Sonic Youth Gossip - The Politics Thread

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

The Fucking GOP!!! You know....the fascist/racist/gunlobby party. (How am I doing so far?)

you know the expression one dead person is a tragedy, one thousand dead are statistic?

like, we know, really, the rest of us know this, and don't need convincing.

the people who need convincing... hahha i don't know what to tell you.

can you?

I'm lost, Dude. Ya lost me.

And here is The Repuke's shining achievement for today: (They don't take Good Friday off.)

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcar...pill-approval/

I always see this as battle/war. I'm pretty sure that Roe v Wade overturn has hurt them thus far.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

I'm lost, Dude. Ya lost me.

hahahhaa yeah i lost myself this is why i ended with a question

i think i was trying to say something like:

those who know the republicans are full of bad actors and bad ideas, don't need convincing,

those who need to be convinced need a face (not an idea) to pin this onto.

the republican party has not yet consolidated onto a single face

but it was late and i had drinks and i could not stitch it all together and such is life lol

I'm having a hard time believing that it was merely coincidental that the good blue Washington Obama judge ruled against the bad red Texas Trumpy judge within literally minutes.

I guess that is where we are at now, right? Go judge shopping according to red/blue.

Symbols, I'm convinced that the Dems can go after Repukes as a brand. Every hour there is something extreme/maga/wrong to point to. And I know that most Repuke voters won't budge. But some might. What do they call them? Independents? Swing? There's maybe a few hundred left in USA, right? :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

Symbols, I'm convinced that the Dems can go after Repukes as a brand. Every hour there is something extreme/maga/wrong to point to. And I know that most Repuke voters won't budge. But some might. What do they call them? Independents? Swing? There's maybe a few hundred left in USA, right? :)

i hear you but i'm not sure there is a formula to do it just yet. i mean they went after the "ultramaga" in the midterms and it kinda worked?

but you gotta keep dry gunpowder for when you need it most.

I think you and I disagree on the current conditions:

You think that a storm may be coming.

I think that tornados have touched down everywhere right now.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

I think you and I disagree on the current conditions:

You think that a storm may be coming.

I think that tornados have touched down everywhere right now.

yes the big storm would be if orange julius caesar were to be acquitted and reelected and carried out his "finish the job" threats

for now it's just... stormy ;)

"The Storm"... Isn't that some QAnon bullcrap? Stop it!

Lol.

Nothing is off the table anymore: Even if The Orange Turd is deemed guilty, he might still be POTUS anyway?

Over the last few years, every single time I thought "Now I've seen it all", I hadn't.

Anyone seem my umbrella?

Quote:

Originally Posted by tw2113

Anyone seem my umbrella?

Wonderful typo!

(Stolen from the internet....)

Please give me an umbrella!
It is so glittery,
Need to save them from daylight!

Please give me an umbrella!
It is so pouring,
Need to protect them from charging water!

Please give me an umbrella!
It is so scary, everyone carries gun,
At least I can carry the umbrella to protect them!

They are flimsy, delicate and hope for every one of us,
So, let me protect them!

Please give me an umbrella!

From The New York Times:

Quote:

The weird new war on "woke" money

What’s so bad about a digital dollar?

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

“Florida,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis in his November victory speech, “is where woke goes to die.” Indeed, DeSantis — who currently seems to be the only halfway viable rival to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — has sought to crack down on wokeness in all its forms, whether that means acknowledging the role of racism in American history or accepting same-sex relationships or allowing the creation of a central bank digital currency.

Wait, what?

No, seriously: On March 20, DeSantis, speaking from a podium bearing a sign reading “Big Brother’s Digital Dollar,” announced that he plans to introduce legislation that would ban Floridians from making use of a digital currency issued by the federal government. Such a digital currency, he asserted, would be used to “impose an E.S.G. agenda” and would, for example, prevent people from spending too much on gas or from buying rifles.

If this sounds crazy, that’s because it is. I have no idea whether DeSantis believes any of it, or even knows what a central bank digital currency is or what it would do (more on that later). And it’s possible that he’s taking this stand out of general paranoia.

But my guess is that he’s being influenced by people who do in fact know what a digital currency might do and fear that it might make it more difficult to engage in such un-woke activities as tax evasion and money laundering. In that sense, DeSantis’s new crusade is a lot like the vote by House Republicans — one of their first legislative moves after taking control of the chamber — to rescind funding that would allow the I.R.S. to crack down on tax cheats.

