Scrutable

Woodchopper wrote: Fri Aug 14, 2020 4:46 pm

murmur wrote: Fri Aug 14, 2020 10:05 am So, they're trying to say that Oakland isn't in California or that California isn't in USA, USA, USA?

Or that the lawyer bloke, Eastman, lacks basic comprehension skills, 'cos the 14th Amendment looks pretty clear to me (yes, I have an English Language O-level)?

Here’s the article. https://www.newsweek.com/some-questions ... on-1524483

tl;dr argues that citizenship due to birth in the US wasn’t automatic.

Just in case that tl;dr is tl;dr: it’s all nonsense.

Lew Dolby wrote: Fri Aug 14, 2020 8:47 am Lol. You'd think someone named Tucker Carlson would be really keen on not having people's first names mispronounced !!

Let’s be absolutely clear here:

The Fox News host Tucker Carlson pronounced Harris’s first name wrongly several times on Tuesday night. When a guest corrected him, Carlson snapped “So what?” and then twice mispronounced her name again.

Tucker Carlson is now an out and out f.cking racist with this. We all knew he was but he used weasley little codewords. This is now explicit racism. He’s basically acting as a 21st century Lord Haw Haw.

The Pod Save America folks are now calling him Tookehr Carlson, and his colleague See-ahn Hannity.

So, just out of interest, we're unlikely to meet but dib dib dib 'be prepared' 'fif' an all that; Kamarrla, Kamayla or like Pamela so Kam'la: what does she say, what dd he say?

In her own words it's pronounced like "comma-la".

FlammableFlower wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 8:06 am In her own words it's pronounced like "comma-la".

had not anticipated that!
Many thanks

No worries - until I read her quote in the WaPo I wouldn't have guessed either. I haven't heard what Carlson mangled it as, but having been corrected 3 times by another guest, and really should have otherwise been informed, he's just being a dick.

I’m sure in the olden days when I was young Republicans used to pride themselves on being courteous. Did this break down before the Tea Party movement?

FlammableFlower wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 8:06 am In her own words it's pronounced like "comma-la".

But note that the O in comma is American-style, as "kahma".

That's that's really doing my noodle in.

Vertigowooyay wrote: Fri Aug 14, 2020 4:51 pm

Woodchopper wrote: Fri Aug 14, 2020 4:46 pm

murmur wrote: Fri Aug 14, 2020 10:05 am So, they're trying to say that Oakland isn't in California or that California isn't in USA, USA, USA?

Or that the lawyer bloke, Eastman, lacks basic comprehension skills, 'cos the 14th Amendment looks pretty clear to me (yes, I have an English Language O-level)?

Here’s the article. https://www.newsweek.com/some-questions ... on-1524483

tl;dr argues that citizenship due to birth in the US wasn’t automatic.

Just in case that tl;dr is tl;dr: it’s all nonsense.

Of course.

Grumble wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 9:43 am I’m sure in the olden days when I was young Republicans used to pride themselves on being courteous. Did this break down before the Tea Party movement?

did that ever apply to people who weren’t white and at least middle class?

bjn wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 1:47 pm

Grumble wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 9:43 am I’m sure in the olden days when I was young Republicans used to pride themselves on being courteous. Did this break down before the Tea Party movement?

did that ever apply to people who weren’t white and at least middle class?

Maybe not.

Grumble wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 9:43 am I’m sure in the olden days when I was young Republicans used to pride themselves on being courteous. Did this break down before the Tea Party movement?

Well bless your heart if you think that was ever anything other than a veneer of respectability.

USA residing Scrutaneers - what is - if anything - actually being done about Trumps blatant attempt to throttle Mail in votes? This seems to be a crisis point.

dyqik wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 3:35 pm

Grumble wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 9:43 am I’m sure in the olden days when I was young Republicans used to pride themselves on being courteous. Did this break down before the Tea Party movement?

Well bless your heart if you think that was ever anything other than a veneer of respectability.

Oh I don’t think it was ever much more than a veneer, but at least it was something.

dyqik wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 3:35 pm

Grumble wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 9:43 am I’m sure in the olden days when I was young Republicans used to pride themselves on being courteous. Did this break down before the Tea Party movement?

Well bless your heart if you think that was ever anything other than a veneer of respectability.

It was just the assumption that also the other guy had a gun.

shpalman wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 5:14 pm

dyqik wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 3:35 pm

Grumble wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 9:43 am I’m sure in the olden days when I was young Republicans used to pride themselves on being courteous. Did this break down before the Tea Party movement?

Well bless your heart if you think that was ever anything other than a veneer of respectability.

It was just the assumption that also the other guy had a gun.

I remember reading a study along those lines (or possibly it was rank speculation, can't remember). Societies that are are armed and prone to violence tend to be much more polite than those that aren't. So the South vs the North in the USA, the tribal areas of Pakistan vs more urban areas and so on.

