Shit! we forgot an election thread for the midterms. Here it is now.

[tstorm823]

...I don't know about where you are, but where I am, if an adult is in a position of authority and responsibility over a 16-year-old and has sex with them, that's still considered grooming and abuse.

People who are under your supervision and authority are not appropriate lovers.

It's not about where I am in current times. It's about things that happened in the 60s-early 80s. Society's perspective has changed greatly since then in the places we live. You can't write the song "hot for teacher" in 2022, but you certainly could up to 1984. The age of consent here is still 16, and laws about positions of authority or corruption of minors didn't exist 50 years ago.

Even if you're moaning about how the overall number has been presented, and that some don't qualify, that still leaves a large number of rapes and sexual abuse of minors-- which the Pennsylvania Catholic Church engaged in covering up, and which Shapiro assisted in exposing. Which is a worthy use of his office, and to which you're only objecting because you identify with the organisation that perpetrated the crimes.

Go ahead and read the Grand Jury report yourself. Page 319 is where the individual stories start.

First one, had relations with teen of unspecified age, but was caught by police and let off, so pretty safe to say above the age of consent. Later on assaulted a child, church covered nothing up, guy was convicted, the Church paid for therapy.
Second one, a child involved, Church reported the allegations to the DA, nothing was covered up.
Third one, all above the age of consent.
Fourth one, removed from jobs, and charges were pressed.
Fifth one was put on leave of absence for relationships with adult women.
Sixth one, victims over age of consent referred to law enforcement, a victim came forward who was a teenager below the age of consent at the time (who said he liked the priest and the priest made him feel special), so they dismissed him from the priesthood.

You could go through them all. In a lot of these cases, no actual crime was committed. In the cases where crimes were committed, it was more often not the church itself reporting the crime to the police. But if you pretend that they're all part of a single event, you get a horrific picture of hundreds of pre-pubescent victims thrown to the wolves and covered up. That's just not the truth, and I blame the people involved for pushing that narrative.

It's just that standing up for paedophiles is such a strange thing to do. I've never understood how Catholics have been able to square that circle of an omnipotent god and child abuse carried out in his name. But we can leave them to their fucked up hypocritical fake morality I suppose.

The Catholic Clergy are less likely to abuse someone than basically any other set of people on the planet, and it is the self-flagellating, hyper-penitent nature of Catholics who refuse to defend themselves that allows you to imagine otherwise.

I'd certainly look twice at a candidate who sues an organization which regularly hides sex offenders, basically launders money, declares itself exempt from taxes and tries to corrupt politicians.

Literally none of that is true in any meaningful sense. You think the Church is covering up sex offenders because you know about its sex offenders... do you not see the contradiction? Churches don't pay income taxes... non-profits also don't pay income taxes... Churches aren't exempt from pretty much all the other taxes (depending on location). What more taxes are you expecting Catholic Churches (which are nearly all individually in the negative being supported by the Church at large) to pay? Money laundering and political corruption? What are you even on about?

 

[tstorm823]

"Too soon" to move decisively and quickly off fossil fuels was over a century ago.

None of us would be alive. Nature would have been destroyed without fossil fuels.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I mean if anyone needs a colonoscopy to see what's up their asses, its Republicans.

I'll save them some time and money... It's their heads.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The Joke from today's Bee... but is it really funny?
View attachment 7363

To be fair, if I was in Pennsylvania I would have voted for the corpse of Terri Schiavo over Oz. I'll take incompetence over a malicious opportunistic grifter.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

 

[Elijin]

Ah yes because churches are well known for reporting sex offenders immediately after one offense. Not at all a history of decades worthof offences that were quietly dealt with until it hits public news.

Your country has separation of state and chruch, ANY political lobbying by the church is corruption

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Only if we can also cap the voting age at 50.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Damn, that gif is so high quality, where'd you get it?

Eh, just googled "moving right along muppets" and it was one of the first that came up. Used another one recently, so I avoided repeating that one.

 

[SilentPony]

Ah yes because churches are well known for reporting sex offenders immediately after one offense. Not at all a history of decades worthof offences that were quietly dealt with until it hits public news.

Your country has separation of state and chruch, ANY political lobbying by the church is corruption

Not just corruption, 100000% illegal. And people have been reporting churches to the IRS left and right. In theory they should be taken to court and have their tax exemption revoked. In theory. The IRS is pretty slow and pretty religious. Damned Bible thumpers.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Speaking of corruption, there was a ballot initiative in Louisiana that was thankfully shot down, but I question how it got there in the first place.

Amends the Louisiana Constitution to allow civil service employees, who are currently barred from politics, to publicly support political campaigns of their family members.

 

[Trunkage]

Fetterman was so def-eatable, even before his stroke. Where was a discussion about what the Green New Deal means for Steel workers? 5 million "migrants" entering illegally in the US which drives down wages? Measuring US health (economic, energy independent and more?) Doesn't seem Oz brought it insisting that Fetterman would be a vote to remain going in what must Americans think is a wrong track.

Most of the footage I saw of Fetterman had him complaining that Oz is wealthy. That should not have been enough.

What was Oz's plan?

 

[Trunkage]

I'd certainly look twice at a candidate who sues an organization which regularly hides sex offenders, basically launders money, declares itself exempt from taxes and tries to corrupt politicians.

Better than the alternative side of being so deep in their pockets that the concept of separation of state and religion is blurring.

Maybe the approach is like how most governors took for the SBC. In the last year, they have 'taken out' all the pedo pastors etc and all those in the administration that hide their offenses....

