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  • Originally posted by iam416 View Post
    To repeat points re actual policy and actual politics, Chairman Joe tabbed Kamala as the best person ever to fix the border crisis that was so bad he refused to give the media access. Which, of course, is no big deal because democracy doesn’t die in darkness. Anyway, Kamala has yet to visit the border, the crisis and blackout persists and Politico, of all places, reported Kamala wants nothing to do with that trainwreck.

    So, now Chairman Joe has put her in charge of The Party’s efforts the take over all elections because, e.g., Georgia only allows something like 20 days of early voting. That, you’ll recall, isn’t just Jim Crow — it’s JIM CROW ON STEROIDS. Straight from Chairman Joe’s mouth.

    The Chairman is also trying figure out a way to pass his “infrastructure” bill that is not even close to half infrastructure. Further, it’s another idiotic, non-targeted money dump. But, Rs may go along with him on the actual infrastructure parts, money dump or not.

    Finally, jobs report should be out soon. Thanks to efforts by some red states to disincentivize sitting on your ass, it should be better than April. CPI is in a week or so. I’m not as optimistic that will be better than April.

    The upside is that the economy the Chairman inherited is still strong and the post-COVID bump should be real. And, thanks be to god, there’s no chance the filibuster goes by the wayside. The Ds can use reconciliation once more this year and once next year. So, hopefully, we can mostly hit “do no harm” re big tickets.

    Other administrative issues will absolutely get hammered. But, such is life. Call it out. Make it an issue.
    But, again, these are the actual issues that matter.
    Dan Patrick: What was your reaction to [Urban Meyer being hired]?
    Brady Hoke: You know.....not....good.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Dr. Strangelove View Post
      If that unemployment report is strong tomorrow (today's ADP numbers hint that it could be) you're going to need at least three articles about critical race theory to balance out the good news
      I said I think it’ll be better than last month. And, if it’s really strong then great. I unequivocally love my country more than some political party. You should try it. But, then again, I embrace American exceptionalism.
      Dan Patrick: What was your reaction to [Urban Meyer being hired]?
      Brady Hoke: You know.....not....good.

      Comment


      • Best Thai dishes.

        1 Tom Kha. Chicken in a traditional Thai coconut sauce.

        2. Gaeng Daeng. Delicious red curry with pork, coconut sauce, lime. Berry good.

        3. Pad Thai. Almost a cliche, but a cliche for a reason: deliciousness.

        4. Krapow Moo Saap . Pork, chilies, basil, rice. Wonderful one pot type dish.

        5. Pad Khe Mao. Rice noodles with Chinese broccoli, eggs, onion, meat, chiles, garlic, soy, fish.

        And ask for hot Thai chili oil with all of the above.

        "The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is sometimes hard to verify their authenticity." -Abraham Lincoln

        Comment


        • It’s hard not to like any well-balanced Thai dish. Total flavor bombs. And I vaguely recall someone saying that Montgomery has the best Thai food East of Bangkok.
          Dan Patrick: What was your reaction to [Urban Meyer being hired]?
          Brady Hoke: You know.....not....good.

          Comment


          • AA, you left out Pad Prik, the working man's dinner. Never had Gaeng Daeng, will have to try it.
            “Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.” - Groucho Marx

            Comment


            • Originally posted by CGVT View Post
              The more things change, the more things stay the same.

              Yep. America First!

              C2qCLKKXEAA2_oy.jpg
              holy shit look at those Democrats

              sorry man, you can't talk me into willingly cucking our nation out because Democrats got a little crazy about states rights way back when.

              Comment


              • *sigh**
                I feel like I am watching the destruction of our democracy while my neighbors and friends cheer it on

                Comment


                • Meanwhile we have a President laughably referring to early voting rules as Jim Crow on Steroids and laughably referring to some sort of fictional present day “white supremacy.” And, lol — it’s the Rs fighting the culture wars.
                  And I believe it was yesterday, he said he'd been President for 15 months.

                  Time flies .. I guess...
                  "The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, .. I'd worn them for weeks, and they needed the air"

                  Comment


                  • Like it or not, throughout the history of the KKK, it has harbored more Democrat voters than it ever did Republicans.
                    "The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, .. I'd worn them for weeks, and they needed the air"

                    Comment


                    • FFS You are going to trot out that bullshit. I expect if from a moron like Krapture, but Jesus liney.

