US Politics: Sit Up Straight and Show Some Respect

[Darth Richard II]

51 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Luckily for him, neither trade policy nor immigration policy nor rhetoric is grounds for anything except outraged whining by opposing politicians and the media. Actual crimes would matter... but constantly saying that he committed them does not amount to evidence no matter how long it is done.

...the fuck?

Do you also think OJ Simpson was innocent?

[Rippounet]

14 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

So, the progressive pants at the thought of abolishing this supposed system of dominance and to do so he needs to uproot its foundations. The surest way of achieving this is to destroy the old ethnic and religious bloc. In the case of the United States it is best, in his view, if there are proportionately fewer white males and fewer Christians, because these represent the dominant class of the country. Mass immigration and diversity must be favoured; Christianity must be sedulously attacked. Moreover, a new administrative class, a canting priesthood, populated by liberals, must be set up and from all the universities enforce the creed that any opposition to the progressive’s identity politics arrives at unspeakable evil.

It will be clear from the above that what the progressive aims at is very far removed from the classical liberalism of Locke, or even liberalism as a political creed, usually understood. The progressive is ideological, schematic, quasi-revolutionary. At some level he likely does believe in the basic presumptions of a more classical liberalism; he believes that society can be founded on a rational contract (Rawls), but he also supposes the current ethnic and religious majority are too sunken in their bigotry to behave rationally.

He might also prefer to see society as a mass of atomized individuals, trading a certain amount of liberty for security and the benefits of cooperation (this maybe how he conceives himself, personally) but his belief in the need to overcome white supremacy leads him to suppose ethnic groupings are also in some sense the fundamental units of political analysis.

Your analysis starts failing when you ascribe motives that come from conservative fears and worldview. Most progressives wouldn't care enough about the ethnic composition of a nation to have any plan about it. They would base any policy on ideals of socio-economic fairness. 

This explains how you reach fanciful conclusions. 

[maarsen]

18 hours ago, Altherion said:

Actually, given that under all but the most extreme (and completely unproven) scenarios, he has not done anything at all that would warrant an impeachment, pretty much anyone else would still be there. The Founders foresaw that it would be tempting for the opposition to remove a President and made the process of removal rather difficult.

No charges were brought forward until impeachment proceedings started either. The preponderance of evidence showed that there was a reasonable chance of conviction , same as is happening now with Trump. In fact the civil suit brought by New York state is probable grounds for impeachment as it is misdemeanors as well as high crimes that set the bar.

[Vin]

Sad news , new shooting *click*

[Zorral]

18 hours ago, Jace, The Sugarcube said:

Is there any chance America could be kicked from the G7? I'd cheer.

As long as the orange insanity is in charge, along with all his corrupt and cray-cray cronies and enablers and cheerers on -- we'll probably get kicked out due to considerations of their own safety.

Let us all left here in the continental USA pray for our survival -- which won't last long, no matter who we are.

In the meantime, this is a long read, but a useful one for evaluating the ever changing, ever added to narratives about our ongoing, ever escalating crisis - crises. 

Quote

Books on the Russia scandal focus on the news. What they need is more history.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2018/06/15/feature/books-on-the-russia-scandal-focus-on-the-news-what-they-need-is-more-history/?

In the end though, I would argue that even more and deeper history is needed to evaluate in a useful way what we think we know now and when we thought we knew it, and for that a grand place to begin is the multi-award winning and very long and easily read, always exciting The Romanovs: 1613 - 1918 by Simon Montefiore.

 

[Martell Spy]

Can the President Be Indicted? There’s Significant Reason to Doubt Those Saying “No.”
Arguments originating in an office working for the president are not objective—nor are they final.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/06/can-the-president-be-indicted-theres-good-reason-to-doubt-those-saying-no.html

Quote

 

Can a sitting president be indicted? The public should be skeptical of arguments saying no, which frequently rely on two opinions by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). This office, in part through its opinions, provides legal advice to the executive branch. As legal counsel to the executive, OLC is naturally biased in favor of helping its client achieve its goals through legal analysis. Media coverage of this important question concerning presidential immunity, however, has largely failed to question the underlying rationales found in those OLC memos. And when it comes to preserving the rule of law and our constitutional system of checks and balances, OLC does not have the final word, and we should not treat its views as such.

The plain fact is that OLC, responsive to its own institutional incentives, sometimes gets things wrong. Its opinions legitimizing the CIA’s torture program were later withdrawn because of errors. 

 

 

[Shryke]

8 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Your analysis starts failing when you ascribe motives that come from conservative fears and worldview. Most progressives wouldn't care enough about the ethnic composition of a nation to have any plan about it. They would base any policy on ideals of socio-economic fairness. 

This explains how you reach fanciful conclusions. 

As usual though, especially because a core Conservative principle is projection, the argument itself is very revealing about the thoughts and motives of the author. Specifically their obsessive concern with religious, racial and cultural dominance. Got a race warrior all up in here.

