Everything is Political

[rischka]

https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1330 ... 79840?s=20

[flip]

i'm so glad i don't watch tv

and i'm so glad i'm not on twitter

i just watched that video linked in that tweet that says "it looks like biden is going to be the apparent winner"... are real words that came out of chuck todd's mouth this morning. what he actually said was: "i just want to confirm: you believe that the head of gsa tomorrow morning at this point ought to say 'the transition needs to begin, it looks like biden is going to be the apparent winner, [etc]...' "

so all chuck todd was doing was clarifying the opinion of his interview subject. chuck todd wasn't himself saying "it looks like biden is going to be the apparent winner". i suppose the most charitable thing you can say about that matt mcdermott tweet is that it's true on a technicality, chuck todd did say those words, but by removing all the context from the quote, it's basically an outright lie.

i don't like chuck todd, but i dislike even more progressives complaining about 'disinformation' who then resort to dishonesty like this. the facts are on our side already, there's no need to make them up.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Ilhan is my representative! Well... she was before I moved.

[...]

Ilhan is my representative! Well... she was before I moved.

Wait, wut? That was my district back in the day too, but I left 13ish years ago. Where you live there?

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Oh really? I was in the Whittier area.

[...]

Yeah, I was Stevens Square mostly, but the Wedge area, down by Powerhorn Park for a while and in the northeast area too. Anything near Franklin in the Lyndale/Nicollet Eat Street area was my preferred locale, though the northeast was growing more promising by the time I left. The important question though is which of the many coffee shops did you frequent? Neighborhood is one thing, but the choice of coffee shops is what really matters.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Spyhouse was the hip place. I really hate their coffee actually, but that's where everyone I knew always wanted to go so I begrudgingly went along. But I was often at The Bad Waitress, the MIA coffee shop, or the bubble tea place on lyndale & 28th (which I think has since become a waffle bar). I go back pretty frequently, and kinda miss it.

[...]

Ah, yeah, Spyhouse was hip even when I was around. I'd go there sometimes to meet people or just for a change of pace, along with Bob's Javahut and some others long since gone, but Caffetto was my big hang out, and by big hang out I mean I'd spend hours there most days reading, chatting with all the other regulars and doing whatever else. But I gather that sort of deal isn't quite your thing, in which case Caffetto probably wouldn't be as attractive. It was a great sit and do nothing much spot. I miss it, but at some point you gotta move on and get away from the 20 and 30 somethings or start to be kinda creepy. Still, I do love that area, but would probably try northeast or some part of St Paul instead if I did ever move back.

[rischka]

so for those of you still with us, trump has signed off, via twitter, on commencement of the transition. Michigan certified it's ballots today

https://twitter.com/MikeDrucker/status/ ... 53474?s=20

Emily at the GSA is finally doing her job. this is as close to concession as we'll see from big orange, i'll wager

https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/statu ... 98692?s=20

[rischka]

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1331 ... 93892?s=20

chill out everyone, nothing to see here! this is why i hate these guys, they're so smug

honestly now is the most dangerous time as trump lashes out for two more months. or if we're very lucky he fucks off to mar a lago to play golf and never returns. it won't stop them from trying this again next time and probably more competently. R voters are fine with it as they feel they're already at a disadvantage. POC vote for dems because they want 'hand-outs' thus they are paid off. and so their votes are obviously fraudulent. but ofc NBD to greenwald and his ilk

[Pretentious Hipster]

Lol gg labour party. Shame because Boris is a huge piece of shit.

[flip]

one of the disturbing things about all of this is how persistent misinformation is. there have been claims from banana time qonspiracy theorist sidney powell and other trump lawyers that some of the election data defies mathematical possibility. as best i can tell, there were two separate claims: that in some michigan precincts, the number of votes was four times the number of registered voters, and that 168,000 votes 'magically' appeared all at once for biden. the first claim was disproven days ago; it came from an affidavit from some texas election security professional who moronically looked at minnesota county data instead of michigan county data (thinking mn meant michigan or something like that). but i went on a youtube deep dive yesterday, and days after that was thoroughly debunked, trumpists are still repeating the claim as if it were genuine evidence. i don't know where the 168,000 vote thing comes from, but if anyone does, i'm curious to see the primary source material.

[flip]

and did anyone see this story about the oxford/astrazeneca vaccine trial? i had just seen the headlines before today, which said that studies proved it was 90% effective. but that's not really what happened. they gave 20,000 people the planned dose, and for that group it was only 62% effective. but someone conducting the trial fucked up, and gave 3000 people only half of the intended dose. on just those people, it was 90% effective. no one knows exactly why.

its true effectiveness seems kind of important, because of the three candidate vaccines right now, at least from what i understand, the oxford one is the cheapest, the easiest to mass-produce, and the easiest to store and distribute.

[kanafani]

Glenn and “his ilk” are not perfect, and I don’t agree with everything they say, but they provide a service that is quite rare nowadays: exposing the hypocrisy, hyperbole and criminality of the liberal establishment, from the left. Keep it up, Glenn and his ilk!

[rischka]

ok kanafani i'll agree that it's important work someone needs to be doing

[MrCarmady]

Lol gg labour party. Shame because Boris is a huge piece of shit.

What are you referring to, specifically?

