November 11, 2020

Trump has made the following tactical moves:

1. Gutted the Defense Department and installed his toady as Secretary.
2. Established a DOJ that acts as his personal law firm and has teed up frivolous prosecutions of vote-counting
3. Has his SoS representing to the world that he has already won
4. Has half the Senate bullied into total compliance
5. Has the current FBI and CIA directors teetering on the brink

And so on.
 
Is it just me, or is this worrying?

August 16, 2017

Help me out -- looking for quotes of center-lefties condemning antifa . .

What I read online tells me that, on the whole, the US center-left denounces antifas as thugs and punks. What I haven't been able to do is come up with references to anyone of note -- commentators or politicians -- saying so.

Recommendations?

March 11, 2016

Which Issue Each Party Debates, Or Ignores

Source: NYTimes (may require subscription)

Democrats and Republicans sometimes seem to be living in two different Americas. We analyzed the past seven debates on each side to show which topics are most discussed within each party.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/11/us/elections/what-parties-debate-or-ignore.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

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Hope you can see this, because the topic selection by the two parties is truly stunning (keeping in mind, of course, that the various debate moderators have also had a hand in setting debate topics)

March 5, 2016

Here's Just How Massive Republicans' Super Tuesday Turnout Was

Source: NPR

If voter turnout is any indicator of enthusiasm, this year's GOP voters are way, way more pumped than 2012 voters were. Democrats, meanwhile? Their excitement seems to have dimmed since 2008.

Last night, more than 8.5 million Republicans turned out to vote in the 11 GOP Super Tuesday states that reported results. That suggests far more enthusiasm than the last time Republicans picked a nominee. In those same 11 states in 2012, turnout totaled only around 4.7 million.

That makes this year's turnout in those 11 states 81 percent higher than four years ago.

Contrast that with the Democrats. In the Dems' 11 states reporting results from last night, turnout totaled only around 5.9 million — that's around 2.6 million fewer people than came out in those states 2008, when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were in the middle of what would would be a long, hard-fought race.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/2016/03/02/468918065/republican-super-tuesday-turnout

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Does this scare anyone else? Could sheer enthusiasm swamp sanity in November?

April 5, 2015

On the heels of the recent "Going Clear" documentary . . .

Is this hilarious/at least a little funny Saturday Night Live spoof of Scientology ads of the 1990s:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/brilliant-snl-fake-ad-ridicules-scientology-and-cultish-fad-religions/

Better still is the actual ad on which the spoof is based.

And for the hat trick, a link to petitions.whitehouse.gov asking that the "Church" of Scientology have its (completely unjustified) tax exempt status reversed:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/revoke-scientologys-tax-exempt-status

September 3, 2014

For everyone out there driven to distraction by DINOs, Blue Dog Democrats, and . . .

'Licans in Dems' clothing.

I'd remind you of two things: Party discipline and Caucusing together.

There are a lot of people running under the Dem banner who don't share my vision of America. This causes me to grit my teeth and sometimes shake my fist at the sky. But then I remind myself that once people get into office, there are governance mechanisms within the party that act (admittedly imperfectly) to align people toward shared goals.

Sometimes these faux-Dems are terrified by what they consider to be an electorate that's much more conservative than it actually is. Sometimes they're natural Republicans who have no home in the modern, radicalized GOP. Sometimes they're flatly cynical and trying to do whatever it takes to get or keep a job. Politics is so far from perfection that a stone would weep.

So, I'm not saying don't try to find real Democrats to run; I'm not saying stop trying to push rightish Dems to the left; I'm not saying that if someone is egregiously antithetical to Democratic values (I have a little list) they shouldn't be primaried out.

What I am saying is that in 9 out of 10 cases, the worst Democrat is better than the best Republican.

Oh, and Get Out the Vote.

August 11, 2013

I’m wrestling with the term ‘bigot’ in relation to Richard Dawkins’ now infamous remark about Islam

I agree with just about everybody that Dawkins' remark was a wrong thing to say, and that he provided no thoughtful context for his disdain.

Wikipedia (attribution uncertain) defines Bigotry as the state of mind of a bigot: someone who, as a result of their prejudices, treats other people with hatred, contempt, or intolerance on the basis of a person's ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, or other characteristics.

This seems to characterize Dawkins' remark pretty damningly, but here's the rub: many atheists such as myself (and many others in this group, unless I've got it entirely wrong) consider religion to be unambiguously bad, regarding it as a set (many sets) of rather silly and often destructive fantasies to be tolerated only because we unbelievers have no right to interfere with it.

From our point of view, religion has richly earned our disdain because it is based on untruths that must be accepted as true — reality be damned — for religion to exist at all. And that the accepting of those untruths does people harm.

So here’s my question: if I say the following things, and if they are objectively true, am I a 'bigot' for maintaining my disdain? Or am I a simple truth-teller?

• Catholicism is inherently bad because of its treatment of women and LGBT persons
• Islam is inherently bad because it demands abjection from its adherents
• Judaism is inherently bad because it indulges in horrible rituals of genital mutilation
• Scientology is inherently bad because it is a con game designed primarily to fleece the faithful

July 23, 2013

Curiously, even though I am eligible to serve on juries . . .

I haven't been tapped to be on one for months. I don't think I've been banned or anything (no hidden posts, f'rinstance).

I read a posting about the time that jury notices stopped regarding the mechanism — apparently it's not triggered when a member first hits the home page, but triggered later by the member moving around the forums (the logic was that DU didn't want to hit members the instant they got to the site, because doing so might tend to dampen discussion).

So I'm wondering if the new method has somehow auto-eliminated me from selection to juries due to some unknown, unique habit I have when I visit DU.

Any recommendations on how I could track down an answer?

December 19, 2011

Yes but . . .

The 'Licans have been rolling out nasty for a couple of years already. In doing so, they are already finding themselves on very mucky, smelly ground. I mean, once you've called the president an illegal alien who's devoted to the overthrow of the very government he heads, how much further can you go?

Which is not to say that the wingnutariat won't try to go even more negative. However, the country's sick of them already. Upping the crazy is likely to cost them votes more than it wins them. And it's likely to also cost them downticket votes, in that the whole Republican party is being tarred with the zealot brush (which is sadly, not untrue). Just about any Dem can run on a platform of "My opponent is a crackpot, and should never be given influence over issues that matter to sane people."

It will come down to three things, I predict: 1) The Obama campaign's ability to get the issues (including those raised by the OP) out to the people; 2) the robustness of the GOTV effort (where Dems appear to be leading at present); and the degree to which votes can be fairly cast and counted.

This last is the 'Licans' ace in the hole. If they can't win on merits, they'll win on stealing the vote and we all know it. We need to not do what Gore did, which was to make the contest close enough to steal.

And concentrate on local/state races!!! Obama needs a Congress he can work with. If Tea Party Congressmen get shown the door, the survivors will be more tractable. And citizens in the 50 states need legislatures *not* devoted to shoving a broken bottle up the workingman's ass.