The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Atlas Force]

It would be better to nominate no one then to nominate Moser. Moser would do active harm to the Texas Democratic party because she's a sneering costal elitist who said she'd rather have her teeth pulled then live in Texas.

The fact that the far left is coming to the defense of a wealthy carpetbagger with abject contempt for the people she's running to "represent" just because the Democratic party also opposes her is the closest thing I've seen to horseshoe theory in action. You might as well come to the defense of Mitt Romney. Just because the DCCC is against her doesn't mean she's a good candidate, you effing morons.

[Atlas Force]

RAFAEL CRUZ'S NAME IS NOT TED!!!!

His middle name is Edward.  I know many Edwards who go by Ted.  If he uses Ted he is not appropriating any other heritage.  

Cruz is not attempting to be anything but a Cuban American.

O’Rourke using the name Beto for Robert is attempting to infer he is of Latino/Irish heritage.  That is appropriation.  You know it, I know it, and the Latinos who did not vote for him in the primary knew it.

Cruz is trying to insinuate that because O'Rouke is Irish American and not Latino, that he doesn't deserve the votes of Latinos. He's saying, "get back into your Irish box." It's not because Cruz is so invested in Irish pride, it's because he wants O'Rourke not to get those Latino votes, eso he'll call appropriation. This is the same attitude, by the way, that suggests if a white person eats at a Chinese restaurant he is appropriating. It's racist against whites. O'Rourke grew up in El Paso, ewhich is 90% Latino, so that he thad a Latino nickname from childhood is not a surprise. He is not denying anything about him. He is accepting t of his background and his life experience.

Cruz is not saying that Latinos should not vote for O’Rourke because he is not Latino.  He is merely pointing out that O’Rourke by using the name Beto is inferring an ethnic connection that does not exist.

Do not tell me O’Rourke has the life experience of an Hispanic.

 

Cruz is blaming Beto for growing up in the heavily Latino city of El Paso and adopting a nickname given to him by his Latino friends.
There's nothing to be ashamed of that at all; Cruz is grasping at the straws. His line of attack here is utterly stupid. Trump was right: He is Lyin' Ted.

THIS....

When me and my wife moved to Houston back in 2012, we had no friends nor family there, so our friendships developed with coworkers, the vast majority of whom were Latino that spoke English as a second language.

In my personal experience nicknames are extremely common in Latino and Tejano communities in Tejas, so this is a completely bogus line of attack.

Initially until I listened to the ad today I had assumed this was targeted at the Latino/Tejano population of Texas (potentially using Spanish Language Radio), since really that's one of two major potential swing voter banks in 2018 (Middle Class Latinos and the other being Urban/Suburban Anglos in the larger Metro areas).

Upon listening to the actual radio commercial, I was shocked at how corny it sounded (Like a used car lot sales jingle from a small town dealer somewhere in EastTex and such a blatant rip-off of arguably one of the best songs from the Charlie Daniels band with much worse lyrics, vocals, and musical presentation. Additionally, Ted Cruz's voice affirming that he was Ted Cruz and approved this  ad sounded downright creepy.

One of the things that I wonder about this "Statewide Radio Ad" is what audience it was even targeting?

Old Anglos are pretty much all ready in the bag for a 'Pub any 'Pub in Texas.... EastTex has become so reliably 'Pub that even the Yellow Dawg Alligators now vote 'Pub....

As all of us following this Forum know, the real vote banks in Texas come from the large Metro areas

Quite frankly even in the Anglo "Redneck" outskirts of the Oil Refinery areas around Houston, those that work and have worked in the offshore Rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, driven the rigs to move materials into and out of the Eagle Ford Shale in South Tex during the recent Oil Boom down there, not only come from an extremely varied and ethnically diverse work environment, but even more so tend to listen to music that sounds a hell of a lotta' better than this crap.

A real Texan County Music Song would be something like Johnny Rodriguez "Corpus Christi Bay" song from the early '70s, and not some random "Redneck Artist" from outside of Texas from back in the days.... Texans are really... really... really proud of their own independent alt country sound.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdivjLBxye8

More seriously now, I suspect the intention of the Cruz campaign was to create essentially free media coverage by running this radio ad, knowing that it would distract the people of Texas from the real actual discussions and issues on the table.

