2022 elections. The steady march for sanity continues.

Fogdog

Fogdog

Well-Known Member
Let us not forget who sent this, when, why and the big lie behind it.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1496206645919105031

thehill.com

Kinzinger rips House Republicans’ ‘damn awful’ anti-Biden tweet

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on Tuesday slammed House Republicans for a tweet they issued after President Biden announced that the U.S. would be imposing sanctions on Russia, calling it “damn awful…
thehill.com thehill.com

Kinzinger rips House Republicans' 'damn awful' anti-Biden tweet

On Tuesday, Biden announced U.S. sanctions against Russian elites and their relatives, sovereign debt and two financial institutions in response to the Russian invasion into eastern Ukraine. He also announced that he authorized more U.S. troops to be moved to three European nations to bolster the eastern flank of NATO.

Following the president's announcement, House Republicans issued a tweet saying, “This is what weakness on the world stage looks like” with a photo of Biden walking away from reporters after delivering remarks.


Kinzinger, who was censured by the Republican National Committee earlier this year along with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), condemned the tweet.
 
printer

printer

Well-Known Member
Poll: Majority of Voters Want Compromise, Not Political Ideology
According to a new poll released Tuesday, most voters want to cast their ballots for a candidate who is willing to compromise, and not entrenched in party ideology.

The Hill reported Tuesday that a new poll conducted by Morning Consult, and commissioned by the Bipartisan Policy Center, found that 62% of voters would likely vote for a candidate that is willing to compromise, rather than be entrenched in their political ideology.

According to the report, just 24% of those surveyed said they wanted their candidate to "stand firm" on their political party's agenda.

The poll surveyed 2,005 registered voters online from February 18-20 and has a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points, The Hill article said.

Democrats and independents in the survey said they were most likely to support candidates who would compromise, reporting at 66% and 63% respectively, while 57% of Republicans said they wanted candidates that would stand their ground along ideological lines.

The poll shows voters are frustrated with the hyperpartisan divide in the country, and the failure of President Joe Biden to keep his "unifying" campaign promise.

"We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature," NPR reported Biden said during his Inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. "For without unity there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward."

Yet most of the major legislation debated during his first year in office including his $2 trillion "Build Back Better" budget reconciliation bill, have been passed strictly along party lines. The exception was the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed in 2021, .

According to The Hill's report, 64% of voters believe that less than half of legislation passed by Congress is bipartisan, and 36% believe less than a quarter is that way.

Most of those surveyed, 52%, believe the political divide in the country has become worse in the last two years, with just 17% saying it has decreased.

Of those numbers, most Democrats and independents feel that way along with 45% of Republicans, according to the report.

When it comes to the cause for the divide, the political parties cannot agree on its root.

Democrats are more likely to blame voter suppression, the Electoral College, and use of the filibuster in the Senate, while Republicans were more likely to blame voter fraud, the story said.
www.newsmax.com

Poll: Majority of Voters Want Compromise, Not Political Ideology

According to a new poll released Tuesday, most voters want to cast their ballots for a candidate who is willing to compromise, and not entrenched in party ideology.
www.newsmax.com www.newsmax.com
 
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Well-Known Member
Russia state media prematurely declared victory, hailed 'new world' in now-deleted report
Russian state-aligned media outlet RIA posted and deleted an article over the weekend that hailed Vladimir Putin for victory over Ukraine as Russia helps usher in a supposed "new world."

In what some have already labeled an "embarrassing and revealing" mistake, RIA pushed the article out and quickly deleted it. The article carries a date and timestamp of Feb. 26 at 8 a.m. and remains web-archived and available via the WayBack Machine to read in full.
The report starts off by underscoring the victory as "restoring" Russia’s unity, not just geographically returning the country to its historical borders and reversing "the tragedy of 1991," but also hailing the country’s ability to overcome "temporary division."

"Russia is restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together – in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians," the article said, according to a translation. "If we had abandoned this ... then we would not only betray the memory of our ancestors, but would also be cursed by our descendants for allowing the disintegration of the Russian land."

And the article could not miss a chance to praise Putin for his role in the war, highlighting the Russian president's "historic responsibility."
"Now this problem is gone – Ukraine has returned to Russia," the article proclaims. "This does not mean that its statehood will be liquidated, but it will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state of part of the Russian world."

"In what borders, in what form will the alliance with Russia be fixed (through the CSTO and the Eurasian Union or the Union State of Russia and Belarus )?" the article muses. "This will be decided after the end is put in the history of Ukraine as anti-Russia. In any case, the period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end."

The article makes the argument that Ukraine’s return was "inevitable," asking how the "old European capitals" could "seriously believe Moscow would give up Kyiv."