                      Do you not know the history of the changes in ideologies? Have you never heard of the Dixiecrats? Jesus. Strom Thurmond was racist bastard when he was a Dem and he was a racist bastard when he switched to Republican. The same for Jesse Helms, just to name two. That "the Dems was the racists" bullshit although technically true don't hunt, because those same fucking racists switched to republican. The parties in no way resemble what they were even 60 year ago.
                      So trot out that tired trope if you must, but know it makes you look ignorant.

                      Read this so that you never embarrass yourself talking about this again.

                      How the ‘Party of Lincoln’ Won Over the Once Democratic South

                      Democratic defectors, known as the “Dixiecrats,” started a switch to the Republican party in a movement that was later fueled by a so-called "Southern strategy."BECKY LITTLE
                      The night that Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his special assistant Bill Moyers was surprised to find the president looking melancholy in his bedroom. Moyers later wrote that when he asked what was wrong, Johnson replied, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come.”

                      It may seem a crude remark to make after such a momentous occasion, but it was also an accurate prediction.

                      To understand some of the reasons the South went from a largely Democratic region to a primarily Republican area today, just follow the decades of debate over racial issues in the United States.

                      On April 11, 1968 President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights bill while seated at a table surrounded by members of Congress, Washington DC. (Credit: Warren Leffler/Underwood Archives/Getty Images)

                      The Republican party was originally founded in the mid-1800s to oppose immigration and the spread of slavery, says David Goldfield, whose new book on American politics, The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good, comes out in November.

                      “The Republican party was strictly a sectional party, meaning that it just did not exist in the South,” he says. “The South couldn’t care less about immigration.” But it did care about preserving slavery.

                      After the Civil War, the Democratic party’s opposition to Republican Reconstruction legislation solidified its hold on the South.

                      “The Democratic party came to be more than a political party in the South—it came to be a defender of a way of life,” Goldfield says. “And that way of life was the restoration as much as possible of white supremacy … The Confederate statues you see all around were primarily erected by Democrats.”

                      The Dixie Democrats seceding from the Democratic Party. The rump convention, called after the Democrats had attached President Truman’s civil rights program to the party platform, placed Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Governor Fielding L. Wright of Mississippi in nomination. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)

                      Up until the post-World War II period, the party’s hold on the region was so entrenched that Southern politicians usually couldn’t get elected unless they were Democrats. But when President Harry S. Truman, a Democratic Southerner, introduced a pro-civil rights platform at the party’s 1948 convention, a faction walked out.

                      These defectors, known as the “Dixiecrats,” held a separate convention in Birmingham, Alabama. There, they nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, a staunch opposer of civil rights, to run for president on their “States’ Rights” ticket. Although Thurmond lost the election to Truman, he still won over a million popular votes.

                      It “was the first time since before the Civil War that the South was not solidly Democratic,” Goldfield says. “And that began the erosion of the southern influence in the Democratic party.”

                      After that, the majority of the South still continued to vote Democratic because it thought of the Republican party as the party of Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction. The big break didn’t come until President Johnson, another Southern Democrat, signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

                      Govenor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, was nominated as States’ Right candidate at the rump convention held in Birmingham on by southern recalcitrants. The Southerners took this drastic action after the Democratic convention added President Truman’s civil rights program of its party platform. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images)

                      Though some Democrats had switched to the Republican party prior to this, “the defections became a flood” after Johnson signed these acts, Goldfield says. “And so the political parties began to reconstitute themselves.”

                      The change wasn’t total or immediate. During the late 1960s and early ‘70s, white Southerners were still transitioning away from the Democratic party (newly enfranchised black Southerners voted and continue to vote Democratic). And even as Republican Richard Nixon employed a “Southern strategy” that appealed to the racism of Southern white voters, former Alabama Governor George Wallace (who’d wanted “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”) ran as a Democrat in the 1972 presidential primaries.

