Thought for the Day

[Stavros]

This invocation of Jesus in the Pennsylvania State House seems over the top even by American standards, but if this is the way the US is going, it is the beginning of the end.

Appearing almost in tears, Ms Borowicz sermonised about “overcoming evil” in the name of Jesus – who she mentioned 13 times – and said “every knee will bow and every tongue will confess” in the name of him.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a8841446.html

[filghy2]

This invocation of Jesus in the Pennsylvania State House seems over the top even by American standards, but if this is the way the US is going, it is the beginning of the end. [I]

It's certainly the way the Republican party is going - it's takeover by religious nutters, bigots and unprincipled scumbags is almost complete. It's had to see how this mindset can be compatible with democracy and the rule of law at the end of the day. Doesn't God's will have to take precedence over a man-made constitution?

[broncofan]

It's certainly the way the Republican party is going - it's takeover by religious nutters, bigots and unprincipled scumbags is almost complete. It's had to see how this mindset can be compatible with democracy and the rule of law at the end of the day. Doesn't God's will have to take precedence over a man-made constitution?

Since I don't agree in principle with any conservative policies it's difficult for me to see what their platform would look like if they get rid of the most extreme nutjobs. They can get rid of the bigots and the unprincipled scumbags but could they get rid of the religious nutters and still be conservative? Certainly they could have more respect for the first amendment's proscription on religious interference in governance, but being pro-life has been a core policy position for them despite Roe v Wade being a 40 plus year precedent.

A conservative friend of mine was writing a policy paper on women's rights and wanted to include a section arguing that being pro-life is compatible with being a feminist. I recall saying reproductive rights are so central to women's autonomy that I don't see how the argument could even be made. She ended up avoiding the subject and arguing that left-wing attempts to empower women were really paternalistic and the real obstacle to women's equality....

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not sure honest arguments can be made in support of too many of their policy positions. Allow the market to determine health care costs because it's the most efficient way to pay for it? Not pass civil rights laws because the free market dis-incentivizes discrimination? Defund social welfare programs because they create dependency and are responsible for the breakdown of the American family? These aren't strawmen. They actually believe this stuff but it's fairly obvious to anyone who thinks about it that their premises are false.

But yes, they can get rid of the most extreme bigots and liars. They can have respect for the rule of law and act in good faith. They cannot provide a remedy for the fact that their policy proposals are fairly easy to knock down with logic.

[Stavros]

I don't want to smear the Americans with a tag of ignorance, but how much detail on policy do Americans actually debate? The way the so-called debate on abortion is framed in many media outlets posits the existence of a heartbeat as the origin of life with the simple proposition that it is wrong to end it -according to Paula White, the President's 'Pastor'-the one who tells him what God wants (!)- he confronted a pro-choice Senator with the proposition it is wrong to kill babies, and the US has withdrawn funding from agencies that provide family planning advice as part of the US foreign aid programme. But where is the debate on what famly planning actually consists of in the US, where abortion is just one part of the services that are provided? Where is the debate on women's rights when the defeault position of the President's supporters is that 'women's rights' by definition is some lunatic feminist 'social justice' agenda out of touch with the American Way of Life?

On the matter of health care, where is the debate between a 'service' and a 'business'? The Single payer system is dismissed out of hand as socialism, preventing any rational debate on what it means, and how it mght benefit the USA, while the complex system which revolve around insurance policies that do or do not provide health care are too dense for most people to comprehend.

We have a similar problem in the UK where the Brexit debate has in fact, for most of the time, been based on distortion and lies, reduced to a simplistic notion we are either better off or worse off if we are in or out. Politicians love this, they love nothing better than avoiding the detail, while these days too many powerful poiticians never even bother with the detail, either because they 'don't have time' or in the case of the President are too thick to understand it, and can't cope with lots of words.

Which is why I like what I have seen of AOC, because she has an ability to examine the detail and ask penetrating questions which are a digest of the detail that expose its strengths and limitations, and which is why some people are uncomfortable when being questioned by her. But at some point, when the detail becomes the headline, will the people stop and spend half an hour to find out what it is, or just 'trust' the President has it right and vote not just for or even in spite of him, but vote against the Democrats because their policy is derided as 'socialism', because the Democrats are an 'anti-Jewish' party because they are the 'enemies of the people'?

