[amphibian]

Malankazooie, on 29 August 2021 - 07:22 PM, said:

Isn't it interesting how each presidency is tested? (with events occurring at the same time or very close). Dubya 9/11 and Katrina. Biden now Afghanistan and Ida. I personally think Biden is too advanced in age to have the stamina to keep up with the daily briefs. His Cabinet better pull their act together.

I don't think it's an issue of stamina. I believe it's an ideology thing - many top level Democrats do not believe things are as bad as they actually are and that they do not want to wield the power they currently possess to do much of anything. Biden wants to "heal the divide", yet can't fully grasp just how much chain the Republicans are yanking just to waste time and run out the clock before they get another shot at frustrating everyone enough to vote with rage instead of good sense.

Compare that to the Republicans who are mostly feckless or actually evil and very, very interested in cohesive wielding of the power they possess to disenfranchise people, to funnel money to wealthy corporations, to keep stacking the judiciary with unqualified ideological zealots, and to keep firebombing our medical systems and social programs.

This ends up with a dynamic that looks like "Nothing changes even if I do elect the supposed good guys" to the average person who doesn't pay attention much to actual politics, votes, and years or decades long outcomes of laws and actions.

[Cause]

“The lesson of this 20-year war cannot be that every time we turn a country upside down or make huge mistakes, our immigration laws, our refugee laws no longer apply.” - laura ingraham

This is such an amazing level of satire that it went over her own head

[Not-So-Great-Raven]

https://apnews.com/a...c791ae7da502d58
Bill after bill after bill just to make it harder for everyone to vote, world's biggest oligarchy strikes again. Such basic things most countries take for granted, yet the U.S. is still fighting for these in 2021.

[Cause]

Not-So-Great-Raven, on 01 September 2021 - 05:14 AM, said:

https://apnews.com/a...c791ae7da502d58
Bill after bill after bill just to make it harder for everyone to vote, world's biggest oligarchy strikes again. Such basic things most countries take for granted, yet the U.S. is still fighting for these in 2021.

“Well we probably have a … more mixed ethnicity” - Charlton Heston, Bowling for Columbine.

I swear this quote jumped straight in my head when I read this comment. It was his answer as to why America is almost unique in having such extreme gun violence like school shootings but not unique in having guns and the USA does almost nothing about.

I have come to realize that drained-pool politics (such an amazing term) is to blame for so many of the wrongs in America. Voting, healthcare, social security. Everything is constrained for fear the wrong people will get it too.

[QuickTidal]

Cause, on 01 September 2021 - 06:04 PM, said:

Not-So-Great-Raven, on 01 September 2021 - 05:14 AM, said:

https://apnews.com/a...c791ae7da502d58
Bill after bill after bill just to make it harder for everyone to vote, world's biggest oligarchy strikes again. Such basic things most countries take for granted, yet the U.S. is still fighting for these in 2021.

“Well we probably have a … more mixed ethnicity” - Charlton Heston, Bowling for Columbine.

Not to sidetrack, but I feel like Heston belongs to this super old school "Greatest Generation" white man's group that can't see the racism (and in other cases just straight bigotry) in their words no matter how much you point them out. Like he bitched about the studio that released Ice-T's album that had the "Cop Killer" song on it...without ever bothering to investigate why someone like Ice-T would write that song to begin with and what happened in his experience that caused that view of the police. Heston is untouched by ANY of that because he never chose to delve further than the surface of what his country was doing to POC, or minorities in general. He's like the most oblivious dude of that era...and it makes it hard for me to watch him in anything. Hell, he wrote a critical essay that's included in the afterword in the 3rd Aubrey & Maturin book called "Arms And the Man", and I refuse to read it as I just can't bring myself to read his words when he was clearly so deaf to anything not in his white orbit of like 4 generations in the past.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 01 September 2021 - 06:46 PM

[Cyphon]

I wonder if anyone internally is comparing the Taliban and Texas with their approach to controlling women. Getting strong spiderman meme vibes.

This post has been edited by Cyphon: 02 September 2021 - 06:14 AM

[Tiste Simeon]

Cyphon, on 02 September 2021 - 06:13 AM, said:

I wonder if anyone internally is comparing the Taliban and Texas with their approach to controlling women. Getting strong spiderman meme vibes.

I've seen a number of memes and jokes and tweets about it.

I personally really like the term Y'all Quaeda.

[Tsundoku]

Cyphon, on 02 September 2021 - 06:13 AM, said:

Getting strong spiderman meme vibes.

???

I do like "Y'all Quaeda" though.

EDIT: Huh, I never even heard about Vanilla ISIS, Yokel Haram and al-Shabubba who are all waging Yeehawd. And this was all about back in 2016.
Oh well, the advantages of not being on social media still far outweigh the disadvantages. And to quote Worry - "I'll die on that hill".