Now, the United States doesn’t currently have a central bank digital currency. Still, the Federal Reserve has been studying the issue, and might conceivably issue such a currency in the future. If it did, it’s highly unlikely that a state government would have the right to prohibit its use. But first things first: What is this all about?

For the most part, our economy already runs on digital currencies, a.k.a. bank accounts. No, your bank balance isn’t a pile of cash sitting in some vault. It’s a string of 1s and 0s on a server somewhere. And most of us make most of our payments by moving those 1s and 0s around, making bank transfers on our computers, tapping or swiping our debit cards or using apps like Apple Pay and Venmo on our smartphones.

But some people don’t have bank accounts, while others, for reasons I’ll get into momentarily, don’t trust banks. So people still hold paper cash — a lot of paper cash. In fact, the value of paper currency out there is bizarre: $2.3 trillion, or roughly $7,000 for every man, woman and child in America. About half that total is probably held overseas, but still.

What’s that currency being used for? An important clue is the fact that about 80 percent of the total value is held in $100 bills, which are very difficult to use in daily life.

Why would someone sit on a large stack of $100 bills? Some people may not trust banks to keep their money safe. As the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank reminded us, while accounts worth less than $250,000 are guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, amounts in excess of that threshold can be lost if a bank fails, and if the F.D.I.C. doesn’t determine that depositors must be made whole to preserve financial stability.

But at least some, and by my guess most, of the vast hoard of Benjamins out there is held by people who want to avoid banks’ reporting requirements in order to hide activities like tax evasion, illegal purchases of drugs and weapons, extortion and so on.

The thing is, whatever one’s reason for holding a big pile of cash may be, paper currency is inconvenient. People can and do keep stacks of bills in their home safes and do business with briefcases full of greenbacks, but that’s increasingly annoying in a digital era. So there’s a demand for digital currency — virtual equivalents of old-fashioned cash that can be stored and transferred electronically.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin were supposed to meet that demand, but as the Federal Reserve study notes, they “have not been widely adopted as a means of payment” because their prices are extremely volatile, they’re difficult to use and they “make consumers vulnerable to loss, theft and fraud.”

To the extent that cryptocurrencies have been used for legitimate transactions — as opposed to, say, ransom payments — the currencies in question have often been “stablecoins,” whose issuers promise to redeem the coins on demand for ordinary dollars. The problem is that a stablecoin issuer is basically just a reinvented version of an ordinary bank, without the regulations and guarantees that make conventional banks mostly safe. Indeed, the stablecoin sector has already suffered some spectacular failures, in which coin holders have lost much or all of their money.

Hence the proposal for a central bank digital currency, which would basically be a government-issued stablecoin whose tokens wouldn’t be pegged to the dollar — they would legally be dollars, and hence risk-free. It would capture much of the appeal of those stacks of physical cash, without the practical drawbacks.

The easiest way to create such a currency would be to allow individuals to hold deposits directly at the Federal Reserve. But as the Fed paper says, “The Federal Reserve Act does not authorize direct Federal Reserve accounts for individuals.” What it doesn’t say is that any attempt to create such accounts would provoke a firestorm of opposition from the banking industry, which doesn’t want to have to compete for customers with a basically infallible government bank. So if a digital currency were to be created, it would be run through private-sector intermediaries.

These intermediaries would, however, be required to obey the same rules that apply to other financial institutions, rules “designed to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.” In particular, like banks and other financial institutions, these new intermediaries would be “required to verify the identity of their customers.”

And that observation brings the whole controversy into focus.

Right now the demand for cryptocurrency comes partly from people who honestly, rightly or wrongly, don’t trust banks, and partly from people engaged in illicit activities. The former group would probably flock to a central bank digital currency, which would offer the convenience of banking without its perceived risks. This would, however, help to deflate the crypto bubble. Maybe more important, it would suggest that those still using private digital currencies are probably up to no good. In effect, it would strip away the veil obscuring the dark side of crypto.

Which tells us what DeSantis’s attack on central bank digital currency would actually do. It wouldn’t protect the rights of Floridians to buy gas or guns; instead, it would protect the ability of wiseguys to evade taxes, launder money, buy and sell illegal drugs, and engage in extortion.

But hey, I guess thinking that money laundering and extortion are bad things is just another example of the wokeness that DeSantis is trying to kill.

I love this guy Bragg, who isn't taking any shit from that moron Jordan.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

I love this guy Bragg, who isn't taking any shit from that moron Jordan.

