jakee

Why do you think wokeness is hard left? As said, MAGA is a populist movement that is quite happy to push Marxist economic policies that it thinks will play well with the crowd. Why have you specifically homed in on woke as being Marxist? What have they actually said or done that would qualify? And how do you know they were communist? Was it simply because they existed in a destabilised society? Or was it because they said and did communist things?

Ah, now we're getting somewhere - so there's nothing about wokeness itself that you think is remotely Marxist, you're just worried about destabilisation being a Marxist ploy? Well ok then: First, WW1 wasn't started by Marxists. Second, German society was pretty well destabilised too, and they didn't turn to Marxism. So why pick Marxism as the inevitable result of any destabilisation? Third, they're not trying to destabilise society anyway. On the other hand, Maga is definitely trying to destabilise society and on Jan 6th they almost succeeded - so is Donald Trump Marxist? His anti-woke VP pick JD Vance thinks the government should seize the assets of politically undesireable companies and redistribute them to the people. That's more or less the dictionary definition of Marxism. So why are you worried about the other guys? Apart from JD Vance, who does need them?

So why is it that because you don't understand why they would waste their time, you think them wasting their time is Marxist?

Sure, but right now a good chunk of that audience would take it as a compliment.

That’s just not true though, is it? What did they say? We moved away from the worst days of bullying gays because non-gay people started to care. Which is not a form of Marxism.

I just did. I'm afraid I genuinely don't understand why "a society where people attempt to understand the societal challenges faced by other people who aren’t like them instead of ignoring or dismissing them out of hand" resembles Marxism. Perhaps you can explain that to me. (I'm also unsure why you would assume that anything that hasn't been explained to you is probably Marxism. Why would that be the default?)

Explain the advantage of a society where people attempt to understand the societal challenges faced by other people who aren’t like them instead of ignoring or dismissing them out of hand? I’m sorry, but I genuinely don’t understand the question.

Jesus, Mark, John, Paul and Ringo. At least make it a tough one.

Sure it's moderates. The same moderates who were suckered by the Fox news spin cycle in 2016. And they'll phrase it as what moderate would vote for trashing the constitution of the founding fathers and removing the check and balance of a truly independent Supreme Court? What moderate would want to allow every incoming Democrat President to appoint enough new partisan Justices to ram through every bit of anti-freedom, Critical Race Theory, commie loving, high tax legislation they want? We told you they were trying to steal the government through the plots of the Deep State and now they're doing it out in the open with the Supreme Court too! Yes, it's obviously total bullshit, but that's the discussion a large part of the media will try to have. Just have to hope they won't be able to do it as well as they have done before.

Kind of overshadowed the "I'm not a Christian" line, too.

It's not that easy - we all know the Republicans will simply refuse to engage on the details. They'll just shout about sore loser Democrats trying to overturn the Constitutional order so they can flip the court and end democracy. Then whenever someone asks the specifically about those three items they'll just ignore the question and shout the same things all over again. Maybe the duplicity will be obvious enough for most people to see through it, maybe it won't.

I see where you're confused - it was Brent who figured out that people saying things was what caused Trump to be shot. I'm saying that if we accept Brent's premise, then it's pretty obviously the stuff Trump said that was the problem.

It always strikes me about these discussions that crop up around wealth taxes chasing people away. Imagine being a billionaire - an honest to god richer than Croesus billionaire - and giving up your home in the place you most wanted to live because you're about to pay a couple percent more tax. As if you couldn't still have anything a person could ever want... except a slightly bigger number in the bank.

Unproven, perhaps, but what makes you declare so confidently that it's a lie? Given what he thought was appropriate to say in public to his supporters about Sen. McCain it's entirely consistent that he would say those things in private.

I see where you're confused - it was Brent who figured out that people saying things was what caused Trump to be shot. I'm saying that if we accept Brent's premise, then it's pretty obviously the stuff Trump said that was the problem.

Since you just said people should read Project 2025 to know what it says, I must assume you read both the Cox article and the Supreme Court decision... so I'm not sure why you're telling such a blatant lie? Cox said this "It decided that the president of the United States, possibly the most powerful person on earth, has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers." The decision says this "Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority." She is absolutely correct about absolute immunity. Why are you lying about that?

That's all just revisionist history designed, as always, so the right can abdicate any responsibility for the consequences of their own actions. Clinton was a long, long, long way from being the most unpopular politician in recent history when she was nominated... because she was running against Donald Trump, the most unpopular politician in recent history. Clinton's approval ratings only fell to somewhere near Trump's unheard of lows because the Republicans ran such an effective character assassination campaign, focussed on two things in particular. From a contemporary article "Clinton’s rise in unpopularity follows renewed focus on her use of a private email server and alleged conflicts of interest regarding her connections to the Clinton Foundation while she served as secretary of state." How ironic is it that because voters fell for the Clinton Foundation smear job, they ended up with a President who is banned from ever being involved with administering a charity? That because they fell for the hysteria over a private email server being used for government business, they ended up with President who stole thousands upon thousands of government documents, then kept them in a club where foreigners and journalists could pay for access and receive briefings on top secret military plans and nuclear secrets? The US right couldn't possibly be stupid enough to make the same mistake again, could they?

