Election Open Thread

@Elaine
Best wishes

@everyone

Lol chuck schumer bent the knee to trump on the budget and even other dems are unhappy

@Ooglyboggles: Meh. The speculation on why Harris lost has always been all over the place. I strongly suspect that it wasn’t any one thing, just a lot of little ones. Were I to throw my own hat into the speculation ring, I would say that there were two campaigns: the one Harris was running, and the one a lot of people (mostly but not exclusively conservatives) said she was running, and which one you gonna believe? Oh, and I guess Donny was kind of running too, but nobody paid that much attention outside his hardcore fans and the politics junkies. But that’s just the general impression I got, and I’m sure that I’d get a dozen explanations in response why that is most definitely not true, and also a dozen alternative hypothesis which are most definitely true, followed by a dozen voices calling everyone else idiots.

Dear God. That means no more Medicaid, doesn’t it?

Why on God’s green Earth would any dem senator vote to destroy Medicaid, let alone at least ten of them?

I just hope that that’s the red line that gets a few tens of millions of people out in the streets protesting.

I’ll be honest the whole problem of either seeing a government shutdown or Democrat’s having to grit their teeth and go for the budget and cloture; it’s a rock and a hard place of loose-loose no matter how you slice it and it freaking sucks on all accounts

What? A shutdown is temporary. Medicaid is forever.

I have been following on youtube tracking all the utterally unhinged stuff since Trump took office again in a series called “We told you so”(his name is Johnny Bananas)

Not an auspicious name if you’re hoping for people to believe you. 🙂

That and the detail that a shut down would have shifted things away from Trump and onto Democrat’s and how that might have been an even worse bit of damage in terms of risk of political capital for the Dems if a shutdown actually did happen

How’s that working for them? Last I checked, Schumer’s name is mud now. It would have been better for his reputation to have taken a principled stand and been accused of causing a shutdown than to have knuckled under, I suspect. Besides, we want the corporate wing of the Democratic Party to flame out. The sooner they’re all fired and replaced with AOCs (or further left), the better. What you have now seem to be singularly ill-equipped to actually fight actual fascists.

the last time Republican’s actually followed through with a shutdown of the government; it ravaged them badly in terms of political capital.

So badly they’re now running the entire country … into the ground. I wish I had had my political capital ravaged that badly. I’d be Prime Minister, or at least the Ontario Premier, which latter, it should be noted, would have meant “no more Doug Ford”. 😛

@Surplus

What? A shutdown is temporary. Medicaid is forever.

Again, worth raising the point that Elon wanted the shutdown. Even if we are to accept the premise of your argument; it should give pause WHY Elon would WANT a shutdown. Bear in mind, this is the same person who currently has his and a bunch of hackers trying to get their hands into people’s social insurance numbers. Why would someone like that who has a hand on people’s social insurance numbers: WANT a shutdown, unless it is to be able to do something WORSE to people and their livelihoods besides the shutdown? Ridding people’s medicade is terrible and my being someone with a disability being on PWD is a concern I share and empathize with people who may face having their own medical care support stolen from them. But the observation of concern I have; is what if the government shutdown allows Elon to do even worse? Something a step worse than just people loosing medical care, for example by starting to delete people’s SIN numbers and thus eradicate people’s proof of citizen ship to than make it easier to “remove” people from the nation even in spite of them being citizens. Why would a fascist technocrat WANT the shutdown unless he wanted to get up to some craven, abhorrent and even worst stuff under the conditions of that government shutdown? Its bad enough to loose Medicaid; but what if the shutdown opened the door to people loosing their citizenship despite being citizens by *blaming* their SIN?

Not an auspicious name if you’re hoping for people to believe you. 🙂

For me unless a persons name some kind of alt-right shibboleth lifted from bigoted lexicon (which automatically discounts them and their position in my eyes) or some such; I more focus on actual arguments of people and how factually those positions hold up. I sooner trust the insights of Johnny Bananas over that of “FNFallout (Finnish Nazi Fallout)” or “WomenPuncher1488” or other such ilk. And credit to Johnny B: he strikes as being able to cut to the heart of the problems we’re are facing and debunking the bs.

How’s that working for them? Last I checked, Schumer’s name is mud now. It would have been better for his reputation to have taken a principled stand and been accused of causing a shutdown than to have knuckled under, I suspect. Besides, we want the corporate wing of the Democratic Party to flame out. The sooner they’re all fired and replaced with AOCs (or further left), the better. What you have now seem to be singularly ill-equipped to actually fight actual fascists.

