I think the statue thing went too far when they tore down Ulysses S. Grant. Who's next, Lincoln?

Yup

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...c93_story.html

The funny thing about that is the slaves weren’t even tying to say “master”. They didn’t have broken English...They were saying “Masa” which means oppressor in Hebrew...

#162 The Least You Could Do | Reply All (this is a link to a podcast episode)

This podcast episode is fascinating to me, I'd had a lot of people recommend it. A tl;dr is that in some spaces white people who are trying to "wake up" and take part in what's happening right now are doing it all wrong. A story about how a lot of black people are just getting random venmo payments from friends/former acquaintances like its some kind of mini-reparations. Small ones too, $5. And this is most common in middle class circles for people who don't need the money. A story about a black comedienne who did a skit that was basically "hey white people want me to absolve you of your white guilt? Pay me and I will!!" and it started as a joke but turned into a lot of white people confessing all their racist shit like they were looking for absolution.

Anyway, its a really great podcast episode, highly recommend even after my tl;dr. One of the conclusions it draws is that there are a lot of people looking at themselves for the first time and where they fit in the world of systemic racism. And its easy to feel super guilty about your role in this, or just the fact that you have it easier than black people - generally speaking. And so a lot of people want to do something, a lot of companies want to make sure they're on the right side of things, but they haven't learned nearly enough, and you end up with these weird, off the wall performative gestures that are really just meant to make the white people feel less guilty, but not to actually... DO anything.

The super far left can go overboard, but I think on many of these cases you've got well meaning liberals and moderates across the spectrum who have no idea what the hell to do with all of the energy going on but feel like they need to do something, and man it backfires a lot.


Ya'll surely know me as someone who is super far left at this point. I've seen conversations about the term master and where its used, and about how much casual language can have racist beginnings. If you work with computers on systems that have a master/slave relationship, maybe (QUIETLY) change that. But if you're in real estate, instead of worrying about the master bedroom, go educate yourself on how black people have disadvantages when trying to find housing for all kinds of reasons, and start working (QUIETLY) to make sure you and your company don't do things with black clients that might perpetuate that system.

Easy.

However, we should rename the fucking Washington Redskins and not write that off to far left crazies. :P

https://twitter.com/meganpratz/statu...97641696657408

Mississippi Flag is about to change.

Who had “State Of Mississippi goes about removing problematic images much more appropriately than civil rights protestors” on their 2020 bingo card???

We all knew this was coming soon...


https://twitter.com/projectlincoln/s...710113793?s=21

Another in a long series...

I can't imagine any other president going with, I had no knowledge, if similar information had leaked to the press.

That Lincoln Project video is fantastic! And, I realized that since they are putting it up all over, Biden gets the benefit of the negative ads but also being able to say he's not running a negative campaign.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Right. A lot of people are looking at these issues for really the first time and thinking about how they themselves perpetuate white supremacy and the first things that pop up are the superficial ones. So people go, oh is calling it the Master Bedroom ok or is calling it The Civil War ok, when the real issus are how does systemic racism manifest itself in the housing market (and there are BOOKS on that) or in university systems. Hopefully these white folk feeling guilty actually look more deeply into their professions are get the rot out rather than focusing on the superficial stuff.


Though Mississippi only took down the flag because the SEC said they were going to pull all championship games if they didn’t. And the SEC only did that because of the moment we are in, which includes people tearing down statues of Confederate leaders. It, as Radii pointed out got people to really think about how problematic all this stuff was. So while some people yell and carp about “erasing history”, a bunch of people were like... wait, why do we have statutes exoling these people.

And remember, South Carolina took down their Confederate flags after the Charleston 9 shooting after a civil rights protestor climbed up a flag pole and took the flag down - leading to a discussion of why it was up there.

Trump admits it: He's losing - POLITICO

The headline is crazy enough, but when you get to one section, it's like "Whoa, I'd inject this right into my veins, but they'd explode"

“Under the current trajectory, President Trump is on the precipice of one the of the worst electoral defeats in modern presidential elections and the worst historically for an incumbent president,” said former Trump political adviser Sam Nunberg, who remains a supporter.

Nunberg pointed to national polls released by CNBC and New York Times/Siena over the past week showing Trump receiving below 40 percent against Biden.

If Trump's numbers against erode to 35 percentage points over the next two weeks, Nunberg added, “He’s going to be facing realistically a 400-plus electoral vote loss and the president would need to strongly reconsider whether he wants to continue to run as the Republican presidential nominee.”

