Chairchucker

Probably. I don't pay too much attention to what the book is they're flicking through.

Like I said, no voter ID required. Just use some common security questions I guess.

Condolences America, this sucks. Re: voter ID, not required here in Australia. They asked me my name, address, maybe my date of birth, I don't remember for sure, then ticked me off a list. But yeah the imaginary threat of voter fraud is less significant than the very real use of ID laws to suppress voting by, disproportionately, ethnic minories, poor people, elderly people.

Maybe he got lost on the way to the local school.

Probably just out walking his shotgun.

This feels like sarcasm but also reads identically to things I have seen people earnestly say, may I please have a hint as to whether you are serious?

No! I acknowledge that he SAID he doesn't agree with it once it became apparent that it was deeply unpopular! Again, he is a liar!

Yes. He is constantly lying. He supported abortion bans and suddenly walked it the heck back and tried to downplay it when he realised what a deeply unpopular move it was.

Paradoxically, while I think Trump being dead (or just, removed from the public consciousness and discourse and with his tiny sex offending hands kept well away from the nether regions of women everywhere) would immediately make the world an immeasurably better place, I don't think politically motivated assassinations are a good precedent to set. I also don't think we need to avoid criticising fascists for being fascists just because the fascist gun loving country they've helped create might use any excuse to shoot someone. Also, while we're on the subject of gun violence, there have been 527 mass shooting deaths in the USA so far this year, and if you picked any of those 527 victims at random, I would cheerfully and without hesitation swap them for any one of the predominantly Republican law makers who consistently refuse to pass legislation restricting the sale of firearms, because maybe if the violence was happening to them they'd feel it was worth taking action.

Trump being a threat to Democracy should not be a particularly controversial statement, unless you're particularly dedicated to the gimmick of enlightened centrism. He repeatedly refused to accept the result of an election, up to and including inciting a terrorist attack on the Capitol, he tried to convince his VP not to certify the election, he said that maybe his VP deserved to be murdered for not overthrowing the election, he said he'd be a dictator, (but only on day one!) he's repeatedly cosied up to and expressed admiration for dictators, including suggesting that maybe America should have a President for life like China has, he told people that after they voted him in they'd never have to vote again. I know for some reason you are relentlessly dedicated to giving Trump the benefit of the doubt that maybe his seemingly infinite bounty of statements that reveal what a corrupt, horrible person he is actually mean something else, but just once, why not listen to what he actually says, over and over and over again?

I think it'll be a little while yet before Republicans try to campaign on the subject of security at their rallies.

It can be simultaneously true that: 1. Donald Trump is the worse candidate for Palestine 2. Current Democrat policy needs to be better.

That's OK Bruce I wasn't really trying to start a new topic, I was just having a cheeky jab about your seemingly boundless enthusiasm for giving one of the worst human beings alive as much benefit of the doubt as you can possibly spare.

Oh yeah, do we also need to separately examine the context around all the rapes he did to see if he's a proper rapist or just a casual one?

