US Politics: Stormy Weather Ahead

[GAROVORKIN]

20 minutes ago, unpaid comintern said:

don’t forget venezuela

I don't think Trump is  worried about Venezuela. They're  broke because Nicholas Madero and his cronies  have done such masterful job of mismanaging and ruining the Venezuelan economy. 

[LongRider]

Early in this thread we were discussing the issue of who might be appointed to the SCOTUS.  Arguments about who those judges might be.  This morning I heard this story on NPR about the selection of federal judge from Wisconsin.   Seems that that little trick McConnell had about not allowing a vote on Merrick has spread to the Senate with their own variation on a theme:

Quote

JOHNSON: AFP has already thrown its support behind one of President Trump's judge picks this year. He's Michael Brennan, a Milwaukee lawyer and an ally of Governor Walker. Wisconsin's Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin refused to turn in a blue slip for Brennan. The blue slip's a way for senators to signal support for a nominee. Withholding that paperwork usually means the end of a nomination. Baldwin has said the White House didn't listen to a state commission that recommends judges. But the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley, broke with 100 years of tradition and held a hearing for Brennan anyway. 

So Brennan is now headed for a Senate hearing.  Oh, and guess what, he's an Americans for Prosperity pick, and Americans for Prosperity is a Koch brothers organization.  

Quote

A conservative group funded by the Koch brothers is turning its attention to a new front - the judiciary. Americans for Prosperity says it's willing to spend nearly a million dollars to confirm judges this year. Those lifetime appointments could reshape the courts for a generation. NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson reports.

The transcript gives the details of AfP goals for the judiciary, which is to put as many of their picks in lifetime appointments.  Chilling.  

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/14/593413198/koch-funded-group-focuses-on-lifetime-appointments-of-judges

[Jaime L]

3 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I thought we were blaming the liberal agenda. I've been going after @Jaime L for like a year and a half.

I've said things I can't take back!

 

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

You weren't wrong to do so. Everything is his fault, including Luck's decrepit body and me now having to do all the mental gymnastics to  be able to root for Kirk Cousins. Jaime is history's second greatest monster, only behind @Week. 

Guys, guys, I know you formed this friendship working on the same political campaign (Michelle Bachmann IIRC?), and you have some kind of bizarre enmity to me based solely and unfairly on me being a dick repeatedly, but let's keep our focus on the real enemy here.

Maine Senator Angus King. 

 

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Jaime L said:

I know you formed this friendship working on the same political campaign (Michelle Bachmann IIRC?)

I always assumed it was Jesse Ventura.

[DMC]

House GOP Backtracks on Claiming Russia Didn't Help Trump

Quote

“Everyone gets to make their own mind whether or not they are trying to hurt Hillary or help Trump,” Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), who led the House intelligence probe, said to reporters on Tuesday. “It is kind of the glass half-full, glass half-empty, depending how you look at it.” [...]

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who has served on the committee since 2015, told Vox that the original Republican assertion that Moscow hadn’t tried to help Trump may not even make it into the final report. A 150-page draft report was sent to Democrats Tuesday; it’s not clear when it will be made public, nor what changes — if any — Republicans will agree to make beforehand.

“It still looks like officially their report will say that there was a preference for Donald Trump,” Swalwell said in an interview. If true, that would mean the report itself would be at odds with Conaway’s initial assertions that Moscow hadn’t tried to help Trump.

 

[LongRider]

Final report might be missing something.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, GAROVORKIN said:

I don't think Trump is  worried about Venezuela. They're  broke because Nicholas Madero and his cronies  have done such masterful job of mismanaging and ruining the Venezuelan economy. 

Even more reason for Venezuela to be concerned.  Trump is the guy that picks on someone he knows he can beat.  He's a bully and a coward.  I'd be as concerned he'd pick a fight with someone he knows he can bully as I  am about him stirring up shit with NK .

[all swedes are racist]

30 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

I don't think Trump is  worried about Venezuela. They're  broke because Nicholas Madero and his cronies  have done such masterful job of mismanaging and ruining the Venezuelan economy. 

lol, yeah, that’s gotta be it

[Shryke]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'll just address all three of these at once. I didn't necessarily mean moderate on the political spectrum, but in their behavior (at least at times). There are a handful of senators who would be willing to block Trump on certain policy out of principle. Citing the votes on tax cuts is kind of pointless. Cutting taxes is what the Republican party is about, and there's no way they weren't going to go along with it. And on the Gorsuch nomination, you claim that it was wrong of them to go along with the process it which it occurred, but by all account Gorsuch is a qualified candidate for the SC. This doesn't change my point that a handful of Republican senators can derail bad policy pushed by Trump. Just look at McCain and the skinny repeal. And while I can't give an example off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure there have been a few bad ideas the Paul has blocked. 