Trump himself has called Biden a fascist. Trump himself has called Biden's govenrment a 'Gestapo administration'. The entire Republican campaign is based on the claim that the Democrats have already ended democracy, tried to steal the 2016 election, stole the 2020 election, have infiltrated and perverted the entire Justice system from top to bottom and will never allow another free election in the US unless they take this last chance to elect a Trump administration which will dismantle the evil, secret Democrat Deep State. So why didn't this registered Republican shooter take a pop at Biden? Because it's all so obviously not true. Why did the registered Republican shooter instead believe Republican VP candidate JD Vance when he said that Trump was 'America's Hitler'? Because the creeping fascism and authoritarianism of a second Trump presidency is all out in the open for people to judge. Clearly, the rhetoric that caused Trump to be shot was Trump's own rhetoric. As an aside, it's telling that there was at least one woman in pride of place in the TV shot behind Trump wearing a campaign T-Shirt that read "Mean Tweets 2024". It's quite amusing that the Republicans are crying and moaning about how dangerous and unacceptable that Democrats have said bad things about Trump, when saying bad things is the reason they like Trump in the first place.

Does anyone have a photo of Trump starting his career with a $10M check from his dad? That'd be a good meme, wouldn't it?

It's a little unfair to single out Vance - until Obama no-one ever seriously thought a non-white person could win a presidential campaign, and until Clinton no-one ever seriously thought a woman could. So every single US President and Vice-President in history (until, ironically, Trump) was a DEI hire, since being a white man was an absolute pre-requisite for their selection.

No, be fair - Winsor would attack Lincoln because he wishes the Confederacy had won.

It’s not a good plan. ‘Fixing’ school shootings by turning every school into an airport security zone is a stupid plan, and one that would stop any good plans being enacted through sheer drain on resources. Do you want me to praise something that’s stupid just to avoid your feelings being hurt? No you don’t, you’re again just using your faux outrage as an excuse to avoid discussing any of the issues I raised, because you really don’t actually care about any of them. What could you possibly think I said that would be ban worthy? You want to see someone stepping over the ban line then you should check out this guy.

Why? You want to spend $1000 per person per year to make the lives of every student in the country measurably worse… instead of actually doing anything about the underlying problems. And it will be a trade off. I happen to increasingly believe that government money is actually functionally unlimited when they want it to be, but the people making decisions will annoyingly continue to claim it has to be spent on one thing or another. With that in mind, check this out. For example, 58% of perpetrators had a connection to the school, 70% were White males, 73 to 80% obtained guns from home or relatives or friends, and 100% exhibited warning signs or showed behavior that was of cause for concern; also, in 77% of school shootings, at least one person knew about the shooter’s plan before the shooting events occurred. Do you think there are some useful avenues that could be explored with that in mind? Sorry, no. You spent that money on a million rent-a-cops instead. But y’know, good rent-a-cops who’ll put their lives on the line, not bad ones like in Uvalde. We’ll guarantee that. Somehow. (BTW, do TSA screeners at the airport carry guns? I don’t think so. So you’ll have to seriously inflate the TSA budget comparison all over again to account for needing security guards who will be able to do anything if an armed person does turn up.) So here’s the thing - your plan is stupid. You know full well it’s stupid. But through your stubbornness and pig headedness you’ll plow straight through any objection anyone raises without even stressing it because you value your simplistic feel good factor over anything that will actually save lives in the long run. So when do you plan to get serious? When do you plan to add anything of value to the conversation? As an aside, the US is the most heavily policed developed nation in the world, with one of the worst violent crime records, yet your answer to everything is always to add more cops. When are you going to take the hint? I saw a YouTube video of a police stop where they’d been notified that a burglar was escaping in a certain suburban area, so this cop decided to help by detaining, handcuffing and running the ID of the first black jogger he saw. Then another cop car turned up to see if he needed backup, and stayed. Then another cop car with a supervisor came to check, and stayed. Then another…. before they’d finished forensically checking his ID and background there were at least 9 patrol cars and somewhere between 10 to 18 cops all milling around protecting each other from this one handcuffed black jogger. He’d been nothing but calm, polite and cooperative, but eventually had to say something like “I’m starting to get really freaked out by the amount of firepower y’all have got gathered around me”. To which the cop said “well we’ve got reports of a burglar escaping so you understand we have to do everything we can to make sure we get him before he gets away!” Now I don’t think I have to explain the blindingly obvious fact that not a single one of those responding officers after cop 1 was doing a single thing to search for a suspect. He could have been sat on the next street corner laughing at them and been perfectly safe. But at the next town council meeting it’ll be “Mrs Miggins’ house was burgled, we told the police exactly where he ran off too and they still didn’t have enough people to find him, we need to invest in more cops!” Right. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9388351/

Just too damn many self proclaimed moderates who refuse to vote for anyone who doesn't have an R after their name. Who'd have ever thought that votes have consequences?

So why do you want to search only people who aren’t students See this is why we keep having these disagreements - because at the first sign of any problem with your position you stop being honest. Even what you claim is your problem with me isn’t genuine. What circle am I going in? I don’t think armed security covering every entrance to every school searching every person who goes in is a desirable or even acceptable solution. That’s as straight as it gets. Meanwhile you’re dancing around all over the place.