America - The Official Thread

[Chrunch Houston]

Republicans: "We're against government overreach!"

Also Republicans: "We're gonna reach riiiight into people's private businesses and tell them what they can/can't do."

Except it is not Republicans reaching riiight into peoples private businesses and telling them what they can/can't do. It is Biden.

Southwest CEO is against mandate.

 

[Danoff]

Except it is not Republicans reaching riiight into peoples private businesses and telling them what they can/can't do. It is Biden.

Southwest CEO is against mandate.

From earlier in this thread:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bans COVID-19 vaccine mandates by any entity

The executive order goes further than Abbott's previous ban, which prohibited vaccine mandates by state entities.

www.axios.com

"Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Monday prohibiting COVID-19 vaccine mandates by any "entity," including employers, if someone objects to the vaccine for "any reason of personal conscience.""

That would be republicans telling private businesses what they can and can't do. The Biden administration is also telling private businesses what they must do - that they must either test or require vaccination.

 

[TexRex]

Except it is not Republicans reaching riiight into peoples private businesses and telling them what they can/can't do.

Except it is. You're lying. Why must you lie?

Gov. Greg Abbott signs bill to punish businesses that require proof of COVID-19 vaccination


"Freedom for me but not for thee."

Royal Caribbean has already cracked as of Friday, complying with legislation that had already been signed into law in Florida and anticipating the Texas legislation being signed, revising its policy to not require passengers be vaccinated.

Big-ups to Norwegian for not caving to this ****ing right trash.

Damn, that was quick. Tree'd by Danoff.

 

[NotThePrez]

Welp, @Danoff very quickly beat me to that, so cheers.

 

[TexRex]

Republicans: "We're against government overreach!"

Also Republicans: "We're gonna reach riiiight into people's private businesses and tell them what they can/can't do."

 

[Chrunch Houston]

Except it is. You're lying. Why must you lie?

Heh.

You feign stupidity so well, sometimes it makes me wonder. So I will explain it to you.

I was speaking to the situation with Southwest, which does not want the mandate, but is being forced by Brandon's EO, to comply with it. I think most anyone with an IQ above 80 would have picked up on that considering I linked to an article about Southwest's CEO.

 

[TexRex]

Heh.

You feign stupidity so well, sometimes it makes me wonder. So I will explain it to you.

I was speaking to the situation with Southwest, which does not want the mandate, but is being forced by Brandon's EO, to comply with it. I think most anyone with an IQ above 80 would have picked up on that considering I linked to an article about Southwest's CEO.

"Well yeah Republicans did it before but I'm talking about something different."

Maybe don't lie and you won't get caught in lies and find yourself having to attack those who caught you in lies.

 

[McLaren]

I very much enjoy how Chrunch's source about the CEO's views also ends up ****ing on the notion that mandates are to blame for the delays.

“To be clear: None of the information from Southwest, its pilots union, or the FAA indicates that this weekend’s cancellations were related to vaccine mandates,” the FAA tweeted Monday evening.

Kelly echoed the FAA in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tuesday morning, saying “there’s just no evidence of that.”

“I want to apologize to all of our customers. This is not what we want but unfortunately it just takes a couple of days to get things back on track,” he added.

 

[Danoff]

I was speaking to the situation with Southwest, which does not want the mandate

Southwest may want companies to have the ability to choose to require vaccination, which Texas is trying to take away...

 

[TexRex]

Southwest may want companies to have the ability to choose to require vaccination, which Texas is trying to take away...

And has been for four months since S.B.968 was signed into law. They do this not only with fines, but as two Austin restaurants learned three months ago, still well before new OSHA guidelines were announced, also with threat of liquor license revocation by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

Texas warns Austin restaurants that their liquor licenses could be revoked for requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccinations

Senate Bill 968, signed into law in June, allows the TABC and other agencies to revoke businesses' state licenses if they make vaccine proof a requirement of getting service.

www.texastribune.org

Chrunch is desperately clinging to the delusional belief that this is different, resorting to personal attacks and general bad faith tactics to drive home the notion that it's different. It's not.

 

[NotThePrez]

Heh.

You feign stupidity so well, sometimes it makes me wonder. So I will explain it to you.

I was speaking to the situation with Southwest,...

Insert moving goalposts .gif

...which does not want the mandate, but is being forced by Brandon's EO, to comply with it.

As @Keef has mentioned, pilots willing consent to being under the control of the FAA when they become a pilot. Pretty much every major American airline is contracted to the federal government as well. As such, they knowingly accept that whatever the FAA says is the rule of law, and that they can't challenge it. I have a very hard time believing that all this is something new, much like the outcry that was produced when the military required all soilders to take the vaccine.