The argument aligns with and builds on Putin’s argument presented the day before Russia launched its invasion, speaking to Ukraine’s history and basis in Russian history.

The Ukrainian people have maintained a tenacious and staunch defense, thus far stymying the Russian army’s advance and preventing Moscow from achieving victory by Feb. 26, as the article would indicate.
www.foxnews.com

Ukraine War: Russia state media prematurely declared victory, hailed 'new world' in now-deleted report

A post from Russian state-aligned media outlet praised Putin's role and derided the West for pushing division among the Russian people. RIA published and quickly deleted the post.
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com
 
hanimmal

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-arts-and-entertainment-lifestyle-education-florida-62616d5f02b1045e734234c583c3f203
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NEW YORK (AP) — Until a year ago, Stephana Ferrell’s political activism was limited to the occasional letter to elected officials.

Then came her local school board meeting in Orange County, Florida and an objection raised to Maia Kobabe’s graphic novel “Gender Queer: A Memoir.” And the county’s decision last fall to remove it from high school shelves.

“By winter break, we realized this was happening all over the state and needed to start a project to rally parents to protect access to information and ideas in school,” says Ferrell, a mother of two. Along with fellow Orange County parent Jen Cousins, she founded the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which works with existing parent groups statewide on a range of educational issues, including efforts to “keep or get back books that have gone under challenge or have been banned.”

Over the past year, book challenges and bans have reached levels not seen in decades, according to officials at the American Library Association, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and other advocates for free expression. Censorship efforts have ranged from local communities such as Orange County and a Tennessee school board’s pulling Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus,” to statewide initiatives.

“There are some books with pornography and pedophilia that should absolutely be removed from K through 12 school libraries,” says Yael Levin, a spokeswoman for No Left Turn in Education, a national group opposed to what it calls a “Leftist agenda” for public schools that has called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the availability of “Gender Queer” among other books. “Now we’re not talking about a public library or bookstores. We’re talking about K through 12 school libraries, books that are just pornographic and with pedophilic content.”

According to PEN America, which has been tracking legislation around the country, dozens of bills have been proposed that restrict classroom reading and discussion. Virtually all of the laws focus on sexuality, gender identity or race. In Missouri, a bill would ban teachers from using the “1619 Project,” the New York Times magazine issue which centers around slavery in American history and was released last fall as a book.

The responses have come from organizations large and small, and sometimes from individuals such as Ferrell.

The American Civil Liberties Union, PEN America and the NCAC have been working with local activists, educators and families around the country, helping them “to prepare for meetings, to draft letters and to mobilize opposition,” according to PEN America’s executive director, Suzanne Nossel. The CEO of Penguin Random House, Markus Dohle, has said he will personally donate $500,000 for a book defense fund to be run in partnership with PEN. Hachette Book Group has announced “emergency donations” to PEN, the NCAC and the Authors Guild.

Legal action has been one strategy. In Missouri, the ACLU filed suit in federal court in mid-February to prevent the Wentzville school district from removing such books as “Gender Queer,” Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” and Keise Laymon’s memoir “Heavy.” The civil liberties union has also filed open records requests in Tennessee and Montana over book bans, and a warning letter in Mississippi against what it described as the “unconstitutionality of public library book bans.”

Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1982 ruling declaring that “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books.” The tricky area, Eidelman acknowledged, is that schools officials are allowed to ban books for reasons other than not approving of the viewpoints the books express. Officials might determine, for instance, that the book is too profane or vulgar.

“The problem is just that often our definitions, for example, of vulgarity or age appropriateness, are for lack of a better word, mushy, and they can also hide or be used as pretext for viewpoint-based decisions by the government,” she said.

Two anti-banning initiatives were launched in Pennsylvania. In Kutztown, eighth grader Joslyn Diffenbaugh formed a banned book club last fall that began with a reading of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” The Pennridge Improvement Project has started a drive to purchase books that have been removed from schools, including Leslea Newman’s “Heather has Two Mommies” and Kim Johnson’s “This is My America,” and place them in small free libraries around the district.

The wave of bans has led to new organizations and to a change of focus for existing groups. Katie Paris, an Ohio resident and the founder of Red, Wine & Blue, a national network of politically engaged “PTA mamas and digital divas” founded in 2019, said that last year she began receiving calls from members begging for help as debates over “critical race theory” erupted.

Red, Wine & Blue started online sessions it calls Trouble Maker Training, which includes such guidance as “Present a calm face to counter the yelling and shouting” and “Own individual freedom: You can decide what is right for your child, but you don’t get to dictate what’s right for other families.” Red, Wine & Blue also launched a website that tracks book bans, raised about $65,000 to organize against bans and is organizing an event in March featuring authors of banned books and parents from communities where books are being challenged.