I just read he sued the motherfucker! Pretty sweet. This Bragg is more hardcore than Billy Bragg.

for those who kept complaining about manchin, like...

All or nothing at all
Half a love never appealed to me
If your heart never could yield to me
Then I'd rather have nothing at all

All or nothing at all
If it's love, there is no in between
Why begin and cry for something that might have been
No, I'd rather have nothing at all

(etc)

you're gonna miss him when he's gone:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...2024-campaign/

Have you seen what that silly bitch Greene is saying now?

Dems....she is the gift that keeps on giving. Too bad so few of you will fight hard and point out the sound of crickets coming from Repukes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

Have you seen what that silly bitch Greene is saying now?

Dems....she is the gift that keeps on giving. Too bad so few of you will fight hard and point out the sound of crickets coming from Repukes.

is there anybody left who doesn't know?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skuj

Have you seen what that silly bitch Greene is saying now?

Dems....she is the gift that keeps on giving. Too bad so few of you will fight hard and point out the sound of crickets coming from Repukes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

is there anybody left who doesn't know?

Any publicity is good publicity for her. Jamie Raskin has rationally, eloquently destroyed her more than once on the House floor, but to her is a win-win because it's Jamie Second Impeachment/Jan. 6 Select Committee Raskin. To quote Death Grips, "I've seen footage" of her fans in Georgia and they say "she's doing exactly what they sent her to Washington to do", which apparently is fuckall for GA.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

yup. she's "one of them."

Sorry for Krugmanizing this thread, but this is another good 'un:

Quote:

Biden versus the chaos caucus

A few ways to get out of this debt ceiling mess

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

Let’s say you took out a large mortgage to buy a house. Maybe you made the right decision, maybe you didn’t. Either way, you signed the contract. And your next monthly payment on that mortgage is due.

So how do you respond? Do you (a.) grumble but pay the bill, since that’s what you promised to do? Or do you (b.) refuse to pay, giving a speech about how debt is bad and your family must cut spending, even though defaulting on your mortgage will ruin your credit rating and could cause you to lose your house?

On Monday, Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House, decided to go for option (b.). Or maybe “decided” is the wrong word. McCarthy may be the weakest speaker in modern history, the notional leader of a caucus seemingly united by little but its loathing for President Biden, probably including a number of members who would rather see the U.S. economy burn than allow Biden to govern successfully. It’s not even clear that McCarthy could deliver on the dead-on-arrival, vague sketch of a deal he sort of offered in a speech at the New York Stock Exchange.

The issue at hand is whether to raise the federal debt ceiling. This ceiling is a peculiar — and destructive — quirk of the U.S. budget process. Here’s how it works: First, Congress passes legislation that determines federal spending and tax collection. This legislation may lead to a budget deficit. Whether that’s a good idea is beside the point: Congress made its choices, and the Treasury Department must do whatever is necessary to honor duly enacted legislation, which may require borrowing to cover the deficit.

But under current law Congress must also vote a second time to authorize federal borrowing by raising the limit on the allowed amount of debt. And we’re only a few months from the point where America won’t be able to keep paying its bills — that is, spend the money Congress has already told it to spend — unless Congress votes to raise that limit.

Yet now House Republicans aren’t willing to raise the limit unless they are given policy concessions they would never be able to enact via the normal legislative process. Basically, they’re saying, “Nice economy you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Indeed, failing to raise the debt limit would have disastrous consequences, laid out in a useful recent paper from Moody’s Analytics titled “Going Down the Debt Limit Rabbit Hole.” At minimum, it would disrupt the functioning of the federal government. At worst, it would precipitate a global financial crisis, possibly as bad or worse than the crisis of 2008 — because U.S. government debt, normally considered the ultimate safe asset, is the linchpin of financial markets around the world, and many markets might freeze if investors lose confidence that we’ll honor that debt.

What can be done to avoid this potential disaster? McCarthy’s suggestions about what a deal might involve are barely worth discussing. On one side, giving in to blackmail — for that’s what a deal would amount to — would set a terrible precedent. On the other, it’s not clear that McCarthy could make good on a deal even if the Biden administration were willing to go along.

Still, for what it’s worth, McCarthy seems fixated on the idea that many Americans are refusing to work because they’re living off government aid and that we should impose more stringent work requirements on programs like food stamps and Medicaid. In reality, the employed percentage of Americans in their prime working years is near a 20-year high. And furthermore, there is abundant evidence that work requirements don’t actually encourage work — all they do is throw up bureaucratic hurdles that end up denying aid to people who really need it.