In that sense, it might have temporarily created a short term media buzz in both the National Media, as well as local Texas news stations, but I suspect that it might well be something that will backfire over the next few months in Texas, considering that Ted Cruz already has a bit of a reputation within the great Lone Star State as being a bit on the shady side when it comes to business dealings and corruption type items involving political donations and personal business investments that so many previous Governors and Politicians of both political parties have been implicated in over the past many decades....

I fail to see how this will help Cruz in Collin/Denton/Tarrant (DFW), Harris/Fort Bend/Galveston/Montgomery (Houston), let alone in Bexar (San Antonio), Travis/Hays/Williamson

Still, Beto is right to let it ride for now and take the high road on name calling and not take the Cruz bait and throw in chips at this point.....

Fold the hand and in the next three months focus on a mixture of building name recognition, personal bio ads, campaign organization in almost all Texas Counties, voter registration efforts from the Dem Senate campaign $$$ and private donations.

Post Labor Day, make sure you hit hard on Spanish Language Radio Stations throughout Texas, as well as TV commercials on Spanish language Cable Channels in the larger Metro areas....

I still wonder what the exact strategy of the Cruz campaign involves on this ad, unless he is seriously concerned about favs on his internal polling numbers among Anglos and Middle-Class Tejanos....

If anything sounds like free favorable media publicity from a relatively unknown Dem within Texas (El Paso is really its own island)....

[Atlas Force]

For all the right- Winger's lamenting Democrats engaging in a so-called Purity Purge of Lipinski, consider this. Take an AR + 6 District like Steven teague's or Justin Amash instead of A+ 6D District like lipinski's. Now imagine the Republican incumbent has a voting record that is pro Obamacare, Pro DREAM Act, pro-gay marriage even before became a fait accompli by the Supreme Court, and resolutely pro-life. And they even refused to endorse Romney over Obama in 2012.

Go on and tell us because they are anywhere from right-of-center to mainstream conservative on economics that you would oppose a staunch conservative primary Challenger because you opposed Purity purges by either major party.

Yeah, I didn't think so either. The bottom line is conservatives are upset because they're losing a conservative vote on multiple issues out of this primary. Yet no one I think would hold my own party to the same standards of moderation. The fact is, it's unlikely that such a Republican incumbent as I described would ever exist or be elected in the first place in an r + 6 District. Though maybe if they inherited the seat from their father the same way Lipinski did, maybe.

[Atlas Force]

The outcome of this election is bad, bad news for the Republicans. I am now convinced that the House of Representatives will almost certainly flip this year. Losing a district Trump won by 20 points...that is a major shift.

Let's not get overconfident...anything is still possible...

Yeah it's the rust belt... a very elastic area if the country. Dems will continue on with "muh rich Atlanta suburbs" strategy o/c.

Dems win a seat in a competitive area where they performed poorly in 2016 and your reaction is that they're not going to follow through in a GE?

Besides, the fact that Dems won this seat when Trump has tailored parts of his presidency specifically to curry favor with this demographic region is bad news for Republicans nationwide next year.

Saccone needs to pull 850 votes out of the remaining 3200. I think he'll net about 100 absentee votes in Greene but probably not enough in the other two to make up for it. I'm still really nervous about calling this though.

You think he wins absentees in Greene 75-25??

ah I thought he won regular votes there by a similar margin but it looks like he only won there like 58-41... okay yeah I feel pretty good calling this one

[Atlas Force]

I was far too young to be politically aware in 06/08 so correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems reminiscent of Wynn/Edwards in MD-04 back in the day (or at least has the potential to be). An entrenched incumbent with views generally more conservative than their safe D district (I.e. Wynn supporting the Iraq War, estate tax repeal, Bush energy policy, etc) gets the first serious challenge of their career from a progressive insurgent and manages to hold on by the skin of their teeth (Wynn won the '06 D primary 49.7-46.4), but then goes on to get blown out the next cycle after demonstrating their weakness and vulnerability (Edwards beat Wynn 60-36 in '08). I do think a candidate other than Newman should run next time, someone who would perhaps be a better fit for the district, but I do think if she runs again she'll win and it won't be particularly close.

