US Politics: Let's Arm All the Teachers! 30 Pieces of Silver to Shoot a Student!

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

“Under the Trump administration, we’re seeing the detention system balloon,” said Clara Long, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch. With arrests up by 30 percent, ICE has requested $2.7 billion to increase detention capacity by 25 percent. “It is one of the fastest growing sectors of the carceral state,” said Kelly Lytle Hernandez, an immigration historian at UCLA.

Detention is big business. ICE relies on private prison companies for roughly 70 percent of its long-term lockups. After the election, the stock prices of  the two largest private prison companies, Geo Group and CoreCivic, nearly doubled.

ICE agents are optimistic about the expansion, said Henry Lucero, who oversees ICE operations in Arizona. “Now if we encounter you, there is a very great chance you’re going to be arrested,” he said. While the Obama administration tried to limit deportations to those with criminal records, Trump effectively made every undocumented immigrant a potential target. “The handcuffs are taken off of our individual officers,” said Lucero, echoing Arpaio. Non-criminal arrests more than doubled last fiscal year to  37,734, according to ICE.

 

'So What? Maybe It Is a Concentration Camp'
Joe Arpaio made his name by building a harsh jail in the desert. Now, Trump is promising to take his punitive approach to immigration national.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/how-joe-arpaio-inspired-the-immigration-crackdown/554027/

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has often served as an acute barometer for the state the American political right, which is why the invitation of European extremists Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, of France, and Nigel Farage, of England, is provoking fear among centrists and conservatives in the U.S. Maréchal-Le Pen is a particularly divisive figure because she does little to distance herself from her grandfather, National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. “I am the political heir of Jean-Marie Le Pen,” Maréchal-Le Pen told The Washington Post last week. “At the Front National, we all are his heirs. He was a visionary.” He was also an unabashed fascist.

Maréchal-Le Pen’s appearance at CPAC on Thursday “dismayed some establishment Republicans, who were not eager to associate with a political faction linked to the dark remnants of European fascism,” reported the Post’s Ishaan Tharoor. The “acceptance” her and Farage, who is speaking on Friday, “seemed to underscore the hard-rightward drift of the Republican Party.” Conservative columnist Matt Lewis complained on NBC News that “these are not conservatives. These are members of an international ethno-nationalist populist movement.”

 

The American Right’s Deep Ties to Reactionary Europe
Why some U.S. conservatives are praising far-right extremists Marion Maréchal-Le Pen and Nigel Farage this week

https://newrepublic.com/article/147187/american-rights-deep-ties-reactionary-europe

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

 After the (also heavily gerrymandered) Republican state legislature returned with a similarly illegal map, the court imposed one of its own based on careful analysis intended to make the drawing of districts more representative. The Republican response has been to threaten to attack the independence of the courts. This is the GOP in 2018 in a nutshell: a party utterly contemptuous of democratic norms and palpably terrified of an even remotely fair political fight. 

It should be noted that although the new map has been frequently been described as “favoring” the Democrats, it still gives an advantage to Republicans, simply a much less egregious one. Republican attacks on the court as being out-of-control partisans are pure projection. The new map still leans Republican because almost any attempt to draw contiguous districts will disadvantage the Democrats, whose supporters are disproportionately clustered in the state’s two biggest cities. It’s pretty hard to sustain a charge of lawless partisanship given that the new map doesn’t even result in the Democratic Party having an unfair advantage.

 

The GOP Is Scared of a Fair Fight
A battle over Pennsylvania's electoral map reveals the party's casual contempt for basic democratic norms.

https://newrepublic.com/article/147171/gop-scared-fair-fight

[Zorral]

9 hours ago, dmc515 said:

That was Madison insisting.

Nah, the Declaration was Jefferson's (fairly overly-detailed) list.  If it was a legal bedrock, then, well, we could all rebel at any time justified by almost any reason.  Sounds pretty cool, I'll grant you.

"Pursuit of happiness" meant property -- pursuit of wealth and property -- another way of protecting slave ownership. Or so it has been argued by some quite savvy sorts of constitutional lawyers.

