Post Left Wing looniness here

The difference is that a single slogan advanced by a fringe element of BLM was being applied to "liberal elites". That's what I was disagreeing with. I never claimed that some extremists didn't actually want to defund the police.

 

Those guys get pretty clever. Hope this is correct link.

 

The advice I would give is to activists is to put down your anger and appeal instead to what appeals to those you see as your nemesis. Do not hate the flag; challenge white people to live up to it. Do not defund the police; instead remind white Americans about Serpico and the admiration we had for him. Don't disrespect the anthem; instead stand taller than those who are not worthy of it's true message.

Challenge those who have destroyed our icons; don't destroy the symbols of our ideals. Because those ideals remain true regardless of man's inability to live up to them.

 

Defunding something pretty much always means taking funding away from it. The only question is how much, and the only ambiguity is whether it should lose some funding or all of it. Let a Republican say he wants to "defund Medicare" and see if he gets the benefit of the doubt. It's a pretty dumb slogan if you don't want to completely eliminate funding.

The most radical elements of BLM came up with the slogan and wanted to truly eliminate the police. I don't think white liberals actually wanted that. The problem is that white liberals gave a platform to that position, acted sympathetically toward it, and accepted BLM's underlying assumptions about the police, because they didn't want to upset the most vocal elements of it going into an election. They weren't the Devil, but they danced with him. In fact, they dirty danced with him. They didn't really start to shift away from it until they got close to the election and saw how bad that strategy was.

Ultimately, BLM is a bad organization with an agenda that is obviously bad to anyone who looks at it even superficially, but for months, white liberals pretended otherwise, and it's why they almost lost the House and would have lost the presidency but for Trump's ***-clownery. White liberals shouldn't get in the sack with them for the same reason conservatives shouldn't get in the sack with David Duke and Richard Spencer. The agenda is toxic and morally depraved.

I understand the desire for some forms of police reform, but BLM goes miles beyond that. Furthermore, you can't use their rhetoric to champion the reforms. And let's just look at the surface-level problem. When you're in the middle of a spike in violent crime, cutting the police (and flirting with eliminating them) and politically undermining them is a bad idea for the same reason it would have been a bad idea to cut the military and flirt with eliminating it in 1943. It's bad policy, and it's a political loser.

They can if they'll back down or at least show tolerance on cultural issues and wokeness. It took their intolerance to drive those people to Trump. James Carville is right on this.

It depends on what the suburbs do. If the Democrats only hold white liberals in the cities, the GOP clearly wins in that trade. The anti-police stuff is a big weapon a non-Trump GOP could use to hold the suburbs.

You and me both, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The public doesn't ultimately care, so I don't see the parties caring anytime soon. We're testing modern monetary theory. For better or for worse, we're going to find out if it's right or wrong.

 

They don't. I read somewhere that people cannot process things that overwhelm them. The debt has become so esoteric thing that is in the category of an asteroid or a comet or Old Faithful blowing up on us all. AOC touts some Modern Monetary theory that renders the debt as irrelevant.

We can't even get our arms around the deficit which is so much less...

The politicians have successfully moved it aside with the only discussion being the sanctimony each side oozes to objections to raising the debt ceiling.

 

No argument on the idiocy of the slogan. It makes a good poster for the extremes but ends up as cannon fodder for the opposition. To Biden's credit, he was clear even during the campaign that he wasn't supportive of "defund the police".

White liberals and even the more moderate elements of BLM weren't as vocal as they should have been. Clearly in light of the George Floyd protests saying anything remotely supportive of police was akin to being "racist".

There are extreme elements of BLM, in fact they've definitely moved to being more radical the more power/support they've acquired. I'm not prepared to throw the baby out with the bathwater though and proclaim them evil because they still have a viable genuine purpose, albeit it's getting corrupted the further in time we progress.

In Seattle, they aren't cutting police but rather reorganizing the department to pull out the social services that over time had been built in to the Seattle Police Department. What's actually occurring is getting lost in the rhetoric, especially the opposition's rhetoric. The Biden Administrations attempt to tie "defund the police" to R's was a bit laughable and a sideshow.