[Atlas Force]

We've cut welfare a lot since the great society, so no wonder poverty rates are about the same.

Not to mention muh prosperty bible fails very hard when productivity has massively increased yet compensation is only slightly higher. These financial and tech firms are screwing over workers and are getting far more money than they deserve. These guys dont deserve 30 times the pay of a teacher just because they got lucky with some financial investment.

I am an upper middle class guy that gets over $50k a year by doing nothing but puttinng stocks in a mutual fund. This sh**t is just completely unfair and shouldn't happen, but that is the fcked up societ thatConservativeGuy jerks off too.

[Atlas Force]

The reason I think Republicans hate poor people has nothing to do with their policies. It has everything to do with their rhetoric. When Republicans like Orrin Hatch say the poor are lazy and need to help themselves, despite the fact that the working poor are very hard working, then what on earth do you want me to conclude other then Republicans don't like poor people?

[Atlas Force]

hillboy Sr. Member ★★★★ Posts: 276

Re: IN-Sen: Bayh in « Reply #19 on: July 11, 2016, 11:05:09 pm »It's over for the INGOP. Many Hoosiers have great memories of E-Bayh and will happily vote for him. Say goodbye to IN-Gov and IN-09 while we're at it. Republicans are officially dead in this state.

[Atlas Force]

How much did Flake win this district by in 2012?

Apologies for the delayed response, as I just saw this early today when I was sipping a few cups of coffee before I had to work a long factory shift....

There might be a small number of precincts that shifted, but looks to be (39.1 D- 56.0 R- 4.9 Other)...

Other is basically a Libertarian Party Candidate, many of whose voters were likely Republican leaning voters who voted 3rd Party because they saw Flake as "too Liberal" on multiple issues....

[Atlas Force]

most people I know vote on the issues

Here's how people actually vote:

1) Your either left or right politically

2) You adopt the positions of your party or political leanings the majority of the time without much thought

3) You then seek out information from your preffered biased sources to justify a position on an issue you know nothing about

4) But you never actually give a shìt if the issue is achieved and never check up on it again (notice Trumps base doesn't care he failed to build the wall)

[Atlas Force]

As someone who thinks the term "garbage poll" gets thrown around a little too freely, this poll is absolute garbage, for a multitude of reasons...

1. Gravis would have you believe Trump's favorability is at 47/51%, in *California.*
2. They'd also have you believe that 1 in 4 California *Democrats* views Trump favorably.
3. They'd also have you believe Trump's favorability breaks even with California Latinos (47/48%). Meanwhile, 2016 exits indicated Clinton carried Latinos with 71% of the vote
4. They'd also have you believe that 34% of California African Americans view Trump favorably (only 9% voted for him in 2016).
5. Their sample finds Clinton defeated Trump in 2016 by 14 points. The actual margin was more than double that.

Obviously, I left out several glaring issues (like Cox leading the Governor primary), but yeah, you can throw this one in the dumpster...then set the dumpster on fire.

[Atlas Force]

If he had reached out to Congress once in a while and wasn't intellectually distant, his presidency might have had more tangible results

What does the first part actually mean? Like is there an actual example from his first term where he didn’t reach out?

He gave massively benefits to red state democrats with Obamacare, spend the entire summer with John Boehner trying to fix the grand bargain and did virtually all of his 2009-2012 stuff through Congress.

It’s obvious that Obama should have done better with congress but I can’t see how this applies as anything other than a talking point.

[Atlas Force]

2020 will be a re-do.  A democratic socialist non-Democrat vs. a former liberal Republican female elitist with a major phony streak.

It's not just Hillary Clinton I can't stand.  It's that slimy John Podesta.  It's that whiny Jen Palmieri.  It's that snot-nosed Robby Mook.  It's the whole slew of Clintonistas that represent the Democratic Party's morphing into the party of elitist latte faux liberalism where they will drop everything for someone's right to an abortion or their right to trans (regardless of age), but will do nothing to significantly reverse the flow of more and more money to fewer and fewer people.  The avant garde fringe social issues are front and center with these folks, while the needs of working families get lip service.

No, thank you.  That's a faux solution to the problems of working folks.

