The Democrat Thread

[Steve9347]

Love the update at the bottom of this blog post.

Ha!

[StrangeSox]

It's pretty shocking to see something so openly, disgustingly racist.

 

It's coming from John Derbyshire, a frequent contributor to the National Review. But anyone talking about institutional racism are just a bunch of reverse-racist "race baiters" playing the race card.

 

doubling down!

 

Leaving aside the intended malice, I actually think "White Supremacist" is not bad semantically. White supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements History has come up with. There have of course been some blots on the record, but I don't see how it can be denied that net-net, white Europeans have made a better job of running fair and stable societies than has any other group.

[Balta1701]

Given the long discussion about how obviously Democrat SuperPAC money must rival Republican SuperPAC money in the other thread, it's certainly interesting to see Wisconsin Democrats coming out and publicly begging for more help from the national level, and saying that they can still win if they're only outspent 5 to 1 rather than 20 to 1.

 

[StrangeSox]

Walker is blaming poor jobs numbers on the Democrats and their dastardly recall scaring off the confidence fairy:

 

As he campaigns in the Wisconsin recall, Gov. Scott Walker has been answering questions about a promise he made in 2010 to create 250,000 private-sector jobs during his first term — the state lost 9,700 private-sector jobs in 2011, and even after a partial recovery this year is only at plus-5,900 jobs since Walker took office.

 

At the state GOP convention on Saturday, Walker reiterated his pledge, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports: “It’s a commitment I made in 2010 and it’s a commitment I make today.”

 

Walker campaigned at a business in Waukesha County, and chalked up the state’s sluggish job growth (which could potentially cost him his job in the recall election) to … the recall itself.

 

[StrangeSox]

Two related and great articles coming out of ProPublica on pardons:

 

Pardon Attorney Torpedoes Plea for Presidential Mercy

(same story, different article)

 

Clarence Aaron was sentenced to three life terms for his role in a drug deal, even though he wasn't the supplier, distributor or buyer in the deal and it was his first criminal offense; he simply put someone in contact with someone else. It's believed that he was given such a harsh sentence (worse than anyone else charged and convicted for the same deal) because he refused to testify against others.

 

A few months ago, ProPublica and the Washington Post had published another report on the Pardons office, finding that Presidential Pardons Heavily Favor Whites (4-1). Bush commuted far less sentences than previous Presidents, and Obama has only commuted one thus far.

 

[Jenksismyhero]

This is what happened to two women who applied for a marriage license in NC:

 

 

I think this is BS too, but it's no different than me smoking a joint in front of the police station and getting arrested. The law's the law.

[StrangeSox]

I think this is BS too, but it's no different than me smoking a joint in front of the police station and getting arrested. The law's the law.

 

Well that's exactly the point of non-violent civil disobedience: you are highlighting the use of force or the implied use of force by the state to enforce these laws. It's meant to create tension to make society question if this is a good and just thing to do. It was the central point of King's Letter from Birmingham Jail.

 

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to so dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

 

y friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

 

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

[Soxbadger]

http://news.yahoo.com/wrong-man-executed-t...-051125159.html

 

So who goes to jail for executing an innocent man?

 

Its really the biggest reason I cant support death penalty, humans just make to many mistakes.

[Jenksismyhero]

Well that's exactly the point of non-violent civil disobedience: you are highlighting the use of force or the implied use of force by the state to enforce these laws. It's meant to create tension to make society question if this is a good and just thing to do. It was the central point of King's Letter from Birmingham Jail.

 

Putting someone in handcuffs is a use of force?

[StrangeSox]

Putting someone in handcuffs is a use of force?

 

Yes, since they're being detained and removed. There's also an implied escalation of force if you resist the state's attempts to deny your civil rights.

 

It's not like these women went to the courthouse expecting to be successful in getting a license, or King organizes sit-ins in Birmingham thinking that they'd just be able to eat at that lunch counter without a problem.

[StrangeSox]

This is just awful:

 

With the signing of a new expanded conscience clause bill in Kansas, Republican Governor Sam Brownback has now legally blessed a virtually open-ended number of situations in which "religious" workers can refuse to assist women under the guise that they believe they "may be" terminating a pregnancy.[...]

