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.
I saw that and said, "yup, we have accurate representation in government. We are a nation of cowards and so the people we elect are cowards."
I also find it funny that we feel the need to distinguish political courage. Its just courage and for all we talk of real men are strong and tough, we lack courage considerably.
And last, that the GOP understands that if they stick together they can get away with it. But they somehow don't understand that if they do the same but do the right thing instead of the easy/corrupt/weaselly thing, they can avoid consequences too.
He's getting support from all the usual suspects on Twitter, BEFORE the article came out, even.
CNN reports that Biden's age is a major electoral concern.
Republicans still regard Reagan as the messiah despite the fact that he left the Oval Office with the same Alzheimer's he came in with.
I am glad the Republicans are running that young stallion Trump!
Hunter Biden’s Indictment Has Put Gun Rights Groups in an Awkward Bind
When news broke last week that Hunter Biden had been indicted by federal prosecutors for lying about his drug use while possessing a gun, Gun Owners of America, a hard-line gun rights lobby, responded with glee.“Good!” the organization tweeted, with the clapping emoji. “If his father wants to work with us to repeal unconstitutional gun control, our lobbyists will be at the White House in an hour. Until then, Hunter shouldn’t get any sweetheart deal!”
It was the most exuberant reaction of any gun rights organization to the Hunter news—a sign that most conservative opponents of gun regulations were struggling to square a political victory for those who dislike President Biden with the consequences of a law they oppose. But these groups appeared to find common ground in a single message: If there have to be bad laws, at least Hunter can be taken down by them too.
It’s not exactly a rallying cry, so many groups opted to stay silent on the topic. The National Rifle Association, in statements to the press, simply said, “Laws should be applied equally against all criminals.” An official for Gun Owners of America, in a more measured statement published just under half an hour after the group’s initial reaction tweet, took a similar tack. “GOA opposes all gun control, but so long as this President continues to use every tool at his disposal to harass and criminalize guns, gun owners, and gun dealers, his son should be receiving the same treatment and scrutiny as all of us,” the spokesman said in the statement.
The three charges Biden’s son is facing stem from a two-week period in 2018 when he obtained and then owned a handgun while he was using drugs. Two of the charges relate to his lie about his drug use in the application for the gun; the third, and more serious, charge relates to his possession of the gun while under the influence.
But according to the New York Times, actual prosecutions of individuals who have lied on their applications for guns are extremely rare. Prosecutions on the third charge are less rare but are typically bundled with other criminal charges and are not pursued on their own. Hunter Biden never used the weapon, had no criminal record, and committed no violent act. A substantial percentage of those accused of lying on a federal firearms application “negotiate deals that include probation and enrollment in programs that include counseling, monitoring, and regular drug testing,” the Times report stated. It is unlikely that Hunter would have been subject to this level of scrutiny were it not for his public profile.
When news broke last week that Hunter Biden had been indicted by federal prosecutors for lying about his drug use while possessing a gun, Gun Owners of America, a hard-line gun rights lobby, responded with glee.
“Good!” the organization tweeted, with the clapping emoji. “If his father wants to work with us to repeal unconstitutional gun control, our lobbyists will be at the White House in an hour. Until then, Hunter shouldn’t get any sweetheart deal!”
It was the most exuberant reaction of any gun rights organization to the Hunter news—a sign that most conservative opponents of gun regulations were struggling to square a political victory for those who dislike President Biden with the consequences of a law they oppose. But these groups appeared to find common ground in a single message: If there have to be bad laws, at least Hunter can be taken down by them too.
It’s not exactly a rallying cry, so many groups opted to stay silent on the topic. The National Rifle Association, in statements to the press, simply said, “Laws should be applied equally against all criminals.” An official for Gun Owners of America, in a more measured statement published just under half an hour after the group’s initial reaction tweet, took a similar tack. “GOA opposes all gun control, but so long as this President continues to use every tool at his disposal to harass and criminalize guns, gun owners, and gun dealers, his son should be receiving the same treatment and scrutiny as all of us,” the spokesman said in the statement.
