[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Future's looking grim, unless Democrats manage to win the midterms and/or Manchin or some Republicans in the Senate (or perhaps state legislatures) can be turned:

'"We have to act now": Historian lays out a "nightmare" scenario for a stolen 2024 election

"I have the Cassandra feeling this spring because it is so obvious where all of this is heading, [...] Trump tells a Big Lie that elections are rigged. This authorizes him and others to seek power in extra-democratic ways. The lie is institutionalized by state legislation that suppresses voting, and that gives state legislatures themselves the right to decide how to allocate the electoral vote in presidential elections.
[...] Republicans win back the House and Senate in 2022, in part thanks to voter suppression. The Republican candidate in 2024 loses the popular vote by several million and the electoral vote by the margin of a few states. State legislatures, claiming fraud, alter the electoral count vote. The House and Senate accept that altered count. The losing candidate becomes the president. We no longer have 'democratically elected government.' And people are angry.

[...] not clear what the armed forces or civil servants would do. Most likely, they would fracture. An oath to defend the Constitution is hard to honor when it is unclear what it means. Both those who were stealing an election and those who were defending votes would claim that the Constitution was on their side.
[...] Businesses that want to avoid chaos between now and 2022 and prevent system breakdown in 2024 would be well-advised not to donate to politicians who repeat the Big Lie and suppress the vote, [...] We have to act now."'

https://www.alternet...021/06/big-lie/


...not sure how much of an impact big business is likely to have on the Trump party. Or how much they'd be willing to resist a fascist takeover that promises them lower taxes, deregulation, and pay-offs for those who comply, but attacks those who don't....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 07 June 2021 - 06:10 PM

[Malankazooie]

Biden's Euro tour. How do you guys think the meeting with Putin will go?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Malankazooie, on 09 June 2021 - 06:57 PM, said:

Biden's Euro tour. How do you guys think the meeting with Putin will go?

Bit less exciting since they're meeting in Switzerland. So much for my wild speculations about what sorts of mischief Putin could try if Biden visited Russia....

[Aptorian]

How many years has it been since either countries president made a visit to the other? The 90s?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Aptorian, on 10 June 2021 - 03:16 AM, said:

How many years has it been since either countries president made a visit to the other? The 90s?

Putin met with Obama in New York in 2015. Putin had an official 'state visit' to Washington DC in 2001, though he's been to DC on two trips since then.

Obama visited Russia in 2013 for the G-20 summit.

[Aptorian]

Huh, I thought the Putin USA relationship was frostier.

[Malankazooie]

The body language is going to be analyzed to an absurd degree. Hopefully the mics pick up Biden saying something along the lines of: "I'm fed up with your malarkey."

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Malankazooie, on 10 June 2021 - 04:53 PM, said:

The body language is going to be analyzed to an absurd degree. Hopefully the mics pick up Biden saying something along the lines of: "I'm fed up with your malarkey."

One of the few things they can do in person that they can't do remotely is touch each other (... without using surrogates or champions). Biden can get pretty handsy. Though I doubt he'll try to sniff Putin's hair.



What happens if Biden and Putin have some physical contact and Biden 'slips' (... from Putin's subtle judo)?...

OTOH studies indicate touch can build rapport. They could try to hug it out (if Biden can survive Putin's bear hug), but I doubt that will happen. Maybe they'd be better off meeting remotely and taking ecstasy or similar, or having surrogates touch them in virtual reality (with the other leader's face/body/soothing voice).

Granted, a virtual stare-down just isn't the same... especially when one of them is into poisoning people.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 10 June 2021 - 05:15 PM

[Malankazooie]

Seemed to go as per routine and planned. Feels good to expect normal again as opposed to how these international spectacles went the four years prior. Now just need to keep tabs on Biden and see if he comes down with a serious illness.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Malankazooie, on 17 June 2021 - 02:33 PM, said:

Seemed to go as per routine and planned. Feels good to expect normal again as opposed to how these international spectacles went the four years prior. Now just need to keep tabs on Biden and see if he comes down with a serious illness.

Not sure how 'normal' this is (or what 'normal' is):

'Putin Sucks Up to Biden: There's a Spark of Hope in His Eyes

[Putin] is loving the attention of a major summit and lavished Biden with praise after a four-hour meeting.

[...] culminating in a press conference that went on and on, with Putin musing on philosophy and even threatening to break into song at one point.'

https://news.yahoo.c...-140512081.html

... but it's definitely an improvement over the US president sucking up to Putin.

'Trump's Russia Adviser: I Almost Faked a Medical Emergency to End Trump-Putin Lovefest

[...] said the lovefest was so disturbing that she considered pulling a fire alarm or faking a medical emergency [...] "I couldn't come up with anything that just wouldn't add to the terrible spectacle, [...] It was one of those moments where it was mortifying, frankly, and humiliating for the country."

Hill said Putin had already made a point of making outrageous statements in the run-up to the event, but "it was the press conference itself and the way President Trump, unfortunately, handled himself that was the worst moment of all." She compared it to how Dr. Deborah Birx felt during Trump's bizarre press conference in which he wondered if people could inject bleach to fight COVID-19.'

https://www.thedaily...=cheats&via=rss

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 17 June 2021 - 05:55 PM

[Malankazooie]

What is all the hub-bub with CRT? What is it? Seems to be the thing right now.

[Gwynn ap Nudd]

Is this a time warp post or something? I haven't had a CRT monitor for years. I thought production was pretty much non-existent. Why would anyone want CRT tech now?

[Obdigore]

So a lot of people are building/buying 'arcade' cabinets, and these same people who think the games they grew up with are the best games, also think it isn't a real experience unless you have a CRT like the one you grew up with.

