US Politics Thread 2021-24

[VipertheSniper]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Poll finds almost half of Americans think our democracy is broken, that political opponents should be silenced, and that we should explore "alternative forms of government."

This is exactly what the woke left has been fighting for: to divide us into warring tribes.

I'm not gonna watch the video again to go through every single point he puts his spin on 1 by 1, by leaving out the other half of the political spectrum, but here's the poll he cites in the video for some added context, which he didn't bother to link:
https://centerforpolitics.org/crysta...tion-FINAL.pdf

[ET2SN]

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by VipertheSniper

I'm not gonna watch the video again to go through every single point he puts his spin on 1 by 1, by leaving out the other half of the political spectrum, but here's the poll he cites in the video for some added context, which he didn't bother to link:
https://centerforpolitics.org/crysta...tion-FINAL.pdf

He didn’t bother to post a link, that’s your argument? That’s the first thing I looked at and I didn’t need your help finding it either as I understand the words coming out his mouth. He didn’t leave out the other side of the spectrum. He spoke of both spectrums in the poll extreme far right voters and extreme hard left voters and their reactions to each other. ET2SN is a good example of that.

And by the way there is nothing in that poll which represents in any way shape or form my way of thinking either.

[Rockstar]

I’ll be interesting to see how the woke left and BLM explain this one. I already see one comment saying the blacks got what’s coming to them because they probably vote Republican. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot over

Pro-Hamas protesters beat Black Hebrew Israelites with Palestinian flags — in Chicago

BY KYLE OLSON
OCTOBER 29, 2023

https://www.themidwesterner.news/202...gs-in-chicago/

The Israel-Hamas war has come to America.
Black Hebrew Israelites and pro-Hamas Palestinians duked it out in the streets of Chicago this weekend.

Video captured by Yeshiva World News showed pro-Hamas protesters using their Palestinian flag poles as weapons as both sides fought in the roadway Sunday:

The wooden pole snapped in the process. Both sides lobbed bottles and sticks at each other while Chicago police struggled to keep them apart.
That was the story on Saturday, as well, when police failed to do so, resulting in tense times along Michigan Avenue.
The Black Israelites appeared to be outnumbered, but that didn’t deter them from wanting to get a piece of the Palestinians:

[Jimbuna]

[Rockstar]

How are you going to become president and leave office with the country being less safe? Borders open, brink of war with the world strongest opponents, interest rates through the roof, homeless population rising by the day, stock market crashing, inflation through the roof, national debt through the roof, energy prices through the roof, mass shootings every week, crime skyrocketing and the list goes on. Let’s not forget the Green New Deal everyone knew it was going to be a problem...kind of like a restaurant where the owner/chef does not taste his food.

Then ask for our vote to sign up for another 4 years of it?

[Rockstar]

Just one week into his presidency, Donald Trump announced an executive order banning people from several Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

On his first day in office, President Biden reversed the ban, made clueless Jake his National Security Adivsor and hired Nejwa Ali, a pro-Hamas and former spokeswoman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to determine who gets to come into the U.S. Now the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officer is repeatedly posting pictures of Hamas terrorists parachuting in with guns and writing, “******* Israel and any Jew who supports Israel,”

Which leads us to today

Democrats Risk Long-Lasting Rift Over Israel-Hamas War
Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian liberal factions now divided as ugly accusations fly in both directions

By
Molly Ball
Follow
Oct. 31, 2023 at 5:00 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/democra...s-war-ec74044f

To many on the left, the Israel-Hamas war is spurring what feels like a permanent rupture, when previously sublimated differences become impossible to ignore and everyone must choose sides.

The weeks since the Hamas attacks have riven the liberal coalition, pitting erstwhile allies against each other as ugly accusations fly in both directions. From the halls of power in Washington to street protests and social media, progressives find themselves at odds with those they once saw as kindred spirits.

