If I'm not mistaken, DeSantis is out at Florida no matter what because of term limits for the governor. So I am not surprised to see slipping poll numbers for favorability. I am shocked to see him diving below the margin for error beneath a democrat in a presidential toss up poll though!!
What do these states think they have to gain with this? I know they're coming at it from a "think of the children" point of view, and are fully willing to ignore the criticisms that a potential child shouldn't have more rights than a realized adult.
But why do these people think this is an issue for the State? I'm thinking here about when this eventually goes to SCOTUS... What is the State's vested interest in denying health care to people who can conceive fetuses?
I think a Trump 3rd party run is the only surefire Democratic victory. I believe that a Trump GOP run will mirror 2016 in which the popular vote is a razor thin (yes, I'm calling a 3-4 Million lead razor thin) victory overshadowed by the electoral college.
I seriously worry about the Cornell West Green Party campaign splitting the Democratic vote for Biden. Biden isn't my first pick, but I would have preferred to see West try to primary Biden and then once West gets any traction, platform planks can be transplanted into the Dem platform. That is not even a possibility for this 3rd party approach.
Also, Jill Stein was a Russian shill to disrupt Sec. Clinton so I can't believe Cornell West has thrown his lot in with the Green Party.
I agree that we need something to stop the hate machine, but it occurs to me that there are still people who carry water for him that in the event of his sudden absence and power vacuum, another toady political figure is going to immediately take up the reins. I wonder how many decades it will take for the reverberations of Trumpism to fade. The Whigs existed in America well until the Civil War... and has even been revived in the last 10 years.
As someone 10 years older than you, let me tell you: the Bill Clinton campaign was amazing. Like, completely forget whatever you think you know about him being a womanizer for a moment...
Clinton went onto a late night talk show geared to black audiences (The Arsenio Hall Show) and played jazz saxophone live like Duke Silver. Clinton, in the typical politician suit, would get on stage and rip a blue streak of reedy sex in front of the house band. In the '90s, everyone jokingly called him the first black president.
At a town hall against George Bush Sr., a black woman asked a question how national debt impacted each of them individually. GB fumbled in his response, but Clinton deftly jumped into show he wasn't out of touch. Collective memory repaints this moment as Clinton with his steely blue eyes stepping forward and saying, "I feel your pain," in a lilting cadence and bit his lip empathizingly. It was noteworthy that a politician was saying "I see you, I hear you" at this kind of event.
And myself being a child in the '90s, Clinton talked to young people about the role they play in democracy and the future of America in a way that had me believing that I could vote for him at the age of 10. Every other politician up to then had talked about children like they weren't in the same room watching the same news as their parents. After becoming president, Clinton went onto Nickelodeon and did a town hall with preteens and teens about smoking that walked that line between getting lectured at and being invested in. It was hosted by a Nickelodeon journalist named Linda Ellerbee who had a show that presented the news to kids for 25 years. Clinton's directed messaging to children probably came from his own experience of having met JFK when he was in his teens as part of a leadership program he was selected for. Shaking JFK's hand and getting to talk with him has been described as the moment young William Jefferson Clinton knew he would one day run for president.
I'm sad we haven't had a politician like this in a terribly long time. I will say though that from a couple of videos I've seen, Obama has been great with children and Biden really talks to kids in ways that show that they will one day be adults. I've never seen them just use kids as political props in a kiss the baby and smile for the photo, then hand over the kid back to the parent like the kid is plutonium.
I will add here that when I first wrote this up and then went to go find source links, it stood out to me how much of my memories were inaccurate compared to the videos I found. I am going to chalk part of this up to the Mandela Effect, but also part of it to remembering the impact these moments had on me and the way these moments were played up in the immediate retelling in conversations at the dining table and from the media (such as SNL who parodied Clinton for well over 10 years). It's weird to think that my memories are wrong, but I think it speaks more to the legendary status of Clinton before his scandals broke out and he was impeached.
I'm just struck by the fact that NK never seems to experience "threats" from any other country to justify its display of arsenal. Like, France or Germany are never targeted, not even really Japan. This is clearly due to NK's alignment with Russia, but even so.
I was glad to read in this article a few insights from professors who teach NK studies who were able to point to patterns of when NK performs these launches. That was illuminating.
I also saw this scatter plotting that you described, and for Fox News, it is more of a swing / crap shoot. Another media watchdog organization called Poynter used to have a media bias report and ultimately deemed Fox News reliable for any coverage besides politics.
To get around this, we can utilize a whitelist/blacklist of news sites. For sources of information not on those lists, we as the mods can refer to the Media Bias Chart from Ad Fontes. For sources of information not measured by Ad Fontes, moderators may use personal discretion.
Example: yesterday someone posted a link from pinknews.com, but I couldn't find it on the media bias chart. That's fine. The headline seemed like credible news, but from a queer news source.
Glad to have you weigh in, so thanks for taking the time! I agree that some of these topics may be best handled with a cross the bridge when we get there approach.
I'm open to test driving the discussions threads until it's obvious that it is a bad idea (lololol), but I would prefer that users refrain from trying them until we flesh out community guidelines first. Otherwise it'll be the wild wild west in those threads!