Then your whole point is irrelevant cause if they aren't gonna stop guys like Gorsich then it doesn't matter. Their "resistance" is irrelevant.

And if you wanna look at the Cabinet rather then just the SCOTUS, take your pick of completely unqualified shitstains there too.

There is no Republican resistance. If moderates do complain, it's only kabuki theatre on the road to folding or their vote being unneeded.

[Shryke]

Trump doesn't give a shit about Venezuela. Voters don't give a shit about it. The american foreign policy establishment doesn't have a massive hard-on for invading it. There's no indication anyone is looking to do anything about the place that's too catastrophic.

[aceluby]

55 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Then your whole point is irrelevant cause if they aren't gonna stop guys like Gorsich then it doesn't matter. Their "resistance" is irrelevant.

And if you wanna look at the Cabinet rather then just the SCOTUS, take your pick of completely unqualified shitstains there too.

There is no Republican resistance. If moderates do complain, it's only kabuki theatre on the road to folding or their vote being unneeded.

Yeah, have to agree here.  If there were any moderates left in the GOP they never would have gotten rid of the SCOTUS filibuster in the first place.  They did exactly what you describe, kabuki theater on the road to folding.

[Yukle]

1 hour ago, Shryke said:

Then your whole point is irrelevant cause if they aren't gonna stop guys like Gorsich then it doesn't matter. Their "resistance" is irrelevant.

And if you wanna look at the Cabinet rather then just the SCOTUS, take your pick of completely unqualified shitstains there too.

There is no Republican resistance. If moderates do complain, it's only kabuki theatre on the road to folding or their vote being unneeded.

I'm in this line of thinking. There is nothing to suggest that the Republicans have any spine whatsoever when it comes to standing up to Trump. The only thing people point out is when they "saved" the ACA. Even then, it was a close-run thing.

Trump all but waves swastikas over the White House and they don't care. They will not stop him. He could invade Mexico and they wouldn't stop him. He could run a live feed of him chatting to Putin about the USA's deepest secrets and they wouldn't stop him (let's not forget he already did this at the G20 and they did nothing about it).

He could appoint 25 literal nazis to the Supreme Court, expanding it in the process, and they wouldn't stop him. Even in the face of catastrophic electoral swings - where the only reason they didn't lose was the margins were so large anyway - they haven't stood up to him. It won't happen. The Republicans are spineless.

[Week]

8 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

You weren't wrong to do so. Everything is his fault, including Luck's decrepit body and me now having to do all the mental gymnastics to  be able to root for Kirk Cousins. Jaime is history's second greatest monster, only behind @Week. 

[lokisnow]

well shit, if blue slips no longer matter, then Obama and Harry Reid got so royally fucked it isn't even funny.

this is what respecting worthless traditions gets you, a nice murdering by the right and proper people. jolly good.

(but don't worry, dmc and tywin will tell us everything is normal and dandy and Collins will save us because reasons). 

[lokisnow]

one thing about the actual midterms, we should expect results to be distributed widely. that means we should expect seats more conservative than Lamb's to flip, and seats that are "toss ups" to go to republicans. obviously the experts work at this to figure out the probabilities, but you gotta be ready to win everywhere, so it has been encouraging that democrats are fielding candidates in nearly every district. I could see a handful of totally off the radar races that get very low turnout flipping unexpectedly democrat, with swings of thirty or forty poitns. on the other hand, it probably won't happen. 

there are 34 (or 35 if McCain doesn't make it) senate seats up for election this cycle, I want all of them. Romney will be tough, because he's such a mcjesus to the mormons, but hey that means 33 winnable seats to me.

and in general, it should be easier to win senate seats because there is no gerrymandering and geography of urban residency doesn't matter. I know it's much much harder, but damned if it wouldn't be sweet to defend all our valuable and vulnerable incumbants and flip several of those allegedly safe seats ala Alabama? 

Then, the next step in my nefarious master plan is to win 33 seats in 2020 while ousting Trump. that should give us enough senators to start passing constitutional amendments and sending them to the states. Let's start with an equal rights amendment, the right to vote amendment, ending lifetime judiciary appointments (2 consecutive 18 year terms max, anyone who's served longer than 36 years is immediately retired on ratification), and of course abolishing the electoral college.