 

Idaho already had a case of a pharmacist who refused to fill a perscription for a woman who needed drugs to stop bleeding, believing that the woman may have had an abortion which caused her blood loss, and the pharmacist received no punishment for the action. How long will it take for that to become the rule, rather than the exception, as the Kansas law goes into effect?

 

"Assisting in terminating a pregnancy" has already become an overly expansive phrase that many anti-choice activists are applying to even more unrelated situations -- from the nurses who refuse to do intake of women in the hospital for a termination to the bus driver who won't drive a route to Planned Parenthood.

 

Creating a law that allows a person's moral convictions -- not science -- to determine what is "terminating a pregnancy" is legislation begging for legal challenge.

[CanOfCorn]

This is just awful:

 

Sounds like we are heading for a Judge Dredd-like America.

[StrangeSox]

Here's a good example of how people can be shockingly blind to the privileges they benefit from.

A web of privilege supports this so-called meritocracy: Shortly after Mitt Romney's failed 2008 campaign for the Republican nomination his son Tagg set up a private equity fund with the campaign's top fundraiser. One of the first donors was his mum, Anne. Next came several of his dad's financial backers. Tagg had no experience in the world of finance, but after two years in the middle of a deep recession the company had netted $244m from just 64 investors.

 

Tagg insists that neither his name nor the fact that his father had made it clear he would run for the presidency again had anything to do with his success. "The reason people invested in us is that they liked our strategies,'' he told the New York Times.

 

Class privilege, and the power it confers, is often conveniently misunderstood by its beneficiaries as the product of their own genius rather than generations of advantage, stoutly defended and faithfully bequeathed. Evidence of such advantages is not freely available. It is not in the powerful's interest for the rest of us to know how their influence is attained or exercised. But every now and then a dam bursts and the facts come flooding forth...

[StrangeSox]

GOP-controlled Virginia House rejects a judicial nominee because he's "outspoken on the subject of gay rights"

[StrangeSox]

Boehner is pushing for another debt ceiling showdown.

 

"We shouldn’t dread the debt limit," said Speaker John Boehner at the Peter G. Peterson Fiscal Summit. "We should welcome it. It’s an action-forcing event in a town that has become infamous for inaction."

 

Yeah, it was so great last time.

[StrangeSox]

[StrangeSox]

Updated chart of what's fueling the deficit:

 

 

But we must use this as an opportunity to gut SS and Medicare because benefits may have to be reduced a few decades from now if we don't reduce them immediately.

[Jenksismyhero]

 

LOL. Yeah, people that think homosexuality is wrong are 100% behind violence. That's the ticket.

 

I also heard that every time you masturbate a kitten dies. Masturbation=advocating for the murder of kittens.

[StrangeSox]

Some are, which is why we have things like the Matthew Shepard law.

 

But most of those signs aren't about violence and are about real issues faced by real LGBT people every single day, so I'm really not sure what you're laughing at. It comes across as incredibly callous and oblivious.

[southsider2k5]

Some are, which is why we have things like the Matthew Shepard law.

 

But most of those signs aren't about violence and are about real issues faced by real LGBT people every single day, so I'm really not sure what you're laughing at. It comes across as incredibly callous and oblivious.

 

I'm guessing he is laughing at the extreme over simplification and misleading representation of the issue.

[StrangeSox]

What's being oversimplified there? What's misleading?

[southsider2k5]

What's being oversimplified there? What's misleading?

 

Opposing rights based on religious reasonings doesn't mean you are in favor of any of those things.

[StrangeSox]

I mean, to me, his insulting dismissal of the very real problems many LGBT face displayed on those signs as equivalent to "masturbation kills kittens" seems like a pretty good illustration of the message of that pic.

 

Both hostility and indifference enable that sort of treatment.

[StrangeSox]

Opposing rights based on religious reasonings doesn't mean you are in favor of any of those things.

 

It means you're cool with enabling those things, though. Especially since these issues arise from religious bigotry in the first place.

[StrangeSox]

I thought you guys were down with LGBT rights?