don't give them any ideas.



luckily, such a law would be largely unenforceable...

I think. I can't say to what lengths those lunatics would go to attempt to, though

Sorry, too late. They are beyond parody.

https://x.com/Heritage/status/1662534135762624520?s=20

I wish I could say I was surprised.

I think I would have at least a smidgeon of respect if they just came out and said they wanted to install a religious theocracy. At least I could somewhat respect the honesty.

I respect someone more for telling me they hate me, rather than someone who pretends to be my friend but makes every attempt to fuck me over when the opportunity presents itself.

you can keep your respect I think, I mean they are unhidden because they are acting for so long now they can not hide much more

well yes, because anyone with two brain cells rattling around in their noggin can see clear as day what they're doing.
But, like I said they're doing it with this veneer of being benevolent, as if their way is for the good of the country and for mankind...aka, "pretending to be my friend"

It's completely absurd

any good chance this lying sack of shit senator doesn't get re-elected, or does getting called out for being a liar become a badge of honour in the GOP? I know the answer, but maybe one of you kind folks will lie to me and tell me she doesn't have a chance. Nancy Mace is also a real piece of work. She was on Real Time last year, and she almost seemed reasonable. Kind of impressive she could reel herself in that well for around 40 minutes. Mace and that Lara Logan have both been sexually assaulted. The Oompa Loompa cult never disappoints.

Nancy Mace called out how difficult it is for victims of sexual assault to speak out, played victim when asked how she could support Donald Trump, and then defamed the shit out of Trump's victim.

There are few souls more vile than that of Nancy Mace.

To be fair, to be fair

...
....

there's always Lauren Boubert

I don't know if you guys have read about it, but did anyone else at least hear about the footage of that one 15 year old hostage who was m̶u̶r̶d̶e̶r̶e̶d̶ "accidentally shot" by police? All while following their orders to be led to safety? Anyone want to guess how many of those cops were held accountable in any serious capacity?

I've been pretty vocally anti-law enforcement before on here, but surely someone else has some input here.

This shit continues to happen and America as a society just, at best, begrudgingly accepts it. Or at least enough people to where not enough is being done. It isn't as if this is just one isolated incident, either. This shit happens far too often for a group of individuals who are given the level of authority and power that they wield.

What would you guys think needs to be done for sweeping police reform in America? Because this is something I feel very strongly about and think we need to seriously address this as a nation. I'm not saying nothing is being done, because there are a lot of people who are really trying. But it isn't enough people and the reforms being passed aren't going far enough in my opinion.

Ezadara, wya ? We don't see eye to eye on very much, but surely you have to have some input on this topic. There might be something you know that I don't regarding this topic. Maybe we'll even agree on something for once...

Kids get mowed down in elementary schools and we can't agree on even a small fix.

I didn't hear about the cops killing yet another person with zero repercussions, but nothing is changing in regards to our law enforcement.

I'm not so sure its the same problem nation wide since police administration is more local and state based, but there are definitely several reforms that would go a long way. Better data on use of force collated at the federal level, better use of force training, more body cameras, transparent police disciplinary process that are independent of department and union pressures, de-militarization of training and equipment, reigning in qualified immunity. That's all pretty neutral stuff, more controversial reforms include things like increasing efforts to route out far right extremist police while also politically ostracizing far left reformers who call for abolishing the police. My take is low hanging fruit that is agreeable is the best type of reform to focus on because you can get realistic change to increase accountability, like with body cameras.

Well, a lot of the policies/training/etc are determined by state and locality, sure. But the issues that plague law enforcement seem to be rather consistent and universal across the board. You can't find one state in the country where there isn't a litany of common grievances against the institution and the people who work in it.

Regarding the bodycam thing, I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that there are still quite a few police agencies that don't even require bodycams at all. I personally think there should be some sort of federal law that requires all cops, regardless of what role they play or where they police, to wear bodycams when interacting with the public. How that would be implemented and how it would work, I don't know, and I won't pretend to. But I can't see how it wouldn't be of some benefit to both the police and to citizens. It's a generally unbiased and easily accessible technology that can protect all parties involved in case some shit goes down.

Better use of force training barely scratches the surface, they need better training in general. I mean you can spend about 5 minutes on YouTube and it won't take very long to find instances where the officer doesn't even really know the laws, and in some cases have even admitted to not knowing the law under oath. How is that even able to fly at all? I'm not even asserting that they should be able to recite the law word by word upon requst (though that would certainly be useful), but having some basic knowledge I would think is pretty vital.