While I have mixed feelings about Bernie Sanders, I'd love for him to crush Warren at this point, if THIS is the cast of characters she's going to run with.

Warren has her own professional, somewhat insular, staff and inner circle. These are drowning rats looking for another ship. Look at the language used to describe who these people are.

Aside from the one anonymous "Clinton Aide" these are the people that even the Clintons kept at arms' length. Adam Pachinko Machine famously longs for attention that the Clintons never give him. And what, half the quotes in this article are him and the spokesman for his PAC? Grifters and cultists are going to be grifters and cultists, but that tells you more about them than the people they cling to.

I understand disliking Warren's play if you're a cultural conservative, but you have to understand that there's an inside and an outside game for populists in the Democratic party. Warren, because she can play the Northeast Liberal Professor role extraordinarily well, has gotten a ton of access to the elements of the national party that are frightened by Bernie. Heck, she basically extracted wholesale carte blanche on banking policy and staffing decisions from Clinton by the end of the primaries. If playing a latte liberal gets you inside the castle gates...

I believe she's a latte liberal at heart.  A real working class advocate would never have felt the need to push that phony Pocahontas crap.

So you honestly think she's fighting like hell to prevent Wall Street deregulation just for the sake of appearing progressive and if she were to get elected, she'd govern as a corporate Democrat? I realize you despite the culturally liberal aspects of the Democratic Party, but you should at least appreciate the work she's done as a professor and as senator fighting for consumer protections. I also think you're jumping the gun on Pocahontas a bit. Isn't it possible she honestly could have thought she had Indian heritage and turned out she didn't? It's one thing to distrust the Clintons, who actually over 20-30 years have a repeated track record of dishonesty that stem far beyond the email scandal, but thinking Elizabeth Warren is a phony just based on that alone is the opposite of giving someone the benefit of the doubt.

[Atlas Force]

I'm one of the people who believes prayer works.  I'm a Christian.  I believe that Jesus Christ is my savior.

But Republicans who're in positions to do something can't sit back with thoughts and prayers and not take any action whatsoever to prevent the next school shooting.  Prayers work, but God doesn't just solve all of our problems for us; we have to make an effort.  When we make no effort, why would He?

So to answer OP's question, the backlash began when it became evident that all congressional Republicans were willing to offer was thoughts and prayers rather than using their power to make change.

[Atlas Force]

I kinda think I see where liberals are coming from. They believe the country elected Bill Clinton twice, then elected Al Gore, then Bush won (but should have never been there), then the country twice elected Obama and then a year and a half ago elected Hillary Clinton.

They believe the country is more left than right. That the only reason the Supreme Court is right is because of George W. Bush and Donald Trump putting Alito, Roberts, Gorsuch and another conservative on the courts, and that those should have been Al Gore and Hillary Clinton (or Obama) appointments.

See, this type of arrogance drives me nuts. You say all that, but then your party fails to even recognize mandates for Democrats when they do win elections. I'll never forget 2008, when the Republicans lost the popular vote AND electoral college, and then proceeded to act like the Obama administration had no legitimacy, and were determined to do everything possible to make it a one term anomaly. And then people like you have the gall say that its people like me who just want to cover their ears and ignore the accomplishments and actions of Republican administrations. Honestly Reaganfan, you are part of the problem.

[Atlas Force]

Nobody will care by November. Actually, nobody cares now.

My God, you're turning into Wulfric. Making the same banal statements in every thread. We get it, you don't think anything that happens before November 1 has any significance whatsoever because the electorate has a short attention span. Why are you even following politics at this point in the year if you think that?

[Atlas Force]

The reason people are annoyed with Beet’s posting as of late is because its a schtick he created and it continually derails threads because of how obtuse he is about it.

Basically; the person who he wanted to win lost and the person he wanted to lose won.  So he threw a hissy fit and said ‘well I’m just going to only post in favour of the incumbent regardless of what I believe because everything is all for naught!’

And that’s what he’s done; to the point where Trump incorrectly saying Reagan didn’t win Wisconsin will ensure Beet runs into the thread just to say ‘He’s right!’  Beet knows Reagan won Wisconsin; but he doesn’t care.  And that’s how it is for every topic he posts about now.

