So again what are Democrats supposed to do? They can’t stop doing what they aren’t doing, nor can they stop the Right Wing Media (RWM) from lying about what they are doing. They could throw trans people under a bus in the hopes that this would prevent (RWM) from misrepresenting their policies, but then RWM would just find a different target to misrepresent.
They can be more vocal pushing back against misinformation in the (RWM) and voices from within their own party that are close to the issue. For example:
(1)
"Breed said she initially supported Prop. 47. But she said she’s seeing some of the unintended consequences of the measure as she tries to crack down on illegal drugs and thefts in San Francisco.
‘Our goal is not to keep people locked up,” she said. “But when there are no real consequences for crimes that are committed in this city, that’s a real problem.’"
…
Newsom reaffirmed his support for the measure last month when asked about efforts to revamp the law. He pointed out that the $950 threshold for felony theft in the law is actually one of the lowest in the country. …
Last month, he called for lawmakers to send him legislation to increase punishments for people who steal, including by making it easier for police to arrest suspects even if they did not witness them stealing and imposing harsher penalties for car thieves and people who resell stolen goods. He’s also calling for changes to the law that would make it easier for prosecutors to show a person met the $950 threshold for stolen goods."
(2)
"‘There were legislative things that contributed to this but there was also, I think, a culture that contributed to this, which was a culture of tolerance,’ said San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins … "
We’ll see if this sentiment dies off at the election season, but for now it seems that Bay Area leadership is acknowledging that we do indeed have a property crime issue. I’m inclined to agree with the other posters that Prop 47 is not the root issue, given that we have states like Texas as control cases. Purely anecdotally I can say I’ve seen fewer shattered windows, which used to be ubiquitous in my neighborhood, since DA Bouding was recalled and replaced with Jenkins (and it looks like the stats do back that up, though less dramatically than my personal observations).
Anyway, Democrats can respond to criticism from “(RWM)” by acknowledging on a nationwide platform that there is indeed a problem, it’s more complex than simple recently adopted “liberal” changes to the law, and that the party is committed to maintaining law and order while striving to treat criminals and suspects humanely while ensuring justice is carried out. Ignoring the problem lets the “(RWM)” hold a monopoly over the talking point.
I just want to say thank you once again for another well-informed post on this subject. I particularly object to haters of Bill Maher who cite very flawed statistics to try to support the claim that Maher is manufacturing a problem when there really isn’t one, because for some inexplicable reason Maher has suddenly turned from an Obama-supporting liberal to a RW fascist.
Maher hasn’t changed (much). What has changed is the social, political, and economic landscape, particularly in California, but also in much of the nation.
Missed the edit window by a country mile but just realized I wiped out a portion of my own post while fixing a typo. What I meant to type was “They can be more vocal pushing back against misinformation in the (RWM) and amplify voices from within their own party that are close to the issue.”
Edit: Also, “We’ll see if this sentiment dies off after the election season.” …
“since DA Boudin was recalled”
I really should not type after working extra hours - my proofreading is nonexistent!
Time for another Maher update. This time it’s neither agreement nor disagreement but more of a “WTF?”.
The “New Rules” segment yesterday was mainly a critique of Canada, with Maher taking the attitude “I like Canada – always will – but …”. And then launched into a bunch of criticisms that I think were partially valid, but only partially, and not well qualified. But the answer to what the fuck he was up to became clearer near the end: extreme liberalism leads to Bad Things, and he cited as additional examples the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, and even in such traditionally liberal social democracies as Sweden which he claims is beset by Somali gangs resulting from excessively liberal immigration policies. His final point was that if you indulge in excessive liberalism, there’s going to be a right-wing populist backlash, and, he said, as a picture of Trump came up on the screen, “you’re not going to like it”.
As a Canadian, it seemed to me that many of Maher’s critiques were typical of the schtick we sometimes see from him: the facts were correct (AFAIK) but the absence of qualification and context made many of them half-truths at best.
For example, he cited the extremely low US unemployment rate (currently 3.8%) compared to Canada (6.1%, up sharply from 5.1% a year ago). There are a few specific short-term factors involved (the Bank of Canada hiked the bank rate since last year and is looking to lower it again) but there’s a much larger overall economic picture here. No one doubts that the US is the best place in the world for entrepreneurs, the best place to start and run a business, and the easiest place to get financial support for it both from banks and from investors.
This leads to an indisputably strong economy, but that strength comes at the expense of social stability and social harmony and all the societal problems that flow from a tragically big and growing gap between the rich and poor. It is, in short, the difference between a nation in relentless pursuit of the Almighty Dollar and the stark division between those that have 'em and those that don’t, versus a more egalitarian and peaceful society. You can call that “extreme liberalism” if you want, dumbass, but those are the priorities that I value, and I see no sign of a Canadian version of the Orange Shit-stain resulting from it.
He also cited the high rate of immigration to Canada compared to the US (true) and blamed soaring home prices on this influx of foreign hordes. A few comments about that. Aside from refugees (less than 17% of annual immigration, and many of those are skilled workers well equipped to contribute to the economy) immigrants must be highly qualified skilled workers and are well vetted as such. Canada has ample resources and we need skilled labour. It’s definitely a net benefit overall, even if I think we sometimes let them in a bit faster than some of our infrastructure can handle, like our highway systems.