Also, I don't believe de-militarization is ever going to happen in any of our lifetimes. Politicians, regardless of what letter they have behind their name, have a vested interest in keeping their attack dogs well-armed and well fed. Law enforcement is usually exempt from any and all gun control laws, and many of them even have legit military equipment like select-fire M4s and M16s in their armory. I'd be remiss if I left out the MRAPs and shit. How often they're used is a different discussion, but they have full access to them if they so desire. What's wild is that these same agencies who are vying for more money and resources aren't even using them on the things that matter, like better training. They're just buying more expensive toys.

As far as reigning in qualified immunity, I think some states like New Mexico and Colorado have implemented limits on QI or have outright eliminated it. I'm not 100% on that so don't quote me on it. I don't know how effective it's been, though.

Ending qualified immunity helps. So does clarifying what police do and don't need to be involved in-- for example, implementing policies that explicitly transfer responsibility for behavioral health calls to mental health crisis response personnel-- although that's when you tend to run into conservatives howling about how the goddamn libs want to defund the police. Strengthening the process for officers who are found unfit to serve in one jurisdiction to be decertified in others helps, too; a lot of officers involved in excessive force incidents had past histories of misconduct and there need to be more reforms that make it clear that a certain degree of past misconduct means you don't get to be a law enforcement officer anywhere.

I think fundamentally it comes down to reducing, as much as possible, interactions between police and the public in policing situations. I don't mean getting rid of your neighborhood coffee with a cop or whatever, but the fundamental issue here is overpolicing-- police are simply too involved in too many situations they don't need to be involved in. Traffic stops, mental health crises, homeless issues, substance abuse problems-- police don't need to be involved in these situations unless there's a clear need for criminal law enforcement. When we reduce the scope of scenarios in which the public comes into contact with policing, police violence decreases dramatically. So that's what we need to do. Replace police responses to behavioral crises with social workers and clinicians, or adopt a co-responder model where police accompany those specialists and defer to them, not the other way around. Put community service workers in charge of things like traffic enforcement where, other than a few high-profile incidents (and I mean, like, a handful over the last few decades) a gun is absolutely not necessary. Implement diversion programs to deal with substance abuse and homelessness. That sort of thing.

Some of this is being done at the state and local levels, but there needs to be progress federally too.

It seems like a lot of individual cops fall on one extreme or the other.

Many of them agree that law enforcement wears too many hats in society and would be ecstatic to trade off some of those responsibilities to other divisions and organizations. On the other hand you have just as many cops who insist that their services are needed for all of those things, just in case the individual being dealt with gets violent or whatever. Not a completely unreasonable consideration, as it isn't unheard of for some folks to become violent.

The funny thing is, though, when cops do respond to these scenes, they're the ones who escalate to violence. It's like they're allergic to the concept of de-escalation. They are the ones, if for no other reason than their presence alone, that make a bad situation worse. Uniformed police just aren't needed for those tasks.

I think I'd be more open to certain divisions of law enforcement who aren't uniformed and are specifically trained to deal with individuals in distress (homeless, mental health crisis, etc) if there is a particular concern for potential harm.

And then you have police unions...a huge fucking problem. I suspect they play a major role as to why there isn't more being done, on a state and local level, at least. I don't know how true that is, but they appear to have quite a lot of leverage and power and many experts have pointed to them as a giant roadblock for police reform.

In some localities, police unions are enormously powerful-- to the point that they become political forces whose endorsement of candidates for local office can be decisive. And given a lot of police reform is implemented at the local level, by city councilmembers and county supervisors, yeah, that does mean police unions can wind up in a position to block any meaningful reform.

in line with the GOP...

"A secessionist who married and abandoned a string of teenage girls, some of whom he abducted and one of whom was 12. That's who helped pass the 1864 Arizona abortion law that's now back on the books.

That's who is deciding women's health in the 21st c."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/po ... ude-jones/

would also love to see MTG's feed. she's like a Russian propagandist talking head. fuck her and all the idiots who continue to vote her into power. enough of the diplomacy and social etiquette.

I know you're upset about all of this, but what exactly do you want?

You wanna fist fight Republicans in the street?

It would certainly be quite cathartic.

where to start, and do either of us have the time?


Nah, I was more projecting I'm tired of trying to talk about them with any decency or forgiveness. I don't always succeed at that, but I do most often try. I've always judged her for being a fuckwad, but I tend to not go any further than agreeing with Hillary's comment of deplorables when talking about the nihilistic dullards who keep her at the table.

I did think it was a funny turn of events that MTG was recently talking about Ukraine, Russia, and Christianity, and then PBS dropped a solid piece on how Russia has from day one been systematically going after churches in Ukraine. The drivel she was repeating was met full-on with evidence of the contrary. They didn't mention her in their piece, but it would be difficult to believe someone at PBS wasn't acting in response.

