Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

[Cmdr_King]

Agreed, but the US Green Party are also ridiculous ideologues who shoot themselves in the foot as a matter of ritual.  So a stand against the status quo, even one that with a modicum of thought leads to having less ability to affect reform, is still appealing to them.

[superaielman]

What the fuck are you doing, Dr Jill Stein?  (Calls Brexit a good thing o_O)

http://www.jill2016.com/stein_calls_britain_vote_a_wake_up_call

Stein is pretty nonsensical (See: Her AMA that strayed into anti vaxxer territory) so that's not surprising.

[NotMiki]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/hillary-clinton-2016-transgender-rights-passport-policy-state-department-lgbt-equality-214007

Fascinating article on Clinton's role in advancing transgender rights, and the political calculations around that.

[metroid composite]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/hillary-clinton-2016-transgender-rights-passport-policy-state-department-lgbt-equality-214007

Fascinating article on Clinton's role in advancing transgender rights, and the political calculations around that.

This is actually news to me.  (Although I have noticed on twitter that transgender people I follow seem to mostly like Clinton, and gay people are typically more angry about not officially endorsing gay marriage till 2013, and the Reagan comments.  It's not uncommon for the LGBT community to disagree between the various letters, though--in fact that's a pretty normal state of affairs).

[dunie]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/hillary-clinton-2016-transgender-rights-passport-policy-state-department-lgbt-equality-214007

Fascinating article on Clinton's role in advancing transgender rights, and the political calculations around that.

Rare is the mainstream acknowledgment of microchange.

[The Duck]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/our_political_culture_doesn_t_know_what_to_do_with_trump_s_explicit_prejudice.html
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/politics/donald-trump-saddam-hussein-iraq-terrorism/

although it's shown that this kind of thing does hurt him in the polls, I feel that in some ways that this should be a blowout of historic proportions. Hillary is so disliked that it's only a significant lead. Hillary has also had some unforced errors here (Bill meeting with Lynch, the FBI thing) but Trump goes right back and takes the news cycle back by doing something heinous. He posted the Star of David thing on the same day Elie Wiesel passed, by the way.

The normalization of Trump and enabling of alt-right assholes is really dangerous and that isn't going away.

[The Duck]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/06/us/baton-rouge-shooting-alton-sterling/
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/07/us/falcon-heights-shooting-minnesota/
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/08/us/dallas-police-shooting-live-updates/index.html

So this country is on fire

[Luther Lansfeld]

We desperately need police reform.

[Captain K]

We desperately need everything reform.

[metroid composite]

So...the Republican Party passed the most anti-LGBT platform in its 162 year history, way more anti-LGBT any stance Trump has taken.  Including stuff like support for conversion therapy (which is basically torture kids until they say they're not gay) opposition to gay adoption (not new), opposition to gay marriage (also not new), all sorts of stuff about bathrooms.  The log cabin republicans (gay republican group) is pretty upset and revoking their endorsement.

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/davidbadash/log_cabin_republicans_shocked_gop_passes_most_anti_lgbt_platform_in_history

[Dark Holy Elf]

Bizarre. You'd think the party brass would have figured out by now that in 2016 this sort of thing is no longer a vote-winner. Though the inmates do appear to be running the asylum for the Republicans these days...

EDIT: This isn't even getting into my moral outrage at them taking these stances, but that should go without saying.

[Grefter]

Absolute tinfoil hat talking out of my arsehole this isn't it its actually in fact just stock rampant bigotry.

But what if its pushing a platform to sabotage the candidate they didn't want to endorse.

[Cmdr_King]

Nah, absolute tinfoil hat would be that the parties are colluding and making the Republicans more supervillainous is a move to terrify voters who might otherwise try to break the two party system into voting for the "lesser evil".

[superaielman]

The platform is a special kind of bad because no one with any real clout or sanity is having anything to do with Trump this election.

[NotMiki]

It says Coal is a clean source of energy.  Um.

[The Duck]

If Newt has any part of it, then the real agenda will involve his moon colony idea.

[NotMiki]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/kris-kobach-party-convention-platform

apparently it is the fever dream of one Kris Kobach

[Fenrir]

How is "gay republican group" a thing when libertarianism exists?

Is it just about hating muslims?

[Cmdr_King]

Libertarians aren't really known in the US mainstream.

That's probably changing this election.

[Grefter]

[metroid composite]

ISIS attacks France (again).  I really have nothing to say, other than I've been advised not to watch the video, so I haven't.


More stuff from gay republicans involved in the process:

http://time.com/4405261/gay-republicans-convention-rachel-hoff-platform/

http://time.com/4405018/gop-platform-lgbt-issues/?xid=time_socialflow_twitter


Another story today is about Donald Trump's running mate, Mike Pence.  I mean...no surprise, he's shitty:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/mike-pence-gay-marriage-religious-freedom
https://www.romper.com/p/mike-pences-hiv-scandal-must-not-be-forgotten-14348

But what's interesting is that he's not at all a popular pick on Reddit, even among Trump supporters.  (To the point that those that know Pence well say that they might well vote for Hillary now).  In Indiana, in an unopposed primary he had 25% of Republicans voting "none of the above".  He was facing a tough reelection in an extremely red state.  He's very much in the pocket of the donors; some have said the Koch brothers, others have said he got donations from for-profit prisons, and then upped the punishment for Marijuana.  (This is contrary to one of Trump's primary appeals, that he's not bought by anyone, because who the fuck would pay for that message?)

[Fenrir]

It's crazy how people are not freaking out over here compared to last november. Seems like we're getting used to the whole thing.

Dude might actually not be related to ISIS

[Fenrir]

The UK sinking deeper

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/07/15/shocking-plain-stupid-theresa-may-shuts-climate-change-office

[Dark Holy Elf]

Say what you will about Cameron's losing gamble landing Britain in this mess (and it did), but I did respect that he was a right-of-centre type who actually seemed to care about sane policy (e.g. acknowledging that climate change is a thing). Between this announcement and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson it's already looking much worse for what the UK conservatives have to offer, and the opposition is a clusterfuck so who knows how long it will last or how much worse it will get.

[Cmdr_King]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z1nNwsgYDc

About halfway through this they get to the topic of Trump vs The Press, and each reporter seems to agree that every successive president in their working lives (so back to probably the mid-90s) has been increasingly hostile to the press regardless, and it's probably bad times on that front no matter who wins (though obviously Trump is a particularly nuclear outcome).  Anecdotal, but it jumped out at me that they all took it as a given.