[Zorral]

6 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

The American Right’s Deep Ties to Reactionary Europe
Why some U.S. conservatives are praising far-right extremists Marion Maréchal-Le Pen and Nigel Farage this week

https://newrepublic.com/article/147187/american-rights-deep-ties-reactionary-europe

Well, Hitler modeled his playbook for African Americans and immigrants and the phony science of eugenics on ours.  He and the right wing of Europe also modeled themselves upon Our Way of Lynching and mob violence.  Yet another reason that FDR wouldn't for the longest time condemn either Germany's actions or the lynchings in the US -- he wasn't going to offend the backbone of the Dems, the southerners. 

[Rippounet]

7 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

The American Right’s Deep Ties to Reactionary Europe
Why some U.S. conservatives are praising far-right extremists Marion Maréchal-Le Pen and Nigel Farage this week

https://newrepublic.com/article/147187/american-rights-deep-ties-reactionary-europe

It makes me sad that the Le Pens are successfully exporting their bullshit.

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

It makes me sad that the Le Pens are successfully exporting their bullshit.

Well, at CPAC this happened today:

When she left she had 3 security guards escort her out for her safety.

 

[James Arryn]

16 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Well, at CPAC this happened today:

When she left she had 3 security guards escort her out for her safety.

 

LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!

[Rippounet]

43 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Well, at CPAC this happened today:

When she left she had 3 security guards escort her out for her safety.

You warm my little eurocommie heart.

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

You warm my little eurocommie heart.

No kidding, I was  pleasantly surprised myself. 

[LongRider]

A unclassified Democrat rebuttal memo to the Nunes memo has been released.  A link to the memo is found at Lawfare blog.

https://lawfareblog.com/document-house-intelligence-democrats-release-rebuttal-memo

 

[SpaceChampion]

Twitter thread about how alt-right is targeting depressed people to recruit them:

 

[Darth Richard II]

24 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Twitter thread about how alt-right is targeting depressed people to recruit them:

 

THAT is some fucked up shit right there.

[Larry of the Lawn]

7 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

THAT is some fucked up shit right there.

I'm not surprised.  This was largely the target audience for 'pickup artists' and such to sell classes and training to.

[The guy from the Vale]

9 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I'm not surprised.  This was largely the target audience for 'pickup artists' and such to sell classes and training to.

Yeah, if your identity is entirely wrapped up in either the "gamer" or the "Alpha" label, you're quite likely to be depressed. This is just the latest round of neofascists recruiting lonely depressed young men into their ranks.

[Paladin of Ice]

3 hours ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Well, at CPAC this happened today:

When she left she had 3 security guards escort her out for her safety.

 

 

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

You warm my little eurocommie heart.

 

1 hour ago, Nasty LongRider said:

No kidding, I was  pleasantly surprised myself. 

I think you guys may be assuming the wrong thing. I also was pleasantly surprised, but googled the story, and it looks like it was the columnist who denounced Le Pen who was booed and escorted out.

That said, all the sources I'm seeing are either far right rags, (Breitbart, Daily Caller) or of questionable worth. (Washington Examiner)

The Examiner's article seems to indicate that columnist in question was booed and chased out sometime after her denunciation of Le Pen, when she criticised the way Republicans are content to ignore the abuse of women by right wing figures.

Quote

A conservative columnist was escorted out of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday after slamming President Trump and conservatives for behaving like "hypocrites" when it comes to women's issues.

Mona Charen, a National Review writer and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, was asked during a panel about the Left's treatment of women what has left her most fired up in the Trump era.

"I'm actually going to twist this around a bit and say that I'm disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women," she said.

Declining to mention Trump by name, Charen said conservatives are guilty of "look[ing] the other way" when it comes to the president and other Republican men who have faced allegations of sexual misconduct.

"This was a party that was ready to ... endorse Roy Moore for Senate in the state of Alabama even though he was a credibly accused child molester," Charen said.

"You cannot claim that you stand for women, and put up with that," she told the crowd, as several members of the audience shouted, "Not true!"

Charen's comments were met with heavy boos inside the conference hall, and she was later spotted leaving the conference with a three-person security detail.

Earlier on in the panel, she issued a strong rebuke of Marion Le Pen, the niece of former French right-wing presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, whose own appearance at CPAC drew scrutiny from some conservatives who have accused her of enabling far-right groups with racist views.

Link.

ETA: I have to say, it took guts on her part to stand up to her party and the crazies in it at CPAC. Since she's a right wing columnist I doubt I'd agree with her about much, but I applaud her willingness to stand up and tell the truth to people who are violently opposed to hearing it. Well done.