Trump getting 400-bombed in November would be.. well, I couldn't realistically imagine it, but we'd need a new ocean for the tears of the Trumpfaithful

I can't imagine Trump would drop out at this point anyway (or the chaos that would occur as everyone attempted to grab the brass ring. Although then again, Jared Kushner's been doing everything for Trump, why not make it official and make him the nominee?)

Thank you to the great people of The Villages. The Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats will Fall in the Fall. Corrupt Joe is shot. See you soon!!! https://t.co/4Gg1iGOhyG

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2020

Nothing like our president applauding the divisiveness he has created while retweeting a video where someone yells white power.

This is completely incorrect. I remember the timeline very well. The shootings took place on a Wednesday. Haley was in Charleston before the weekend building grassroots support. That Monday, she started off her day with a meeting—I believe at 8 or 9 am, as in it was the first order of business for the day—with top Democratic leaders in South Carolina telling them she was going to be pushing for the flag to come down. Monday afternoon, she held a press conference saying that the flag needed to come down, and the process and conversation was fully in motion then. It was the following weekend that Bree Newsome climbed the flagpole. Iirc, the SC General Assembly had already had its initial overwhelming vote by then. It was nothing more than an illegal, unhelpful, and purely symbolic publicity stunt.

I don't think its fair to generalize all the "left". But it does seem to be getting out of hand with some left-wing extremists. Re: statues, there are some statues that should be torn down but there is a lot of grey (and not sure to how resolve them). George Washington seems to be going too far.


Yeah, basically agree with this.

It's not good enough for Trump to lose by a few electoral points. He needs to lose large where it shows a repudiation of his Presidency.

No, I can't imagine him dropping out either. He'll stay on and if he loses, will claim wide-spread fraud, cheating which will be a rallying cry for his supporters and Trumpism (to go on for another 4-8 years).

The problem is there are people that are tearing down statues because they are old white men. When statues of Grant who arguably did more for blacks than any one besides Lincoln in the era has his statues torn down, people have gone to far. Not to mention some of the abolitionist statues that have been torn down. Why? It is some old white dude.

Are we going to remove “master” from the language?

Did Vader say, “Last time we met, I was the learner, now I am the teacher.”

It’s the proverbial we’ve given the protestors an inch with regards to police brutality, but they are trying to take a mile and remove history. There could be a great discussion regarding Confederate monuments (I am against them being put up to begin with), similar to what places in Europe have done with holocaust sites.

Let’s focus on one thing at a time and not lose the momentum on realistic and justified goals (police reform).

And then he'll go play a round or two of golf.

Except no one is actually going to do most of those things you're talking about. There will be a handful of rando events. But if anyone's going to go back and screw up Star Wars further, it's going to be Lucas. And we know it's not going to happen (well, ok, except the Lucas part but I don't think the Mouse would let him).

And, surprise, surprise - the police reform isn't coming. Sure, Colorado has done some good stuff. There are a few places where officers are resigning at a slightly higher clip than normal. But the Senate GOP wanted to pass a stupid bill that would do next to nothing tangible but allow them to claim everything was fixed so, of course, the Dems blocked it. So nothing's going to come of that, either.

SI

The headline on FOX News website is how Trump is pushing back at the NY Times over the Russian-Afgan situation with a picture of Trump saying "Nobody briefed...Me"

Do they not understand the fact that he didn't know about this makes him look borderline worse?

The sad thing is, it is completely believable he wasn't briefed. He barely listen to any briefs as is, but reports say he gets very angry with any report that is negative about Russia. I can totally believe that the intelligence people where afraid to tell him. Of course, that in and of itself is terrible.

If the IC did not brief the President, then the people who made that call need to be exposed and fired.

The military/IC going rogue and deciding to keep their elected civilian leadership out of the loop is unconscionable and needs to be dealt with in the harshest way possible.

Also, when stuff like this happens, it excuses voting for Republicans because people will think "Oh, it won't get too bad because *someone* will keep it from getting that bad." That's so dangerous. People need to know that if you vote for these guys, you get all of it. All of the corruption. All of the cronyism. All of the prioritizing other countries over America. No one is coming to save you. So even if your woke friends on facebook are really annoying, you need to decide whether voting GOP in order to own them is worth bounties being placed on American soldiers with impunity.

FWIW worth the source does claim Trump was briefed about the bounties in March.

Trump (and Russia and the Taliban) is now denying the story.

I don't trust Trump but I'm also skeptical of anonymous sources too.

It appears one of his handlers got to him as he deleted the retweet.