“We think education works best when it’s parents and teachers working together,” says Paris, the mother of 7- and 3-year old boys. “And if you don’t want your child to have access to a book, then opt them out. That’s fine. You just don’t want to just take that opportunity away from my kids.”

Trying to get a book restored is often like other kinds of community activism — letter writing, speeches, attending meetings.

Meenal McNary is a member of the Round Rock Black Parents Association, based about 20 miles from Austin, Texas. The association was founded in 2015 after a Black teenager was slammed to the ground by a police officer, but more recently became active in diversifying the curriculum and fighting efforts to remove books. Last year, a parent’s objection led to Round Rock school district officials considering whether “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You,” by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds, should be taken off middle school reading lists.

“We worked with a middle school teacher who started a petition, and that gained a lot of traction, with more than a 1,000 signatures,” McNary says. The district followed a three-step review process — culminating with a school board vote — during which McNary and others helped organize people into writing letters, turning up for board meetings and telling others about the petition.

“We had children speaking up in favor of this book, even though it was traumatic for some of them to read,” McNary says. “We had everyone from middle school students to grandmothers and grandfathers stating their reasons why this should remain on the shelves. The board ended up voting in our favor and the book is still there.”
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hanimmal

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Man, the insurrectionist RINO's must really be thanking their lucky stars that Russia is currently pushing all their bullshit off of the front pages. Because their narratives are just falling apart hard.
https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-red-state-murder-problem
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Every news outlet from FOX to CNN to The New York Times to local newspapers has a story with attention-grabbing headlines like “US cities hit all-time murder records.” Fox News and Republicans have jumped on this and framed it as a “Democrat” problem. They blame it on Democrat’s “soft-on-crime” approach and have even referredto a New York District Attorney’s approach as “hug-a-thug.” Many news stories outside of Fox have also purported that police reform is responsible for this rise in murder and have pointed to cities like New York and Los Angeles.

There is a measure of truth to these stories. The US saw an alarming 30% increase in murder in 2020. While 2021 data is not yet complete, murder was on the rise again this past year. Some “blue” cities, like Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, have seen real and persistent increases in homicides. These cities—along with others like Los Angeles, New York, and Minneapolis—are also in places with wall-to-wall media coverage and national media interest.

But there is a large piece of the homicide story that is missing and calls into question the veracity of the right-wing obsession over homicides in Democratic cities: murder rates are far higher in Trump-voting red states than Biden-voting blue states. And sometimes, murder rates are highest in cities with Republican mayors.

For example, Jacksonville, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city with a Democrat mayor, despite their comparable populations. In fact, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Yet there is barely a whisper, let alone an outcry, over the stunning levels of murders in these and other places.

We collected 2019 and 2020 murder data from all 50 states. (Comprehensive 2021 data is not yet available.) We pulled the data from yearly crime reports released by state governments, specifically the Departments of Justice and Safety. For states that didn’t issue state crime reports, we pulled data from reputable local news sources. To allow for comparison, we calculated the state’s per capita murder rate, the number of murders per 100,000 residents, and categorized states by their presidential vote in the 2020 election, resulting in an even 25-25 split.

We found that murder rates are, on average, 40% higher in the 25 states Donald Trump won in the last presidential election compared to those that voted for Joe Biden. In addition, murder rates in many of these red states dwarf those in blue states like New York, California, and Massachusetts. And finally, many of the states with the worst murder rates—like Mississippi, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina, and Arkansas—are ones that few would describe as urban. Only 2 of America’s top 100 cities in population are located in these high murder rate states. And not a single one of the top 10 murder states registers in the top 15 for population density.

Whether one does or does not blame Republican leaders for high murder rates, it seems that Republican officeholders do a better job of blaming Democrats for lethal crime than actually reducing lethal crime.

Screen Shot 2022-03-16 at 2.37.44 PM.pngScreen Shot 2022-03-16 at 2.37.55 PM.pngScreen Shot 2022-03-16 at 2.38.07 PM.pngScreen Shot 2022-03-16 at 2.38.30 PM.png

Conclusion
The current narrative around crime and murder is convenient and wrong. Whether you’re watching CNN or Fox News, or getting news online or from a traditional newspaper, you would think that the increase in murder is a phenomenon found mostly in liberal cities. Many have tried attributing this increase to Democratic policies, specifically police reform. Republican lawmakers and ad makers have contributed to this narrative through clever messaging and strategies.

But the data clearly paint a different story. The increase in murders is not a liberal cities problem but a national problem. Murder rates are actually higher in Republican, Trump-voting states that haven’t even flirted with ideas like defund the police. Eight of the ten most lawless, high-murder states are not only Trump-voting states, but GOP bastions for the last quarter of a century. A more accurate conclusion from the data is that Republicans do a far better job blaming others for high murder rates than actually reducing high murder rates.