But this is, as I said, beside the point. What will actually happen next?

One possibility is that faced with looming financial chaos, McCarthy will allow a floor vote on the debt ceiling, and that a few sane members of his party will cross the aisle and help Democrats raise the ceiling. As far as I can tell, that’s the Biden administration’s plan A.

What about plan B? There are several options. Moody’s Analytics seems to think that the Biden administration might simply ignore the debt limit, invoking the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says that the validity of U.S. public debt “shall not be questioned.”

Another possibility is the famous platinum coin. U.S. law allows the federal government to issue commemorative platinum coins in any denomination it chooses; so it could in principle mint a coin notionally worth, say, $3 trillion, deposit it at the Federal Reserve and pay its bills by drawing down the account thereby created. (The Fed would offset any effect on the money supply by selling off some of its large portfolio of U.S. government bonds, so this would in effect simply be borrowing through the back door.)

Yet another possibility would be to issue “premium bonds.” These are bonds that offer an unusually large “coupon,” i.e., annual interest payment, relative to their principal, the amount they pay when they come due. The Treasury could auction off these bonds for substantially more than their face value, in effect borrowing without increasing the official size of the debt.

All of these plans have drawbacks, and considered in isolation they each sound a bit silly. But they should be graded on a curve — compared not with normal fiscal management, but with the catastrophic consequences if the U.S. government simply stops paying its bills.

One thing should be clear: It’s unlikely that this situation will be resolved with something resembling the deal that ended the debt ceiling crisis of 2011. Democrats have gotten somewhat tougher: They believe that President Barack Obama gave in to blackmail, and they won’t do it again. Republicans, on the other hand, have gotten a lot crazier; even if Democrats were willing to make a deal, it’s highly doubtful that McCarthy could persuade his caucus to accept it.

I wish I could offer reassurance that all of this will work out. But I can’t. When the party that controls one body of Congress has no interest in keeping America governable, catastrophe is always a real possibility.

Quick Hits

More about premium bonds.

Why not consols (perpetual bonds whose principal is never repaid)?

Debt in a very long perspective.

Debt is high. Interest payments, not so much.

A sobering analysis from Foreign Affairs:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middl...state-solution

Don't "tl;dr", peoples.

Fox settled with Dominion!! Around 800mil I think!!

I still have faith: Lying matters!

Now, how come Trump is not in jail yet?

I just went to the Fox News site. The main headline is something about how Biden made a lot of money. I quickly scrolled down, my brain cells committing suicide as I perused......

.....not one peep about the settlement.

Joe Exotic is running for president, from jail? hahahaha

it's old news I guess, but I missed it

Quote:

Originally Posted by _tunic_

Joe Exotic is running for president, from jail? hahahaha

it's old news I guess, but I missed it

Didn't some pundits theorize that Trump could do that?

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

A sobering analysis from Foreign Affairs:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middl...state-solution

Don't "tl;dr", peoples.

it's a bit of a tldr though because there is no evident solution to that problem. none that will work anyway. the authors say "the u.s. should..." and of course it should, but the would is another story that demands a big "HOW."

to always win is a kind of curse, and israel is stuck in a dangerous course right now as a result of endless victory.

and the us is stuck along for the ride as well, cognitive dissonance be damned.

i mean, the path has been going in this direction since the lebanon war, and then later when there was a chance to fix things but they killed rabin it kept going unabated. then sharon sees the light or something and conveniently dies. and so always further to the right. seems like a curse to me.

so how do you alter the course of a perpetual turn to the right when you get a sense of victory from it? like, actually alter the course? because anyone can issue "shoulds" and jeremiads. they are free, and have no tradeoffs.

the logical conclusion, it seems to me, the authors want israel to be handed a defeat as a result of its slow creep into fascism. but it's ever so slow that nobody wants to notice, and it's just "terribly inconvenient" to notice at this juncture.

so nobody who can do anything about this will "notice" -- except for israelis themselves opposing their own descent. as they should. they're the last hope. it's a well educated country, there's a tradition of moral examination of one's actions, there's a conscience, there's some hope there. of course on the opposing camp there is also nationalism, religious fanaticism, and the ability to twist any argument into self-justification.

but for the usa to take sides here...? an unfathomable leap (even though netanyahu had no qualms supporting trump and attacking obama).

personally i don't see a way forward here. but i'm not an expert. i'm just an agnostic observer. and it looks fucking terrible. and it's easy to moralize, but coming up with actual actionable solutions is a ton harder. show me a credible one.

as far as i can see it's only up to israeli citizens themselves to decide what they will do with their own fate. i'm not saying that there aren't other people involved or affected or responsible, that there are no humanitarian or moral issues etc. no, i'm not saying that.

i mean they are the only ones with power to actually do anything at this particular juncture. everybody's future (not just their own) is in their hands.