This is a direct quote from one of your posts, and the part of it to which I was responding: "I base my views on politics around the policies of parties and outcomes, I dont subscribe to identity politics or personality politics." Because you claimed that you base your views on politics around policies and outcomes, I shared a number of outcomes. You appeared reluctant to discuss those outcomes. Since you would prefer to talk about whether or not Trump is racist, a thing you seemed to be claiming was not your priority, let's do that I guess. Donald Trump was super big on the 'birther' conspiracy theories. A thing that has coincidentally only been targeted at Barack and Kamala, but interestingly not Donald Trump, whose mother was born in Scotland and whose father was born to German immigrants. He continued arguing for these conspiracy theories years after the release of Obama's long form birth certificate. He called Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. After two of his supporters beat a homeless Latino man with a metal pipe, he said '...the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again." He said that the federal judge who presided over the Trump Uni fraud case couldn't do his job because he was "of Mexican heritage." After four black men and one Latino were cleared of rape by way of DNA evidence, he took out a full page ad calling for New York to being back the death penalty to punish them. Trump signed a travel ban from seven Muslin-majority countries. He later claimed that this would protect the USA from terrorists. When he said that, in the fifteen years since the 11 September attacks, not one of the terrorists who killed people in American were from any of the countries he enacted a travel ban against. Also, for some reason he didn't ban travelers from Muslim-majority countries where he held large business interests, like Saudi Arabia or Turkiye. He referred to Elizabeth Warren as 'Pocahantas,' (on a few occasions including during a speech to Native American veterans of WWII) and said that the only reason she claimed Native American heritage was she had 'high cheekbones'. (WTF?) He reportedly said that Haitians "all have AIDS" and Nigerian immigrants would never "go back to their huts." His campaign chose a white nationalist to serve among California's delegates. After a bunch of white supremacists marched and shouted slogans like "The Jews will not replace us," a white nationalist drove his car into some counter protesters and killed one. Trump said that there was both blame and 'very fine people' on both sides. He complained about the removal of Confederate monuments. He pardoned a mayor who was convicted of criminal contempt for racially profiling Latinos. He called NFL players who protested police brutality against black people by kneeling during the anthem 'sons of bitches' and said they should be fired. He retweeted anti-Muslim videos from the deputy leader of a British ultranationalist hate group. He is reported to have referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as '****hole countries', questioned why the USA would want to allow immigrants from those countries, and suggested the US try to get more immigrants from places like Norway. He presided over a policy of separating immigrant children from their parents. He suggested that four congresswomen of colour, all of whom were American citizens and three of whom were born in the USA, go back to their countries. He kept referring to COVID-19 as the 'Chinese virus' even after the World Health Organisation advised him not to because it could give rise to racial profiling. He tweeted a video of his supporter shouting 'white power' at anti-Trump supporters. He called the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' a 'symbol of hate'. He promised to veto a Defence bill, over a provision for removing the names of Confederate generals from military bases. He declined to condemn the Proud Boys, white supremacists who endorse violence. If it's not clear to you that Trump is racist, that does not reflect well on you.

Good thing that's nowhere near what I said at any point. To recap, my original point, in direct response to your dubious claim that you "base [your] views on politics around the policies of parties and outcomes," was that among the outcomes of a Trump presidency was that in 2017, white supremacist propaganda on college campuses tripled, hate groups increased by 4% and hate crimes by 17%. Some other outcomes were the Department of Agriculture being banned from using the term 'climate change', executive orders gutting obamacare, withdrawal of federal protection for trans students, reductions of rights for federal employees, making it easier for fossil fuel companies to lay pipelines, and scaling back environmental reviews when building highway. So it is just super weird that you decided to ignore the actual point of my post and argue a barely relevant point using a source that didn't actually support your position, and now respond by arguing against a claim I never made.

I posted a reply a little while back that is somewhat lengthier than this one is gonna be and the forum ate it so I gave up and did other things instead but I'm back and will try again I guess. My original post was primarily addressing your claim that you "base [your] views on politics around the policies of parties and outcomes", and I listed a number of outcomes. It's curious that you ignored all of that and went instead for my side comment about Trump's racism. Almost as if your claims that the things you cared most about were policies and outcomes, was a lie. The main point in that paragraph wasn't about Trump's racism in and of itself, but the flow on effects of that. The 'record numbers' spoken of by the article you posted were 17%, up from 8%. Obviously even 8% is still too high, but I guess black people are just as capable of voting against their own interests as white people are. The article does not even attempt to argue that Trump is not racist, it moreso lays out some of the reasons that he is, as a contrast to the point that black people seem to be voting for him anyway. The article's point is not, 'black people are voting for Trump, therefore how racist could he be?' It is more, 'black people are voting for Trump despite his racism.' The actual given reasons for this change is things like younger black voters not having the same attachment to civil rights legacy movements, or disillusionment with the Democratic party not treating black voters particularly well even despite the fact that it's been black voters who have consistently been more likely to vote Democrat. The article is more an indictment of the way the Democrats have taken the black vote for granted, than it is remotely vindicating Trump from being racist.

Did you even read this yourself? It doesn't support your position in the slightest.

Black people voting for Trump is not evidence against him being racist, any more than women voting against him is evidence against him being a rapist. (Which he is.)

