U.S. Politics: Who's Cohen Down?

[LongRider]

1 minute ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I wouldn't be surprised if they're being funneled money for lawyers straight from the RNC at this point.

Look on the bright side, more $$ funneled to those losers means less to spend on R candidates. (hope it does at any rate).   Oh Sean, such delicious karma for your Seth Rich CT bullshit.  

[Martell Spy]

Hannity is a journalistish.

[Fragile Bird]

31 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Would anyone be surprised if SH is getting Russian money?  Seems almost a given at this point.  Not sure what the rules even are there given that he's a journalist talking head.

Actually, he has stated he is not a journalist, he's a host. So presumably rules of journalistic integrity don't apply to him.

I saw a great headline from a NY morning paper flashed on CNN - the Daily News, maybe?

"FOR FOX SAKE!"

[Alcibiades]

I just lost it at work today when the Hannity news hit. Was just giddy for the rest of the day.

[S John]

28 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Actually, he has stated he is not a journalist, he's a host. So presumably rules of journalistic integrity don't apply to him.

I saw a great headline from a NY morning paper flashed on CNN - the Daily News, maybe?

"FOR FOX SAKE!"

I don’t think much will come of this- at all, but one possible positive outcome is the Fox viewership is forced to confront the difference between a journalist and a ‘host’.  All of the 24 hour networks kind of play fast and loose with the line between news and commentary.  I think one of the main sources of division in America is that far too many people are not schooled on the difference between news and opinion.

[HoodedCrow]

Hannity went out of his way to say that Cohen sent him no invoices. (Cohen didn’t charge him for all his free advice, out of altruismIm I’m sure. But it would make much more sense if Cohen was arranging for this Trump adoring host to receive some really unbelievably great money laundering real estate deals in exchange for Propaganda. Dark money could be funneled to a fake journalist, who convinces people to buy into the race baiting, xenophobia, outrage machine, and crap that the Republicans peddle. Trump, in turn, peddles Hannity as a go to source for news. Hannity does seem a little jumpy about it. 

The Trump strategy is to accuse other people of doing what he already is doing, like whipping up fake news.

Or maybe Hannity just liked playmates.

Whatever it is, they are going through Cohens finances, you can bet.

Oh and Trump just vetoed Russian sanctions on the guys who supply gas weapons. He sure does like rich Russians.

 

[Week]

4 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

That was my immediate thought, and then it was confirmed when he said he gets Real Estate advice from Cohen.

I thought he had a meeting with Cohen about Russian Adoption.

[DMC]

It's just one poll, and it's an outlier and a small sample, but Emerson has Hiral Tipirneni (D) and Debbie Lesko (R) in a dead heat, 46 to 45 respectively, in the Arizona special election to replace Trent Franks:

Quote

Monday’s poll is an outlier and a huge swing in the direction toward Democrats, with other recent polling showing Lesko winning by double-digit margins. The latest public poll on Friday from OH Predictive Insights and ABC 15 Arizona found Lesko leading by 10 points, 53 to 43 percent.

Arizona’s special election has captivated national attention, with Republican groups pouring more resources into a district that President Trump won by 21 points in 2016. The winner of the April 24 race will replace former Rep. Trent Franks (R), who resigned after reportedly discussing paying a staffer to act as a surrogate mother. [...]

The survey found that Hiral, a first-time candidate, leads among independents, 42 to 28 percent. And she has a positive favorability rating, with 49 percent who view her favorably, compared to 29 percent who view her unfavorably.

Forty-three percent of voters view Lesko favorably, compared to 45 percent who have an unfavorable opinion of her.

This race isn't even really on most prognosticators' radar - it's at solid or likely R among all major outlets.  This is likely (in part) due to the lack of candidate quality on the Dem side - Tipirneni doesn't even have a wikipedia page.

[mormont]

So let me get this straight. Cohen had three clients in the last year, Trump. Broidy and Hannity. Cohen paid $130,000 of his own money to protect Trump. Hannity got free legal advice.

Cohen is surely the most generous attorney in the country. If I was Broidy, I'd be wondering where my freebies were! 