(Now, I'll note that 1 The SBC pretendes they didnt track these pedophiles among their rank. Now there is better people in place, it is now know that they DID track them, the leaders of the Convention just didn't bother telling any congregation they were transferred to. They did this for decades, very similar to the Catholic church. 2. Where the fuck is De Santis with his anti-grooming rhetoric here. If he treated churches as half as bad as school teacher, there might actually be change. 3. Of course, when De Santis means groomers, he never actually means pedos. He means gay people. 4. Yes, the SBC has shifted 'Left' in the last year, as strange as that is to here. No, their rhetoric is still god awful and are still more right wing than the pope. They just got sick and tired of management lying to them.)

 

[gorfias]

What was Oz's plan?

Cut taxes? I really don't know. That by itself is a huge problem.

Tucker Carlson posited some time ago that there may be no red wave. What is their message? Lower taxes and more efficient government? That might get an accountant for Mobile corporation interested but who else? That's like a Democrat claiming to be for healthy children. Are there people for sick children?

And this is the way Republicrats and Democrans want things. If anything, the Republican leadership doesn't want to be in charge. If they're in charge, their base may actually want them to do things.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

All this talk of awful politics and shuffling slightly less or more bad people into office while I'm just sitting here wondering how the hell "loli" is trending on Twitter for the 8th time in the last three weeks.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Cut taxes? I really don't know. That by itself is a huge problem.
Tucker Carlson posited some time ago that there may be no red wave. What is their message? Lower taxes and more efficient government? That might get an accountant for Mobile corporation interested but who else? That's like a Democrat claiming to be for healthy children. Are there people for sick children?

The problem is that when Republicans say "lower taxes" they mean lower taxes for wealthy people and corporations. They don't mean lower taxes for YOU.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/fundamentally-flawed-2017-tax-law-largely-leaves-low-and-moderate-income

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

The problem is that when Republicans say "lower taxes" they mean lower taxes for wealthy people and corporations. They don't mean lower taxes for YOU.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/fundamentally-flawed-2017-tax-law-largely-leaves-low-and-moderate-income

One of the more barbaric plans they've been trotting out now and again is to force everyone to pay taxes regardless of income, even if it's a dollar, so that they feel "invested in the system"- because after you pay that dollar, you'll suddenly realize how wasteful the government is and vote Republican. Of course, that plan would cost far, far more than it would ever take in, but since when have Republicans let fiscal responsibility get in the way of punishing the people they hate?

 

[Thaluikhain]

What is their message? Lower taxes and more efficient government? That might get an accountant for Mobile corporation interested but who else? That's like a Democrat claiming to be for healthy children. Are there people for sick children?

Yeah, they have to get a quick, memorable soundbite, generally something vague enough that nobody can disagree with (such as being for healthy children), and then there's no particular obligation to carry through if/when they win. That sort of snappy, official messaging is most often worthless.

Looking in-depth at their policies would be more useful if all the voters were political analysts who had time to do that sort of thing, listening to the unspoken messages and past histories of candidates is more useful in practice.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

 

[immortalfrieza]

Ish? I got a - mostly self-reported - elevator pitch for the candidates on the ballot in the mail. Basically a brief summation of their history and a short paragraph about issue that they consider a priority if elected. It was using a half-sized newspaper, so it wasn't as brief as you might expect for something in the mail. But still, the thing was probably only...I want to say 8 pages total? Regardless, the contents were largely superficial, only touching on what the candidate thought was the most important factor and otherwise not really going into their policies and goals.

To your point, this has been a complaint of mine for some years now. The system only really works if the population is politically educated and informed, which is decidedly the exception rather than the rule. Even in presidential races - which dominate the news cycle for almost a year - the general populace would be hard pressed to accurately describe the candidates' policies, much less their qualifications. More commonly, they default to how they're characterized by their favored pundits, or simply assume that if they belong to the same party then they must share beliefs and priorities.

Never mind direct voting, wherein the ballots can be deliberately obtuse or otherwise misleading - with or without weasel wording - to try and prejudice voters towards a particular answer. Eg. "Should this law be rejected? Yes or No?" is a very literal case of "vote yes to say no". I shit you not, that's a thing. In fact, here's an example of it from 2014...as part of a 1,000 word ballot measure.

In a very fundamental way, our current approach to the system is somewhere between broken and useless. A voting population needs to be politically aware and capable of making informed decisions, and - right now - the system at best doesn't facilitate either consistently and at worst tries to sabotage both factors.

Considering the entire system has been built around every last politician not genuinely giving a damn what the people want and need much less having any obligation whatsoever to actually give the people that it would be very self sabotaging of our government to actually allow people to be informed when they vote. The system works... for the politicians and the politicians only.

Besides, they're well aware the vast majority of people vote automatically for a particular party regardless of what the candidates are doing or what the policies are.

It's just that standing up for paedophiles is such a strange thing to do. I've never understood how Catholics have been able to square that circle of an omnipotent god and child abuse carried out in his name. But we can leave them to their fucked up hypocritical fake morality I suppose.

The only people who are in any religion these days are blind worshipers who don't care that everything about said religion has already been proven beyond all doubt to be bullshit. These are the kind of people who will defend anything anyone in an organization does because they are part of the organization no matter how horrifically bad it is. It's not the first time "it's Christianity, therefore it's good" has happened and sadly it won't be the last.

I think that's very unfair, Oz was a brillant heart surgeon and I haven't heard anything that would assume he had a serious brain injury since then, he just seemed like a greedy person willing to take advantages of gullible peoples for money.

So... Oz was always a politician.

 

[Trunkage]

All this talk of awful politics and shuffling slightly less or more bad people into office while I'm just sitting here wondering how the hell "loli" is trending on Twitter for the 8th time in the last three weeks.

Like Anime? (I don't touch twitter with so Im assuming.) I'd dare say its got something to do with the new owner