This week’s Weasel Award goes to the editors of Newsweek

“This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. We apologize,” read Newsweek’s editor’s note on Friday, which replaced the magazine’s earlier detailed defense of the op-ed.

“We entirely failed to anticipate the ways in which the essay would be interpreted, distorted and weaponized,” read the apology, signed by Josh Hammer, opinion editor, and Nancy Cooper, global editor-in-chief.

But the pair ended the note by saying that the op-ed would remain on the site, with their note attached.

TBF how could anyone have predicted that publishing a racist conspiracy theory disputing the eligibility of the US’s first serious Black and Asian American veep candidate on the basis of her race, along similar lines to the racist conspiracy theories about the eligibility of the US’s first Black President on the basis of his race, and then defending it in great detail twice, could in some way be perceived as being in support of said racist conspiracy theory. And what are the chances that racists would then read the racist article and run with it as some sort of validation of their racist beliefs?

Still mistakes happen, and having been faced with this completely unforeseen turn of events they have at least had the courage to put their hands up and say “yes publishing it was a mistake, and given the response it has generated we regret that we did, in light of which we’ve now decided to keep the article up and stand by every horrific word of it”.

Vertigowooyay wrote: Sat Aug 15, 2020 4:07 pm USA residing Scrutaneers - what is - if anything - actually being done about Trumps blatant attempt to throttle Mail in votes? This seems to be a crisis point.

Locally, here in MA where it won't matter anyway, people are talking about hand delivering their mail ballots to the drop boxes at town offices instead of mailing them.

Frankly, this is going to make even more Democrat voters vote in person, and queue to do it, whatever the pandemic is doing.

The one possible bright spot in Trump's attacks on the postal service is that, by encouraging Democrats to find other ways to vote, it might minimise the discrepancy in vote tallies between those counted on election night and those processed later, which minimises the opportunity for him to claim that late-counted votes were "manufactured" and therefore shouldn't be counted.

It's almost as though his sabotage attempts aren't strategically thought through.

Before he opened his big mouth it was possible to dismiss concerns about the postal service as democrat scaremongering. Now he’s blatantly said it out loud maybe there’s something that can be done.

And so the Biden let-down begins.

Despite both Biden and Harris campaigning on a promise to end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and despite the demand being approved in a draft of the party's platform, it's been quietly dropped from the party's official platform:

In the midst of the convention, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has dropped from its party platform a demand for no more oil and gas subsidies and tax breaks, Huffington Post reported on Tuesday.

The statement - "Democrats support eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuels, and will fight to defend and extend tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy” - originally appeared as an amendment to party demands last month and was approved, the report said.

However, the final draft of the platform was missing the statement, HuffPost reported. The Independent has contacted the DNC for comment.

Mr Biden's climate plan called for historic investment in clean energy which would be paid for, in part, by "ending subsidies for fossil fuels". The plan also called for the US leading the charge in a global ban on fossil fuel subsidies.

"There is simply no excuse for subsidizing fossil fuel, either in the United States or around the world," Mr Biden's climate strategy noted.

Senator Harris' plan also called to "end federal subsidies for fossil fuels and hold Big Oil accountable for its role in the climate crisis,” the Washington Post reported. (Her campaign website is no longer active). In 2017, she co-sponsored the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act.

https://www.independent.co.uk/environme ... 76836.html

The DNC has already confirmed to HuffPo that the omission was deliberate - apparently the original inclusion of Biden and Harris's campaign promise in their platform was a mistake.

So before they've even got elected, it's clear that their grand statements on the importance of tackling climate change don't extend quite as far as potentially upsetting business interests. Apparently the plan is to fight climate change while giving taxpayers' money to fossil fuel companies and allowing those companies to pay less tax.

What can they possibly hope to achieve if they're so afraid to stand up to business - especially failing businesses that cause a problem most of the country (and world) wants to see strong action on? They can't even do it in an aspirational document like a manifesto, so there's obviously little chance of anything useful being put into proposed legislation after the election, and even less chance of it surviving demands to water it down from politicians in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry.

In her book 'This changes everything', Naomi Klein made a point to the effect that recognizing climate change involves both accepting its reality, and also understanding that urgent, radical action is necessary. Liberals generally accept the reality of climate change, but deny that fighting it requires any significant change to the economic status quo, while Conservatives understand the depth of upheaval that would be necessary to meaningfully combat it, but deny its reality. So nobody in the mainstream of politics is actually going to do anything about it.

It seems to me like this analysis is largely correct, and also applies more generally.

Bird on a Fire wrote: Wed Aug 19, 2020 12:36 pm What can they possibly hope to achieve ...

Getting elected. That's what politicians do, because if you can't get yourself elected, you're no longer a politician.