Both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian advocates describe a feeling of disillusionment as relationships fracture and harsh words are exchanged. The result, many predict, could be a breach that splits Democrats for a generation with untold political consequences.

To liberal Jews devastated by scenes of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, the ensuing weeks have shattered illusions of solidarity, says Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and director of the Anti-Defamation League. College students and faculty, as well as local chapters of Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Socialists of America, have justified or even celebrated Hamas’s actions, while many others have emphasized the Palestinians’ plight and criticism of Israel over sympathy for the victims of the terrorist attacks.

“It has been an incredibly clarifying and terrifying moment at the same time for many progressive Jews,” Greenblatt said. “They’re calling me, tweeting, messaging, expressing shock and sadness that the people they marched with, the causes they marched for, have abandoned them in their hour of need.”

The feeling is mutual for many activists on the left who say President Biden and other Democratic officeholders have blindly sided with a right-aligned Israeli government bent on retribution that disproportionately harms innocent civilians.

“If you are Arab-American, Muslim-American or Palestinian, you feel like you don’t matter, you feel invisible,” said Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist and former spokesman for the Justice Democrats, which has supported the progressive Congress members known as the squad in primaries against more centrist

Democrats. “If you are advocating at all that Palestinian and Israeli lives should be treated equally, there’s a feeling that the party doesn’t care about you at all,” he said.

The result, Shahid warned, might be that a president already struggling to ignite the enthusiasm of young and minority voters loses them completely—a recent Gallup poll found Biden losing 7 percentage points of support with voters under 35 in the past month, he noted—or that the party splinters as it did in the Vietnam War era. Others have drawn parallels to the left’s split over Soviet communism in the 1950s.

In a Wall Street Journal/Ipsos poll conducted Oct. 18-20, 48% of Democrats said the U.S. has a responsibility to support Israel in the conflict, versus 53% of independents and 64% of Republicans.

The split comes as Biden has expressed strong support for Israel and called on Congress to approve billions of dollars in new military assistance to the American-allied government. Israel on Monday sent tanks and infantry toward Gaza City in an intensification of its ground operation in the territory. Authorities say thousands have been killed in the fighting since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

The conflict has spilled into the White House, where Biden on Thursday met with Muslim leaders who chided him for not showing more empathy for Palestinians in his remarks on the conflict. A top State Department official resigned Oct. 18 in protest of the administration’s approach, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Oct. 19 sent a letter to diplomatic staff seeking to quell internal dissent.

In Congress, a resolution condemning Hamas passed the House overwhelmingly with 412 votes on Wednesday, with nine left-wing Democrats voting against it and six voting “present.” (A lone Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, also voted against the resolution.)

Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, explained her “present” vote in a statement that said, “While I still condemn Hamas’s attacks and the pain and suffering of the Jewish people everywhere, I also condemn the violations of international humanitarian law by Israel and the pain and suffering of Palestinian people everywhere that are not recognized anywhere in this resolution.”

On Thursday, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey centrist, said on X, formerly Twitter, that the 15 Democrats who didn’t vote for the resolution were “despicable and do not speak for our party.” In response, one of the 15, Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana, called Gottheimer a “coward” and a “punk,” and invited him to settle their differences physically.

A recent closed-door meeting of congressional Democrats erupted in recriminations when Gottheimer was heard to mutter, “they should feel guilty”—a remark that some progressives heard as directed at Muslims as a group, but which Gottheimer said was aimed at his colleagues who hadn’t sufficiently condemned Hamas. Gottheimer has faced protests and death threats over the comments.

Even progressive stalwarts such as Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) have drawn protests from the left for backing Israel. Jewish Democrats have reportedly complained to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries about comments made by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), both of the squad, in the aftermath of the attacks. Squad members have received increased protection from Capitol Police because of a sharp escalation in threats against them in recent weeks.