This seems to be another case of conservatives whining incessantly about their negative actions having negative consequences.

I think most anyone with an IQ above 80 would have picked up on that considering I linked to an article about Southwest's CEO.

Your article also quotes the Southwest CEO advocating for his employees to get the vaccine so that they don't lose their jobs, as well as to improve the general health and safety of the flight industry, going so far as to offer 2 days pay as incentive and compensation for any side-effects. @McLaren has also pointed out that Kelly has stated that the recent delays were not caused by the new federal vaccine mandates.

Also, you do realize that if Abbots executive order could be applied to Southwest, it would still be a case where a powerful Republican politician would be forcing a private company to not do a specific thing, rather than letting the company have the freedom to choose, right?

 

[Blitz24]

Southwest may want companies to have the ability to choose to require vaccination, which Texas is trying to take away...

I still am unclear on the endgame for Texas. While my guess is this won't lead to a measles outbreak or, worse, somehow a reintroduction of an eradicated disease, doesn't this mean that students going out of state from Texas for college might have an issue with actually going to those colleges if vaccinations are not enforced?

 

[Danoff]

So with the debt ceiling fight being postponed briefly, there have been a lot of scathing criticisms of McConnell for "caving". In an email to news reporters, Trump said:

"Looks like Mitch McConnell is folding to the Democrats, again. He's got all of the cards with the debt ceiling, it's time to play the hand,"... "Don't let them destroy our Country!"

A surprising number of Republicans seem to just want to watch the world burn. Obviously the debt ceiling is something that passed regularly under Trump, and obviously, not even a year into the Biden administration, the debt is not the making of Biden (who has yet to pass infrastructure, and the rest of it), and it's not even entirely the making of Trump, or Obama for that matter. This idea that raising the debt ceiling is allowing democrats to destroy the country is pure asshattery. The US defaulting on the debt would be monstrous, as would shutting down the entire government. Those are the options Donald! He knows that, of course, as do all of the republicans. But they want to sell a deeply toxic lie to their supporters in hopes of garnering enough outrage to win elections. We've already seen what happens when people believe those lies.

It's hard to even tally up how many ways this comment from Trump is evil. There are a lot.

• it's super hypocritical, republicans acknowledged that the debt ceiling has to be raised in 2019
• democrats helped them do it, because of course the country has honor its debts
• honoring your debts is not destroying the country, it's the opposite
• playing the the debt ceiling, even without defaulting, is problematic for the US credit rating, and bad for economics
• continuing the filibuster the debt ceiling, even past the point where reconciliation is viable, with no demands, is just outright trying to tear apart the US economy, and it's using minority rule to accomplish it.

No surprise, Trump's instincts here are to insist on bad faith action in hopes of achieving minority rule.

All of the house republicans voted for the US to default.

This is a bipartisan issue. It's not about the budget, that's a separate issue. This is about honoring debt. The issue was made partisan in the Senate, where republicans could use the filibuster rules to force a vote-a-rama, and they, in pure bad faith, wielded the filibuster to thwart attempts to pass a bipartisan issue on partisan terms (strictly democrats voting 51-50) so that they could force democrats to sit through meaningless votes meant to help campaign ads. It didn't work, but they've promised to try again, harder, in december.

The filibuster, that thing that Manchin keeps saying forces compromise, took a bipartisan issue and allowed it to become partisan because of a perceived advantage to one side's re-election chances. After positions were taken, for purely stupid meaningless maybe-it-might-get-votes nonsense, the house stayed in lock-step with the new partisan position, for the same reason.

The filibuster must go (and I know it won't unless more democrats win 2022). It is absolutely wrecking the US political system in just so many ways. No filibuster? No partisan arguing over the debt ceiling.

 

[TexRex]

Also, you do realize that if Abbots executive order could be applied to Southwest, it would still be a case where a powerful Republican politician would be forcing a private company to not do a specific thing, rather than letting the company have the freedom to choose, right?

This is the correct take. It's always been about prohibiting private entities from refusing to cater to the unvaccinated. There is no functional difference between doing it when only private entities were making this choice and doing it now in response to pending OSHA requirements.

...

 

[Danoff]

This is the correct take. It's always been about prohibiting private entities from refusing to cater to the unvaccinated. There is no functional difference between doing it when only private entities were making this choice and doing it now in response to pending OSHA requirements.

...

I think we can go one level further and say that this is purely performative. They (the governor's office and politicians that support this kind of thing) know it won't work, they know it's not constitutional, and are launching themselves directly into the safety net that is the US court system in an attempt to get voters that don't know any better to think that they're doing something to help them. It's pandering at a criminal level.