Nice. I'm sure if there'd been a response it would've been some kind of complete lack of self awareness, Lauren Boebert style rant about what Joe Biden did.

anyone want to take a shot to explain why Ds aren't working with a small number of relatively sane Rs in the House? Nudge MTG to go through with ousting Johnson, and then work with that small group of Rs to put one of the Rs in the Speaker position, and then attempt to get some shit done? Ds don't actually want to get anything done either? Not possible in an election year? the Rs would end their political careers, so they couldn't get even a small number of them to go along?

it seems like such an obvious workaround to all these puerile, nihilistic wingnuts. If they all still went out for drinks and dinners after work like they used to, maybe this would be feasible.

Do democrats even have a candidate besides Biden? From the outside it seems like only Donald Trump is doing an electoral campaign.

That's interesting. Can you say it is actually an electoral campaign, since he never talks about any policy in any detail? He paints the world doom and gloom and cries about being the victim of everyone and everything, but he never actually talks about the job. X wouldn't happen under his watch, but X did indeed happen under his watch. Y would have never dared when he was in office, but Y did indeed dare, and more, when he was in office.

You must be getting a much different feed than we do in the US. Or have different expectations of politicians?

Marianne Williamson is actively running for the Democratic nomination, but has not won any delegates.

Dean Phillips and Jason Palmer both ran and secured a couple delegates, but have dropped out of the race.

Robert Kennedy Jr. originally contested the Democratic nomination but dropped out prior to the primaries and ran as an Independent instead.

It is very rare for an incumbent President to face a serious primary challenge when seeking re-election.

What's most interesting in this cycle, so far, are the surprisingly soft results for Republican "low dollar" fundraising efforts. (This is when funds are raised in small amounts by soliciting the 'common man'...and which is the historical backbone of any presidential candidate's bid to win. These efforts and funds are the 'work horse'.)

Trump proved to be a game-changer in fundraising - for both sides - in '16 and '20 as his presence generated massive response rates and dollars raised, but the returns for Republican efforts, so far in the cycle, are comparatively weak. There's a growing concern amongst Republican fundraisers and agencies that swaths of the Republican base - those needed to secure a Trump victory - may be 'sitting this one out'.
It's still early in the fundraising cycle, but 2020 returns through 1Q were far greater than those of 1Q24.

Any of those fundraising efforts are more likely to fund Trump's extensive legal fees than they are to fund traditional campaign expenses, though.

Why is that relevant?

If I were the type to regularly donate money to political figures, and the leader of my political party began to siphon all of that money to cover their legal bills, I might be inclined to donate less this year. Not every Republican donor is a raging Trumpite, after all.

I feel like Trump has this way of connecting with the working class of the USA that no other candidate has. I don't know how, but it would be cool to see some form of populist way of politics by the Democratic Party, one who resonates more with the injustices of the capitalist system and the struggles of the working class. It seems that, that kind of rhetoric made Trump very popular, putting Americans against immigrants and traditional politicians, but not against multi billionaire companies and the upper class who has the real economic and political power of the country.

To fight a right-wing populist, maybe a good contender would be a left-wing populist, much more in this context of high inflation and massive income inequality. I don't know if a CIA falcon like Biden is the correct candidate to fight that kind of politics, he is the perfect enemy for someone like Trump. Biden is an old politician, from the traditional democratic party and in which his government didn't bring any joy or power to the regular working class of the USA. There is this progressive rhetoric that most social democrats' politicians have that don't resonate with the real struggles of the American people.

I have talked with American friends and more or less this is what they think, from the outside it seems that this description of the reality is on point.

And yet Biden beat Donald Trump once, so we know that his brand can, in fact, beat Trump's right-wing populism.


His government boosted the wages of millions of workers by expanding overtime guarantees. It broke up agricultural monopolies to help out struggling farmers. It took some unprecedented steps to prevent union-busting-- some of the most drastic steps the government can take given current law is pretty restrictive on the government's ability to support unions. It cracked down on wage theft in industries with some of the most vulnerable workers. He put policies in place to increase the wages and negotiating power of contractors after years of them getting screwed over by lax federal regulations that open them to exploitation. He juiced the NLRB with the funding and guidance it needs to actually effectively advocate for and support workers after decades of neglect. He undid a bunch of Trump-era orders that made it harder for public employees to unionize and championed a collaborative rather than antagonistic approach to government unionization. Heck, he's the only president to ever hit the picket line alongside striking workers (while Donald Trump was down the street at a nonunion shop shilling for auto corporations).