Rep. Brad Schneider (D., Ill.) said that while Democrats have been mostly unified, he has been “incredibly disappointed” to see some people “who not only haven’t been able to condemn the horrific terror attack on Israel, but have celebrated it and called it resistance.” He singled out Tlaib for refusing to retract her statement blaming Israel for an explosion at a Gaza hospital that Israel and the U.S. say was caused by an errant rocket fired from Gaza (a Wall Street Journal video analysis supports that claim).

“She spread a claim by Hamas that is not true, that has led to threats to American military personnel and diplomats around the world, and continues to throw gasoline on that fire,” Schneider said in an interview. “It’s important that all of us call out evil. We may have differences of opinion, but we don’t get to have our own facts.”

Tlaib’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Though the current conflict has brought it to the fore, the discord in the Democratic ranks has deep roots. In 2019, House Democrats struggled to pass a resolution disapproving of remarks by Omar that many saw as antisemitic, eventually uniting around a statement that condemned both antisemitism and anti-Muslim sentiment.

Democratic Majority for Israel, an advocacy group with ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, sprung up in 2020 to oppose progressive Democrats in primaries. The group’s political-action committee spent large amounts to counter Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign and to stymie a further expansion of the squad, with mixed results.

While some progressives decry the machinations of the big-money Israel lobby, centrists see grim vindication in the ugly expressions from the illiberal left. Center-left thinkers have warned for years about the climate on many campuses, where an “anticolonialist” posture has become a litmus test for faculty hiring, and students embrace a radical chic that rationalizes or valorizes violence if it is committed by groups regarded as oppressed.

“I do worry that young people are increasingly indoctrinated with an ideology, an anti-Israel hatred, that is so virulent that it renders them indifferent to the coldblooded murder of Israeli civilians and children,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat.

Many New York progressives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, distanced themselves from the city’s DSA chapter after it promoted an Oct. 8 pro-Palestinian rally that blamed Israel for the attacks and included antisemitic displays. Torres, who has been decrying the organization’s anti-Israel stance for years, said too many fellow progressives previously played down such sentiments.

Omar last week attacked Torres for his pro-Israel statements, asking at a press conference, “How many more Palestinians would make you happy if they died?”. [typical democrat response]

Responding on X, Torres called Omar’s accusation a “vicious lie,” adding, “How many Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians must die from endless rocket fire and escalated conflict before she summons the moral decency to support Iron Dome?” referring to Israel’s air-defense system.

Progressive activists say the focus on what they characterize as a few nutty college kids is misguided and disproportionate at a time when some Republican politicians, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have called for leveling Gaza. They see a march to war that echoes the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when antiwar voices were marginalized and the result was decades of disastrous military entanglement in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I’ve been heartbroken and disturbed by the lack of empathy altogether around the plight of Palestinians,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the leftist Working Families Party, which is pressuring the White House to back a cease-fire.

To others, however, the lack of sympathy for the suffering of Jews reflects a deeper split. “It really is, I think, a battle for the soul of our party,” says Joe Vogel, a Maryland state delegate who is seeking the open congressional seat to be vacated by Democratic Rep. David Trone.

As an undergraduate at George Washington University, Vogel was expelled from student government by activists for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The same group came under fire this week for projecting antisemitic messages including “Glory to our martyrs” on the outer walls of a campus library.

“It shouldn’t be that hard to condemn the murder of innocent women and children and seniors, yet many have either said nothing or equivocated,” Vogel said. “We have a serious problem in our party right now.”

Write to Molly Ball at molly.ball@wsj.com

[Rockstar]

Oh look, IRS budget cuts will damage efforts to crack down on Hamas funding via fake charities, cryptocurrency and other schemes, per the Senate Finance Committee.


I'm not too sure even 6 months ago Hamas funding was a concern.

[Jimbuna]

Mike Johnson — who has run unopposed 3 times — once said democracy is 'not always a good thing'

Older comments from newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) have recently surfaced, showing the Republican lawmaker's disdain for democracy.