I don't see that happening anytime soon, do you? Biden continues to try to give them reason to return to the party with both his rhetoric and majority of his policies but I doubt any of that can supercede the culture war rhetoric. The latter will win the day, IMHO.

The culture wars are losers for the GOP (Trump and non-Trump) in the suburbs. Anti-immigrant, pro-religion, anti-abortion, etc. stances simply run counter to big city/suburb views. The crime angle may be able to win back a few but you're nibbling at the edges at that point. The white blue collar crowd, and alas it is white, have already escaped to the countryside. Those that haven't must be planning their exit or enjoy the misery they live in every day.

Adding this because it's prescient to this issue.

 

@Mr. Deez

The left's reticence to push back on the "defund the police" is like the right's reticence towards pushing back on the "stolen election" claims. They are both boxed in rhetorically at this point. Their respective delays and power used in pushing back it too little too late. The extremists have won the arguments. It ends up in situations like this, a very conservative party member that get's heckled when they don't support the extremist position.

Does anyone think that DeSantis could be heading toward a Cuomo like moment? I'm not referencing the sexual assaults but rather DeSantis was a darling of the right because of his COVID stances, like Cuomo for the left. Florida has 90% ICU bed occupancy and the positive test rates continue to climb. DeSantis could end up being just as wrong as Cuomo with his COVID decisions.

 

The Libertarian Party. Specifically the Mises Caucus is very good on that issue.

 

I need a more customizable party because that may be the only issue that caucus works for me.

 

No. Because DeSantis has been very intelligent in his justifications, and he overlying principle for doing what he does is for liberty.

The Cathedral makes these huge accusations about Florida and Texas when they are at a peak and the North East are in a trough. Then they ignore cases rates completely when the situation was flipped. When California was doing much worse than Texas during one seasonal peak, the comparison was NEVER brought up. You have to look at the actual data over the last 18 months and intersperse that will what the medical community learned about SARS-1 about 20 years ago. Those on the Right are starting to wise up a bit about what sources they listen to. Less Fox and more independent journalists.

 

"Liberty" doesn't justify needless deaths, IMHO. I suspect you disagree.

Texas surpassed NY and is gaining on CA in Covid deaths. This is coming after we have prevention mechanisms (Vaccine) and better treatment options. That's inexcusable, IMHO and an indictment of Abbott and DeSantis if current trends hold.

 

I say no because my cynicism says DeSantis is doing what Floridians want. He knows his audience.

It's the same with Abbott. There's this "being a Texan" thing and you wouldn't believe how many down here like it...

 

I think the Libertarian Party proves the point. It cares about fiscal responsibility, and it got 1.18 percent of the vote in the last election. The Democrats and Republicans don't give two squirts of piss about the deficit, and they consistently get massive support.

On the fiscal front, the best we can hope for is a Democrat in the White House and the GOP controlling Congress. They'll at least fake caring about fiscal responsibility.

 

He did, but by the time he had the nomination wrapped up, the momentum within the party was on the side of BLM. They had largely accepted their narrative, even if Biden pushed back.

I agree, but that kind of thing needs to get pushed back on. It sets up a false binary and needlessly polarizes the issue.

It all depends on how bad the crime problem gets. It doesn't look good now.

In the cities, yes. In the suburbs, I think it's more complicated. It depends on how the issues are framed and what the alternatives are. Ultimately, I think suburban voters are fairly sensible and consensus oriented on social issues.

When Biden was in the Senate, he was pretty pro-cop and tough on crime.

I think that's a pretty fair analogy. However, I think stolen election issue is tougher to push back against, because there is no Trump-like figure putting a fatwah on any Democrat who says we shouldn't defund the police.

I think it depends on what ultimately happens. If the spike in cases is brief and doesn't lead to a big spike in deaths, then he'll be ok. If it becomes sustained, then it'll probably sink his chances.

 

I guess you just ignored the seasonality issue. Watch this winter when the rankings shift again. Then tell how awful NY and the NE is in their policy and how great the South is doing.