[IheartIheartTesla]

I was pretty agnostic about the pee tape till last week, but now I feel like every story about this Administration is true, even the untrue ones.

Still a bit discouraged that Trumps approval ratings are stuck at 40, but most of his supporters have probably tuned out at this point.

[Jace, Extat]

8 hours ago, LongRider said:

Look on the bright side, more $$ funneled to those losers means less to spend on R candidates. (hope it does at any rate).   Oh Sean, such delicious karma for your Seth Rich CT bullshit.  

I fucking hate Comey, but I'm looking at our overall position and I find it quite pleasing from a broad strategic standpoint.

Comey requires -and deserves- no progressive support for his bush war against Trump, but every tweet increases the RNC's need to discredit the man for their Great Leader's happiness.

And that's not even getting into the legal fees and Trump Tax associated with bootlicking in person.

It's telling that the head of the RNC was on State of the Union Sunday to defend her organization's run of corruption and she immediately bypassed not only that but also the upcoming elections in favor of spewing Trumpian propaganda.

[OldGimletEye]

Paul Ryan wins the Howard J. Turkstra, aka “The Cruiser”, “I thought I better join the army, before I got drafted” award.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paul-ryan-suggests-trillion-dollar-deficits-were-inevitable

Quote

In an interview that aired yesterday, the host noted that the Republican tax plan, which Ryan helped write and champion, has spiked the deficit that the House Speaker claimed he wanted to lower. Noting Ryan’s looming retirement, Chuck Todd noted that he’s walking away from Capitol Hill “with trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.” Ryan had a non-answer at the ready:

“That was going to happen. The baby boomers’ retiring was going to do that. These deficit trillion-dollar projections have been out there for a long, long time. Why? Because of mandatory spending which we call entitlements….”

 

Quote

 The deficits he vowed to shrink are growing. The debt he said he’d control is exploding. Asked for a defense, Ryan argued on “Meet the Press” that the mess he’s leaving to others to clean up was inevitable.

Except, it wasn’t. We weren’t supposed to have trillion-dollar deficits by 2020 until Ryan passed his tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations. It’s these tax breaks, not “entitlements,” that created the fiscal problem Ryan promised to avoid.

Ryan says I thought I better create defecits before defecits came.

I think we should definitely call Ryan, “The Dork”.

..............................................................................

New Deal liberalism

Was it primarily about just pandering to the concerns of the white working class?

Or was it about, takin’ names, thrashin’ conservative clowns, and doing identity politics.

The case it was more the latter.

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/16/17242748/identity-politics-racial-justice-democratic-party-lilla-traub-trump

Quote

As the Democratic Party struggles to regain its once-solid national majority, journalists, academics, commentators, and politicos keep reverting to an irresistible narrative: that the party’s commitment to racial equality has alienated it from the white working and middle classes — perhaps irreversibly. As a result of this misstep, Democrats now seem to be the “party of minorities, the marginalized, and their young and elite liberal patrons.”

 

Quote

By morally committing the Democrats to racial equality, Humphrey set the party and the country on the path that led to desegregation, LBJ, the Great Society, mandatory busing — and, finally, white “backlash.”

 

Quote

But this argument misses something New Deal liberals recognized early on: By the late 1930s, without racial justice, there would be no program of economic equality. It is New Deal liberalism itself that upended the supposed distinction between identity politics and class politics.

Rejecting the choice between “self-interest” and “moral commitment,” liberal New Dealers drew on a moral vision that linked fighting the gross injustices facing African Americans and other minorities to the shared interest of all workers. By the late 1930s and early 1940s, the core constituencies backing the New Deal were groups that supported civil rights: industrial labor unions, African Americans, and urban liberals.

 

Quote

Long before civil rights rose to the top of the national agenda, in sum, it was evident to labor leaders, African Americans, and other liberal New Dealers that they had to act together to defeat the Southern Democrats who stood in the way of both civil and labor rights.