That's just me trying to think of lesser known accomplishments that directly relate to workers-- I'm not even touching on his landmark legislation like the IRA or CHIPS which have created over 100,000 jobs and will create many more, many of them geared towards working-class Americans. I'm also not touching on other policies that aren't specifically about workers but still benefit working class Americans, like his unprecedented steps to crack down on exploitative anti-consumer practices or the stuff he's done to reduce the cost of living.

Frankly, Joe Biden is probably the single most pro-worker president of our lifetimes. I mean, by a lot, to an extent that even surprises me, to be honest. That doesn't automatically mean he's entitled to the votes of working-class Americans. It doesn't mean that there isn't still a lot of work that needs doing to support the working and middle class in America. And the truth is, many of these policies don't have immediate drastic effects, so it may not look at first glance like they're generating big improvements, particularly as the administration continues to grapple with inflation and an opposition House that doesn't want any of its priorities to pass. More needs to be done to inform voters about the things Biden has done. But this idea that Biden is just some old party hack who hasn't done anything for the working class-- it's just not true. It plays into Trump's nonsense about how he (a New York billionaire who inherited a fortune, spent years fleecing his workers and consumers, and then cut taxes for his rich buddies the second he got into office) is the actual working class champion. He's not. We can talk about why many voters think he is, but let's not just accept his premise and buy his false narrative on Biden.

Maybe your American friends think they know more than they actually do? That's a big problem everywhere, about everything. They don't believe in expertise, but they're experts in all things after reading a sentence or two or after listening to a 20-second tiktok.

I would never have known that Joe Biden was such a good president, every piece of information that reach outside of the US portray him as this Sleepy Joe guy that doesn't know where he is standing. If he is as good as you guys said, then he will have no problem winning the next election.

Nobody is saying he's going to win hands down. I'm saying you're too easily accepting this narrative that Biden has been unable to do anything for working Americans when he's actually gotten a lot done, on that and other fronts. The fact that his reelection bid against a guy with more indictments than IQ points is still close is more an indictment of the country than of him-- of our electoral system (even Trump's campaign doesn't think it's going to win the popular vote, they're solely aiming to win the Electoral College); of our media, which seems convinced that 'fair coverage' means 'you have to make both candidates look equally bad, even when they're clearly not'; of our voters, too many of whom are disengaged, uninformed, and unwilling to change either of those things; and of our political leaders, whose consistent willingness to choose cynicism and appeals to our worst impulses is in large part why our politics is so garbage at this point.

I realize that talking about pundits and political experts in America has become toxic because Republicans have so deeply fetishized 'the average American' who doesn't pay attention to or care about policy issues, but it's telling that, among the observers and analysts who do actually pay attention, hardly any of them say the problem is Biden isn't doing anything/enough. The recurring theme is "Biden finally did [insert popular policy that previous presidents have tried and failed to accomplish; infrastructure is a good example]. Why don't voters care?" The recurring theme is: Biden has done a lot. But under the stress of unprecedented polarization, rising political violence, and a media landscape that would rather run yet another headline about how a guy with a lifelong stutter isn't a terribly eloquent speaker, most voters just aren't noticing.

it only seems like he has a connection with the working class. There are three types of people he has a connection with,

1. The ignorant and the gullible who think a billionaire is in touch with them because he likes fast food. Meanwhile he is lying to them and playing to their biases and fears, all the while being part of the reason the working class are struggling to begin with
2. The Christian Taliban. They will let him play president as long as he promotes their radical Christian narrative. They want the USA to be a fascist Theocracy.
3. The uber rich oligarchs who benefit from his policies that are designed to maximize profits at the expense of the working class.

Abortion and the culture wars created by right wingers who still think you can "catch the gay" are going to be the deciding factors in the general election. Biden may not be popular or leading polls but most online polls are taken by keyboard warriors anyway, these days. The Trumpanzees I know in real life either haven't voted in decades but spout his disgusting rhetoric or they can't vote due to being ex-cons. His Bible stunt backfired for the most part. This election will be another election that will see more women and minorities sway the election. Abortion rights won in a lot of traditionally conservative states. Right wing populism has always been on the wrong side of history. Germany had right wing populism in the 30s and half the 40s.

when I read this, why am I sensing some underhanded, loaded and bullshit subtext?

I don't support Donald Trump if that is what you are implying. But I have never read good things about Joe Biden, quite the opposite, this is the first time that I have read such a fierce defense of his government.

People don’t need to personally like Biden or think that his administration is highly effective to recognize the fact that the alternative is magnitudes worse.

Nails it.