As for higher average house prices than the US, part of it is that people in Canadian cities are not fleeing them as they are in the US, because they’re great places to live (see previous comments about social harmony) and so housing within and near large cities has been rapidly rising in value. It’s been boosted by demand, yes, including from new immigrants, and helped along by the absence of a subprime meltdown and price collapse as the US experienced, and by a strongly regulated banking system. The value of my current house tripled in the past ten years. I’m not complaining.
I’m not going to say that Maher is full of shit. He made some valid points. Canada is far from perfect. But by golly, when Maher has an axe to grind, he grinds away like there’s no tomorrow!
This is pure RW talking points. Hannity and his ilk have spent the last several years invoking the “liberal excess” of the Weimar Republic to justify their shift to fascism, and it sounds like Bill has swallowed it hook-line-and-sinker because it helps him rationalize his phobia of Scary Brown People.
Bill Maher: "At its worst, Canada is what American voters think happens when there’s no one putting a check on extreme wokeness,” Maher continued, citing transgender Ontario public school teacher Kayla Lemieux, who went viral after images circulated of the educator wearing massive prosthetic breasts in class.
“They say in politics, liberals are the gas pedal, and conservatives are the brakes, and I’m generally with the gas pedal, but not if we’re driving off a cliff,” he said near the end of his monologue."
Oops, guess the wrong ox got gored this time. Shouldn’t you just wander away from the TV set for another drink? 
Yes, the culture wars are all fun and games until you get your face bitten by the leopard.
Don’t worry, wolfpup will get distracted forget it all and go back to hunting for wokeism in Disney movies, the academy awards, and what not again
Please try to read for comprehension. Note that I didn’t say Maher was entirely wrong in everything he said about Canada. I said that a lot of it was without context and therefore misleading, and it bugged me because I’m in a position to understand the nuances.
As a medical professional I get that you’d be more triggered by his anti-science stance and crap like “medical science doesn’t know everything” as an excuse for ignoring all its recommendations that one doesn’t happen to like. Note that here I didn’t say that Maher was missing context and nuance, I said that he was flat-out wrong and was being an idiot. See the difference?
Terrible sentence structure! I blame pre-dinner drinks, dinner wine, and post-dinner drinks! Clearly, …
I get that, as a medical professional, you’d be more triggered by his anti-science stance …
This sort of thing always confounds me in social media. If I “like” it, does that mean I like Christian nationalism, or does it mean that I like the OP for criticizing it? If I react “angry”, then does it mean I’m angry at the OP, or at Christian nationalists?
On Facebook, at least, it seems that all of the emoticons are a type of Like. They show up when you hover over the Like button. The emoticons were added so that people wouldn’t have to avoid “Liking” a post that is sad or angering, or where someone is asking for comfort.
So that suggests to me that the Like is for what you think of the post, while the emoticon is how you feel about what is described. If someone posts something bad that happens to them, you “Like” that they shared that, but then you use the “Care” emoticon to symbolize giving them a hug.
You do not want to put an Angry emoticon on when someone says something heinous, because Facebook will then show you more posts like that one. That’s what “Like” means for the algorithm": show them more of this.
(Hope that made sense. It’s a bit hard to talk about, and my head is a bit fuzzy right now.)
Now he’s defending Woody Allen, because I guess social deviants have to stick together.
Aside from the value or lack thereof of Maher’s views on Woody Allen, Maher’s (quoted) representation of what Allen is accused of is fake and false and incorrect.
I’d recommend this documentary:
As with his recent on-air peroration about Canada as a woke dystopia and his repeated hitting the talking point about permanent gender reassig on children — he seems to lock in on some popular perception of what’s wrong with some issue and just keeps banging at it based on that.
Yes, and I suspect further examples wouldn’t be hard to find.
I agree with wolfpup that Maher’s habit of bringing in guests that wouldn’t be welcome on, say, MSNBC is a positive. I’m less forgiving than wolfpup of Maher’s softball approach, though. (Yes, I get that Maher is an entertainer and not a journalist. But he does bear some responsibility for the fact that he’s giving people, be they left or right, a platform.)
Maher too often chooses a topic to get indignant about based not on the facts about that topic, but about what some group of people want to believe about that topic. Increasingly, that group appears to be ‘less-educated right-wingers.’
An indication of why he’s going that direction appeared in his most recent episode: Maher made some snarky comment about Biden and an audience member gave Maher a huge YEAH!! And there was enthusiastic applause that sounded as though it came from most of the audience.
The further Maher goes to the ‘ignore the facts; savor the outrage’ right, the more he’s rewarded by his increasingly right-wing audience—both in-studio and online.
I don’t see that changing. He’s going to go on ignoring facts in favor of ‘narratives’ that will win him up-votes and applause from the non-reality-based community.
(And all that said: sure, extreme leftists say and do really annoying and deplorable things. But they have zero chance of gaining power. Whereas Maher’s current fanbase has all too much chance of gaining power.)
And then you realize that Maher is basically a better-dressed Joe Rogan.
Joe Rogan is by his own admission a dumbass. Maher legitimately believes he’s the smartest person in whatever room he’s in and wants to make sure you know it.
It’s a sad state of affairs when you can plausibly show how Maher is more reprehensible.
Then again, I liked Rogan on NewsRadio. I don’t remember liking Maher on anything.