***

late night dreaminess aside, I've been thinking a lot about rural conservatism, and why over the last century the rural vote flipped from solid leftist to solid fascist rightwinger.

I think it is entirely do to displacement from complete automation and mechanization of labor. 

Initially, machinery was great, it allowed farms to expand beyond their natural size and become more profitable, but even still, there was an exodus from rural to urban as the first machinery began displacing labor.

and around the time in the 40s and 50s that indoor plumbing and electric lighting, and gas stations became universal in rural areas, we also had advances in family planning. Sure it was a baby boom but it could have been much worse. for example, the boomers grandparents tended to all have lots of children all the time, just like every generation in history preceding them had done. but the boomers parents and the boomers did not. my grandmother in law was from a family farm that entailed 13 siblings, not uncommon, but all the brothers and sisters had only 2-4 kids when it came time to do their own family thing.

So that first change in automation and labor displacement? that labor displacement was largely avoided because of family planning that reduced the labor supply.  Sure many people still left farm labor for indoor jobs with no heavy lifting, but in the sixties and seventies, farming communities were still robust.

So combine Nixons vile farm policies with now the big machinery is a coming, and specialized, and they're going to be so insanely efficient they're going to completely crater all the commodity prices and for the first time in human history, farming is not a self-sufficent practice nor labor in which one can earn a living wage, or even profit. Those are all gone. in addition, now in these decades and beyond we progress to the nth degree in industrialization, expansion of farms, and  such that you're not just displacing surplus laborers, you're displacing entire families, and extended families which of course trickles up to the bulldozing over of communities hundreds of years old, decimating towns, counties and states. 

Because people no longer have jobs in rural land, and very few people even own land anymore, as it's all been bought up and merged, and if you're a "farmer" chances are you're like my cousin, an employee of a mega farm who drives tractors for them.  virtually all the jobs have been displaced by automation and machinery, and with self driving tech on the way, all the remaining jobs are going.

And in the century long process of all this labor being destroyed, rural land flipped from being lefties to being fascist righties. 

I think this holds an extremely foreboding lesson for democrats, as they eagerly seek to destroy millions upon millions of jobs by encouraging labor displacement and automation. when democrats are on the side of capital and are defending the rights of the capital owners to murder jobs. the laborers, they're all going to abandon the democrats, quite rightly, and at least go somewhere where their anger is welcomed. 

that's a long winded way of saying self driving cars are going to be a huge boon to fascist recruitment.

:-/

[Fragile Bird]

<sighs>

The WAPO is reporting Trump was bragging at a fundraiser last night that he lied to Prime Minister Trudeau at their meeting in Washington, telling Trudeau that Canada had a trade deficit with the US. Trudeau assured him we don't, but Trump, he told his audience, made claims without knowing what the facts were. He just made them up.

You may or may not be a fan of Trudeau, but you can be sure that he was fully briefed on the facts of US-Canadian trade and had them at his fingertips.

What the hell do you do when you are meeting with the POTUS and he sits there across from you and lies to you with a straight face? Was this also covered in The Art of the Deal, alongside the advice to start negotiations by punching as hard as you can so that the eventual results don't seem so bad in the end to your adversary?

Why tf would you brag about it at a fundraiser? Do you not realize at least half a dozen people (if not all) are recording your speech?

I point out at the same time the top US trade negotiator made claims that Canada had a huge trade deficit with the US, showing figures no one in Canada could understand. Turned out that the US team was counting goods that had landed in Canada from other countries for transit to the US in their trade figures.

Talk about smashing up your relationship with one of your closest allies in the world, the one your economy is intertwined with.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/15/trump-says-he-made-up-information-when-speaking-with-trudeau.html

[Jace, Extat]

10 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

<sighs>

The WAPO is reporting Trump was bragging at a fundraiser last night that he lied to Prime Minister Trudeau at their meeting in Washington, telling Trudeau that Canada had a trade deficit with the US. Trudeau assured him we don't, but Trump, he told his audience, made claims without knowing what the facts were. He just made them up.

You may or may not be a fan of Trudeau, but you can be sure that he was fully briefed on the facts of US-Canadian trade and had them at his fingertips.

What the hell do you do when you are meeting with the POTUS and he sits there across from you and lies to you with a straight face? Was this also covered in The Art of the Deal, alongside the advice to start negotiations by punching as hard as you can so that the eventual results don't seem so bad in the end to your adversary?

Why tf would you brag about it at a fundraiser? Do you not realize at least half a dozen people (if not all) are recording your speech?

