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.
tbf, I think it's a no-win situation. I don't think it's reasonable to tell Target employees they're now on the front lines of a harassment campaign from the right, deal with it.
Eh, corporations are amoral entities. Whichever way leads to more money is the "right" way for Target to behave.
Target to Pull Some LGBT-Themed Merchandise After Customer Backlash
(Wall Street Journal Paywall)
“In some cases, people have confronted workers in stores, knocked down Pride merchandise displays and put threatening posts on social media with video from inside stores, she said.”
I'm sure if there was a targeted (no pun intended, honestly) harassment campaign of precisely the same level of severity and frequency against conservative-affirming merchandise, Target would respond just like this.
...Right?
*crickets*
I can't wait till they start pushing that women must be covered and Target changes its employee policies to for women to wear a hijab (of course they will make up a Chrisitan word for that so it doesn't sound unAmerican)
Shrouds? Veils? “Modesty” garments?
Christian modesty clothing is already a thriving industry (along with Jewish and other religions).
Christian modesty clothing is already a thriving industry (along with Jewish and other religions).
...I hate this world.
It isn't a Burka, it's a freedom dress!
It isn't a Burka, it's a freedom dress!
She was asking for it. I mean, look at her ankles.
Surprised this didn’t get more traction- DeSantis is putting off a execution due to possible insanity. The insanity? The killer could be trans.
Some good news.
Progressives are applauding what Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman called the state's "transformational" legislative session, which ended on Tuesday after the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party passed nearly every item on its agenda, securing economic justice, reproductive rights, and labor protections for Minnesotans.With the DFL holding only a narrow majority in the state House and Senate—a six-vote and one-vote margin, respectively—policy researcher Will Stancil said on social media that "the scale of their achievement cannot be overstated."
"The Minnesota Legislature just completed what is probably the most productive session anywhere in the country since probably the New Deal," he said. "Sweeping bills and reforms across every area of life."
Stancil was among a number of progressives who highlighted nearly two dozen bills passed by the DFL and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who posted an image of a whiteboard with party's legislative agenda on it along with the word, "Done."
A bit struck by how DeSantis does look a bit like Orban.
Seems like the DeSantis on Twitter plan went a bit sideways.
Karma, how I love thee.
lol that’s what you get for expecting Elon to be competent.
can someone summarize?
Looks like the audio failed?
can someone summarize?
Twitter Spaces kept crashing. Muskrat and the AntiMouse kept having hot mic issues. The AntiMouse thought that reading a speech into the poor audio quality of Spaces was a good idea?
Besides that, it was evidently really boring as well.
the twitter space they were using for it was also causing people’s browsers to crash and/or randomly disconnecting people
Edit: beaten to it
Gotta love it.
Sucks for the Twitter IT guys who are going to have Musk screaming at them.
Bold of you to assume twitter still has IT people
Bold of you to assume twitter still has IT people
Pretty much this.
I'm sure there's some people left out of necessity. First thing that comes to mind anyone working on a visa that need to stay.
Otherwise not much empathy for anyone over at Twitter.
Also, Twitter wasn't exactly a bastion of ethics before Elmo bought it. So even those that left because of Elmo are suspect...
f*ck im.
That makes, I think, six convicted of actual seditious conspiracy? Good number to have for the "they were just visiting" crowd.
If Twitter can't handle 300k people watching Ron DeSantis, I'm really looking forward to Tucker's new show.
Somehow I have avoided actually hearing DeSantis' voice until yesterday. I guess I just prefer to read my news rather than watch it.
Yep, I'm gonna have to knock another 10-20 percentage points off of my already falling estimate of his likelihood of becoming the next President. Doesn't matter how coherent you are when you're this devoid of charisma.
IHateDRM wrote:Bold of you to assume twitter still has IT people
"Four incredible years at Twitter", in which I assume he's using the literal 'too implausible to be credible' meaning rather than the figurative 'marvellous' meaning
‘Stick over carrot’: progressive Portland takes a hard turn on homelessness
On a recent Monday, Jessie Burke stepped out of the lobby of the Society Hotel and into an unusual scene. The sprawling tent encampments that once lined the sidewalks of Portland’s Old Town were mostly gone.
“This is what should be normal,” said Burke, who bought and renovated the 132-year-old Mariners Building in 2013 and transformed it into the chic hotel on 3rd Avenue.
Burke owes this to a palpable and controversial shift in liberal Portland, a city that had long opted for a mostly hands-off policy to the camps that had come to dominate the hotel’s surrounding blocks. Now, at the urging of residents like Burke, the city is clearing camps, sometimes daily, and planning to encourage unhoused people to relocate to centralized communities.
“The only policies I’ve seen are compassion on top of compassion,” Burke said. “Anyone who works with these populations knows there are people who respond to carrots and people who respond to sticks. Everyone who responds to carrots, good work; you got them. Most of the people that are left respond to enforcement.”
Advocates for unhoused people say they strongly disagree. This new “normal” in Old Town represents a distinct turning point in one of the country’s most progressive cities.