 

Quote

Instead, the core groups behind the New Deal — industrial unions, African Americans, and urban liberals — transformed the party from below. Claims for racial justice were a key part of the liberal program, as understood by New Dealers themselves in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

While parts of Roosevelt’s program perpetuated discrimination, New Deal labor and jobs programs also offered real benefits to many African Americans in the North and even in the South. In response, black Northerners voted overwhelmingly for Roosevelt in 1936 and stuck with the president for the rest of his time in office. This new voting bloc motivated many Democratic politicians to back civil rights.

Quote

The CIO pioneered a fusion of class and race, arguing that economic justice required the labor movement and the state to tackle the mutually reinforcing problems of economic and racial inequality. CIO president John L. Lewis emphasized that “no group in the population feels more heavily the burden of unemployment and insecurity than the Negro citizens.… The denial of civil liberties lie with heavy discrimination upon Negroes. Only when these economic and political evils are wiped out will the Negro people be free of them.”

 

Quote

African Americans, the CIO, and other urban liberals fostered a new understanding of “liberalism” in which support for civil rights was a key marker of one’s identity as a liberal. Ordinary voters, too, came to link racial and economic liberalism: By the early ’40s, Northern Democratic voters were substantially more likely to back key civil rights initiatives than were Republicans.

 

Quote

Contemporary liberals are once again confronted with the challenge of forging a politics in which reformers seeking progress for particular groups do not see themselves as isolated advocates but instead as part of a broader ideological coalition with common aims and shared enemies.

 

Quote

The lesson of the New Deal coalition for liberals today is not that they should turn away from appeals to the identities of particular groups. Instead, liberalism is at its strongest when its advocates understand that justice for each group is essential to achieving justice for all.

 

[LongRider]

So if Hannity claims Cohen wasn't his attorney, then does whatever is found concerning Hannity in Cohen's files not merit the attorney/client privilege?  Hilarity at Hannity's expense enthuses. 

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, LongRider said:

Hilarity at Hannity's expense enthuses. 

Always got to like hilarity at Sean Insanity's expense.

[Jace, Extat]

Just now, OldGimletEye said:

Always got to like hilarity at Sean Insanity's expense.

I saw a clip this morning of him accusing Halloween of turning kids Liberal.

I thought that stuff was a meme.

I THOUGHT IT WAS A MEME!!!!

[LongRider]

Just now, Pony Queen Jace said:

I saw a clip this morning of him accusing Halloween of turning kids Liberal.

I thought that stuff was a meme.

I THOUGHT IT WAS A MEME!!!!

Giving hooligans dressed in cheap grocery store costumes candy on demand is just another form of liberal entitlements that put this country deep into debt.  

[mormont]

37 minutes ago, LongRider said:

So if Hannity claims Cohen wasn't his attorney

Hannity's position appears to be that he wasn't, but he was, but he wasn't, but he was. 

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, mormont said:

Hannity's position appears to be that he wasn't, but he was, but he wasn't, but he was. 

You have been found guilty of Crimes Against Hannity

[LongRider]

14 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

You have been found guilty of Crimes Against Hannity

Oh the Huge Manatee!

 

[Fez]

5 hours ago, dmc515 said:

It's just one poll, and it's an outlier and a small sample, but Emerson has Hiral Tipirneni (D) and Debbie Lesko (R) in a dead heat, 46 to 45 respectively, in the Arizona special election to replace Trent Franks:

This race isn't even really on most prognosticators' radar - it's at solid or likely R among all major outlets.  This is likely (in part) due to the lack of candidate quality on the Dem side - Tipirneni doesn't even have a wikipedia page.

I generally don't trust Emerson due to their insistence on remaining a landline-only polling firm. But in this case, with the early voter average age being 65 right now (and that's actually down from where it was a few weeks ago), it may not be as much of an issue.

I suspect Lesko will win fairly comfortably, but it's not a shoe-in. National Republican groups have dumped over a $1 million into the race in recent weeks, so they seem to be at least a little nervous (and Tipireni has out-raised Lesko directly). Their main motivation may just be residual concerns from Conor Lamb winning and not anything specific about what's happening on the ground here; but maybe not.