                      By the time Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, the Republican party’s hold on white Southerners was firm. Today, the Republican party remains the party of the South. It’s an ironic outcome considering that a century ago, white Southerners would’ve never considered voting for the party of Lincoln.
                      I feel like I am watching the destruction of our democracy while my neighbors and friends cheer it on

                      Comment


                      • Lineygobile knows all of that, one drive through the Michigan Militia countryside sees that whatever the past is, it is irrelevant to the present. You only need to see the numerous yard signs. It's either a sign denigrating Whitmer's intelligence, her physique or the claim that Trump did in fact win. These salt of the earth people aren't interested in voting rights or civil rights for anyone but themselves..

                        But deep down inside they are conflicted by the fact that Glenn Schembechler knew and did nothing about it.

                        Comment


                        • The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) says that KKK membership has been on the decline for many years now.

                          https://www.adl.org/education/resour...ate-of-the-kkk

                          You can cut and post articles and pics all you like. Fact of the matter is that the Democratic Party's history is filled with racism, and racists. And not all of it was "down south".

                          And just because someone is from the south, doesn't mean they are a racist, or have KKK sympathies. Just because the Republicans have 'carried the south' in elections does not make them racist. We have people in this forum who live in the south, but I don't consider them to be racist because of where they live.

                          Trying to tie all white conservative southerners to racism and the KKK is just plain foolish.
                          "The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, .. I'd worn them for weeks, and they needed the air"

                          Comment


                          • Jesus. I guess you are as hopeless a Krapture. You'll spew that shit about Dems being racist 100 years ago with no regard to the history or evolution of the parties and claim it is proof that the Dems are the racist party today.

                            It is a stupid, lazy argument.

                            BTW, if what you posted is what you took from that article you need to work on your reading comprehension.

                            "But they wuz Dems LOL"
                            .
                            Last edited by CGVT; June 3, 2021, 11:53 PM.
                            I feel like I am watching the destruction of our democracy while my neighbors and friends cheer it on

                            Comment



                            • Experts Call It A 'Clown Show' But Arizona 'Audit' Is A Disinformation Blueprint


                              June 3, 20215:00 AM ET

                              MILES PARKS



                              Contractors working for Cyber Ninjas, the company hired by the Republican-led Arizona state Senate, examine and recount ballots from the 2020 general election on May 3.


                              To Matt Masterson, the review of 2020 ballots from Maricopa County, Ariz., that's underway is "performance art" or "a clown show," and definitely "a waste of taxpayer money."

                              But it's not an audit.

                              "It's an audit in name only," says Masterson, a former Department of Homeland Security official who helped lead the federal government's election security preparations leading up to November's election. "It's a threat to the overall confidence of democracy, all in pursuit of continuing a narrative that we know to be a lie."

                              By lie, he means the assertion from former President Donald Trump and some of his allies that election fraud cost him a second term in the White House.

                              2020 ELECTION: SECURE YOUR VOTE

                              Former Election Security Official Says It Will Take 'Years' To Undo Disinformation


                              And, Masterson says, the strategy chosen by the Arizona's Republican state Senate leaders is working as intended to undermine confidence in the outcome of last year's vote.

                              The process is a simple exercise in how disinformation spreads and takes hold in 2021. And experts fear it presents a blueprint for other states and lawmakers to follow, one that is already showing signs of being emulated across the country.

                              "Now we have a playbook out there," said Masterson, who is currently a policy fellow with the Stanford Internet Observatory, "where if you don't like the results — by the way in an election that wasn't particularly close ... you just claim you didn't lose and in fact the process itself was rigged against you."

                              Step 1: Create a false reality

                              At a basic level, it's a victory for those looking to sow doubt in the 2020 election results just to have them still being litigated six months after Election Day.

                              To be clear, Maricopa County's election results have already been audited multiple times by companies with experience in the field, with no problems being uncovered.

                              POLITICS

                              Biden Says He Will Ramp Up Push To Expand Voting Rights, And Puts Harris In Charge


                              This latest process, however, is being run by a company without election experience that's led by a CEO who has spread election-related conspiracy theories.

                              Actual election audits have consistent and transparent procedures, often established in state law, but this has none of that, says Jennifer Morrell, a former election official and a national expert on election auditing. Morrell observed the process in person in Arizona for a week.

                              "They were sort of making up the process," Morrell said. "They were improvising as they went along."