A fractured media enables politicians and their supporters to fix the 'debate' in advance, while some of what passes for 'news' is just opinion, and not based on analysis or a balanced approach that sees more than one side of the argument. This is the consequence of the end of the Fair Broadcasting rules that Reagan abolished in 1987 on Murdoch's advice and which has caused so much damage to political debate in the US.

[Stavros]

Can Boeing survive? Remember this?

Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.c10a4431b3c5

[filghy2]

Since I don't agree in principle with any conservative policies it's difficult for me to see what their platform would look like if they get rid of the most extreme nutjobs. They can get rid of the bigots and the unprincipled scumbags but could they get rid of the religious nutters and still be conservative?

Presumably it would be about the virtues of small government combined with traditional morality and family values. The latter doesn't need to take the peculiar form that American evangelical Christianity has taken. I don't support this position and I don't think the empirical evidence supports it, but I can understand intellectually why people might think that approach is best for society as a whole.

The striking thing about today's Republican party is that they no longer make any serious attempt to make the case that their policies would benefit most people. It's all about tribalism, where the aim of politics is to benefit members of your tribe at the expense of others and to do down the other tribe by any means possible.

I don't think the Trump Republican party can any longer be described as conservative. What is conservative about trashing long-standing institutions with little thought as to the future implications? What is conservative about refusing to apply any standards of acceptable behaviour? What is conservative about weakening constraints on executive power?

[holzz]

when I was in uni, one day I was feeling pretty groggy. I think I had some kind of cold, and my lecturer was being an arse. He accused me of not handing in a report, when I clearly did, and I had bought a sandwich which fell out of my hand as I left the shop, and I was late to class since I asked the taxi driver to go to the campus but he went the wrong way, and I was a bit hyper.

I dropped some money on the ground, and as I was picking it up from the corridor floor, some girl came and then literally stood on my hand. She was thinking "oh, I want to hurt this guy so I'll step on his hand!!" So I just got up and shoved her. she fell to the ground, and then she looked so shocked. Some guys in the corridor looked at me and motioned to hit me, i just told them to f off. Even some campus security came and just moved on.

But then some girl who thought she was badass and was above social norms/rules and because i was "nothing" in her eyes - lol. really? what made her the judge of value?

Looking back, i don't really see what I did wrong. I was defending myself. But i'm only asking this since I told my parents, and they said it was understandable but over the top.

​

tl;dr - some college babe who is the Godly-humanity-judge stepped on my hand as i was picking up loose change, i got irate, shoved her, and then she acted the victim.

Just a random thought I had.

[broncofan]

Below is a quote on twitter by a man named Grahame Morris who is a Member of Parliament. He said this while linking to a video of Guatemalan troops abusing children. Notice how he invokes Christianity and particularly Easter. Even if he had not linked to a propaganda video claiming Guatemalan troops were Israelis, it sounds like he's invoking the Christian God's judgment against the Jews, which in the context of Easter is not a terribly thoughtful thing to do.

My understanding is that he has acknowledged they're not Israelis but has not issued a condemnation of Guatemala.

This comes in the wake of a bunch more scandals....and the potential of the European Human Rights Commission investigating Labour for anti-Semitism. If there is a God, he will please let this happen....absolute clowns.

"Marvellous, absolutely marvellous the Israeli Army, the best financed, best trained, best equipped army in the world caught on camera beating up Palestinian children for the fun of it. May God forgive them. What would Jim Royle say on an Easter Monday".

[Stavros]

For what it's worth, not much I expect, Morris has apologized for his error referring in his tweet to 'the dangers of fake news online'. Morris lifted the Guatemalan/IDF claim from the now suspended account of 'Rachel Swindon' or Rachel Cousins, a pro-Corbyn member of Swindon Labour Party whose profle you can read here-
https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefa...visive-twitter

I don't know where Rachel Cousins gets her information from, and I doubt that for all her support for the Palestinian cause she has ever been to the West Bank or Gaza and, snob that I am, I doubt she has ever read a book on the subject or the articles in key journals that provide superior in quality arguments for and against the Israelis and Palestinians. For Morris to latch on to something he did not look into himself is his problem, and he has made a fool of himself.

But what this exposes is the way in which people react to something they see online much as they might have done seeing something on tv or listening to the radio before twitter. Without pausing to wonder if what they have seen is true, the emotion is triggered, the buttons pressed, the mistake published for all to see. It can of course in more expert hands be used to cover up the truth on behalf of the person pressing the buttons -the President's instant claims of exoneration being a case in point, even though everyone knows he is America's No 1. Liar, as David Frum described him on the BBC last week.