So at this point, he either thinks there are enough racists in this country to carry him, or he really just doesn't care about a second term and doesn't have the balls to just walk away.

There is no way you miss that when it is the first guy in the video

British intelligence confirms that it is true.
Russia paid Taliban fighters to attack British troops in Afghanistan | UK News | Sky News

Well, an anonymous source in British Intelligence confirmed it was true.

I note you didn't reference the first part of my post where I note MS doesn't take down their flag if people didn't move against Confederate Monuments (why was pressure applied now by the SEC). Secondly, while the process was in motion, it was not complete. Bree Newsome Bass climbed the flag pole on June 27 and the SC House didn't vote on it until July 9. And you may consider it unhelpful and purely symbolic, but to many she was a hero. Rev. William Barber compared her to Rosa Parks after all. The minority leader of the SC House offered to represent Bass in court. Symbolic gestures matter. It is considered a significant part of the Charleston 9 story. And like it or not, it'll be remembered far longer than the name Nikki Haley.

And of course it was illegal, that's the point. She willingly went to jail. But all charges were dropped because it had become such a powerful symbol.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Even the White House is not denying the report, only the part that the President was briefed.

You are right, we should just believe Trump. He's been so truthful before.:rolleyes:

Any advice for someone who has a "child" indoctrinated as so anti-capitalism that he/she literally thinks that you're an idiot to want to work "unless there's a gun to your head"? Asking for a friend.

That's exactly what I said :rolleyes:

There have been a couple statues torn down of people who didn't deserve it. I think that is just more about some people hell bent on destruction.

But many of the statues torn down should be. There is no need to glorify Confederates or Columbus (which has always been comical today). Tear that shit down and put up statues of people who deserve it.

If they can make a life like that work for them, then great! I hear Portland's nice.

If I was a parent, I just wouldn't be able to handle things like this. I respect parents a lot.

Depends on how old the kids is.

Low 20s.

Tell them to go live on their own and see how it goes

"His point in tweeting out that video was to stand with his supporters, who are oftentimes demonized," says @PressSec, on Fox, explaining why Trump tweeted out a video of a supporter at The Villages yelling "white power."

— Annie Karni (@anniekarni) June 29, 2020

Thankfully someone is standing up for the unfairly maligned white supremacists!

SCOTUS struck down a Louisiana abortion law - mandating abortion providers had to have 'admitting privileges' at a hospital.

5-4, Roberts joined the liberal 4.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...-1323_c07d.pdf

This is very good news. The laws that these states have passed regarding abortion are archaic.

And pretty much identical to the Texas law that was struck down a few years ago

SI

Roberts is only concurring because it just got ruled against 4 years ago (where he voted to strike it down). He's ruling for the precedent. It's more of a 4-1-4 ruling than 5-4

Yes, but how often do you see a Justice voting for stare decisis on a case they voted against? It's not common. I have a feeling he's being very cagey to protest the reputation of the Court (again).

I think Roberts realizes the other four conservatives would burn the place down and he's standing between them and a Dem packed court.

The Lincoln Project

@ProjectLincoln


Kavanaugh tried to strike down a 4 year precedent, but instead strikes down Susan Collins' 24 year Senate career.

Actually Gandhi. TIL that he's a racist.

That's exactly it. His rulings on the ACA, LGBTQ rights, and now abortion show that he's being very political in his rulings. He knows one wrong step can end up destroying the Court.

Yup. He's a brilliant guy playing the long game.

This has actually been a lowkey debate in South Asia for the last 5 or so years. Though it was from things he said when he lived in South Africa, so maybe he changed when he went back to India - but basically part of his plea to the British was that the Indians were superior to blacks so Indians should be treated better in SA.

Statues of Gandhi have been vandalized in South Africa in the past because of this.

Exactly.

This is an important point. I wouldn't read this opinion as a big win for abortion rights going forward. It is a set-up for losses in future years when cases come to the Court that aren't exactly the same as cases decided previously. https://t.co/ctLZE4V9yR
— Sasha Samberg-Champion (@ssamcham) June 29, 2020

This is the critical doctrinal announcement by CJ Roberts today. Going forward, it will be irrelevant to the undue burden analysis whether an abortion restriction has any real medical benefit or is just a sham. https://t.co/rm2yO2KfJI
— Sasha Samberg-Champion (@ssamcham) June 29, 2020

Not a lawyer, but it seems like he loves to throw in little nuggets that he can use in the future to gut things at a future date. Basically, isn't he saying "any other restrictions, we're good with, but don't be so stupid as to put in ones that we just ruled against".

SI