--

furthermore... i think that perhaps american scolding could only foment a greater siege mentality and further push them to the right...

Got this email from Gavin Newsom/Campaign For Democracy PAC:

Quote:

If you want to see the outcome of Ron DeSantis’ Stop W.O.K.E. Act, look no further than changes made to a First Grade Social Studies text about Rosa Parks.

Old Version: “The law said African Americans had to give up their seats on the bus if a white person wanted to sit down.”

Changed to: “She was told to move to a different seat because of the color of her skin.”

Further edited to: “She was told to move to a different seat. She did not. She did what she believed was right.”

That’s right. She was just told to move to a different seat. That’s it. It’s insane.

When asked, the publisher said they made the change in response to their "interpretation" of Ron DeSantis’ bill.

Just two weeks ago, I was in Alabama at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, the place where the Montgomery Bus Boycott was organized in 1955 — the day after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to follow a law requiring Black riders to give up their seat to whites.

It is at the same time a chilling reminder of how far we’ve come and a reminder of how people like Ron DeSantis are so eager to take us back.

If this is as enraging for you as it is for me, here’s something you can do about it today:

Please contribute $3, or whatever you can afford, directly to the Florida Democratic Party where they are working every day to replace far-right Republican legislators who support the Stop W.O.K.E. Act with Democrats who will fight against the DeSantis agenda.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Soup Nazi

...

i can't quote inside your quote. but the motherfuckers...

tucker carlson now going to newsmax or to be sued into oblivion? or both?

place your bets...

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

tucker carlson now going to newsmax or to be sued into oblivion? or both?

A comment by a YouTube user:

"Fun fact about testifying: you're NOT allowed to answer a question with a question. I haven't heard Carlson make a declarative sentence in years!"

Predictably, several media outlets and a large swath of the great unwashed are bothsidesing this: Fucker Carlson on the right, Don Lemon on the left, now let's go have a beer. MORONS.

Damn fact-checkers, man.

Quote:

No, Tucker Carlson Has Not Died

The television host was recently ousted from Fox News.

Claim:
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson died on April 24, 2023.

Rating:
FALSE

On April 24, 2023, news broke that influential Fox News host Tucker Carlson had been ousted from the network. Fox News said it had "agreed" to part ways and that it wanted to "thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor."

Soon after the news spread, Twitter users claimed that Tucker Carlson had died.

On April 25, 2023, another Twitter user posted a digitally edited article with a fake headline claiming "Tucker Carlson has died from suicide."

We have found no evidence that is the case. The above tweet also appears to replace the headline of this CNN article with a fake one. If Carlson had died, it would have been major headline news. There is also no official confirmation from Carlson's representatives and his family.

Instead, the news headlines have been dominated by Carlson's ouster from Fox News. His departure came a week after Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million over the network's dissemination of election lies; Carlson also was exposed for disparaging his colleagues. A former booker also filed a lawsuit against Carlson alleging sexism on his show.

During his time at Fox, Carlson was hugely popular with viewers. He was often accused of racism and of propagating the "great replacement theory," which posits that Americans are being replaced by immigrants. He has also been the subject of numerous fact checks on this website.

This is not the first death hoax surrounding Carlson. In May 2017, a rumor spread that he had been killed in an automobile collision.

Death hoaxes about celebrities and public figures are common, and often emerge when a big news story brings the individual into the spotlight, which results in more engagement with the fake news. In our past analysis of death hoaxes, we learned this form of junk news, designed to get gullible readers to pay attention because a famous person is involved, is often clickbait, or in rare cases simply misreporting based on a misunderstanding.

Given that there has been no official confirmation from Carlson's team, and no real reporting on this, we rate this claim as "False."

Bummer. :D

@goatedtranny is a 10/10 username, oh my god.

I love the part that says, in all seriousness, "Given that there has been no official confirmation from Carlson's team [that the guy croaked himself]..."