Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass. Most people are good.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Git your coffee, and get ready, here comes a Taylor Swift thread y'all

 

Why Trumpers are losing it over Taylor Swift

Swift goes to football games to support her boyfriend, shattering MAGA brains.


MAGA this week at last found its true, final, most hated enemy. Not Barack Obama. Not Hilary Clinton. Not Joe Biden. Not even Hunter Biden. No, the epitome of everything Trumpers set themselves against is not a politician at all, but that nefarious pop singer/songwriter, Taylor Swift.

Swift is not running for election and is not really a political figure. Thus targeting her seems at best pointless and at worst counterproductive for a political movement.

But the conservative media marketplace often has different incentives than the Republican Party — which is part of why the Republican Party is such a mess. Swift’s music now effectively functions as the soundtrack for the GOP crawling into a dumpster and setting itself on fire.

Why have Republicans chosen this moment for their much-more-than-two-minutes Swift hate? Well, this week Swift released a provocative album titled The GOP Sucks and So Does Donald Trump.

Ha ha. No, she didn’t do anything like that at all. Instead, her sin was … attending a football game. Last Sunday, she went to see the Kansas City Chiefs/Baltimore Ravens matchup because she’s dating Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce — who has been reviled by the right for making ads for the Pfizer covid vaccine and (gulp) alleged woke beer brand Bud Light. The Chiefs won, giving them a berth in the Super Bowl and destroying right-wing talking points about Swift being the Chiefs’ Yoko Ono.


Newsmax host Greg Kelly went as far Monday as to accuse Swifties of “elevating her to an idol … and you’re not supposed to do that. In fact, if you look it up in the Bible, it’s a sin!” Another Newsmax host dismissed the Swift-Kelce relationship as “fake.”

Meanwhile, one of Fox News’ “hard news” shows devoted a segment to attacking Swift, her fans, and Kelce, who a commentator derisively referred to as “Mr. Pfizer.”


But that was nowhere near as wild as a segment earlier this month during which Fox News host Jesse Waters described Swift a “Pentagon asset” developed at a NATO meeting and deployed to help Democrats.


Republicans loathe successful single women, especially if they’re Democrats. So it’s not exactly a surprise that they hate Swift.


Oh, there is more to read along with your morning cuppa:

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/taylor-swift-causes-trumpers-to-lose-it-kelce

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

News bits: Faux tells Swift what to do; DJT’s double liar attorney; PA court attacks Dobbs

Mind-blowing Republican hypocrisy
Various media are reporting that America's authoritarian radical right including Faux News is engaged in a propaganda campaign to stop Taylor Swift from involvement in politics. The WaPo made a 1 minute montage of clips from various Faux blowhards insulting Swift and telling her to stay out of politics. The blowhards say things like (i) it is best for her to stay out, (ii) she can't name one Biden policy, (iii) she complains about climate change but she flew on a private jet, (iv) please don’t believe anything Swift says because she does not do what she says.

“Does Taylor realize the guy that they want her to endorse is a kind of stumbling, bumbling mess, doesn’t have the energy to even give a 30-minute speech, let alone perform a three-hour concert like she does?” Hannity said of Swift and Biden on his nightly show. “He also is kind of very creepy. She may want to check out those creepy videos, they’re online.”
Faux accuses Swift of hypocrisy and Biden of being creepy?? The arrogance and hypocrisy of the Faux blowhard crew is stunning. And Hannity is creepy.
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Trump’s double liar attorney
The New Republic reports that crackpot Trump attorney Alina Habba, the Kraken-Lite of Trump thugs, has retracted her allegation that the judge on the latest defamation case was biased. She alleged that the judge should have recused himself from the trial due to a conflict of interest with the prosecuting attorney. In her retraction, Habba lied about her original accusation, calling it merely an inquiry. It was not a mere inquiry. It was full blown accusation. 

Then she lied about retraction saying the basis for the conflict of interest allegation had been resolved and there was none. There was no resolution, just statements from the judge and the prosecuting attorney that there was no conflict of interest. That is not a resolution. That is just statements from accused people.