I point out at the same time the top US trade negotiator made claims that Canada had a huge trade deficit with the US, showing figures no one in Canada could understand. Turned out that the US team was counting goods that had landed in Canada from other countries for transit to the US in their trade figures.

Talk about smashing up your relationship with one of your closest allies in the world, the one your economy is intertwined with.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/15/trump-says-he-made-up-information-when-speaking-with-trudeau.html

He also suggested that US troops in South Korea were subject to negotiation.

[OldGimletEye]

Not sayin’ I’m the greatest speller in the world. And I'm usually pretty hesitant to point others spellin’ mistakes because as they say people in glass houses ought to not throw stones.

But, “Marine Core”. 

Seriously.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-marine-corps-spelling_us_5aa8b28ce4b0f7a689cd8a75

 

Quote

On the same day President Donald Trump proposed that the United States develop a “Space Force” to fight wars in space, he also paid tribute to the men and women in uniform here on Earth.

Except his since-deleted tweet on Tuesday didn’t refer to the Marine Corps, but the Marine “Core,” a mistake many said the commander-in-chief should never make. Veterans, in particular, took offense: 

 

[Gorn]

3 hours ago, lokisnow said:

late night dreaminess aside, I've been thinking a lot about rural conservatism, and why over the last century the rural vote flipped from solid leftist to solid fascist rightwinger.

I think it is entirely do to displacement from complete automation and mechanization of labor. 

Initially, machinery was great, it allowed farms to expand beyond their natural size and become more profitable, but even still, there was an exodus from rural to urban as the first machinery began displacing labor.

and around the time in the 40s and 50s that indoor plumbing and electric lighting, and gas stations became universal in rural areas, we also had advances in family planning. Sure it was a baby boom but it could have been much worse. for example, the boomers grandparents tended to all have lots of children all the time, just like every generation in history preceding them had done. but the boomers parents and the boomers did not. my grandmother in law was from a family farm that entailed 13 siblings, not uncommon, but all the brothers and sisters had only 2-4 kids when it came time to do their own family thing.

So that first change in automation and labor displacement? that labor displacement was largely avoided because of family planning that reduced the labor supply.  Sure many people still left farm labor for indoor jobs with no heavy lifting, but in the sixties and seventies, farming communities were still robust.

So combine Nixons vile farm policies with now the big machinery is a coming, and specialized, and they're going to be so insanely efficient they're going to completely crater all the commodity prices and for the first time in human history, farming is not a self-sufficent practice nor labor in which one can earn a living wage, or even profit. Those are all gone. in addition, now in these decades and beyond we progress to the nth degree in industrialization, expansion of farms, and  such that you're not just displacing surplus laborers, you're displacing entire families, and extended families which of course trickles up to the bulldozing over of communities hundreds of years old, decimating towns, counties and states. 

Because people no longer have jobs in rural land, and very few people even own land anymore, as it's all been bought up and merged, and if you're a "farmer" chances are you're like my cousin, an employee of a mega farm who drives tractors for them.  virtually all the jobs have been displaced by automation and machinery, and with self driving tech on the way, all the remaining jobs are going.

And in the century long process of all this labor being destroyed, rural land flipped from being lefties to being fascist righties. 

I think this holds an extremely foreboding lesson for democrats, as they eagerly seek to destroy millions upon millions of jobs by encouraging labor displacement and automation. when democrats are on the side of capital and are defending the rights of the capital owners to murder jobs. the laborers, they're all going to abandon the democrats, quite rightly, and at least go somewhere where their anger is welcomed. 

that's a long winded way of saying self driving cars are going to be a huge boon to fascist recruitment.

:-/

I wouldn't say that US rural voters were ever "left-wing" in any meaningful sense of the word. A hundred years ago, the Democratic coalition was, basically, big cities + unionized factory workers + the South. Sure, the farmers in the South voted for Democrats, but that was a regional thing. Rural states in other regions such as Maine or Dakotas were solid Republican strongholds. The West shifted Democratic during FDR's presidency due to the Depression and the Dust Bowl, but it didn't last long.

People who live in rural areas naturally lean towards conservative ideology, and this is true for most countries and most time periods. Scandinavia is one exception that comes to mind, but I can't think of any others.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

Indeed, the fundamental irony of Tillerson’s ouster is that for how bad he was at his job, at the end of the day, it was trying to do it well that did him in. In this context, there is little reason to believe that Mike Pompeo’s State Department will function much more effectively than his predecessor’s. The facts before us suggest that it’s not really intended to.

No, Mike Pompeo Isn’t Going to Save the State Department

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/no-mike-pompeo-isnt-going-to-save-the-state-department.html