[Holymanm]

and did anyone see this story about the oxford/astrazeneca vaccine trial? i had just seen the headlines before today, which said that studies proved it was 90% effective. but that's not really what happened. they gave 20,000 people the planned dose, and for that group it was only 62% effective. but someone conducting the trial fucked up, and gave 3000 people only half of the intended dose. on just those people, it was 90% effective. no one knows exactly why.

its true effectiveness seems kind of important, because of the three candidate vaccines right now, at least from what i understand, the oxford one is the cheapest, the easiest to mass-produce, and the easiest to store and distribute.

from what i understand, 62% effectiveness is already great... (even though now we're used to 90% and 95% from the previous two!) and if it can get to 90% with an alternative/accidental dosage, that's even better... but i wonder if this means tremendous delays while they figure out why

[Pretentious Hipster]

Lol gg labour party. Shame because Boris is a huge piece of shit.

What are you referring to, specifically?

I've read and saw on youtube that 5 councilors left labour and 10% of their members left as well.

[flip]

from what i understand, 62% effectiveness is already great... (even though now we're used to 90% and 95% from the previous two!) and if it can get to 90% with an alternative/accidental dosage, that's even better... but i wonder if this means tremendous delays while they figure out why

i read a study about this, and it's true that 62% is great, enough to basically stop transmission... if there's no virus yet in the community, and if 100% of people get vaccinated. but when there's a lot of virus around, and only 50%-75% of people are likely to get vaccinated, from what i read a 62%-effective vaccine would help a lot, but we'd still be masking up and social distancing. from what i read, i think we'd want a 80%+ effectiveness to truly get back to normal -- but i'm obv no expert, and i'm sure when we get closer to widespread public distribution of a vaccine, we'll get tons of good info from epidemiologists and i'll just wait for that before feeling confident about any numbers.

[MrCarmady]

Lol gg labour party. Shame because Boris is a huge piece of shit.

What are you referring to, specifically?

I've read and saw on youtube that 5 councilors left labour and 10% of their members left as well.

If it's the likes of Chris Williamson, then good riddance.

[rischka]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... acy-440475

Here's a deep dive from politico abt what went down in Michigan. If anyone's as fascinated w this stuff as I am :p

[Pretentious Hipster]

https://twitter.com/bayareas415/status/ ... 12610?s=19

[Monsieur Arkadin]

I don't know if I'm a jew or not. My family history is confusing, but I do have a very jewish sounding last name. I have never once argued my opinions on Palestine publicly without being called Kapo. It's ridiculous.

[thoxans]

always think of the louis c.k. bit about how jew is one of the only words where it's both the merely descriptive thing to call someone, as well as the slur for that same person

'oh he's a jew' and 'oh he's a jew' mean vastly vastly different things. and one of these days i'm gonna lol thinking about it irl, and end up getting in trouble

[Holymanm]

i always feel a bit of an angry twitch when gentiles use the noun "jew" (and a happy bit of fraternité when other jews say it). like with any other "racial" linguistics, it's about (historical) associations, i suppose. the N word isn't evil as a word; it was used by X people at Y time while doing Z bad actions. and when i hear someone ask "are you a jew?" i immediately associate it with... err... my ancestors being questioned and interrogated - and then arrested and murdered or exiled - with queries like that, for the past 800 years and beyond. so i dunno. if you want to use the word you can just write a movie, à la tarantino, in which the characters keep saying it

[flip]

predictably, with 'news' on twitter, that tweet doesn't seem to be even approximately true. after reading two stories about it, the best i can tell is that the mp was suspended for violating a party order not to talk about corbyn and the ehrc report on party anti-semitism. it wasn't for "supporting palestine and being anti-semitic".

that said, both the party order and the suspension seem ridiculous to me, at an uninformed glance. if the left (and i know it's probably a stretch to apply that term to uk labour right now) is giving up on freedom of thought and freedom of speech as core principles, i don't want to be a part of it. mind, the right gave up on those principles too, at least in trump's america, so i don't really have anywhere to go.

[kanafani]

so i don't really have anywhere to go.

Hey I have an idea. How about a new party?

[MrCarmady]

I asked someone I had just met at a party if they were Jewish and she was visibly uncomfortable until I added that I was as well and then we had a nice chat. Can't remember what tipped me off, I remember reading somewhere that Nazis and Jews are the two groups of people most obsessed with figuring out who's Jewish and who isn't, just look at this website:
http://www.jewornotjew.com/

Anyway, it sucks that you can't criticise Israel without being accused of anti-Semitism in some circles, but it equally sucks when anti-Zionists make excuses for speech that clearly crosses over into anti-Semitism, and that happens constantly on the left in this country. I think Corbyn is an anti-Semite, there's too many data points to give him the benefit of the doubt at this point, but because he has a history of anti-racism and holds genuine socialist beliefs which is so rare in modern politicians, many on the left give him a free pass. I don't understand how you can have a cult of personality around someone so boring and ineffectual, though.

[kanafani]

I think Corbyn is an anti-Semite, there's too many data points to give him the benefit of the doubt at this point

Can you share those? I don't follow British politics much, but my impression from what I've read is that the label is B.S. designed to sink him.

[flip]

Hey I have an idea. How about a new party?

no parties right now, pandemic

i'm not sure i like the concept of a political party anyway

and i agree with mrcarmady generally (not necessarily specifically about corbyn, i just don't know enough about that), that in progressive circles anti-semitism often seems to be tolerated, or at least that was my experience when i lived in the uk. i knew people like that, and ex-scfzer damian was a clear example of another. i haven't really sensed that in canada though, so it might be geographically specific.