 

You are talking about the past. I am pushing for the future. People have been propagandized that the budget doesn't matter. We need to re-educate the culture. Amerircans used to really care about this stuff and they can again.

 

The people who educate Americans don't care about it, so it's pretty hard to re-educate the culture. I'm not optimistic.

Honestly, I used to think we'd be better by now. In the '90s, I thought the problem was the old, FDR-loving grannies who clung to their colossal entitlements. I thought that as they died off, younger voters who knew how badly they were getting screwed by those programs and had to deal with the debt would usher in a new era of fiscal responsibility. Why wouldn't it? None of this takes a lot of brains or thought. A casual look at the numbers makes it pretty obvious. Democrats bullshat and lied about it to save face, but the GOP brought the message and resoundingly had the truth on their side. It was just a matter of time before people woke up.

Then the GOP blew their credibility under Bush. They stopped making the case, so they could spend like drunken sailors. Obviously the Democrats always want to spend like drunken sailors, so they weren't going to make the case. Then Trump came in, made the grannies an essential part of the GOP's coalition, purged the suburban voters (those most likely to care), and dropped all pretense of fiscal responsibility and conservatism. There truly is no one left to make the case anymore. Nobody has the credibility, and now there's an entire generation of voters (basically everybody younger than about 40) who have never even heard of the case. They don't even know what fiscal responsibility means, looks like, or why it matters.

The result is that we're going to test modern monetary theory - not because we've made a conscious decision to do so but by default and because of stupidity and lack of discipline. We're going to find out if debt really matters or not. Seems pretty dangerous and stupid to me, but that's what our collective intellect and wisdom have become. It's sorta like skydiving without a parachute not to commit suicide but to find out if you can do it and survive. It's the ultimate "hold my beer" moment.

 

They're also ignoring the fact that illegals are being dumped throughout the south by the feds that is also contributing to the outbreaks. Before someone goes into attack mode on me for this statement all you have to do is look at the Texas border counties and see the Covid rates. Many illegals are coming here for medical assistance.

 

I thought Democrats were all about Democracy...

Lawsuit aims to keep natural gas measure off Spokane ballot

 

So, are you saying the substantial pay cut that the City wanted Carmen Best to take and which she said no, you can go find another Chief of Police ISN'T and WASN'T defunding of the agency?

Are you saying the hands being tied isn't what is creating vacancies at record levels?

Same thing is playing out in other cities, to include places like Portland, Minneapolis and Atlanta...

Your City and its stupid and narrow-minded city clowncil cost you a police chief far better than that city EVER deserved...

 

When you favor the judiciary deciding policy questions, you're not about democracy.

 

Now Gavs is getting nervous.

California Recall: Newsom Shifts To Stark Tone As He Seeks To Stay In Office

"California Gov. Gavin Newsom is using increasingly stark language as he campaigns in the final month of a tight recall election, calling it 'a matter of life or death' that voters keep him in office"

matter of life or death - oh, is he campaigning in Afghanistan now?

 

Newsome is doomed. Just like Biden and the Dems.

 

Hyperbole is the go to Liberal tool; but they like to accuse Republicans of using fear tactics. It's so blatantly obvious? Why does it work? Same reason people fall for Jim Baker or other televangelists: there is something wrong with their emotional psyche.

 

FIFY

 

"Defund the Police" isn't a "slogan" pushed by the extremists. It is actual policy in 20+ cities run by Democrats, and barely missed in Atlanta. Defunding the police wasn't a bad idea to invoke when crime was increasing. Defunding police was the cause of crime increasing.

Here are a few of the so call "extremist" cities that defunded the police:

New York, Oakland, Austin, Washington D.C., Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.

Own your party's idiocy, SH.

 

This is off the rails lunacy:

Getting Trump’s tax returns is only the beginning - The Boston Globe

 

I love it. Especially in the fall...

 

You are a sad individual. Trump against the liberal establishment is a sin that cannot be tolerated.

 

It's obviously a very partisan description of the Trump Administration, but I actually don't have a problem with what the article is calling for in terms of policy.