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radius777

radius777's Journal
radius777's Journal
December 16, 2021

My fear is we still don't know

what this SCOTUS would do. Roberts wouldn't go along but who knows what the other 5 would do, who just upheld the absurd Texas anti-choice bounty law.

IIRC, all of the cases SCOTUS ruled on during the 2020 election were related to state election law and process issues, not deeper Constitutional questions such as having legislatures select alternate slates of electors, having the VP reject electors, having it thrown into the House, etc.

Nowhere in the Constitution is there a right for voters to select the electors. The right is that of the state legislatures which have in all states decided to 'allow' the voters to do so. IOW, it has become a custom enshrined in state laws, but a rogue RW SCOTUS could decide to revert to an 'originalist' reading of the Constitution.

December 16, 2021

I don't think you get it. She posed a hypothetical

whereby Republicans attained power via non-democratic means. Biden/Dems should use every available legal mechanism (including martial law if necessary) to stop such a coup, until democratic order can be restored. The purpose of such a measure would not be to keep Biden/Dems in power, but simply to ensure that there is a democratic transfer of power.

Fascism in Europe rose not because it was strong, but because democracy was weak, and because pro-democracy people blindly followed norms while fascists did not.

December 16, 2021

+1. Republicans fight dirty

and we can't continue to play by standard rules when they've thrown out the rulebook.

If they throw out democracy to attain power then we'll have no choice but to fight fire with fire.

Authoritarians always depend upon other people following norms while they don't - that is their biggest advantage.

December 15, 2021

Illegal immigration, supply chain/inflation, voting rights, Afghanistan, covid, crime.

Biden's poll numbers started tanking when he/Mayorkas started lifting the restrictions at the border, which then acted as a magnet for more people to come. Mass immigration is not popular with any voting bloc, even Latinos, who then have to compete with the new arrivals for housing and jobs. In fact Trump did better with Latinos and Black male voters than Republicans typically do, possibly due to his hard stance on the border.

Voting Rights and Policing Reform. Many PoC and others are very disappointed that Dems/Biden are not going to the mat for voting rights while the GOP runs their suppression game all over the country.

Supply chain/inflation/gas prices. It's the economy stupid as Big Dog told us. Voters will always blame who is in power and there is no way to get around this. Biden has to do more to solve these issues or Dems will pay.

Afghanistan. Alot of women voters and others felt the withdrawal was grossly mismanaged, and now the Taliban is control of the country.

Covid. People are just sick of covid and will blame whoever is in power if it is not solved. Biden is doing all he can, but the dummies won't take the vaccine. Hopefully the antiviral pills will be a gamechanger that will sharply lower hospitilization and deaths.

Crime. crime is up greatly in many major cities which are mostly controlled by Dems. Adams was elected in NYC in response, we'll see if he creates a new template that can balance racial/social justice with safety. Being a black man and former policeman he would have the best perspective.

December 15, 2021

'Tax and spend liberal' is a racist and classist narrative

likely created by Lee Atwater, that implies that liberals tax white people and the middle class to the benefit of the poor and minorities.

The fact is FDR created the middle class by taxing the rich and corporations to the benefit of regular people. So it literally is taxing and spending but not in the way the 'tax and spend' epithet implies.

December 14, 2021

There are also some clueless folks

who think that anyone pro-technology or secular is somehow 'liberal' or more progressive. This is simply false, as most of these guys are libertarians and oligarchs of the worst kind.

There are also 'deeply embedded trolls' ie RW posters on liberal message boards and blogs who make it a long term project to gently push RW narratives while artfully blending in.

December 14, 2021

The police unjustly kill and jail lots of whites,

but just like tax cuts White America tends to believe that since it hurts PoC more then it's a good thing (or at least not that bad).

Also many whites have a Mayberry view of how the police actually operate.

The cops are often unqualified (overweight, unathletic, unintelligent, personality disorders) for the job they do, and tend to reach for their gun first to make up for their deficits. An athletic and smart cop can easily subdue a suspect with minimal harm to the suspect - an incompetent slob cannot and needs to fire his/her gun.

The cops often lack ethics and are corrupt, and will arrest more people to fulfill quotas and get more overtime, fabricate evidence so DA's (who are politically motivated) can get convictions. The system sucks and is not based on justice.

December 13, 2021

Musk is a power hungry pretentious dork

of the types that have fucked up our country over the past 50 years, that tend to be adherents to some brand of sociopathic libertarianism, which is an ideology that is antithetical to egalitarianism and democracy. Time Traitor of the Year would be a more apt commendation.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/08/elon-musk-slams-build-back-better-electric-car-incentive
Elon Musk slams Biden’s Build Back Better bill and its electric car incentives
Critics suggest the multibillionaire is annoyed that Tesla’s nonunion-made cars wouldn’t qualify for the subsidy
Musk, the multibillionaire founder of the electric car company Tesla, said that if he were in charge of the federal government “I would just can this whole bill. That’s my recommendation.” The entrepreneur, speaking at a Wall Street Journal summit on Monday, added: “It might be better if the bill doesn’t pass because we’ve spent so much money, you know, it’s like the federal budget deficit is insane.”
December 11, 2021

F'in greedy ass company - corporate America earns its bad reputation.

We're in the middle of a pandemic where alot of these companies made record profits while regular people wound up on bread lines, ie a K shaped recovery. It is the workers who risked getting covid, who worked long hours, who kept this economy running - and it is the workers who deserve to be paid and treated properly, full stop.

December 11, 2021

+1. The greedy hand of the one percent is behind all of this,

they're the ones who funded the stop the steal stuff, the voter suppression movement (which didn't begin with Trump, it was standard Republican policy in the Obama era), anti-abortion bills, anti-gay bills etc. They own the Supreme Court. They don't want democracy. The alt-right clowns and insurrectionists are the visible face of Trumpism but the 'invisible hand' is that of the one percent.

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