U. S Politics: I know why the caged babe screams.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

In other news I'm shocked, shocked, well not that shocked:

Quote

Do they give out Nobel Peace Prizes for praising and appeasing brutal dictators who threaten nuclear war — without getting anything in return?

President Trump claimed he would use his world-class dealmaking skills to convince North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, to surrender his nuclear weapons. Instead, Trump got played. Kim, who pledged in wishy-washy language to “denuclearize,” is now accelerating his nuclear program. The nuclear threat from North Korea — and the risk of a preemptive war launched by Trump — are both growing. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is heading to North Korea this week hoping to contain the fallout.

Twenty days ago, Trump shook hands with Kim in Singapore. At the summit, Trump played the role of apologist in chief for Kim’s human rights abuses while praising Kim as a “very talented” person because he can “run it tough.” In North Korea, “running it tough” means executing dissidents, torturing political prisoners in gulags and threatening to wipe a few U.S. cities off the map with a nuclear blast.

The White House and Trump’s surrogates insisted that the unsavory handshake would be vindicated. They claimed we were witnessing a history-making deal from a history-making dealmaker. Former presidents, guided by experts who understood every intricacy of North Korean politics, had failed. All it would take from Trump, they claimed, was a one-on-one handshake, a photo-op and some touting of North Korea’s prospects for developing beachfront resorts. Hit by that sophisticated diplomatic approach, Kim would trade missiles for condos. Then, the president’s cheerleaders argued, Trump could accept his well-deserved invitation to Oslo.

It was risible then. Now it is being revealed as fatally naive.

Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that North Korea is rapidly completing a major expansion of a key manufacturing facility for missiles — missiles that can strike American allies, American military bases in those allied countries and, yes, the mainland United States.

North Korea watchers also used recent satellite images to conclude that “improvements to the infrastructure at North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center are continuing at a rapid pace.”

NBC News and The Post also reported this weekend that “U.S. intelligence agencies believe that North Korea has increased its production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months.”

To anyone with even a basic understanding of North Korea, this comes as no surprise

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/07/02/trumps-big-north-korea-deal-is-already-turning-out-to-be-a-sham/?utm_term=.28d72ea46e6c

[Centrist Simon Steele]

5 hours ago, Bonnot OG said:

That speaks more to society than it does about the candidate, hence my disgust for "ethical" leftists that voted with their "conscience". 

So also, let me get this straight, Clinton was the worst thing about the 2016 election, not Trump? 

K. Totally not an asinine false equivlance that ignores reality. 

Oh, and how horrible is Sanders if he couldn't beat Clinton lol? 

 

Settle down. Clinton should not have been the nominee. We can talk about the awfulness of Trump all you want. And don't forget about DNC rigging for Clinton. But, I think your posts illustrate the wider problem here. Traditional democrats are really afraid of the progressive movement. In some cases, to the point of angry vitriol through PM.

"Seriously, any dipshit that says Clinton was the worst thing about 2016 should just be laughed at and nothing else. 

One, way to ignore how bigoted american society is. 

Two, way to ignore that a fascist is in the white house and how he is actually the worst thing about that election. "

 

Well, despite your eloquent take, you ought to figure out who your allies are and who your enemies are. Right now, these kinds of responses are evocative of the classic, "drinking poison and hoping someone else dies." Instead of addressing issues within the party, you will point and claim bigotry and those who do not agree with you.  

My response to you, about Clinton being the worst thing, was only in line with your comment about Sanders being the worst thing in the 2016 election. I fundamentally disagree, and I would argue you have it backwards. But you are deflecting to my omission of Trump because you threw out a faulty argument. That's okay, but if you need to know how I feel about Trump, I've made it clear multiple times. Keep in mind, sometimes people respond to pieces of your argument when that piece of your argument is patently absurd. I hope you get to feeling better, I seem to have upset you, and that wasn't my intent. 

[LongRider]

Seems quite civil.

Quote

A woman publicly confronted Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt while he was eating lunch on Monday and urged him to resign, according to video posted on Facebook.   "EPA head Scott Pruitt was 3 tables away as I ate lunch with my child. I had to say something," Kristin Mink posted on Facebook with an accompanying video of her encounter with Pruitt. 

Minka, who is a schoolteacher according to her Facebook profile, lists off multiple scandals Pruitt has been ensnared in since becoming EPA chief, including the rental of a Capitol Hill condo owned by the wife of an influential lobbyist. 

