ChiGoose

Vallas is a traditional establishment guy who has tacked to the right to carve his lane in the election. His endorsements largely come from those that endorse republicans (like the FOP) though Vallas has himself traditionally been a Dem. Vallas’s support has come from the southwest and northwest white conservative areas of the city. Johnson is a Cook County Commissioner, so he has experience with local government administration. His platform is fairly progressive and he’s big on fixing the homelessness problem. He actually was a big supporter of a local non-profit that worked to help the homeless whose associate board I used to sit on. However, he has some controversial proposals like a 3% tax on incomes over $100k and a business headcount tax for people who work in the city (and thus benefit from its infrastructure) but live in the suburbs. Johnson’s support has come from the white progressive / liberal areas in the north. The runoff will be decided by turnout and who can court the west and south side areas that supported Lightfoot, Chuy, and Willie Wilson: Here’s another breakdown of the vote:

Not optimistic. This field was incredibly weak and I don’t have high hopes about either candidate who made the runoff.

She’s delusional. She has only herself to blame. Maybe she had had a few too many of those conciliatory Modelo’s before talking to the press…

Me too! Very underrated city. Have lived here for over a decade and really can’t imagine living anywhere else.

Lightfoot was elected with more than 70% of the vote in the 2019 mayoral election runoff. She then spent four years alienating every constituency and complaining about literally everything. Her greatest accomplishment is leaving us with this quote: “My dick is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest dick in Chicago.” The election played out mostly as expected. Vallas picked up the conservative vote while Lightfoot, Johnson, and Chuy Garcia competed for the second runoff slot. Johnson had surged over the last couple of weeks and beat out Lori and Chuy. I would expect that Johnson is the favorite for the runoff (interestingly, both he and Vallas split the white vote so the runoff will be decided by turnout and who the Latino and black votes coalesce around), but Vallas has a good chance at the upset.

In reality, the war started because the Ukrainian president went against the will of the people and cancelled plans to move the country towards the West in favor of closer relations with Russia. The people revolted and forced the president out. Putin couldn’t have that so he invaded Crimea under false pretenses. When that did not deter Ukraine’s move towards the West, he apparently decided to try to take over the whole country and install a puppet government. As much as people want to stretch the truth so they can blame Biden, the sole reason this was exists is because Putin wants to restore the USSR.

Some people will fall for the dumbest propaganda from the geniuses who confused SIM cards with the game “The Sims”

There’s tons of coverage. I see videos from the war literally every day. There are embedded journalists, there are independent outlets covering it, it’s everywhere if you’re looking for it. The only way you could believe that there’s no coverage is if you live in such an isolated bubble that the real world cannot penetrate it.

Top 5 states by homicide rate: 1. Mississippi 2. Louisiana 3. Alabama 4. Missouri 5. Arkansas Didn’t realize progressives were running those states… Also: “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.”

2022 Homicide rates: Chicago - 25.8 Buffalo - 24.6 Is every day in Buffalo a day of hate too?

So any time a nuclear power wants to take territory and kill civilians, we should just let them? Let’s just carve out the world for Russia and China so they can take whatever want and we’ll just come to the “negotiations” with our tails between our legs.

Let me ask you this: If China invaded the United States, took a good chunk of our territory before stalling out, was torturing and murdering civilians, instituted a policy of kidnapping American kids and taking them to re-education camps so that they can be brainwashed into thinking that China is superior and the US really doesn’t exist, would you be willing to cede a parts of the US to them? Would you condemn US citizens to indoctrination, torture, and death? If China had stalled out and the US was poised to take the upper hand and potentially regain the occupied territories, would you instead sue for peace? Because I sure as hell wouldn’t.

They’ve been pretty clear about this: restoration of their borders and sovereignty.

Maybe PJRedStateBartTwitchyDotMAGADotWin doesn’t have good war correspondents?

This stuff is readily available for anyone who is interested. Maybe it’s not that it’s not there but that some people have closed their bubbles so they never see it.

Saw this going around here in Chicago and it looks like it may not be limited to just the Illinois Nazis: Hopefully it’s overblown and these losers just keep losing and embarrassing themselves but be vigilant this weekend and stay safe just the same.

Russia is torturing and executing civilians and they are even kidnapping children and “re-educating” them to eliminate their Ukrainian heritage. It’s textbook genocide: trying to erase a culture. And yet some people are surprised that Ukraine doesn’t want to capitulate to Russia and leave its citizens in the hands of those who wish to liquidate them.