What really pushed Habba back from continuing with the original lie about a conflict was a threat by the prosecuting attorney to seek sanctions against Kraken-Lite for lying to the court and smearing both the judge and prosecuting attorney Roberta Kaplan. Kaplan accused Trump and Habba of asserting “a false narrative of judicial bias” and said she will consider filing for sanctions against Habba.
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The Pennsylvania state supreme court issued an opinion that that abortion restrictions constitute sex-based discrimination and are “presumptively unconstitutional” under the state constitution’s equal rights amendment. Slate writes: 
The Supreme Court’s eradication of the constitutional right to abortion in 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization had an immediate and devastating impact on gender equality in the United States. With a single ruling, five justices wiped out millions of women’s access to basic health care and handed control over their medical decisions to politicians and judges. It wasn’t just the court’s judgment, though, that relegated women to a lesser place in the constitutional order; it was also the court’s reasoning, which used the centurieslong oppression of women to justify an ongoing oppression of women by way of a deprivation of their rights. Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion rested largely on the views of dead white men who condoned the rape, beating, and murder of women to maintain female subjugation in every realm of life. And he dismissed his ruling’s ruinous impact on gender equality in a single conclusory paragraph asserting that abortion restrictions could not possibly discriminate against women.

This week the Pennsylvania Supreme Court responded to that conclusion: no. On Monday, the court issued a landmark opinion declaring that abortion restrictions do amount to sex-based discrimination and therefore are “presumptively unconstitutional” under the state constitution’s equal rights amendment. The majority vehemently rejected Dobbs’ history-only analysis, noting that, until recently, “those interpreting the law” saw women “as not only having fewer legal rights than men but also as lesser human beings by design.” Justice David Wecht went even further: In an extraordinary concurrence, the justice recounted the historical use of abortion bans to repress women, condemned Alito’s error-ridden analysis, and repudiated the “antiquated and misogynistic notion that a woman has no say over what happens to her own body.”
It is not clear what impact this might have, but at least in Pennsylvania abortion will remain legal. The logic attacking Alito’s crackpot “reasoning” is simple but solid. Restricting abortions does discriminate against women.






Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Rep. Ilhan Omar faces calls to ‘resign in disgrace’ over speech in support of Somalia


 


https://nypost.com/2024/01/29/news/rep-ilhan-omar-faces-calls-to-resign-in-disgrace-over-unbecoming-speech-in-support-of-somalia/amp/


“Ilhan Omar’s appalling, Somalia-first comments are a slap in the face to the Minnesotans she was elected to serve and a direct violation of her oath of office,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) wrote on X. “She should resign in disgrace.”

Omar, the first Somali American in Congress, appeared to assure her Somali American constituents that she would do everything in her power to prevent the disputed, breakaway Republic of Somaliland from entering into a sea-access deal with landlocked Ethiopia.

A clip of the Minnesota lawmaker went viral with over 2.6 million views after it was posted on X, with a translation saying Omar had said: “As Somalis, one day we will go after our missing territories.”




Newsweek cannot handle inconvenient truth!

A post here yesterday focused on comments by a Palestinian about the mess in the endless Israel-Palestine conflict. I read the article and it just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. So I thought I would set up an account and comment to ask a question. Newsweek rejected the comment. Here is the rejection email with my comments and question:



The AP article I quoted is headlined: Netanyahu says he told the US that he opposes a Palestinian state in any postwar scenario

I clicked on the learn more button in the rejection email and got this:



As far as I can tell, my comments and question were not uncivil, spam, profanity, incoherent, obscene, threatening or an attack on the identity of the author or other commenters. 

That leaves insulting and inflammatory as the only possibilities for rejection. But, were they insulting and/or inflammatory? Apparently so in the eyes of the Newsweek censor. 

But if inconvenient truth is insulting and/or inflammatory to at least some people and that merits censoring it, how is it possible to have open and thoughtful conversations as Newsweek claims it wants? That is how I analyze the reasoning that led to rejecting my comments and question.





Qs: Is Newsweek incapable of dealing with inconvenient truth generally, or is this a response limited to exceptionally emotional issues like the endless Israel-Palestine conflict, misery and bloodshed? For example, in an article that denies Republican animosity toward non-heterosexuals or abortion, would Newsweek have rejected similar comments and questions about Republicans passing laws that interfere with the freedoms of (i) the LGBQTN community, or (ii) women who want an abortion? Ditto for a pro-gun article about lack of gun violence but comments and a question about actual data on how severe the gun violence problem actually is? 

Is this just a tempest in a teapot, or is there something important going on here?