[IamMe90]

The White House released the House Intelligence Committee Minority Report today.

I didn't know this was going to be released - last I heard, Trump had decided not to. Apparently, something changed, and they released it with some redactions. But boy, even with those redactions, this report completely eviscerates the account of events put forward in the Nunes memo, and also highlights just how transparent the GOP were being in their baldfaced lies in doing so.  

 

[LongRider]

56 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

I think you guys may be assuming the wrong thing. I also was pleasantly surprised, but googled the story, and it looks like it was the columnist who denounced Le Pen who was booed and escorted out.

Yes, Claren was booed her comments on Le Pen.  The tweets posted also noted her comments on Roy Moore and those in the White House who bragged about committing affairs.  This clip captures both her comments on Moore and Le Pen.

My understanding of CPAC is that is supposed be a gathering of like minded people and to have one person go against the grain, no matter how mild, is notable. 

[Sivin]

On 2/23/2018 at 0:10 PM, Zorral said:

There are analysts who submit that Putin's push on orange idjiot for the anti-immigration agenda and expelling everyone who isn't 'white' from the USA is a strategy for destroying the USA's food supply, particularly any surplus.  This kills more than a single bird while providing vengeance for the western embargo put in place by we-know-whom to punish Russia for various things including political hacking and manipulation of campaigns and elections.

We do certainly see the effects already on our food supply without the migrant labor that big ag biz has depended on for so long -- as well as even at the race track for grooms, jockeys, etc.

 

That is an interesting, though I think inconsequential, possibility. America will never go hungry. Full stop.

I wouldn't be surprised if Putin thinks he can expand his asymmetrical warfare into agriculture, Stalin did it after all. But I would put forward that Putin has never been to Kansas or Indiana. It's one thing to play around with the numbers on a produce sheet, but the reality is that America so easily produces so much food that we're the fattest people in the history of the species. When Putin is envisioning a famine in America, he is making the mistake of using his own backwater country's capabilities as a measuring point when the difference between the two is as stark as the Moon and the Sun. 

In response to @Kalbear regarding polls, the Orange Leader is back to a flat 40. I have been casually awaiting this moment. I will be paying attention to the daily polls that aren't giving him 50% quite closely. One can hope that all of these dead children will be worth more than a 1.4 drop.

[all swedes are racist]

On 2/23/2018 at 0:40 AM, Kalbear said:

Philando Castile was someone who worked in a school and had a concealed carry permit. He is precisely the kind of person Trump says he wants in schools.

He was executed by police. 

Good luck with that.

well, not precisely what trump wants, if you get me....

On 2/23/2018 at 5:47 AM, Inigima said:

So... What if you're a teacher and you don't fucking want to shoot anyone?

Beyond the insanity of the idea that arming teachers is a better solution than regulating guns more tightly, it's nuts to me that everyone proposing it is just assuming teachers are fine with this extra burden. Teachers go through an M.Ed. program and some state professional certifications because they want to teach, not because they want to be gunned down in a hail of bullets as a human shield for other people's children, nor to commit homicide. Neither is part of the job description and the idea that they should be added is frankly offensive.

An image I saw on Facebook really drove this home for me. After a couple of school shootings, some hero teachers did take a bullet to save students, and somehow the country has now internalized that that's what teachers are "supposed to" do.

this is exactly what they are looking for; in addition to increasing firearm manufacturers profits and an ostensible victory in the culture war, this is rear action attack on teachers. get a large number of teachers to “resign” or be forced out due to some new requirements related to firearms training or whatever, lower the standards required to become a teacher, fill a bunch of schools with a  bunch of solid good ol patriotic troops (or fucking cops, or just plain dipshit enthusiast larpers), and you get a significant influence on the up and coming generations— ooh-rah pro-gun and empire for the nice, (white, affluent, suburban) districts, prime recruiters for the unwashed (poor, rural) and essentially guards to further institutionalize the bad (poor, non white, urban). will fit in nicely with the upcoming gutting-of-public-sector-unions descision before the supreme court

 (came here to post this and saw someone— fb? — already post about trump trying to get vets into teaching positions)

2 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

I'm not surprised.  This was largely the target audience for 'pickup artists' and such to sell classes and training to.

the venn diagram of alt right reactionaries and these pua/mra chuds is an almost perfect circle