Having read a number of your posts over the years, I've not found this to be true. You certainly subscribed to identity politics when it came to hand wringing over CRT, for example. I think the character of a leader matters, and can flow on to the rest of the population. White supremacist propaganda on college campuses tripled in 2017, for example. (https://www.adl.org/resources/report/white-supremacist-propaganda-surges-campus) There was also a 4% increase in the number of hate groups. (https://www.splcenter.org/news/2018/02/21/year-hate-trump-buoyed-white-supremacists-2017-sparking-backlash-among-black-nationalist) and a 17% increase in hate crimes. (https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2017-hate-crime-statistics-released-111318) so it seems that, in fact, having an openly racist president is bad for the country as a whole. (Although he's said that he's probably the least racist person there is, so presumably you'll be taking him at his word rather than examining his words and actions.) Let's also look at some of the other outcomes. Trump added a few conservative justices to the supreme court which had the outcomes of rolling back Roe vs Wade and ruling that a president was literally above the law. Many prominent Republicans are science denying buffoons who think that climate change is a Democrat hoax, which has led to the Environmental Protection Agency being a bit of a joke. The Department of Agriculture were explicitly banned from using the word 'Climate Change.' https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/07/usda-climate-change-language-censorship-emails It seems that's a ban that a few Republicans have followed. Trump signed executive orders aimed at gutting obamacare, putting a ban on travel from a number of muslim majority countries, (but oddly not Saudi Arabia, a country with whom he did business) removing two regulations on businesses for every additional one that is added, (wtf, how would this even work?) limiting the separation of church and state by limiting the actions that can be taken against religious organisations engaged in political campaign activities, withdrawing federal protection for trans students, reducing the rights of federal employees, (including making them easier to fire) making it easier for oil and gas companies to lay pipelines, and scaling back environmental reviews when building highway, among other. Trump and the Republican party are very bad for women, people of colour, trans people, and the environment. EDIT: they're bad for everyone, but those are some of the 'highlights'

In a radical act of self care, I decided not to watch the debate unless one or both of the contestants literally died on stage. Apparently that didn't happen so I didn't watch the replay. Anyway, apparently Biden looked very silly, so of course Americans will do the sensible thing and elect a felonious rapist who packed the courts with conservative supreme court judges who rolled back Roe vs Wade and decided presidents were allowed to commit crimes if they did them 'officially'. I'm sure it's totally safe to assume the guy who said he'd be a dictator but only on day one, who labels any unflattering news story as 'fake news', who called those media outlets 'enemy of the American people', barred them from press conferences and suggested they lose their media license, who said that there were very fine people on both sides when one of the sides contained Nazis and Klan members and a white supremacist who killed someone with their car, who called athletes who protested against police brutality by kneeling 'sons of bitches' and suggested they be fired, suggested the USA accept more refugees from places like Norway or Asia rather than African nations, suggested it was treasonous not to applaud his speeches, used a school shooting as an opportunity to criticise the FBI for investigating himself, said it was great that China had a President for life and that maybe the USA should give that a shot some day, sided with Putin over the leaders of his own intelligence agencies, suggested that several congresswoman who happened to be women of colour, all of whom were American citizens and three of whom were born in the USA, should 'go back to their country', withheld pandemic aid from states with governors who 'weren't grateful enough', suggested that a 75 year old peace activist who was hospitalised after being shoved by police officers 'could be an ANTIFA provocateur', shared a video of a supporter yelling 'white power', said he might not accept the results of an election if he loses, suggested that a police officer accidentally killing someone is similar to a golfer missing a putt, encouraged people to vote twice, refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he lost an election, urged a crowd to march towards the capitol, told the crowd of domestic terrorists he'd just encouraged 'We love you. You're very special', tried to have the Vice President overturn the election... Well, I'm sure there's absolutely no downside to having that guy in power again.

Hello just a brief report from Australian politics. IYKYK

Gromnir you're on drugs and you should put them down. What I actually said: protesting is not censorship. What you somehow got out of that: violence is OK if I like the person doing it.

Hey I just quickly looked up the info and that appeared to be the response from the source I found. If they were assaulting people then, I guess the issue is not censorship but assault.