Video at link.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/395267-woman-confronts-pruitt-at-restaurant-tells-him-to-resign?amp&__twitter_impression=true

[Jace, Extat]

Having seemingly fatal fissures within the party has worked pretty well for the republicans

[Altherion]

11 hours ago, davos said:

If not for unforeseen event of Comey's memo, Hillary would have likely been president with a narrow EC win but a strong popular vote margin.  You can't plan for the unforeseen.

Given that the phenomenon you describe (i.e. the revelation of previously unknown information close to the time of the election) is so common in American presidential politics that it has its own name (it's called an October surprise), I don't think this is true. You can't plan in detail without knowing exactly what it is coming, but it does not require clairvoyance to know that something is coming. There's a variety of ways to deal with these unknown threats. The most obvious is to be ahead by enough that it doesn't matter. Another way is to have a candidate against whom there is little real to say and who is sufficiently liked and respected to be believed when repudiating lies. Finally, one can have a revelation of one's own in reserve and spring it when the time is right.

The Democrats failed miserably at the first and surest way despite having literally twice the resources to work with -- the race was still fairly close in October. The second way was a complete non-starter given the nature of their candidate. They did have an October surprise of their own (the "locker room talk" tape), but they had already spent it earlier to counter the Wikileaks info dump. The existence of an additional October surprise does not absolve them of being unprepared for it and for running a campaign so inefficient that the surprise mattered.

[Jace, Extat]

Oh go fuck a cactus. There's a difference between OPPO dumps and the FBI director kneecapping a candidate 2 weeks before the election and you know it.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Triskjavikson said:

It seems very clear that fissures on the left are quickly opening up to unprecedented levels, and I feel like I hear about it more and more. 

This sounds more like a selective exposure problem on your part.  AOC's win is great, but pales into comparison of the Tea Party's influence and success in primaries for three straight cycles.  That's just an empirical fact.  Waters saying something confrontational and Pelosi begging off basically describes their professional relationship for a quarter century.  And Schumer didn't do shit.

I don't think there's any "fissures" on the left because no one is fighting the progressive's ascendence except literally the three septuagenarians at the top of the House leadership - and two of those are pretty damn liberal.  As long as everyone still understands you need to run candidates that align with their district, I don't think most anyone cares.

[lokisnow]

13 hours ago, Triskjavikson said:

Indeed, but to what extent did they actually have these fissures?  Certainly the establishment people in Washington and in the professional party positions were very anti-Trump initially, but virtually everyone eventually fell in line.  

Something that I wonder about is to what extent that's the authoritarian mindset of the right-leaning voter and how much is the left-leaning vote different?  

Well the Rhode Island democrat party declined to endorse three progressive women INCUMBENT democrat Legislators.

in one case they endorsed an alt right trump supporting republican because the mean 27 year old legislator had said unsavory things about the leadership (like that they spent more time drinking than legislating).

http://www.rifuture.org/ri-dem-party-doesnt-endorse-three-progressive-female-legislators/

 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/the-rhode-island-democratic-party-may-have-endorsed-a-trump-supporter.html

 

on the other hand most of the elections are already over and if there was some dire fissure your post is worrying about, uhhhh it definitely did not happen, only one incumbent lost his seat to a  primary challenger. Tea party it ain’t, which is horribly unfortunate but indicative of how much of a failure November will be for democrats.

 

edit: phone autocorrect changed incumbent in the last paragraph to inhuman, which is hilarious and apt, apparently it knows more about DC than the rest of us. inhuman indeed.

[Bonnot OG]

3 hours ago, LongRider said:

Seems quite civil.

Video at link.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/395267-woman-confronts-pruitt-at-restaurant-tells-him-to-resign?amp&__twitter_impression=true

Come one! Be civil damn it!

No seriously, this is great. Just make their lives fucking miserable. They deserve it.

[Spring Bass]

What I've heard from Rhode Islanders is that the State Democratic Party has been dominant for so long that it's totally meaningless - anyone who wants political office goes into the Democratic Party machine, so you end up with a state party that often has really shitty politics and shitty people in charge. They honestly deserve to have folks form a new party and challenge them from the left.

[Bonnot OG]

RI Dems going with an Alt Right type lol. Fucking god.

[SweetPea]

1 hour ago, Bonnot OG said:

Come one! Be civil damn it!

No seriously, this is great. Just make their lives fucking miserable. They deserve it.

Do you not realize she was actually being civil? 

[mormont]

5 hours ago, Altherion said:

the race was still fairly close in October

Look, I know you have form for talking nonsense, but does it never occur to you to check whether what you're saying is actually factually correct?