The three charges Biden’s son is facing stem from a two-week period in 2018 when he obtained and then owned a handgun while he was using drugs. Two of the charges relate to his lie about his drug use in the application for the gun; the third, and more serious, charge relates to his possession of the gun while under the influence.
But according to the New York Times, actual prosecutions of individuals who have lied on their applications for guns are extremely rare. Prosecutions on the third charge are less rare but are typically bundled with other criminal charges and are not pursued on their own. Hunter Biden never used the weapon, had no criminal record, and committed no violent act. A substantial percentage of those accused of lying on a federal firearms application “negotiate deals that include probation and enrollment in programs that include counseling, monitoring, and regular drug testing,” the Times report stated. It is unlikely that Hunter would have been subject to this level of scrutiny were it not for his public profile.
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In the world of conservative punditry, the charges appeared to be something of a coup—a deserved smackdown. But because the right perceives that preferential treatment for the younger Biden is around every corner, some are already speculating about how the president will let Hunter off the hook. “When will Joe pardon Hunter?” the editor of one gun publication wondered aloud.Very few conservative gun groups defended Hunter, or adhered to their previously stated position that the law he was indicted under shouldn’t exist. The Firearms Policy Coalition re-shared a tweet from August, offering, “If Hunter is looking for gun lawyers to challenge the federal law he’s charged with violating … we know some people.”
Indeed, Hunter’s own lawyers are pushing the court to adhere to an earlier plea agreement that fell through, citing a challenge to the federal firearms background check system that is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. If that lawsuit succeeds, it could undermine the legal foundation of Hunter’s prosecution, the New York Times reported. That’s not what gun groups are pushing for, though.
The Second Amendment Foundation, which opposes restrictions on gun ownership, responded to Hunter’s indictment by quoting an article from a conservative publication: “The law spells it out pretty clearly that a person like Hunter Biden shouldn’t be owning a gun. And if you’re not going to enforce it against Hunter Biden, I don’t know how you’re going to enforce it against anybody.”
These tepid responses show just how much partisan politics plays into stated policy goals. The ambivalence from gun rights groups may not be surprising, given the political awkwardness of the situation, but it is notable given the opportunity to promote a new ally for the cause. On Friday, Hunter Biden’s attorney made the argument that would, under other circumstances, have been articulated by the gun rights groups themselves: The statute his client was charged under, the attorney said, was “likely unconstitutional.”
The insane thing is that "yeah but" is a valid defense/excuse for them.
Right now, some young Democratic congressperson should propose the "Stop Hunter Biden Gun Reform" Act with every piece of common-sense gun legislation that they have been peddling for years.
I don't think it would pass, but I would love the theatre.
Nikki Haley’s Consensus Appeal
Nothing affirms my belief that so many people’s golden era coincides with them being kids than this lede
“How can I get back to being ten years old? Help me, Nikki Haley!!!”
But seriously, it is extremely funny for people to be nostalgic for the early 1980s, an era marked by people complaining about how awful it was and longing to return to the 1950s.
In Speaker Joe Cannon’s memoirs, he complains that kids have it too good in the 1920s with radios and indoor plumbing and such , and says that he much preferred the simpler time of growing up in the 1840s.
“Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.”
Book III of Odes, Horace
circa 20 BCE
If this was as true as Republicans and others think it is, we'd already be back in the Neolithic...
RETURN TO TRADITION
The online freakout over "15-minute cities" is truly an astonishing thing to behold.
(They're also going all-in on Fetterman having been replaced by a body double. Fetterman's social media is at least handling it nicely.)
The online freakout over "15-minute cities" is truly an astonishing thing to behold.
Didn't know this was a current thing, but that concept was an integral part of my bachelor's degree thesis project in 2001/2002.
Hmmm. I don't know why I just understood the social engineering of that.
Pack poor people into the center of town.
The pull out all the resources such that everything has to be pumped in or is way out of reach so you have to wade through everyone else to get to it.
And then you wonder why there is crime? Rampant drug use? And out of control obesity?
The city I lived in was designed to be walkable in the city center and in each neighborhood. Most locations are no more than 10 minutes from a mixed-use business are, with a grocery store, services, restaurants, banks, etc.
Works great.