The New Republic unearthed a 2019 address Johnson gave to the First Baptist Church of Haughton, Louisiana. In that speech, the GOP congressman described the concept of democratic government as "two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner."

"You don't want to be in a democracy," Johnson said at the time. "Majority rule: Not always a good thing."

Johnson's apparent disdain for democracy was also noted by scholar Jeff Sharlet, who is an expert on militias and the far-right. Sharlet retweeted what he called a "vital thread" in which another X user posted a series of tweets remarking on how Johnson has actually never once had to win a close election.
"[I]n [Johnson's] political career, he has not participated in a democracy," X user David Pepper wrote. "He is actually the perfect example of how in today’s gerrymandered world, people can ride to the highest levels of power without being in a real election their entire careers. Which means they can be complete extremists and never face accountability for it."

Publicly available election data on Ballotpedia backs up Pepper's claims: In 2015, Johnson was actually sworn in on February 3, weeks prior to the February 21 special election for a vacant seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives, as he ran unopposed. That fall, Johnson was once again unopposed in the October 24 blanket primary, giving Johnson a full term in the Louisiana House of Representatives without once facing any primary or general election opposition.

The closest election Johnson had was likely in 2016, in the Republican primary for Louisiana's 4th congressional district. But even then, he won with a remarkably low vote share. According to Ballotpedia, Johnson came in second place in an eight-way jungle primary with less than 25% of all votes cast), but then beat his Democratic opponent in the general election with more than 65% of the vote.

Johnson's lopsided victory in 2016, along with other similar one-sided routs of his Democratic opponents in 2018, 2020, and 2022 (in which he ran unopposed yet again) without even appearing on the ballot) could be attributed to Louisiana Republicans' gerrymandering of his district. In 2019, the University of Notre Dame conducted a study on gerrymandering in Louisiana, and found that the practice of "cracking" and "packing" — in which majority-Black communities are "cracked" apart to weaken their vote share and "packed" into heavily Republican areas — was most prominent in Johnson's district.

"Cracking is most evident in Districts 4 and 5, where the black and liberal vote in the northern corners of the state is diluted by districting these parishes together with those possessing a high percentage of Republican and white voters," the study read. "What results is a state with five Republican [districts] and one Democratic district."
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other...054c8b40&ei=36

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Mike Johnson — who has run unopposed 3 times — once said democracy is 'not always a good thing'

He’s right, majority rule is not always a good thing. Populism is a core element of fascism making it a damn good reason reason why we don’t elect presidents by popular vote. Unlike the U.K. which has an inbred monacrchy that gets to be king, well, because.

What should be concerning is when so-called progressive Democrats like Hillary Clinton when after losing an election cry for years afterwards and work to remove the electoral college.

As for gerrymandering it has gotten bad in every state of the union Democrat and Republican alike. But as you’ll note in any article written about gerrymandering they’re just endless cycles of showing how bad it is only when the other guy does it.

[Rockstar]

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) presses Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on an immigration officer's anti-Israel social media posts. Sec. Mayorkas says Sen. Hawley's questions are out of line, claiming that the employee's posts are not emblematic of the 260,000 DHS employees.

[Skybird]

A right to vote needs to see a certain competence by the Voter for the matter or topic to be decided. Unfortunately most of the time that is not the case.

From what I red about him, the speaker they voted rings all alarm bells I have.

[em2nought]

It's pretty shocking to see all the hostility to and prejudice toward Jewish people in and created by our centers of supposedly higher learning.

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by em2nought

It's pretty shocking to see all the hostility to and prejudice toward Jewish people in and created by our centers of supposedly higher learning.

Wasn't it the Biden administration that removed Houthi from the terrorist list, eased Iran sanction, when he and clueless Jake took office? Why are we surprised now by what is happening?

Seems the Houthi, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Nejwa Ali and woke democrats all got the signal.

[ET2SN]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

extreme hard left voters and their reactions to each other. ET2SN is a good example of that.

If I'm hard left, then you're sincere.