I've seen a few search results coming up with an assertion these domestic terrorist groups are using the Taliban as an inspiration for their own aims to overthrow the US Govt, but they all seem to be blogs etc, not more "legit" news sources.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 02 September 2021 - 07:36 AM

[QuickTidal]

Tsundoku, on 02 September 2021 - 07:26 AM, said:

Cyphon, on 02 September 2021 - 06:13 AM, said:

Getting strong spiderman meme vibes.

???

I suspect he means this one:

 C-658VsXoAo3ovC.jpg (21.98K)
Number of downloads: 0

[Gust Hubb]

White supremacist praise of the Taliban takeover concerns US officials

white supremacists and Taliban

[Gorefest]

Well, it is the old joke on the US-Afghan saga of 'on one side you have zealotrous warmongering religious fundamentalists who are strongly repressing women's freedoms, and on the other you have the Taliban.'

[Tiste Simeon]

Gorefest, on 03 September 2021 - 07:31 AM, said:

Well, it is the old joke on the US-Afghan saga of 'on one side you have zealotrous warmongering religious fundamentalists who are strongly repressing women's freedoms, and on the other you have the Taliban.'

Hmm I'm just debating whether to post that on Facebook or not... I have a fair few American friends haha I'm not sure I'm ready for the backlash it may cause...

[Cause]

The new Texas anti abortion law is worse than I realized. Even if the abortion clinic did nothing wrong and wins the legal battle brought against them but the 10k bounty hunter, the law as written I understand it doesn’t allow them to recoup legal fees. The law specifically doesn’t allow it. So win or lose they will slowly be drained of resources.

That said as I understand it this law won’t stand up to the test of time. Still wow that it’s gotten this far.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Cause, on 04 September 2021 - 09:31 AM, said:

The new Texas anti abortion law is worse than I realized. Even if the abortion clinic did nothing wrong and wins the legal battle brought against them but the 10k bounty hunter, the law as written I understand it doesn't allow them to recoup legal fees. The law specifically doesn't allow it. So win or lose they will slowly be drained of resources.

That said as I understand it this law won't stand up to the test of time. Still wow that it's gotten this far.

Test of time? The Supreme Court is expected to explicitly overturn Roe v Wade in their next session. In the meantime, other states can easily duplicate Texas's strategy.

Most bizarre thing about the Supreme Court allowing the Texas chicanery is---as Chief Justice Roberts protested---if the court applied the same reasoning to future cases, the same tactic could be used to circumvent other constitutional rights that the court majority actually likes (or 'believes in')... though it's very possible the new overriding precedent is 'honey badger DGAF, Catholic dogma uber alles (especially that pesky demon pope)!' Actually on second thought the Catholic justices don't seem to GAF about other Catholic dogmas like opposing the death penalty or providing asylum so IDK, perhaps it's partisanship (with abortion letting them essentially shout 'baby killers'!...)?

In the long run the US population does seem to be becoming more secular on average: 'Around 70 percent of members of the Silent Generation said that they "know God really exists" and "have no doubts about it." That same sentiment was shared by about 63 percent of baby boomers and Generation Xers.

But in 2018, millennials expressed a lot less certainty. Only 44 percent had no doubts about the existence of God. Even more doubtful were members of Generation Z — just one-third claimed certain belief in God.

Today, scholars are finding that by almost any metric they use to measure religiosity, younger generations are much more secular than their parents or grandparents. In responses to survey questions, over 40 percent of the youngest Americans claim no religious affiliation, and just a quarter say they attend religious services weekly or more.'

https://www.nytimes....a-religion.html

Not sure if that trend will apply enough in every state to keep abortion legal. (And if the Supreme Court's in true honey badger crusader mode, what's to ultimately stop them from declaring that abortion itself is unconstitutional, either because it's murder or it violates the 'rights' of the fetus (or the zygote...)?)

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 04 September 2021 - 03:09 PM

[Primateus]

https://twitter.com/...922442850930696

Jesus effing christ, America, that's pretty low even for you!

[Malankazooie]

Oh my, I made the mistake of clicking on that. First reply tweet was a Hulk Hogan meme. Bloody hell, twitter is the most toxic heap of digital shit.

[Aptorian]

Is nobody going to to ask why these rural hospitals in Oklahoma apparently have several gunshot victims? Like, are people doing tractor drive by's in the Midwest?

[Tiste Simeon]

It's America. Getting shot is an occupational hazards no matter where you live.

[Gwynn ap Nudd]

Gorefest, on 03 September 2021 - 07:31 AM, said:

Well, it is the old joke on the US-Afghan saga of 'on one side you have zealotrous warmongering religious fundamentalists who are strongly repressing women's freedoms, and on the other you have the Taliban.'

Newsroom kinda nailed that years ago. Though the Tea Party types they were maligning at the time are a pale shade of the recklessness of the current ones.

[Cause]

I’m ready for a newsroom reboot, second term of Obama and first term of trump.

Will pay!