[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

People absolutely have to wrap their heads around the fact that the Alt-Right chose the "Okay" hand signal specifically because it has so many other, innocuous uses and to make people look like hysterical ninnies when they freak out over seeing it. The "circle game" has been around for ages now, among a myriad of other ways the gesture is used.

Stop. Taking. The. Bait.

Prederick wrote:

People absolutely have to wrap their heads around the fact that the Alt-Right chose the "Okay" hand signal specifically because it has so many other, innocuous uses and to make people look like hysterical ninnies when they freak out over seeing it. The "circle game" has been around for ages now, among a myriad of other ways the gesture is used.

Stop. Taking. The. Bait.

There’s a very easy fix to this and that’s to slap the cadets with punishment for unprofessionalism. Doesn’t matter why you did it - you’re spending the next month painting rocks or cutting grass with scissors. Got to study for school? Well, you’ll be released from extra duty around midnight and you’ll have 3-4 hours to study before roll call.

Prederick wrote:

People absolutely have to wrap their heads around the fact that the Alt-Right chose the "Okay" hand signal specifically because it has so many other, innocuous uses and to make people look like hysterical ninnies when they freak out over seeing it. The "circle game" has been around for ages now, among a myriad of other ways the gesture is used.

Stop. Taking. The. Bait.

Does one stop taking the bait by ignoring a nazi doing the okay, or by pointing out they purposely co-opted the sign to own the libs, or something else?

I find it interesting there is such a strong movement to prevent nazis/white power/white supremecists from taking over a website/restaurant/parade/whatever, but when it comes to the OK symbol, everyone is perfectly fine with just washing their hands of it and saying "Whelp, can't do anything about that but not use it."

mudbunny wrote:

I find it interesting there is such a strong movement to prevent nazis/white power/white supremecists from taking over a website/restaurant/parade/whatever, but when it comes to the OK symbol, everyone is perfectly fine with just washing their hands of it and saying "Whelp, can't do anything about that but not use it."

Frankly i don;t see this as any different than a swastika. Yes there are legitimate uses for a swastika, but those uses are obvious in their appropriate context. If you see it outside of that context, it is safest to assume it is a nazi identifying themselves, and everyone understands that displaying it outside of that one specific context will make people think they are a nazi.

It’s sorta like Hitler ruined the toothbrush mustache for everyone forever. No one wants to be like a Nazi, so anything that comes to be identified with them becomes taboo.

No, it’s because it’s counterproductive. Dogwhistles have more power when the meaning is muddled and debated. Fighting it would just make it a better dogwhistle, which means the only way to rob it of it’s power so that it can eventually be reclaimed is to make sure that in the short term ONLY Nazis are using it. At that point it stops being a dogwhistle and just becomes a Nazi sign. Since it lacks an inherent iconic meaning using it will have lost it’s value to them and they’ll have to move on to something else to serve the same purpose.
I’m not saying we have to cede everything to Nazi’s, but the media botched the coverage when the Nazi’s started trying to co-opt the OK sign and we lost control of it. We need to be more proactive about exposing the context and intent when Nazi’s try to do stuff like this, but instead most of the early coverage of this particular instance was stuff like “can you believe people are saying this is racist?!”

Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy
* not a ton of information but worth a quick read

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019...

farley3k wrote:

Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy
* not a ton of information but worth a quick read

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019...

The first line of defense is the kindergarten teacher.

We're f*cked. Republicans will never fund disinformation education, media literacy, or critical thinking. It would cost them votes.

Republicans love the idea of kindergarten teachers as the first line of defense...against school shooters.

Only because the maps are slightly less gerrymandered than last time.

EDIT: And the news at lunch said he's thinking about running for Senate in 2022, for Burr's seat. So he's not retiring, just moving from House to Senate because he can't easily win his House race just by showing up now.

2 other GoP house members in NC are apparently doing the same. Maybe they finally fixed the damn maps.

Isn't he the one that tried to sneak in at night and secretly redraw his district as more favorable, then threw a tantrum and quit when he got caught? Maybe that was a local R?