For a lot of kids who weren’t White, upper middle class Chads and Stacies, the 80s sucked hardcore. At least modern kids have a lot more protections, even if I bemoan the fact it’s much harder for them to just go spend all afternoon and half the evening alone outside.
Prederick wrote:The online freakout over "15-minute cities" is truly an astonishing thing to behold.
Didn't know this was a current thing, but that concept was an integral part of my bachelor's degree thesis project in 2001/2002.
It may share a name but the conspiracist’s concept of 15 Minute Cities doesn’t bear any semblance of the original concept- they essentially believe that the deep state is trying to re-engineer cities to isolate neighborhoods from each and will soon pass laws that will forcibly prevent anyone from being able to travel more than a few miles from their home and workplace.
There's also the fact that, for the overwhelming majority of human history, cities were "walkable cities" because cars didn't exist yet.
Like, I'm not going to say it was a "15-minute city" but I'll bet you could get everything you needed to live in London in 1703 while walking and it could be done in a reasonable timeframe.
There's also the fact that, for the overwhelming majority of human history, cities were "walkable cities" because cars didn't exist yet.
Like, I'm not going to say it was a "15-minute city" but I'll bet you could get everything you needed to live in London in 1703 while walking and it could be done in a reasonable timeframe.
That was certainly the case in 2007-12 Budapest when I lived there. Rarely had any reason to leave a radius of 2km from my apt for daily needs.
One challenge facing this concept in modern times is Amazon and similar online retailers, though.
It’s possible to live like that in some American cities. I didn’t have a car at all when I lived in Iowa City and got by comfortably, though it’s a fairly small city and everything is pretty centralized. If not for my job I wouldn’t really need to leave my current neighborhood in Portland and can easily walk everywhere else in 10-20 mins. It’s not super fun having to walk back with a load of groceries but it’s doable.
On the other hand I’ve also lived in places like Omaha, where any given location in the city is roughly a 40 minute drive minimum from every other location, and if you attempt to walk anywhere drivers will actively try to run you down in crosswalks and parking entrances as though you are personally offending them.
Folks freak out about 15 minute cities because they are afraid it will "defund the suburbs". And that is a legit concern. The suburbs are bloodsucking tax drains on cities that turn once thriving urban centers into crime ridden wastelands. They are, by design, reverse affirmative action.
I was fascinated by one of the Republican candidates - deSantis? - saying that something like 80% of Americans "live in small towns, not urban areas". In fact, it's exactly the other way around. How can someone get to the point of vying for a major party candidacy without any understanding of the demographics he's dealing with?
Lunacy.
I was fascinated by one of the Republican candidates - deSantis? - saying that something like 80% of Americans "live in small towns, not urban areas". In fact, it's exactly the other way around. How can someone get to the point of vying for a major party candidacy without any understanding of the demographics he's dealing with?
Lunacy.
lol. Yeah. Most of the folks that talk about how they "grew up in a small town" actually grew up in places like Fort Worth or metropolitan Atlanta.
I was fascinated by one of the Republican candidates - deSantis? - saying that something like 80% of Americans "live in small towns, not urban areas". In fact, it's exactly the other way around. How can someone get to the point of vying for a major party candidacy without any understanding of the demographics he's dealing with?
Lunacy.
He's smart enough that he knows and understands that. I think your comment (purposefully?) skips the part where he is 100% disingenuous and says whatever he thinks it takes to move the needle on his candidacy, even if it's something demonstrably false.
Let's not forget there these types of places have limited parking for brodozers.
He's smart enough that he knows and understands that. I think your comment (purposefully?) skips the part where he is 100% disingenuous and says whatever he thinks it takes to move the needle on his candidacy, even if it's something demonstrably false.
Yeah, I did skip the part where no one lies all the time. DeSantis has shown time and again that his Harvard education has not given him basic cognitive skills. If it had, he'd be in a far better position and still be a Trumpist, just with a better rating against Trump.
The second problem I see with your assertion is that DeSantis is acting as if the assertion was true. DeSantis is picking issues that seem to appeal to rural voters - basically, mirroring Trump - but in a state where 87.7% of the population lived in urban areas in 2020. And that percentage is increasing.
And his campaign has been foundering for months.