Schumer is a complete unprincipled flake who should be replaced with some new blood in the DNC but things aren’t exactly great for Republican’s either when their own constituents are angry with them due to Trump and Elon’s bs to the point that Republican Pundents are either floundering or outright being run out of Town Hall meetings even in rural areas. This isn’t to say the Democrat’s old guard establishment are bungling things politically right now; they without question are. Tim Waltz, AOC and Bernie are the folks who have the pulse on things and they and other similar Dems in the wings need to be the one’s who need to be leading the party and taking charge of things. But I am saying that the Republican’s have gotten a win that seems to be not be all that much of a win if their own constituents are, to some level,running their own political representative out on a rail. And every time a Republican tries to use the old tired right wing rhetoric in these town halls; they get booed and jeered hard by their own voter base. I don’t know if its much; but it is at least something.

So badly they’re now running the entire country … into the ground. I wish I had had my political capital ravaged that badly. I’d be Prime Minister, or at least the Ontario Premier, which latter, it should be noted, would have meant “no more Doug Ford”.

Which legit horrifies me and I’m worried about Canada being invaded as a Canuck. But it seems the Republican plan to run the US into the ground under the cheeto fascist; is probably goning to be the final nail in the Republican coffin this time when everyone across the political spectrum (save Trumplerite cultists who are too far gone); is reeling from the cavalcade of self destructive bs and are just getting more and more pissed off. No one is happy. Republican’s lost enough political capital that it resulted in Biden wining the vote last time, and made the US one of the strongest economics contributors in the G7. Old, Establishment Democrat’s bungled things because they failed to take initiative, failed to hold themselves firm to their reported values, and underestimated Republican malfeasance. But Republican’s “win” is going to be the biggest loss of their Capital to date since now they have put the Fascist autocrat back into office once again and is making things so unstable and utter crap that not even the Republican’s can hold a stable footing.

Everything is garbage, and you won’t see me claim otherwise. But in these darkest of days: I hold defiant hope in spite of Republican and right wing machinations; because we now see plain and unclouded the plans, machinations and polices of Republican’s, Conservative’s and their ilk for what they are and how much damage they can and will do. And pretty much a lot of people; revile what they see. Seeing this crap unfold made hell freeze over in making Quebecer’s finally declare themselves proud Canadian’s and mobilized the Canadian Geopolitical landscape, and has prompted NATO and the EU to take their own initiative in spite of the US on the world stage.

Everything is a deteriorating mess; but there are helpers keeping up the fight.

@ elaine

It’s certainly technically possible. There have been some court cases in the US where law enforcement have done it, and the issue was the admissibility of the consequent recordings.

Bit more here…

https://bluegoatcyber.com/blog/the-feasibility-of-hackers-remotely-activating-your-mic-and-camera/

@ elaine

To quote the classic cross examination answer: “Possible, but not probable.”

You have to put a specific piece of software on the target phone. And unless you’re a master hacker with access to NSA level resources the only way to do that is by malware. So unless you’ve opened any suspicious attachments in recent times I wouldn’t worry unduly.

And if you want some peace of mind you could always put the phone somewhere out of earshot when you’re not using it. Or just put a towel over it; the mics aren’t that powerful.

Hope that’s some help.

I found something interesting while doing research:

https://philpapers.org/archive/betwsh.pdf

In this article, Bettcher argues that sexual attraction must be

reconceptualized in light of transgender experience. In particu-

lar, Bettcher defends the theory of “erotic structuralism,” which

replaces an exclusively other-directed account of gendered attrac-

tion with one that includes a gendered eroticization of self as an

essential component. This erotic experience of self is necessary for

other-directed gendered desire, where the two are bound together

and mutually informing. One consequence of the theory is that the

controversial notion of “autogynephilia” is rejected. Another con-

sequence is that the distinction between gender identity and sexual

orientation is softened.

Seems to me this can explain a great deal beyond “just” aspects of queer experience. For example, the frequency with which cis women in het relationships can have sexual difficulty with “letting go” or “being in the moment” or similarly — if attraction and enjoyment require identifying with an “erotic self” then it’s not going to work if one is not able to find a working erotic self-concept, whether that’s because of being trans and having dysphoria or because of slut-shaming or messaging that you can’t be sexy if you don’t live up to some narrow beauty standard.

The article (or any newer, further developments along these lines) should probably be required reading for couples therapists as well as for gender therapists, and maybe therapists in general.

I’m sure many here will cheer its thorough demolition of the sad old “autogynephilia” trope, too. (It seems like forever since we had a troll drive by here and use that, thinking it was somehow an automatic checkmate, only to get schooled.)

Where is everyone? It’s been two weeks since anyone else commented.

Good riddance. Too little, too late as it may be.

Meanwhile there is a terrible, terrible TERFy ruling from the fucking UK Supreme Court. Are they in some sort of race to the bottom with the US’s?

“Anti-hero” oft seems like a gateway drug leading to supervillainy. Darth Vader went through an anti-hero sort of phase (e.g. when he cut off Dooku’s head).