, dying in prison."

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sun Apr 09, 2023 11:14 pm

This country is coming apart at the seams.

Pyperkub · Post by **Pyperkub** » Mon Apr 10, 2023 6:12 pm

LordMortis wrote: Sun Feb 26, 2023 7:07 am
LordMortis wrote: Fri Feb 24, 2023 5:50 pm So the head of the RR company from the crash in Palestine, OH was on CNBC talking about how everything was being shipped out to clean.

https://www.wkbn.com/news/local-news/ea ... palestine/

By clean they mean

The wastewater is being sent to Texas Molecular, which injects hazardous waste into the ground for disposal.
The Michigan "disposal site" is right between the Huron River and Bellville Lake... and not too far from me and very close to Remus West. I wonder how U.S. Ecology Wayne Disposal actually disposes of the soil. Hopefully, not the same way we recycle.
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/loc ... ne-county/

I guess working with government officials to make sure things are safe for decades to come means different things to the railroad than it does to me.

Wayne County Executive Warren Evans held a news conference Friday alongside U.S. Representatives Debbie Dingell and Rashida Tlaib about hazardous materials sent to Michigan.

After the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, tons of contaminated dirt needed somewhere to go. That somewhere was US Ecology, a waste disposal company in Van Buren Township specializing in hazardous waste.

The elected officials said its delivery blindsided them.

“Wayne County government not knowing that they’re coming, (or) which way they’re coming (or) how safe the trucks are that are coming is something that has us all very, very irritated,” said Evans.

The contaminated soil was delivered to a site in Belleville. At the same time, the contaminated wastewater was delivered to a deep well liquid injection site in Romulus.

Caught off guard by its arrival, officials questioned whether the facilities would handle the materials safely and whether they would pose any health or environmental concerns.

According to Dingell, the train company Norfolk Southern initially decided to send the materials to Wayne County. She said the EPA has since taken over the Ohio derailment site and that the agency will collaborate with Michigan officials moving forward.

Generally known as Regulatory Capture:

Yet two months after the disaster, amid mounting distrust and as lawsuits pile up against Norfolk Southern, the railroad giant maintains an outsized role in monitoring for contamination in and around East Palestine. Contractors on Norfolk Southern’s payroll — including one with a particularly checkered past — are leading the search for pollutants in water, soil and home air.

Several independent experts have condemned the testing to date as inadequate, pointing out that authorities have been slow to test for the full spectrum of potential contaminants. Critics have unsurprisingly compared Norfolk Southern’s involvement to a fox guarding the henhouse, and some argue that funding cuts at environmental agencies opened the door for Norfolk Southern to be heavily involved in studying its own chemical disaster.

Nicole Karn, a chemist and associate professor at the Ohio State University, called the chemical screening and reporting “sloppy” and “ridiculous.”

“In terms of trust, it would be helpful if the company responsible for the problem wouldn’t be in charge of cleanup,” she told HuffPost.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Wed Apr 12, 2023 12:45 pm

https://twitter.com/BriannaWu/status/16 ... 9929270276

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Wed Apr 12, 2023 1:43 pm

HAHAHAHA...they're a bunch of poo diving glue huffing ninnies. You wouldn't hire them to run a cash register at Walmart never mind be in actual charge of anything important in life. In a normal world I mean

In a correct world Trump would be a septic tank cleaner. Nothing more.

waitingtoconnect · Post by **waitingtoconnect** » Wed Apr 12, 2023 5:47 pm

This one upset even Levar…

https://twitter.com/levarburton/status/ ... ifptgtAAAA

https://www.salon.com/2023/04/12/missou ... s_partner/

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Wed Apr 12, 2023 6:55 pm

When I think about the effects of this... Any thinking family with any 'means to do so' would get their asses out of this place. What it leaves behind are either people not giving a shit about it or people that will feel destroyed/stuck/hopeless. Leaving this group of Senators, Congressmen, and Electoral College Vote firmly-and-forever Red.

They need a 'brain drain'. They need a 'politically-minded drain'. And they need a 'politically hopeless' opposition.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 10:12 am

Joe Biden confuses All Blacks with Black and Tans during Ireland trip

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 12:42 pm

Isgrimnur wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 10:12 am Joe Biden confuses All Blacks with Black and Tans during Ireland trip

Honestly, I don't think he was talking/thinking about the paramilitary group.

Alefroth · Post by **Alefroth** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 1:05 pm

Right, he was talking about the New Zealand rugby team.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 2:22 pm

Alefroth wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 1:05 pm Right, he was talking about the New Zealand rugby team.

Yeah, but I am seeing headlines like this:
"Biden makes cringeworthy gaffe in Ireland, mixes up ‘All Blacks’ rugby squad with ‘Black and Tan’ military force"

I think he said Black and Tans because he was looking at a bunch of Guinness advertisement signs and I bet there was something feeding his subconscious reading one. IMO

Or maybe he just ordered one

I'm likely being way too generous here.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 2:44 pm

Or maybe he just got some similarly named obscure (for a foreigner) trivia mixed up.

Presidents need to be Presidential, but they remain human, and perfection isn't possible. I don't see that tiny mistake as anything more than anyone else mixing up two similar names.

Like we do all the time.

TheMix · Post by **TheMix** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 2:47 pm

It didn't even invoke a shrug from me. If I hadn't spent time in New Zealand when I was younger, I'm not sure I'd know exactly who the All Blacks are.

pr0ner · Post by **pr0ner** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 4:15 pm

TheMix wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 2:47 pm It didn't even invoke a shrug from me. If I hadn't spent time in New Zealand when I was younger, I'm not sure I'd know exactly who the All Blacks are.

Eh. I know who both the All Blacks and the All Whites are, and I've never been to NZ.

But I also keep up with sports.

gilraen · Post by **gilraen** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm

Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".

Never heard of "All Blacks" since I don't follow rugby.

El Guapo · Post by **El Guapo** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:31 pm

gilraen wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".

Never heard of "All Blacks" since I don't follow rugby.

Honestly when I heard that Biden had made a gaffe involving him saying "All Blacks", I was relieved to hear what it was.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:41 pm

gilraen wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".

After decades in Indiana, I think of hunting dogs.

Alefroth · Post by **Alefroth** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 6:08 pm

El Guapo wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:31 pm
gilraen wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".

Never heard of "All Blacks" since I don't follow rugby.
Honestly when I heard that Biden had made a gaffe involving him saying "All Blacks", I was relieved to hear what it was.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 8:30 pm

Blackhawk wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:41 pm
gilraen wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".
After decades in Indiana, I think of hunting dogs.

Wh ... when are dogs in season?

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 8:55 pm

gilraen wrote: Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:29 pm Meh. If I hear "black and tan", I immediately think "booze", not "military force".

Never heard of "All Blacks" since I don't follow rugby.

In Ireland it's a half-and-half.

Black and tan has some baggage.

Of.course he was in Northern Ireland so....

NM, looks like he made the gaffe in Dundalk. So not Northern Ireland.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Apr 13, 2023 9:59 pm

But you can see it from your house.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:12 pm

You might want to sit down, but it seems Harlan Crow has been donating to other political figures.

https://twitter.com/AnnieLinskey/status ... 8097214468

Sinema and Manchin fail to attract small donors. But both share a billionaire donor: Harlan Crow.

Unagi · Post by **Unagi** » Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:21 pm

Because of course.

malchior · Post by **malchior** » Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:27 pm

Sinema bet on the oligarchs when she went independent aspiring to be one herself. Manchin is a lower level oligarch already so the alignment is natural.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Thu Apr 20, 2023 12:42 pm

I might die of not surprised.