 

[TexRex]

I think we can go one level further and say that this is purely performative. They (the governor's office and politicians that support this kind of thing) know it won't work, they know it's not constitutional, and are launching themselves directly into the safety net that is the US court system in an attempt to get voters that don't know any better to think that they're doing something to help them. It's pandering at a criminal level.

Abso****inglutely, and I think I've been pretty transparent about my position on performativity and populism, but the aim was primarily to address @Chrunch Houston's unwillinges to acknowledge facts because they're inconvenient.

 

[TexRex]

 

[EngieDiesel]

Well, demanding money to prove loyalty seems to work for Scientology... I guess what's good for the cult of L. Ron is also good for the cult of Donald.

 

[TexRex]

Well, demanding money to prove loyalty seems to work for Scientology... I guess what's good for the cult of L. Ron is also good for the cult of Donald.

No doubt. They're also fond of attacking former disciples.

...

 

[Blitz24]

The fissure in the Republican Party is growing larger and larger. My political stance used to be conservative until about 5 years ago when it went too extreme. Now I am pretty much in the moderate camp. Of course, that means everyone hates me.

 

[Samcastor]

The fissure in the Republican Party is growing larger and larger. My political stance used to be conservative until about 5 years ago when it went too extreme. Now I am pretty much in the moderate camp. Of course, that means everyone hates me.

I know this is the America thread but the moderate stance in America is pretty far to the right in most similar western democracies already.

 

[TexRex]

I know this is the America thread but the moderate stance in America is pretty far to the right in most similar western democracies already.

Yeah, and that's not America. It just isn't built that way.

 

[UKMikey]

Fired FBI official Andrew McCabe wins retirement benefits and back pay in settlement

The Trump administration fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on the eve of his retirement in 2018. McCabe then sued over his termination.

www.knkx.org

 

[Biggles]

Fired FBI official Andrew McCabe wins retirement benefits and back pay in settlement

The Trump administration fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on the eve of his retirement in 2018. McCabe then sued over his termination.

www.knkx.org

What?! Crunch had been confidently predicting for months that McCabe & his buddies Brenner & Comey would be throwing each other under the bus in an attempt to avoid prosecution for their Anti-Trump, Anti-American conspiracies ... & instead this.

What's next? There are actually no pedophile, globalist, communist/elitist lizard people ?!

 

[TexRex]

What?! Crunch had been confidently predicting for months that McCabe & his buddies Brenner & Comey would be throwing each other the bus in an attempt to avoid prosecution for their Anti-Trump, Anti-American conspiracies ... & instead this.

What's next? There are actually no pedophile, globalist, communist/elitist lizard people ?!

The #2 man at the FBI is dismissed as the House intel committee votes to release the memo and lets the FBI director read it. **** storm to follow!

McCabe was former FBI Director James Comey's right-hand man (Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ontroversial-surveillance-memo-to-public.html

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...rector-andrew-mccabe-removed-from-bureau.html

I can haz **** storm?

 

[TexRex]

I'd have put this in the media bias thread if not for Couric having honored a request by a SCOTUS press representative. Given thatdetail, this seems the most appropriate place.

Katie Couric admits she edited out controversial Ginsburg comments on athletes kneeling

Former Today anchor Katie Couric admits that she purposefully edited out comments that the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader […] The post Katie Couric admits she edited out controversial Ginsburg comments on athletes kneeling appeared first on TheGrio.

news.yahoo.com

I'm pretty sure RBG would have been okay with people, me included, disagreeing with her on this position.

I do disagree. I don't think the kneel is disrespectful because it doesn't call attention to itself. Those who choose to do it do so silently. It would be disrespectful to be absent. It would be disrespectful to disrupt ceremonies. Plus, the Seahawks' Nate Boyer, a Green Beret who served in Iraq and Afghanistan before his football career, is the one who suggested Kaepernick take it during the anthem.

 

[McLaren]

#DefinitelyNotACult

 

[Blitz24]

"I mean, who cares about security being compromised by someone typing "CTRL + U" on our webpage? The journalist, or should I say hacker, who uncovered this compromised the PII of our state's educators!"

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...ound-security-flaw-a-hacker-threatens-to-sue/

 

[TexRex]

Predictably, and appropriately, the stupid Trumper is getting dragged.

 

[UKMikey]

As well as insisting Trump wasn't to blame for the event of Jan 6, he pardoned the McCloskeys for threatening innocent BLM protesters at gunpoint while ignoring the plight of Kevin Strickland who was jailed for 62 years for the crime of being black, so I'm not sure Parson is the best judge of culpability.

I can't help thinking this is performative legislation litigation.