Removing the feelings each side have for each other from the context of why is ridiculous. If what you care about most in a conflict is the level of discourse, rather than the historical and current context, you're monumentally missing the point. Protests are not 'banning freedom of speech', nor are they censorship. They are exercises of the protesters' own free speech. It appears the 'violence' spoken of didn't happen until after the police went to try and disperse the protest, or as you might call it 'censor or ban their freedom of speech'. (Although that would in some ways be more accurate than the way you used it, since the police have got some kind of government connection going on.) In the counter example you offer, I might indeed be bothered by a pro-choice speaker being protested at a conservative university, but it wouldn't be because 'how dare you protest a speaker that's censorship', (it isn't censorship!) it would be because I disagree with their position, and think that the position they're taking is harmful. In much the same way that I was annoyed by antivaxx protesters because I think what they're doing is harmful. Oh cool let's talk about those things, too. Going to war over pronouns seems bad, people definitely shouldn't invade other sovereign nations over a linguistics issue. (lol I kid, just a light barb about your use of hyperbole.) But honestly, what do you mean by 'go to war'? For the most part I don't see a great deal of vitriol from the so-called 'woke' crowd about simple pronoun mistakes, more just a 'hey just so you know, this person prefers they/them pronouns' or whatever the case may be. I have definitely seen stronger criticism where it is clear that people are making a point of intentionally not using someone's preferred pronouns, which is honestly reasonable, because where there is intent, it is clear that someone is deliberately addressing someone else in a manner they don't want to be addressed, which seems somewhat disrespectful. BTW let's have an aside about trans people, because they're a somewhat likely candidate for preferring a different pronoun to what people might assume. A statistic that you might occasionally see regarding trans people is that amongst that section of the population, there is a relatively high percentage of people with depression, with suicidal thoughts, or who have attempted suicide. The statistic I just found from a quick internet search was something like 43% of people interviewed had attempted suicide. (This was in Australia.) Interestingly though, there were a few factors that were noted to reduce that statistic. Things like access to gender affirming surgery or hormones, social support from friends, family, co-workers etc, and lack of institutional discrimination. You know, things like just treating them like the gender they identify as, including using preferred pronouns. So, when people advocate for using others' preferred pronouns, one of the reasons is it's just better for their mental health, and at the risk of being DRAMATIC, is one of the many things that contributes towards making people less likely to try to kill themselves. To remove it from the context of trans people, I've known people who preferred to be known by their middle name, or by a certain version of their first name, and addressing them by the way they prefer, and making sure they're OK with what I'm calling them, is just common courtesy, and if I were to intentionally call them by a name or version of name that they didn't want to be called, that would be a jerk move. Now, I'm not as familiar with some of the discourse around safe spaces and trigger warnings. They're just a few of many things that I've seen held up as a straw man far more often than I've seen demands for either. Having said that, neither are really unreasonable things to exist. It's why content warnings exist in media in the first place. People want to know what they're getting into. If you take a victim of sexual assault to see a movie about sexual assault without warning them beforehand, that's kind of a jerk move, the same as if you take someone with conflict related PTSD into a movie with a lot of gunfire. It's a considerate move to 'warn' people that media might include one of their 'triggers', and no one should be mocked for doing this. Regarding Agatha Christie, as previously pointed out, this is not what censorship means. A publishing house electing to modify the content of their own works is just editing. It's always happened, it happened before when, for example, they edited Agatha Christie's book 'Ten Little (N-words)' (which also contained that word repeatedly throughout) to 'And Then There Were None,' or to 'Ten Little Indians.' The UK edition apparently didn't completely phase out the original title until 1985. I'm not sure whether that move received the same kind of performative, misguided outrage as the recent move. Probably more outrage than when they BRUTALLY CENSORED Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by calling it The Sorcerer's Stone in the USA. Edits happen for all kinds of reasons, but for some reason it's only the ones designed to remove slurs and stuff like that which receive performative outrage. (Although to be fair a lot of people did mock the USA for being perceived as not educated/smart enough to read a book called The Philosopher's Stone) I started writing this before I went to netball, so there's probs been some more responses by now, but I don't want to lose my progress so JUST PO