Unhoused Portlanders are feeling the increased pressure. Aistheta Gleason built themself a home of pallets when they first arrived in Portland from Colorado last summer. “I had a living room, a bedroom. It was all planned out,” they said. “I had a queen-sized bed and a water filter.”
Last fall the cops showed up, and Gleason says they were arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest, after a confrontation during which they initially refused to drop a walking stick. In the patrol car, they watched city workers dismantle the camp.
Now, they push their belongings, including at least two dozen books, around Old Town, where social services are close. Gleason doesn’t bother setting up a tent, knowing they’ll have to move it daily. Instead, they sleep with their dog in a different spot every night, wrapping up in a sleeping bag and a tarp.
The shift in city tactics is a product of changing political winds. Last fall, the Portland city commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty – who had for some residents come to represent a misguided and overly permissive approach to a homelessness epidemic – failed in her re-election attempt. Hardesty oversaw the Portland bureau of transportation, which is tasked with enforcing sidewalk ordinances that might prevent people from camping wherever they want. Hardesty ardently opposed enforcing those ordinances, as her constituency of unhoused people gained political power and legal clout.
Hardesty’s loss came at the hands of a more “law-and-order” Democrat in Rene Gonzalez. His central argument, according to his campaign website: “Taking a hands-off approach to homelessness is not compassionate or progressive; it’s dangerous and inhumane.”
‘I feel safe here’: the people leaving everything behind to seek refuge in US
The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has a message for migrants that he has been repeating loudly and frequently: “Our border is not open … don’t risk your life and your life savings” to come to the US seeking refuge without invitation.
But for millions, hunger, violence and fear ring out louder. Political dysfunction and economic calamity are pushing people from many nations in the western hemisphere in what Joe Biden has called the “largest migration in human history”, exacerbated in Latin America and beyond by the coronavirus pandemic.
People with tenacity but few means make a hopeful journey mostly across land towards the US-Mexico border. If they beat the odds to reach American soil they may find harbor – or more heartbreak.
Yesi Ortega choked up when talking to the Guardian at a shelter in El Paso, west Texas, earlier this month, as she recounted the odyssey she, her husband Raphael López and their five-year-old son, Matías, had spent six months making.
The family had reached a tipping point in their native Venezuela and followed more than 7 million other citizens who have fled the country’s economic collapse and pervasive hunger when their choice came down to food or clothing, Ortega, 24, said.
“We had no option. We needed to take the risk,” she said. Like almost a third of this exodus, they first tried nextdoor Colombia, itself unstable and contributing amid the post-pandemic hardship to the latest rise in migration towards the US.
Seeking asylum and work, migrants bused out of NYC find hostility
NEWBURGH, N.Y. (AP) — Before he left Mauritania, the West African nation of his birth, Mohamed thought of New York as a place of “open arms,” a refuge for immigrants fleeing dire circumstances.
Now that he’s here, seeking political asylum from a government he feared would kill him, he doesn’t feel welcome. The 19-year-old has become a pawn in an escalating stand-off between New York City and suburban and upstate communities, which are using lawsuits, emergency orders and political pressure to keep people like him out.
Mohamed is one of about 400 international migrants the city has been putting up in a small number of hotels in other parts of the state this month to relieve pressure on its overtaxed homeless shelter system.
Some of the relocated asylum seekers say they now regret leaving the city, pointing to a lack of job opportunities and resources to pursue their asylum cases, as well as a hostile reception.
“It’s better in New York City,” Mohamed said. “There, no one cursed at you and said ‘go back to your country.’”
The Associated Press is withholding Mohamed’s full name at his request to protect the safety of his family in Mauritania. In his home country, Mohamed said he had joined a group of young people to decry the government’s corruption and human rights abuses, including allegations of ongoing slavery. Days later, he said a group of men threw him in an unmarked car, took him to a secret room, and beat him viciously for two days.
After a journey that took him across the U.S. border with Mexico, he landed in a shelter system in New York City he found frightening and overcrowded. In one Brooklyn shelter, a room with 40 beds, someone stole his few remaining possessions as he slept.
So when outreach workers offered him the chance to relocate earlier this month, promising more space and chances to work, Mohamed took it. He joined other asylum seekers at two hotels a few miles outside the small Hudson River Valley city of Newburgh, about two hours north of the city.
Republican county officials there have accused the city of dumping its problems on its neighbors, while insinuating that the new arrivals pose a danger.
Last week, Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus won a temporary restraining order barring the city from sending additional migrants. More than two dozen other counties across New York state have declared emergencies in an attempt to block migrant arrivals, even in places where none are planned.
As far as 400 miles (644 kilometers) north of the city, Niagara County officials have warned of an imminent safety threat, vowing criminal penalties for hotels found to be housing asylum seekers.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, says he will continue his efforts to disperse some of the more than 40,000 asylum seekers currently in the city’s care.
Meanwhile, some who joined the initial wave of relocations have since returned to New York City’s shelter system. Those who don’t have money for transportation, such as Mohamed, say they are stuck.
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