                              Vote counters used conveyer wheels to tally ballots, often having to grab the wheel to stop it from moving too quickly past them. Other volunteers did data entry into a spreadsheet with no quality-control checks in place to make sure they entered it correctly. Observers from the Arizona Secretary of State's office have documented a series of " problematic practices, changing policies, and security threats that have plagued this exercise from the start."

                              ANALYSIS

                              Trump Continues To Push Election Falsehoods. Here's Why That Matters


                              In short, it has been an unreliable mess. And Morrell says she's sure whatever count the "auditors" come up with won't match the official tally.

                              But by calling it an audit, the process gains credibility in the eyes of people who don't know better, says Francesca Tripodi, an information studies professor at the University of North Carolina. The title itself is a misinformation tactic.

                              "The strategy in calling it an audit to begin with creates the illusion of legality — the illusion of a government-backed agency," Tripodi said. "And when I think of an audit, I think of wrongdoing immediately."

                              Step 2: Hit the airwaves

                              Normally, election audits are mundane, sparsely attended affairs. But this one has its own Twitter account (with 68,000 followers) and a livestream on the pro-Trump One America News Network, which has also raised money on air to fund the audit.

                              "It's terrifying," Morrell said. "We've suddenly said it's OK to hand our ballots over to a third-party organization with political bias, with no experience, who get to make up the rules and then make a decision or a determination based on what they do on whether or not the outcome of the election was correct."

                              The only way it works, however, is if people know about it. And if it gets covered in a way that doesn't note the audit's technical shortcomings.

                              ELECTIONS

                              Why 2020 Mail-In Ballots From One Georgia County May Be Scanned Again


                              That's where the conservative media ecosystem steps in.

                              An NPR analysis of social media engagement data from the online analytics firm NewsWhip found that the 10 most popular stories about the "audit" on social media were all published by conservative publications, many of which have also pushed the false idea that Trump may be the rightful president.

                              NewsWhip's engagement data encompasses how many times an article was shared, commented on or liked across Facebook, Pinterest and much of Twitter. The company analyzed a time period from April 1 through May 25 at the request of NPR.

                              Five of the 10 most popular links came from WesternJournal.com, a conservative clickbait site that furthers right-wing narratives and conspiracies.

                              "It's rather odd that we are constantly reassured that every aspect of the 2020 election was entirely safe, secure and kosher, and yet the ongoing election audit process in Arizona's Maricopa County seems to have been marred with confounding setbacks at every turn," begins one such articlepublished by The Western Journal. "Are they trying to validate claims that the election was stolen? Because this is how you validate claims that the election was stolen."

                              Step 3: Use the doubt to sow more doubt

                              The audit is a perfect example of how false information can be used to fuel more false information in a seemingly never-ending cycle.

                              POLITICS

                              Arizona Republicans Enact Sweeping Changes To State's Early Voting List


                              A recent Fox News poll found that 82% of Trump voters believe thatillegal voting is a "major threat" to the stability of the U.S., even though election fraud has never been revealed to be a widespread issue in American politics.

                              Those fears were surely amplified by Trump's false rhetoric around election security last year. Now Republican lawmakers are using those fears to justify major changes to state voting laws, as many officials feared they would.

                              "I don't know what's legit, what isn't legit, but why wouldn't we want to answer those questions?" Karen Fann, the president of the Arizona state Senate who initiated the review of Maricopa County's results, said in an interview last week with CNN.

                              In some states, that may mean clamping down on voter access to chase a fraud bogeyman that doesn't exist.

                              In others, it may mean more of these sorts of "audits."

                              Three Republican state lawmakers from Pennsylvania visited the site of the Arizona recount Wednesday to observe the process.

                              State Sen. Doug Mastriano was among them, and while he declined to talk about the visit with The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and a local radio station, according to reporter Ali Vetnar, he granted one to OANN.

                              Private "audit" efforts are now sprouting in other swing states like Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin.

                              "The incentive structure that has been created is one in which so far we've seen zero accountability for lying and pushing these narratives," Masterson, the former DHS official, said. "We don't see anyone really, truly being held accountable."
                              I feel like I am watching the destruction of our democracy while my neighbors and friends cheer it on

                              Comment

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