Its a nostalgia thing.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Gwynn ap Nudd, on 19 June 2021 - 01:23 AM, said:

Is this a time warp post or something? I haven't had a CRT monitor for years. I thought production was pretty much non-existent. Why would anyone want CRT tech now?

Lol... Critical Race Theory. New right-wing bugbear / excuse to prevent publicly funded schools from teaching about the racist aspects of US history or discussing literature that deals with racism (or discuss racism pretty much at all), etc. Also to ban governmental bodies and private businesses with government contracts from doing racial sensitivity training and so forth.

There's a wide range of different CRT material. While there are rational arguments against the efficacy, rigor, and empirical accuracy (etc.) of some of the most popular texts, trainings, and trends (etc.), the right-wing (from what I've seen) isn't making them, except maybe for disputing the re-centering of 'American identity' around racism / white supremacy (for example, the 1619 Project, arguing that the date of the nation's founding should be considered the arrival of the first slave... which was also riddled with verifiable factual errors about historical details, since corrected).

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 19 June 2021 - 01:47 AM

[Gwynn ap Nudd]

Obdigore, on 19 June 2021 - 01:36 AM, said:

So a lot of people are building/buying 'arcade' cabinets, and these same people who think the games they grew up with are the best games, also think it isn't a real experience unless you have a CRT like the one you grew up with.

Its a nostalgia thing.

I don't really get the fascination with old video games. The differences in resolution and graphics are just too great. I did consider installing a couple old pinball games, at least partially for the nostalgia factor, but with how loud I would need to set them now to get the real experience my neighbours would have fits.

[Gwynn ap Nudd]

Azath Vitr (D, on 19 June 2021 - 01:47 AM, said:

Gwynn ap Nudd, on 19 June 2021 - 01:23 AM, said:

Is this a time warp post or something? I haven't had a CRT monitor for years. I thought production was pretty much non-existent. Why would anyone want CRT tech now?

Lol... Critical Race Theory. New right-wing bugbear / excuse to prevent publicly funded schools from teaching about the racist aspects of US history or discussing literature that deals with racism (or discuss racism pretty much at all), etc. Also to ban governmental bodies and private businesses with government contracts from doing racial sensitivity training and so forth.

Oh, and

*Whoosh*

Might want to look up.

[Malankazooie]

Has the newly signed Juneteenth federal holiday released the specifics yet? If it falls on the weekend will the federal holiday be the Friday before or the Monday after? Or will it be that familiar fed holiday scenario where it will be observed the Monday following June 19th?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

https://www.yahoo.co...-095512632.html


OTOH:

' some Republicans do understand what critical race theory is and have noticed some of its ideas have trickled down from higher education to become fairly mainstream interpretations of history. Those Republicans are pursuing laws that target the kind of teaching that could actually exist, or already does, which is troubling news both for the quality of American education and the more general cause of being allowed to say things that are true.

Put simply, critical race theory's originators argued that formal legal rights and institutional colorblindness don't guarantee racial equality. This concept, first introduced in academic legal writing, can be applied in easy-to-grasp ways to widely recognized features of contemporary American society. Consider school districts: It's no longer legal to send Black and white students who live in the same neighborhood to different schools for purposes of racial separation, and it's also illegal to refuse to sell or rent a home to Black buyers because they're Black. But because of residential patterns and wealth gaps established when such discrimination was legal, Black families disproportionately live in lower-income areas with underperforming schools[...] a racially discriminatory outcome is passed on from generation to generation without any specific white person in the present day necessarily doing something racist.

That's systemic racism—and in the recent Economist/YouGov poll, 57 percent of respondents said they believe it's real, or, to be specific, that racism is "a broader problem that exists within the country's organizational, societal and legal structure" as opposed to "only a problem with individuals." [...] the more-informed conservatives responsible for cultivating CRT panic as an issue are trying to prohibit [systemic racism] from being taught [about], and they are succeeding.

[...] the right-wing Heritage Foundation's CRT report explicitly cites the normalization of "the idea of systemic racism" as a troubling trend to be eradicated. An opinion issued [...] by the Republican attorney general of Montana, which ultimately concluded that the advocacy of critical race theory concepts violates civil rights laws, argued that "the popular shibboleths of 'systemic,' 'institutional,' or 'structural' racism" are "used as a pretext to justify intentional discrimination against individuals on the basis of race." Influential pundit Ben Shapiro wrote [...] urging conservatives to continue pursuing CRT prohibitions because, he says, it's critical to prevent children from learning that racism is "embedded deeply in American life." In Florida, a rule passed [...] at the behest of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis forbids educators from saying that "racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons." A Manhattan Institute fellow named Christopher Rufo is tracking (and encouraging) CRT bills here, and teachers say even the ones that are vague and flimsy could legitimately set back the cause of saying accurate things about history to students in history classes.'

https://slate.com/ne...en-shapiro.html

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 26 June 2021 - 07:14 PM

[Malankazooie]

Playing a harp on a billowy cloud? Or getting jabbed in the backside by a pitchfork?



How the hell did Cheney outlive him? Wasn't 'Rummy' one of the first adopters of the 'stand-up desk' revolution?

[Cause]

Is pulling out of Afghanistan a good or bad idea?

America won’t commit the resources to fix the problem, so it will be stuck in a low key conflict forever I guess.

Withdrawing will return the country to the status quo pre invasion. So how likely is it that we get another ISIS situation, or al qaeda group operating out of the region? Also is this essentially saying the last decade of war, treasure and manpower expended in The region was essentially wasted?

Hindsight is always easy but if after 9/11 America had not invaded Iraq or Afghanistan would the USA and world be more stable?