[Yukle]

23 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

So, the progressive pants at the thought of abolishing this supposed system of dominance and to do so he needs to uproot its foundations. The surest way of achieving this is to destroy the old ethnic and religious bloc. In the case of the United States it is best, in his view, if there are proportionately fewer white males and fewer Christians, because these represent the dominant class of the country. Mass immigration and diversity must be favoured; Christianity must be sedulously attacked. Moreover, a new administrative class, a canting priesthood, populated by liberals, must be set up and from all the universities enforce the creed that any opposition to the progressive’s identity politics arrives at unspeakable evil.

I do not agree with this assertion, and you've not really based on much beyond supposition.

This is to suggest that particular systems of unfairness only exist when there is inequality given by a majority onto a minority. It also assumes that ethnicity is always a course of conflict, which it isn't. Power imbalances do not need to come from having superior numbers, they come from having an unequal distribution of resources.

Take a really simple case such as a family of five with an abusive parent.

The parent represents just 1 in 5 of the population yet it represents 5 in 5 of the power's effective executive power.

Similarly, look to any particular state which includes a representative democracy element to it. As far as I know, only Rwanda has more women than men in power of any country in the world. Similarly, it isn't uncommon for bureaucrats to be men more so than women. The overwhelming majority of power within a state is concentrated into the hands of perhaps a few thousand people, and these people do not necessarily represent the population at large.

If there is any revolutionary aspect, it is the idea that resources must be fairly distributed and that being born into wealth is not permission to hoard that wealth.

The bit of your post that annoyed me (the rest I mostly disagreed with, but didn't mind it beyond that) is the idea that universities are part of a supposed "liberal conspiracy" to suppress free speech. This absolutely infuriates me - especially since all of the current efforts to suppress free speech around the world come from the USA's government, North Korea's government, Australia's government - in fact, any government determined to avoid criticism. It's not a left-right matter, as it's something done by those in power to ensure they don't get held to account. They're all following Trump's lead in discrediting media to avoid scrutiny. The idea that universities are suppressing any speech is a fantasy; this is the catcall of those who don't believe in global warming and want to say that all "elites" are in some conspiracy together.

[Jace, Extat]

It's lame ass anti-intellectualism wielded by those who feel kool by being 'above the sheeple'

[Martell Spy]

Nazis gonna Nazi.

How Trump Came to Enforce a Practice of Separating Migrant Families

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/16/us/politics/family-separation-trump.html

Quote

 

But advocates inside the administration, most prominently Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior policy adviser, never gave up on the idea. Last month, facing a sharp uptick in illegal border crossings, Mr. Trump ordered a new effort to criminally prosecute anyone who crossed the border unlawfully — with few exceptions for parents traveling with their minor children.

And now Mr. Trump faces the consequences. With thousands of children detained in makeshift shelters, his spokesmen this past week had to deny accusations that the administration was acting like Nazis. Even evangelical supporters like Franklin Graham said its policy was “disgraceful.”

 

 

[LongRider]

28 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

And now Mr. Trump faces the consequences. With thousands of children detained in makeshift shelters, his spokesmen this past week had to deny accusations that the administration was acting like Nazis. Even evangelical supporters like Franklin Graham said its policy was “disgraceful.”

I guess Trump and Miller did Nazi that coming.   Heartless cruel bastards.

[LongRider]

18 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said:

And now there's the Stephen Miller "we're doing it and it's awesome" argument. 

"Plus we are owning the libatards and drinking their tears." he did not say.  (but surely wanted to)

[Darth Richard II]

http://gph.is/1symlY6

[Yukle]

6 hours ago, Jace, The Sugarcube said:

It's lame ass anti-intellectualism wielded by those who feel kool by being 'above the sheeple'

Yeah... when universities use facts and data to contradict right-wing think tanks, they are suppressing freedom of speech. When newspapers criticise literal Nazis for ploughing a car into protesters, they are ignoring the violence "on many sides" and being biased MSM.

The attitude that "I'm the only one who understands it all," is really irritating. It's a bit like that moment in the Simpsons when Homer says, "Facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove things that are even remotely true." It seems some take this as a cue to dispute them, rather than the joke it was meant to be.

Maybe that's part of the reason the Simpsons has been less funny for a decade: it stopped being satire and just felt like the real world.

[Yukle]

16 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Your analysis starts failing when you ascribe motives that come from conservative fears and worldview. Most progressives wouldn't care enough about the ethnic composition of a nation to have any plan about it. They would base any policy on ideals of socio-economic fairness. 

This explains how you reach fanciful conclusions. 

I missed this post, and used too many words to make the same point.  

Still, whoever it was who made the sock-puppet account from last time will hopefully not take umbridge this time, as we've taken time to read it over carefully.