He’s not interested in an honest discussion with his fellow forum posters.  He just wants to drop in and post whatever pro-incumbent comment he can to keep up his schtick.  And what do you know, his fellow forum posters are annoyed they can’t have a serious conversation with him and find themselves baited into arguments with him by what is basically one big elaborate troll.

If someone posted ‘I’m only going to post like I’m a 19th century Frenchmen from now on whether I believe it or not!’ That doesn’t suddenly make it okay and mean we should pussyfoot around and go ‘Oh yeah, maybe he really does believe that so we can’t do anything about his attention-seeking derailing another thread!’

So yeah, it makes sense why regular posters think a person like that shouldn’t be a modertor; even if they don’t post in the section he moderates.  They expect some sort of level-headedness that he’s lacking.

[Atlas Force]

He was right for the wrong reasons at the wrong time. Someone saying in 2009 that Donald Trump would be the next president, while being right, really had nothing to base that on at the time and 99 times out of 100 will have been a lucky ideological hack and not a genius of political analysis.

I would also point out that if Obama had treated Russia like a foe from the start, we almost certainly wouldn't have gotten the New START treaty. The only big mistake he made was not beefing up our cyber defenses and bringing more public awareness to ongoing Russian hacking and disinformation campaigns against the US. While that's a hard task, given that you'll sound like a conspiracy theorist at every turn, Obama's greatest strength was his ability to communicate, and I think he could have managed it better than most other presidents.

I also think it's important to clarify how we define "geopolitical foe," since al Qaeda and ISIS are obviously larger foes than Russia, but are only marginally "geopolitical." Likewise, we have more to gain from even our strained relationship with Russia than we do Iran or North Korea. We should try to maintain as good of relations as possible with Russia, since not doing so would decimate the economy of Europe and lead to a massive global conflict. This is not the case with Iran and North Korea which we can afford to hold a much harder line against.

[Atlas Force]

Maybe - maybe not.

If this election had been held in the spring, O’Conner would have won.

If PA 18 had been held today I believe Saccone would have won.

Estes will win by a good margin in Kansas in November.  

This socialist tilt by a wing of your party is not going to be helpful to you in attracting up scale suburban Republicans.  You really need to ditch the socialists.

There maybe a Democrat Atlas red wave, but I do not fear it as much as I did yesterday.

See, this is what I just can't understand. If Danny had gotten 1 - 1.5 more point(s) or so, he'd have won, and yet in terms of actual votes, it's not that much different from losing. Would you still feel the same way if Danny won by the same amount Baldie did?

I just don't get how you are less worried. If Clinton was in the White House and a Republican almost won a D+7 district that Clinton won by 11 points, and months ago Rs won a D+11 district, I would be crippled by anxiety about the thrashing Republicans were about to deliver to my party in November. That you can't or won't see these signs for what they are is puzzling.

[Atlas Force]

I'm very familiar with West Virginia and it's hard for me to imagine many people taking this seriously, much less actually going through with it and writing Paula Jean in. As others in this thread and elsewhere said, a lot of Paula Jean's numbers in the primary were from protest votes and Dixecrats who still haven't switched their registration (a big problem Democratic campaigns in WV and Kentucky have to deal with). While there were some sincere Paula Jean voters, not all were. And just because those sincere voters supported her in the primary doesn't mean they're going to write her in. Especially considering WV's problems at the moment, such as the coup that pushed out the WV Supreme Court. Democrats and those leaning Democrat are acutely aware of how serious things are in the state right now, and though Manchin is a federal politician and has little to do with state issues, he's a part of the puzzle state Democrats are trying to put together in November.

It should also be noted that Paula Jean has, rather unceremoniously, shot whatever future political career she may have had square in the back of the head. She was never going to be a US Senator or anything, but there was some rumbling about maybe her running for a State Delegate seat or something small. No more. The state Democratic Party was never fond of her in the first place, but they tolerated her. They're going to be out for blood now.

[Atlas Force]

(whataboutism deleted)

Neither the campus nor the local government want the monument to slavery there, but NC’s autocratic government has banned local governments from removing statues. When you shut down democracy, you get extralegal violence.