Look, if he had actually applied his supposedly competent Harvard mind to his campaign, he'd have gone much farther into traditional Republican values-based stuff, rather than Populism, to set himself apart from the mob. He'd work to peel off aging nostalgia voters, bringing them back to their roots (that might actually have been a good campaign slogan for him) and making a full frontal attack on Trumpism. There's a space there that has not been filled in recent years and on paper he'd be great at it.
Instead, he's chosen to play a game he does not understand and he's reduced to just playing copycat - always a losing game. No matter what sort of outrageous lunacy he pulls out of his hat, he's got to compete with the OG crazy, Trump, and he's just not wired to do that. So he's cobbled together slogans and idiotic hills to die on, and even Republicans seem to think that, okay, he's trying, but while we've got Trump, why bother backing him against the windmills he's tilting at? He's built the groundwork for a number of backlashes in the next few years that will complicate his situation, and his support has dropped to lower than the percentage of Republicans who say they are "undecided" - around 14%, maybe a bit less, in August. And that's after he "rebooted" his campaign by modifying his stances on many issues.
I'm sticking with "he's not lying, he really is not understanding the demographics he's facing", or indeed much of anything about what drives Trumpism. And his numbers argue that. If he were flat-out lying, he'd have never said that, because he'd understand that each time he apes Trump he's simply falling short by comparison. But he doesn't. He's digging his hole and my guess is he's more frustrated by why he can't just copy Trump's attitude and lash out at supposed "easy targets" like Disney and liberal colleges and win, win, win.
He may be a good Yale/Harvard lawyer, but he's not a good candidate, and the fact that he's considered a challenger to Trump shows that the rest of the field is generally even worse. It's horrifying, but it's not the result of lying all the time. Trump lies impulsively when he sees advantage, and he sticks to those lies. DeSantis tries to copy him but he has not figured out what will be to his advantage, he's just following along. That's why Trump is beating him, so far; Trump has decades of sleazy organized crime business practices that have honed his eye for the advantage to him, and how to sell that as "YOU can succeed too if you just follow my example", when what really happens, is that you end up increasing his influence and wealth and get nothing for yourself. Trump can be self-destructive because he's always leaving town in a day or two. DeSantis has to live with his policies in Florida. There's a reason snake-oil sellers kept on moving down the road. Trump understands that. DeSantis does not.
I never thought of it that way. DeSantis essentially sh*ts where he eats and wonders why he has zero influence outside his state.
Trump gobbles up everything in sight. And when he builds up a monumental sh*t, he dumps and runs to a new bed and breakfast buffet.
Robear, I don't disagree with much of your analysis. His brain is very clearly smart at many things, but not at the whole "people" thing. I still suspect he knows better about that specific statement, and that he's stating it because he things he can convince people of obvious falsehoods (ala Trump). But I also 100% buy what you're saying: he doesn't get it when it comes to people, to why his campaign isn't working, to why Trump can pull it off while he can't.
You can be super smart at some things and not be a savant at manipulating a subset of people, ala Trump.
And I suspect much of his behavior in Florida is because he genuinely is an autocrat. He is a guy who wants all the power and to bend people to his will, to punish those who go against him. Although there is an argument to be made that he went in that direction when he decided he'd be running for president.
Wild media bias about Garland today.
CNN - Headline 'We will not be intimidated,' Garland says at hearing
USATODAY - Headline "Teary-eyed Garland defends DOJ as GOP accuses favoritism for Biden"
Wow talk about loaded language.
I agree with you on those points, firesloth. Just remember, any time your analysis depends on "someone is like this 100% of the time", you've let bias into your thinking. It's when you start trying to tease out when they believe something, and when they are actually lying, that you can look at their successes and failures and figure out what they can and can't do well.
DeSantis is simply not a good politician, and so he's a *terrible* Populist, where your popularity depends on your personal appeal to your followers. But I agree, he's absolutely an autocrat wannabe. But he has not built his own following; he's trying to steal people from Trump and I don't think he understands why that won't work the way he's doing it.
And of course, he's poorly advised. Or at least, not listening to good advice when it comes his way.
Of course I do wonder if appealing to rural voters wins electoral college votes instead of actual votes.
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