But, is twitter a genius means of exposing the rank stupidity of people, or a clever way of publishing instant thoughts and reactions to news? I don't use it, only read it if it is part of the news, so if it disappeared at mdnight tonight I would not care, and the world would not be any different. But at least it might halt the incesssant garbage that garbage man in the White House pumps out, labouring under the delusion he is important.

And if there is any justice, Morris will not be an MP for much longer. But a good example of how decrepit the Labour Party has become.

[broncofan]

For what it's worth, not much I expect, Morris has apologized for his error referring in his tweet to 'the dangers of fake news online'. Morris lifted the Guatemalan/IDF claim from the now suspended account of 'Rachel Swindon' or Rachel Cousins, a pro-Corbyn member of Swindon Labour Party whose profle you can read here-
https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefa...visive-twitter

I don't know where Rachel Cousins gets her information from, and I doubt that for all her support for the Palestinian cause she has ever been to the West Bank or Gaza and, snob that I am, I doubt she has ever read a book on the subject or the articles in key journals that provide superior in quality arguments for and against the Israelis and Palestinians. For Morris to latch on to something he did not look into himself is his problem, and he has made a fool of himself.

But what this exposes is the way in which people react to something they see online much as they might have done seeing something on tv or listening to the radio before twitter. Without pausing to wonder if what they have seen is true, the emotion is triggered, the buttons pressed, the mistake published for all to see. It can of course in more expert hands be used to cover up the truth on behalf of the person pressing the buttons -the President's instant claims of exoneration being a case in point, even though everyone knows he is America's No 1. Liar, as David Frum described him on the BBC last week.

But, is twitter a genius means of exposing the rank stupidity of people, or a clever way of publishing instant thoughts and reactions to news? I don't use it, only read it if it is part of the news, so if it disappeared at mdnight tonight I would not care, and the world would not be any different. But at least it might halt the incesssant garbage that garbage man in the White House pumps out, labouring under the delusion he is important.

And if there is any justice, Morris will not be an MP for much longer. But a good example of how decrepit the Labour Party has become.

I stopped following all of the accounts that kept me abreast of what was going on because it caused me a little irritation. I had someone reach out to me and I re-followed them and this came up on my timeline. This happened recently with the Trump Mueller stuff as well that I was determined not to follow too closely.

Morris' first response was that it didn't matter if it was not really Israel because Israel has done bad things. So he posted something false with all sorts of strange religious innuendo, was told it was false by hundreds of people, and said it didn't matter to him that it was false and that the people responding were "trolls".

Right-wingers are rightly brought to task for including Christian religious innuendo when discussing military operations in the Middle East because of the sensitive history of the Crusades. While I have no animus towards Christianity or Easter, the God forgive them it's Easter Monday is a little too tone deaf if that's all it is and I suspect whether unconscious or conscious it was motivated by Israel's Jewishness.

I'm hesitant to talk about all of the fringe figures like Swindon who get their hands slapped but the problem is they never stop having influence. Even exiles like Atzmon have an uncertain status to some. People are told to avoid David Icke but then he does have an influence among some in these networks and criticizing the lizard king can be seen as pro-Zionist. There ARE many people on the left who are critical of Israel and do not have an axe to grind but there's also a bubbling cauldron of conspiracy driven crazy.

Initially I thought it was an unsolvable problem because random people keep popping off with this sort of thing but I feel more conviction that it's the tolerance of it. The party sometimes acts against these people but really identifies more with them than the people who are complaining about it. Jim Sheridan can say he used to respect and empathize with Jews but now doesn't and he's a well-meaning lovable guy who got carried away out of his anger at Israel. Jewish people complain that this is unacceptable and and they are vindictive, enemies of the party, and as I heard one Corbyn supporter with a large following say "Corbynophobic". In fact, this person said Corbynophobia is a bigger societal problem than anti-Semitism.

I had gotten it wrong about the commission. Apparently they're the Equality and Human Rights Commission and I don't know what authority they have. The only thing I hope is that there's a full list of the people involved in these scandals, with notes analyzing each issue because frankly I'm tired of the obfuscation. If it's really just criticism of Israel that's being stigmatized, then transparency would show that, but of course that's not what it would show.