This. While I'm not supportive of mob vandalism, on the other Hand LITERALLY  the ONLY other way the student body could've gotten rid of the statute was to somehow undo the excruciating level of GOP gerrymandering the entire state is subject to, win a majority (if not a supermajority) of the state leg, keep the governors office, in order to legislatively allow home rule on such matters.

Or, they could've, and did, eventually say "we've petitioned, we've asked, we protested, and a bunch of elderly "reformed" white supremacists hundreds of miles from here continually said "screw you".

It just dawned on me how snowflakey these right wingers are. They have to have immediate near unrestrained access to assault rifles in order to take "direct action" (i.e. killing feds) against even the THEORY of the government taking away our local rule. But in any actual case of completely ignoring local rule for ages an they get turned inside out over a statue specifically erected by white supremacists being toppled as "the beginning of mob rule.

[Atlas Force]

My rating of Atlas Avatar Colours

1) orange - mark of an exciting user with Good Opinions
2) dark green - very strong loyalty to something that was killed off by Jill Stein and the birth of the maroon Avatar
3) maroon - tryhard SocDem, I disagree with this avatar being created
4) red/blue - snooooooze
5) light green - boring version of orange
6) yellow - good number of yellow avatars make very intriguing posts, in the same vein as surreal artists who only paint what they claim to see in alternate universes
7) grey - handy way to find out quickly whether you should ignore a poster before reading
63738) no avatar - very suspicious, potentially dangerous individual; should be banned asap (some I assume are good people)

[Atlas Force]

Even if we ignore the minor little fact that he's basically outright admitted to being a troll, determining the difference between a pessimist and a concern troll isn't hard. The thing with LimoLiberal, hofoid, etc. is they are intellectually dishonest in how they make their cases.

Pessimistic: "Oh wow this poll shows D candidate only up by two points. This could be tightening, if things improve a bit it wouldn't shock me if R candidate could actually pull this off."
Concern troll: "Only up by two points! And then consider the enthusiasm gap, and *cherry picked detail from ridiculously MoEed crosstabs* and *discredited pseudoscientific theory about polling*, you can see this poll really shows R candidate up by 4."

LimoLiberal famously once tried to argue that a poll showing the Democratic advantage on the generic ballot INCREASING by two points was a "collapse" and just look at how him and hofoid interact in every thread on Wisconsin. It's the same type of J. J.-style nonsense that brainless blue avatars pull, poll unskewing, cherry picked data, citing junk polls and crosstabs, etc. It's also the type of insane theories they bring up, I remember hofoid once arguing that the Michigan marijuana legalization referendum would actually hurt the Democrats because "something something neckbeards" just to give an example.

But anyway, I present to you some recent posts which might throw the theory that LimoLiberal is just a normal guy with a pessimistic streak who wants to contribute into doubt:

For the record, I am annoyed that I have to start maintaining this quarantine again.

Well, if you guys want to do yourselves (and the rest of us) a favor, there's always plan B(an).

Yeah, it’s gotten ridiculous. Where are the mods?

Ive been patient. Krazen is the only other poster I’ve ever suggested we ban, but enough is enough. My patience with LL is at an end. Its time for mods not named Virginia or Torie to have some backbone and bring the hammer down on this little spamming sh!t who has spent the last *year* stinking the joint up.

x KingSweden

this.

x LimoLiberal

[Atlas Force]

This is pretty much exactly the type of response you can expect when formal avenues of resolution have been shut off by a higher authority. The people and institution hosting the statue and shouldering its costs haven’t wanted it for a long time but can’t relocate it due to laws preventing it from being moved or otherwise altered. Civil disobedience became the only means of reaching their preferred outcome.

This whole situation is exemplary of how important narrative crafting is in how we morally frame the world around us. That doesn’t just refer to the Lost Casue myth either, but also how we view acts of civil disobedience. The civil rights movement of the 60s required wholesale disobedience towards a regime of oppressive racial laws, and reactionary Whites in the South as well as nationwide looked on in disgust at these supposed lawless thugs. Now we enshrine their civil disobedience in our national mythos, much as we have the Boston Tea Party, or the colonists who tore down the statue of King George III in New York the day the Declaration of Independence was first announced publicly within the city.