If you want to feel a little better about yourself and the current state of the world, the podcast Knowledge Fight recently put out an episode covering the depositions for the Infowars/Sandy Hook criminal trial, using clips from the depositions.
The Infowars people are obscenely, hilariously incompetent, and one of them doesn’t even seem to understand why he’s there or what his role is. No one did any sort of preparation, they lack basic information about the case, and they repeatedly walk into obvious rhetorical traps by the lawyers. The Infowars guys all think of themselves as blameless super-geniuses and masters of rhetoric, and listening to them getting roflstomped by lawyers who frankly aren’t trying that hard is deeply cathartic.

ruhk wrote:

If you want to feel a little better about yourself and the current state of the world, the podcast Knowledge Fight recently put out an episode covering the depositions for the Infowars/Sandy Hook criminal trial, using clips from the depositions.
The Infowars people are obscenely, hilariously incompetent, and one of them doesn’t even seem to understand why he’s there or what his role is. No one did any sort of preparation, they lack basic information about the case, and they repeatedly walk into obvious rhetorical traps by the lawyers. The Infowars guys all think of themselves as blameless super-geniuses and masters of rhetoric, and listening to them getting roflstomped by lawyers who frankly aren’t trying that hard is deeply cathartic.

Perfect. Will check that out.

Kentucky’s ex-governor pardoned a child rapist because the 9-year-old victim’s hymen was intact

WaPo wrote:

When the Louisville Courier-Journal revealed earlier this month that former Kentucky governor Matt Bevin (R) had pardoned a slew of violent criminals during his final weeks in office, he cited his belief in second chances.

But on Thursday, Bevin offered a different explanation for one particularly controversial pardon: He said he didn’t believe that a 9-year-old girl was raped, because her hymen was intact.

“There was zero evidence,” Bevin told talk-radio host Terry Meiners of WHAS.

Already under fire for handing out pardons to relatives of his supporters, Bevin is now facing an onslaught of criticism from medical and forensic experts. Scientists have debunked the notion that inspecting an alleged victim’s hymen can prove whether they were sexually assaulted, and found that most survivors of child sexual abuse do not have any physical damage. George Nichols, an expert in evaluating child abuse who also served as Kentucky’s chief medical examiner for 20 years, told the Courier-Journal on Thursday that Bevin “clearly doesn’t know medicine and anatomy.”

Bevin, who had a reputation for making controversial and unproven claims during his single term as Kentucky’s governor, was narrowly defeated by Democrat Andy Beshear in November. Before leaving office, he issued 428 pardons, a group that includes multiple convicted murderers and sex offenders, the Courier-Journal reported.

Asked Thursday by Meiners how he could stomach pardoning a child rapist, Bevin responded, “Which one?”

thrawn82 wrote:

Isn't he the one that tried to sneak in at night and secretly redraw his district as more favorable, then threw a tantrum and quit when he got caught? Maybe that was a local R?

A different sh*tty Republican.

ruhk wrote:

I’m not saying we have to cede everything to Nazi’s, but the media botched the coverage when the Nazi’s started trying to co-opt the OK sign and we lost control of it. We need to be more proactive about exposing the context and intent when Nazi’s try to do stuff like this, but instead most of the early coverage of this particular instance was stuff like “can you believe people are saying this is racist?!”

Bingo.

Army, Navy Probes Find No Racist Intent in Hand Gestures

Stop. Taking. The. Bait.

Prederick wrote:
ruhk wrote:

I’m not saying we have to cede everything to Nazi’s, but the media botched the coverage when the Nazi’s started trying to co-opt the OK sign and we lost control of it. We need to be more proactive about exposing the context and intent when Nazi’s try to do stuff like this, but instead most of the early coverage of this particular instance was stuff like “can you believe people are saying this is racist?!”

Bingo.

Army, Navy Probes Find No Racist Intent in Hand Gestures

Stop. Taking. The. Bait.

The police investigated the police-involved shooting and found that the police weren't to blame...

We know from the DHS report that Republicans buried a decade ago that white supremacists and other right-wing extremists are active in the military and are specifically recruiting military personnel.

We also know that no one within the military is actively looking for white supremacists or other extremists--there's literally no internal military law enforcement or intelligence task force monitoring extremists--even though 22% of service members have "seen signs of white nationalism or racist ideology within the armed forces." That number goes up to half if the service member isn't white.