We don't have to agree to indicate that we've treated something with respect. I liked reading Chaircat's post in terms of writing style. I didn't really like how the conclusions were reached, as such, as I felt they were lacking justification for the views. Simply asserting doesn't make something true; it's not that their view was impossible, but there wasn't anything analysing how they went from the philosophy to the conclusion.

It read like, "Locke says this, therefore liberals think this." There was something missing in the middle to link the two concepts. But there maybe another post coming, and perhaps something was cut for the sake of brevity and we will get some follow up.

But, like Rippounet, I'd say that inequality of resources is the cause of progressive anxiety and frustration, not ethnicity. The former feels like a data-driven and measurable means of achieving a better world, the latter feels like a sideshow drawn by politicians to avoid doing any real work.

[DireWolfSpirit]

U.S.A.'s long history of separating families of color- https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/history-separating-families-of-color_us_5b241a78e4b0f9178a9d1866 

https://youtu.be/pwZmjx62ysY

You know its a pathetic policy when even a dirtbag Evangelist like Franklin Graham calls it "Disgraceful".

[IheartIheartTesla]

11 hours ago, Triskjavikson said:

So we now have at least three arguments coming out of the White House on this.

There was the "we can't do anything about it, it's the Dems' policy."

There was the "we could maybe stop it but only once the Dems give us border wall money."

And now there's the Stephen Miller "we're doing it and it's awesome" argument. 

I think they started out with the fourth "This is justified by the Bible"

[Zorral]

I, for one, have been wondering and wondering about this, since the report was released. What the Justice FBI report buried, and the news media plays right along with it:

https://www.salon.com/2018/06/18/heres-whats-buried-beneath-that-fbi-report-how-rogue-agents-sabotaged-the-clinton-campaign/

Quote

 

. . . . Whether Comey admits this or not, the report clearly suggests that his judgment was influenced by this cabal of FBI agents who were pressing for him to "lock her up."

The Republicans have been working the refs hard, and it's fair to conclude they may have worked Horowitz too. He focused on all the specious accusations of an anti-Trump conspiracy and left the more damning evidence of the FBI's successful sabotage of the Clinton campaign hovering between the lines.

Naturally, all this information about the  FBI agents scheming to sabotage the Clinton campaign is being ignored in the press, in favor of the sensational text message from Peter Strzok to his girlfriend Lisa Page, after she lamented that Donald Trump might become president: "We will stop him."  As Yogi Berra said, it's like déjà vu all over again. Once again the Trump team's actual misconduct is downplayed while petty misdeeds that feed the Trump narrative of grievance and victimization are emphasized. . . . 

. . . . A cabal of FBI agents in the New York office loyal to Rudy Giuliani apparently hectored their bosses, leaked to the press, and urged former agents go on television to put the Department of Justice and the FBI under pressure to act harshly against Hillary Clinton, even when if was outside the norms, rules and laws of the department. They were successful beyond their wildest dreams.

The media obliged them ----

 

. . . . The media have done no serious introspection on this issue, and the dynamic continues to this day. There's a lot of critical coverage of Trump but reporters will leap at any chance to "balance the scales," no matter how ludicrous. We have seen that once again this past week as the GOP handed the media the Strzok text as if they'd just just found the Ark of the Covenant.

The Republicans will be happy to spoon feed the press buckets of "oppo" to fill journalists' desire to be even-handed as soon as the next presidential campaign begins. The end result will be just as much a distortion of the facts as this inane narrative that poor Donald Trump was the victim of an FBI plot to deny him the presidency, when the truth is that he won the election at least in part because the FBI sabotaged his opponent.

 

[DMC]

SCOTUS punts on gerrymandering cases

Quote

The justices of the Supreme Court can agree on at least one thing—they do not want to rule on the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering in 2018.

On Monday, the court punted two major political redistricting cases: Gill v. Whitford, a challenge to Wisconsin’s Republican gerrymander, and Benisek v. Lamone, a challenge to Maryland’s Democratic gerrymander. Together, Gill and Benisek presented the Supreme Court with an opportunity to finally decide whether legislators violate the Constitution when they draw districts designed to dilute the power of voters’ ballots on the basis of their political associations. Instead, the court shooed away both cases on plausible but not entirely satisfactory grounds. Its nondecision will allow partisan gerrymandering to continue for the time being. Yet Justice Elena Kagan’s concurring opinion provides a road map for voting rights advocates to follow in the future—one that might attract Justice Anthony Kennedy’s vote if he remains on the court.

Well that's severely disappointing.  At least they didn't rule against the plaintiffs, I guess.

[Guy Kilmore]

2 minutes ago, DMBouazizi said:

SCOTUS punts on gerrymandering cases

Well that's severely disappointing.  At least they didn't rule against the plaintiffs, I guess.

Yep, I was going to post this, it feels a bit like a water shed moment.