Is what the students did with this statue vandalism? Yes. Is it illegal? Yes. It’s also true though that those most outraged are outsiders. Not the students who had to deal with it every day, they decided to tear it down, nor the institution who was hosting it, most of the faculty are likely quietly relieved it’s gone. As the issue of Confederate monuments has becone an increasingly polarizing subject, this increasingly describes the dynamic at play nationwide. People outside the jurisdictions hosting and paying for the monuments in question are demanding reactionary legislatures to take an increasingly hard tack on the matter. Notice the calls by some already in this thread to rebuild the statue on the same grounds and post armed guards.

If there is any truth to the idea of there being significant overlap between those who support Confederate monuments and those who claim to support local control, recognize that the vast majority of these monuments would be relocated off public grounds, placed in indefinite storage, or scrapped if the actual local bodies responsible for the management of these statues were legally allowed to have their say. If such a reality bothers you that much, the proper response would be to offer to buy it off the hands of the municipalities. Start a non-profit, contribute to an existing one or whatever suits your needs to pool the necessary resources. The worst response is contiung to expect others who would wish otherwise to promote your preferred narrative at their own expense.

The latter has been the response of the state legislatures with the exception of Maryland who decided they didn’t care. The rest became even more restrictive in the ability of the localities to dictate what happens to Confederate monuments. Those most supportive of the statues, mostly located outside the municipalities in question, have reacted with such heated fury even to the times that cities have managed to legally remove the statues that the reaction it generated from them was virtually identical to the reactions to actual vandalism and defacement.

If these are the types of reactions we can continue to expect from draconian state legislatures and the pro-Confederate monuments crowd, expect a lot more vandalism, defacement, and outright destruction of the monuments from those being forced to host them. Civil disobedience will be their only tool left.

[Atlas Force]

ReaganFan hasn't committed any offense in my view, besides holding political opinions that are unpopular with the majority of the community here. I don't condone all that Ftaghn goes, but Badger seems to have been the one to started their controversy, and she responds in kind. Smoltchanov and Famous Mortimer haven't engaged in ad hominem attacks or flung insults at other posters, so far as I know. ProudModerate2, by contrast, has done so routinely.

Perhaps I do possess some bias on this, given that the vast majority of the people with whom I've clashed on here are on the left side of the spectrum, while the other individuals you name have never engaged in attacks against me. And that is how I judge people by. If people treat you with respect, don't engage in blatant attacks, or bog themselves down in unproductive debates that accomplish nothing, then I have no issue with them being here. Of course, people with truly horrendous opinions (such as racism, sexism, etc.) shouldn't be allowed here under any circumstances. But I also don't think you should kick someone out just because they may have a differing view on an issue (i.e. abortion or gay marriage) than you do.

I don't understand, are you saying that so long as people don't treat you badly, you don't particularly care what they say or do? If so, that actually kind of makes sense.

Anyway, some thoughts:

1. There are more non-conservatives on this forum - considerably more I bet, so that probably gives you a skewed impression of problem users. It is interesting too, because not that long ago, I was wondering why we've had so many argumentative conservative trolls in a row who had to be banned. Maybe you missed users like Klartext, ahugecat and ghost monkey (not banned), et al. These users - mostly the last two - treated others like crap and in some cases had pretty twisted views. Pretty much every major troll since at least mid-2016 who chronically derailed threads were Trump supporters / conservatives.

2. When you made your infamous list of "problem" users which happened to be all leftists, you seem to have effectively invited more negative treatment of yourself, and probably even by users not on that list. Of course I don't condone that, but I don't get why you couldn't see that coming. It seemed like a blatantly obvious reaction. If you sit there casting judgement onto people, they will probably return the favor and thensome.

3. The state of American politics has understandably lit a fire under the left's butt, so it has definitely made things more volatile both on this forum and off. Politics isn't an emotionless game people play. It's very real, and has very real effects on people. It tore the Republican Party in two under Obama, so if you think this is just some phenomena on the left, just wait until the next Democratic president gets elected. And let's be honest here, the behavior of Donald Trump is obscene and an affront to even the most basic levels of decency that so many Americans thought this country respected, so it shouldn't be surprising that some of these people are becoming more aggressive and less tolerant of their ideological opponents who wish to keep such a vulgar, sick man in power.