Well, peace talks will go nowhere at this point. Putin likely won’t settle for less than overthrowing the Ukrainian government and installing a pro-Russia puppet. And Ukraine (rightfully) won’t want to cede territory that leaves any Ukrainians in the hands of those torturing, killing, and kidnapping them as part of their plan of genocide. So the only way to bring this to a close quicker is to ensure one side gains the decisive upper hand. I would very much prefer that side to be Ukraine.

Ukraine is a smaller country with a smaller army that has been transitioning to a more modern NATO style but was similarly decrepit as Russia as recently as 2014. If we want to end this quickly, we should just give Ukraine everything they need to launch a counteroffensive and reclaim their territory. Anything short of that and this war is going to continue to drag on as a small modern force defends against a much larger outdated military.

I would be good with that

This is why I didn’t want to do a point-by-point response. It’s just devolves into arguing about literally every single possible issue instead of the topic at hand. A national divorce would lead to a civil war. It would be messy, people would die and even in the most optimistic scenario, we would all be far worse off than we are now. Personally, I think that’s bad and we should work to bring ourselves more together not push each other further apart. Surprisingly, it seems a good number of people disagree. And my point about the Nazis was that we SHOULDN’T judge a party by its worst members. I thought that was pretty clear.

Another in a long line of unpopular GOP policies designed at helping the rich at the expense of the rest of us. This is also why they spend all their time talking about culture war issues to get people mad and rile up their base: GOP policies are generally deeply unpopular with the average Americans so they want people voting based on anger and fear, not policies.

I didn’t want to list them out because I think it misses the point, but I’ll throw some out from the top of my head because you asked. The Right doesn’t own the founding of this country. The Founders were careful to keep the endorsement of a specific religion out of the Constitution but the right insists that we are a Christian theocracy. The founders grounded the right to bear arms as a way to maintain well regulated militias but the right believes this means everyone has the right to own any kind of gun with few to no restrictions. The right today is mythologizing a past that never existed. I bet that if you asked, a full 90% of the left wouldn’t really care about the anthem debate. And as for identity politics, you might be missing the “real American” identify driving the right. It’s rural white Christians as the true Americans and everyone else is “the other” How many memes have you seen about this being a conservative country because if you plot the presidential vote by land instead of people, there’s more red? The right is literally banning books. When in the entirety of world history have the people who ban books turned out to be the good guys? I honestly don’t know what this means or is referencing. The progressive prosecutor movement isn’t even super popular on the left. Here in Chicago, the likely leading mayoral candidate is strongly pro-police and is endorsed by the police union. However, the impact of these prosecutors on crime is greatly over exaggerated on the right because they won’t compare crime rates in similar cities with different approaches (hint: crime is up everywhere) This conversation started because some on the right are literally calling for a war against their own country because they don’t like what people say. In addition to that, people’s lives are being endangered because the right insists on slandering trans people and drag queens as pedophiles. A guy with a gun went into a pizza place because he thought the owners were using the non-existent basement for pedophilia. There is a popular twitter account on the right that routinely dehumanizes trans people and drag queens, driving people to threaten them or even instigate violence. These aren’t minor things and there is no justification that should be made for any of the above.. yet you will say this will “return us to our values”. I see it on this board every day. Look, the extremists on both sides push unpopular ideas that get popularized by the corporatist media that cares more about getting people mad so they stay tuned in than reporting the truth. But the overwhelming majority on both sides just care about kitchen table issues. They aren’t dialed into politics 24/7 and they aren’t familiar with the majority of things discussed on this board. Instead of defending the position of having us kill each other, why not advocate for ways to bring us back together? PS: if you’re trying to say all members of a political party are as bad as the worst members of that party, do try to remember that the current GOP is supported by literal Nazis.

Already explained it, but divorcing an abusive spouse doesn’t result in a war in which people die. Also, I could list a similar litany of ways the GOP has betrayed the values of this country and denigrates the left, but it would be pointless. If you’re unhappy with how things are (as I am), you should be advocating for ways to make them better instead of excusing those who are advocating for us to kill each other.

You know, we could save the planet if we just hooked Reagan’s coffin to the power grid. He’s gotta be spinning so fast he could power the entire country.