[OldGimletEye]

Stiglitz isn't happy with the Supreme Court.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/american-democracy-on-the-brink-by-joseph-e--stiglitz-2018-06

Quote

In just the past few days, the US Supreme Court has handed down a series of rulings favoring corporations over workers, and right-wing extremists over the majority of Americans. With the Court following Donald Trump down the path of racism, misogyny, nativism, and deepening inequality, it would appear that yet another pillar of American democracy has crumbled.

 

Quote

The Court’s first egregious decision this week came on Monday, in the case of Ohio v. American Express. In a 5-to-4 decision, the Court upheld anti-competitive contracts that American Express imposes on merchants who accept AmEx credit-card payments. As I pointed out in an amicus brief to the Court, AmEx’s arguments in defense of its anti-competitive practices were totally specious.
The decision, written by the Court’s most predictably right-wing member, Clarence Thomas, betrayed a deep misunderstanding of economics, and reflected a rigidly ideological, pro-business stance. All told, the ruling amounts to a major victory for monopoly power. Major corporations that engage in similar anti-competitive practices will now be able to entrench their market dominance even further, distorting the economy and increasing America’s already glaringly high levels of inequality.

I'm sure Clarence Thomas' understanding of economcs is something like, "Well yeah see back in the 1980s Reagan got elected, then he cut taxes and it was mornin' in America."

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

Note to Self: Reading for the weekend.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w24746

Quote

Since the onset of the Great Recession, an explosion of both theoretical and empirical research has investigated how the financial crisis emerged and how it was transmitted to the real sector. The goal of this paper is to describe what we have learned from this new research and how it can be used to understand what happened during the Great Recession. In the process, we also present some new evidence on the role of the household balance sheet channel versus the disruption of banking. We examine a panel of quarterly state level data on house prices, mortgage debt and employment along with a measure of banking distress. Then exploiting both panel data and time series methods, we analyze the contribution of the house price decline versus the banking distress indicator to the overall decline in employment during the Great Recession. We confirm a common finding in the literature that the household balance sheet channel is important for regional variation in employment. However, we also find that the disruption in banking was central to the overall employment contraction

 

[OldGimletEye]

Remember way back when, Puke Gingrich suggested that poor (and mainly brown) kids should get jobs so they learn the value of hard work.

Let's forget about the dog whistle politics of Gingrich's comment for a moment.

Now here is a hard working ambitious young man.

And what does he get for his trouble? He gets the cops called on him.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/7/2/17527382/reggie-fields-racial-profiling-911-police

Quote

Reggie Fields, a 12 year-old Ohioan, proudly operates Mr. Reggie’s Lawn Cutting Service. Together with some of his relatives, Fields mows lawns around his Maple Heights neighborhood, a suburb of Cleveland. But his team’s usual routine of cutting four to five lawns a day was disturbed last week when police showed up after Fields accidentally mowed a small part of a neighbor’s yard.

 

[SweetPea]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Remember way back when, Puke Gingrich suggested that poor (and mainly brown) kids should get jobs so they learn the value of hard work.

Let's forget about the dog whistle politics of Gingrich's comment for a moment.

 

What is wrong with that suggestion?

Quote

 

Now here is a hard working ambitious young man.

And what does he get for his trouble? He gets the cops called on him.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/7/2/17527382/reggie-fields-racial-profiling-911-police

 

Alright, some idiot called the cops, the cops realized the kid did nothing wrong and they left. This is basically a non-story.  I don't see your point.

 

[mormont]

47 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

What is wrong with that suggestion?

Alright, some idiot called the cops, the cops realized the kid did nothing wrong and they left. This is basically a non-story.  I don't see your point.

When things happen that we know should make us uncomfortable, we can face up to them. Or we can pretend that we don't understand what's wrong with those things. You've picked one option. Don't expect us to play along. 

[Relic]

1 hour ago, SweetPea said:

What is wrong with that suggestion?

Why don't all these out of work coal miners get jobs, why don't the rust belt Trump voters suffering from economic woes get better jobs, why dont we ALL get better jobs? What is wrong with the suggestion is that it's an intentionally intellectually dishonest strawman.

[Martell Spy]

Angry Mother and Toddler Confront Scott Pruitt in a D.C. Restaurant

https://www.thecut.com/2018/07/scott-pruit-restaurant-confronted-mother.html

Quote

 

As soon as her husband noticed him, she got up — toddler in arms — to go have a word with him.

“I just wanted to urge you to resign because of what you’re doing to the environment and our country,” Mink says, captured in a video uploaded to Facebook. “This is my son. He loves animals. He loves clean air. He loves clean water. Meanwhile, you’re slashing strong fuel standards for cars and trucks, for the benefit of big corporations.”

 

 

[LongRider]

5 hours ago, SweetPea said:

Do you not realize she was actually being civil?