Methodology
We sought 2019 and 2020 murder data from all 50 states. Our primary source was the annual crime reports released by state governments, more specifically from their Departments of Justice or Public Safety. We chose state data because we found it’s more comprehensive than FBI data which is often compiled later. 37 states had crime reports for the years 2019 and 2020: Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. For the remaining states we pulled data from published public sources: Alabama- US News, Georgia- US News, Hawaii- The Center Square, Indiana- Hartford City News Times, Louisiana- US News, Maryland- Ocean City Today, Mississippi- US News, Missouri- US News, New Mexico- US News, Ohio- Axios, Oregon- KOIN, Vermont- WCAX, West Virginia- The Center Square. In seven states, the public sources only provided murder per capita rates, so using the rates and census population data, we estimated the number of murders in that state. Data and sources are attached above.
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Well-Known Member
Texas mail ballot rejections soar under new restrictions
Texas threw out mail votes at an abnormally high rate during the nation’s first primary of 2022, rejecting nearly 23,000 ballots outright under tougher voting rules that are part of a broad campaign by Republicans to reshape American elections, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

thehill.com

Texas mail ballot rejections soar under new restrictions

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas threw out mail votes at an abnormally high rate during the nation’s first primary of 2022, rejecting nearly 23,000 ballots outright under tougher voting rules that are part of…
thehill.com thehill.com
 
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hanimmal

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
printer said:
It is all Biden's fault. Less murders when Trump was president.
Click to expand...
idk, is that the 'keep on trolling' troll, or a 'moving the goalposts' troll?

printer said:
Texas mail ballot rejections soar under new restrictions
Texas threw out mail votes at an abnormally high rate during the nation’s first primary of 2022, rejecting nearly 23,000 ballots outright under tougher voting rules that are part of a broad campaign by Republicans to reshape American elections, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

Roughly 13% of mail ballots returned in the March 1 primary were discarded and uncounted across 187 counties in Texas. While historical primary comparisons are lacking, the double-digit rejection rate would be far beyond what is typical in a general election, when experts say anything above 2% is usually cause for attention.

“My first reaction is ‘yikes,’” said Charles Stewart III, director of the Election Data and Science Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It says to me that there’s something seriously wrong with the way that the mail ballot policy is being administered.”

Republicans promised new layers of voting rules would make it “easier to vote and harder to cheat.” But the final numbers recorded by AP lay bare the glaring gulf between that objective and the obstacles, frustration and tens of thousands of uncounted votes resulting from tighter restrictions and rushed implementation.

In Texas, a state former President Donald Trump easily won although by a smaller margin than 2016, the trouble of navigating new rules was felt in counties big and small, red and blue. But the rejection rate was higher in counties that lean Democratic (15.1%) than Republican (9.1%).

Last week, AP reported that 27,000 ballots had been flagged in Texas for initial rejection, meaning those voters still had time to “fix” their ballot for several days after the primary and have it count. But the final figures suggest most voters did not.

The most rejections were around Houston, a Democratic stronghold, where Harris County elections officials reported that nearly 7,000 mail ballots — about 19% — were discarded. During the last midterm elections in 2018, Texas’ largest county only rejected 135 mail ballots. Harris County elections officials said they received more than 8,000 calls since January from voters seeking help, which they attributed to “confusion and frustration” over the new requirements.

In the five counties won by Trump that had the most mail-in primary voters, a combined 2,006 mailed ballots were rejected, a rate of 10% of the total. In the counties won by Biden with the most mail-in voters, which include most of Texas’ biggest cities, a combined 14,020 votes were similarly rejected, which amounted to 15.7%.
thehill.com

Texas mail ballot rejections soar under new restrictions

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas threw out mail votes at an abnormally high rate during the nation’s first primary of 2022, rejecting nearly 23,000 ballots outright under tougher voting rules that are part of…
thehill.com thehill.com
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printer

Well-Known Member
Friendly_Grower said:
People approve of what Biden is doing 63%
People approve that "Biden" is doing it 46%

Now how in the hell does that make sense?
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Obviously you do not make sense. From yesterday.

"The national opinion poll, conducted March 14-15, found that 43% of U.S. adults approved of Biden's performance in office. Fifty-three percent disapproved and the rest were not sure. Biden's approval numbers have been below 50% since August.

At the same point in Donald Trump's presidency, about 39% of Americans approved of his performance in office, while around 56% disapproved.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll is conducted online in English throughout the United States. The latest poll gathered responses from 1,005 adults in total including 439 Democrats and 351 Republicans. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points."
graphics.reuters.com

What does the country think of Biden?

Keeping tabs on U.S. President Biden’s approval ratings and American’s top issues
graphics.reuters.com graphics.reuters.com
 
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