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[Vector]

Speaking of censorship, looks like the BLM livestream on the topic of "We Keep Us Safe" was deplatformed tonight by Youtube + Facebook. Boo.

[MorleyDev]

For their to be unity there must be broad agreement. There can be unity with economic discussions and disagreements therein, agreeing that X is a problem and debating the best way to solve it. But there are current issues in the moral space in the USA about which there cannot be unity, only either broad agreement or deep conflict. Examples of which are Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, climate change. The position of unity there is 'we oppose these things, how do we go about encouraging people to be less them?'.

Until the main political parties in the USA enforce Codes of Conduct which works to push away, punish and expel members who engage in those isms/phobias and a general view conductive to solving climate change rather than denial, a positrion of unity around broad agreement will not be possible. Which the means Republicans would need to abandon their active currying of the fundemntalist vote, for one.

[Rolan7]

I want to go out on a limb and give the Capitol protesters some credit.  Even now that the dust has settled a bit, I'm not sure most of them knew that the plan was to storm the building.  I would guess that *many* knew, but not necessarily most.  It would only take a fraction, radicalized by the various theories on youtube/parler/4chan/etc, to lead the crowd into that action.

That one clip of the woman who got peppersprayed at the entrance (friendly fire from the rioters, or cop action?) and left in shock sticks with me.  She didn't know what she was getting into.  She isn't some fascist trying to ziptie congresspeople, she wanted to protest just like me.  We disagree in the strongest terms, but protest is good and important.

The core difference, in my mind, is that... Antifa and BLM activists didn't incite mobs for political violence.  People took advantage of civil unrest to loot.  Antifa isn't even an organization, and BLM strongly condemns the looting that took place.  Government instigators have a history of inciting such things in civil rights protests, but even if that didn't happen, it's nothing like what took place on the sixth.

Organized right-wing militias used a crowd of well-meaning protesters to violently break into the nation's capitol and sieze documents, and tried to sieze our elected officials as hostages.  This is not comparable to the civil unrest over... a perceived lack of police oversight.  The right-wing media likes to talk about cities on fire, but that's not what happened.  What happened is that ex-military militia with lethal weapons almost fucking executed senators we elected, and did irreparable damage to our reputation as a nation.

And we watched many (not all!) of the cops stand by or assist.  So there's that.

It's not comparable.  Protest is good, this is fascism.  And it's not done, not by a long shot.

[dragdeler]

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[Starver]

I was reading this article, earlier, about three of the officers concerned..

Yes, just three (plus anecdotally some of their colleagues) plucked as fruit of just the right taste from the whole gorram cop-tree of varying quality, but worth a read. Even if it's to have something else to be cynical about.

(For one thing, until now I'd mostly only seen pictures of protesters wandering the corridors/crossing between viewing balcony sections, because that seemed to be the main story, that some people got in. There was also a map or two of "protesters entered from this direction and this one". But I'd not really looked for 'action' shots or watched enough clips of news to see much (that wasn't, again, protesters walking the corridors/clambering balconies). So this is the first time I saw how many were storming the place, or at least a more representative view. And the few police/whoevers featured in those mass shots don't look 'accomodating' to the... Rabble? Horde? The massed onslaught.)

[MaxTheFox]

Is it true that Biden's Covid plan is pretty much the same as Trump's?

[Frumple]

Biden actually seems to have one, so no

[Lord Shonus]

If by "pretty much the same", you mean "completely different", then yes. For one thing, his initial relief proposal clocks in at $1,900,000,000,000 instead of the $900,000,000,000 compromise that was the last effort - an increase of over a trillion dollars without nearly as much rich-people pork.

There's some stuff in there that's the same, because it is fundamentally a good idea. Except Biden's probably actually going to do them instead of just tweeting it and forgetting.

[MaxTheFox]

Alright then, makes sense.

But didn't Pelosi shoot down the original 2T$ proposal?

[Lord Shonus]

No. It was acknowledged that getting too much through the Senate was impossible with Mitch in charge, so they downsized. Pelosi did shoot down some fairly large proposals due to having too many poison pills (lawsuit communities for businesses that reopen being a big one), but raw cost wasn't the issue.

[Rolan7]

The proposal was tied to some "poison pills".  Bills are seldom direct in our congress, they're usually a negotiated combination of various things.  Like giving some "pork barrel" money to the states which have votes and few people, in return for expanding basic human rights.  Which makes "X voted against Y" meaningless, which sure works well for our congresscritters as both an attack and defense.

The "poison pills" made this particular legislation obviously untenable.  It was a publicity stunt - they get to say they offered something, but they wanted to ban late term abortion or something (I don't remember).  It was a stunt, but that's how the game is played.  It's all deeply flawed, obviously.

[Naturegirl1999]

I’ve not heard of the term “pork barrel” money before, what is meant by that?

[Cthulhu]

They're talking about karens on twitter again.  They're talking about random boomers not wearing masks while we run out of vaccines cause the government gave a bunch of them to Europe and hospitals in New York face 6-figure fines for using their entire stock and politicians play chicken over the relief plan.  Nobody trusts anyone anymore and we're all very tired.

[MrRoboto75]

I’ve not heard of the term “pork barrel” money before, what is meant by that?

Let's say you and I are both congresscritters.  You want to expand spending for social security, but you need other congresscritters to vote for your bill.  You come to me, but I don't particularly care about social security, but I might really care about education.  I tell you I might vote for your bill, but only if you put in something extra into the fine print about education.

The bill is obstensively still about social security, but if passed also now does something about education, which makes me happy.

Its a form of compromise but often obfuscates what bills are really about to the public, and who/why people support certain bills.  To the public I might be against social security, but I voted yes on this social security bill, because hidden away was really what I wanted.

[Rolan7]

Exactly, thank you!