And just this week the Republican-controlled Senate stripped out language from the National Defense Authorization Act that was designed to screen out white supremacists and white nationalists who wanted to enlist. Now recruiters don't have to bother looking out for enlistees with "white nationalist" ideologies, they just have to worry about gang members and "extremists."

So, to recap, no one is screening recruits to turn away white supremacists and white nationalists and once those people are in the military, no one is bothering to do anything about them even though the DHS and polls of service members say those racists f*cks are a problem.

Prederick wrote:
ruhk wrote:

I’m not saying we have to cede everything to Nazi’s, but the media botched the coverage when the Nazi’s started trying to co-opt the OK sign and we lost control of it. We need to be more proactive about exposing the context and intent when Nazi’s try to do stuff like this, but instead most of the early coverage of this particular instance was stuff like “can you believe people are saying this is racist?!”

Bingo.

Army, Navy Probes Find No Racist Intent in Hand Gestures

Stop. Taking. The. Bait.

Pretty sure Obvious answer is the answer. The recruits are just racist and of course the military won’t actually go out of their way to admit that. Need willing poor black people to fight their wars.

G.O.P. Lawmaker Had Visions of a Christian Alternative Government

But here's my favorite part

But for the sheriff here in Spokane County, Ozzie Knezovich, Mr. Shea’s activities are part of a troubling trend: Far-right organizers have begun plying their message of civil conflict in mainstream political circles, building new networks that include elected politicians and voters who would never consider themselves part of an extremist group.

I think a lot of people underestimate the size and the growth of what’s going on,” said Sheriff Knezovich, a longtime Republican who supports President Trump.

I worry that Malheur is a preview of things to come.

If Clinton had been elected, there would probably have already been a repeat, but Trump being elected diluted their attention (and gave the big money that was tacitly backing the disputes with the BLM the mineral and oil rights in the national lands that they wanted). If that hadn't happened, I expect that their next move would be to more explicitly take over a county.

I don't think we're at 1859 though--the Civil War was animated by the single issue of slavery, and there's just not enough people who care about BLM land management policies to make that work. If there's open war, it'll be the combination of theocratic libertarianism that drives it, and I don't think there's enough there for conventional war. So I expect the terrorist attacks will continue.

Gremlin wrote:

I worry that Malheur is a preview of things to come.

If Clinton had been elected, there would probably have already been a repeat, but Trump being elected diluted their attention (and gave the big money that was tacitly backing the disputes with the BLM the mineral and oil rights in the national lands that they wanted). If that hadn't happened, I expect that their next move would be to more explicitly take over a county.

I don't think we're at 1859 though--the Civil War was animated by the single issue of slavery, and there's just not enough people who care about BLM land management policies to make that work. If there's open war, it'll be the combination of theocratic libertarianism that drives it, and I don't think there's enough there for conventional war. So I expect the terrorist attacks will continue.

If you haven’t listened already, the limited-run podcast It Could Happen Here did an excellent overview of why and how a “new civil war” could break out in the US. His thesis isn’t that it would be full-on war so much as the federal government overextending itself in the face of decentralized violence between small groups of activists and militias and just losing control of certain parts of the country.

ruhk wrote:

If you haven’t listened already, the limited-run podcast It Could Happen Here did an excellent overview of why and how a “new civil war” could break out in the US. His thesis isn’t that it would be full-on war so much as the federal government overextending itself in the face of decentralized violence between small groups of activists and militias and just losing control of certain parts of the country.

Make sure you are mentally in a good place before listening to It Could Happen Here. For some, it may be overwhelming.

a second both feelings, it is excellent, and also a really hard listen. Imminently plausible but intentionally worst case scenario

More if an editorial than news:
Hallmark Movies are Fascist Propaganda

She's not wrong.

After reading the article I have to agree with her and Stele.

https://twitter.com/talbertswan/stat...

Maybe they are just practicing scuba divers.

TheGameguru wrote:

https://twitter.com/talbertswan/stat...

Maybe they are just practicing scuba divers.

Not the guy second from left. He's clearly not comfortable with what his colleagues are doing, and will voice those concerns as soon as he retires from congress.