U.S. Politics- This Is Us, Basically Fascists

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, Week said:

Who is surprised?

Per usual, faux outrage from the Right. The "freeze peach" putzes aren't under threat from the Left.

 

Bu bu bu but... liberal bias ! 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

32 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

I am alright with Murphy or Walz.  I think Walz is the safer choice.  But I haven't been playing close attention at all,  because frankly the Republican choices are a joke. 

I will be possibly moving into Jason Lewis's district and I might get the joy of voting him out of office. 

I figured I’d just address our CD with Ace and discuss the governor’s race here. I too am leaning towards Walz. He’s the most charismatic of the three and he can appeal to white rural voters in a way that Swanson and Murphy cannot. Another appealing aspect about him is that he could have national ambitions, and he’d be great on the ticket. Swanson’s best argument is that she’s already won statewide three times and frankly, she’d probably make a better governor since she has all the connections in St. Paul. However, I find it really odd that she got primaried and ended up pulling out. I have no idea what happened there, but it’s not a good sign. Murphy is the one I have no interest in.

We also need to talk about the elephant in the room: Sen. Tina Smith. She’s never won a race as the candidate and frankly she’s a milquetoast campaigner. Dayton really screwed up there considering he had a ton of qualified people he could have chosen from to replace Franken (and I still don’t think he should have resigned). He should have picked either Kelliher, Walz, Nolan, or McCollum.

[ThinkerX]

Yes, it's Fox.  Yes, the chances of this happening are infinitesimal.  Still, it's interesting, and the reaction of Trump and Conservatives should it miraculously happen ought to be well worth it.  Or what happens when the designated scapegoat refuses to play?

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-news-editor-we-should-stop-having-reporters-at-trump-rallies/ar-BBLsT6m?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580

"We should stop having reporters at those Trump rallies," Stirewalt said on Fox News's "Outnumbered." "Everybody should stop having reporters penned up like veal in the back of those things for the president to use as a prop, and then some of the reporters exploit that for their own personal benefit."

Stirewalt added that "this is not helping anybody. Get out of the hall. Leave the cameras, get the reporters out of the hall. Quit letting him use you as a foil."

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I wonder if this QAnon nonsense will pick up steam. They say people are leaving clues on message boards. Perhaps there are some here. I can't think of anyone who would leave them though. And I certainly wouldn't try and name names. That would be absurd.

@Jace, Basilissa

@Casablanca Birdie

@Mexal

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

Yes, it's Fox.  Yes, the chances of this happening are infinitesimal.  Still, it's interesting, and the reaction of Trump and Conservatives should it miraculously happen ought to be well worth it.  Or what happens when the designated scapegoat refuses to play?

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fox-news-editor-we-should-stop-having-reporters-at-trump-rallies/ar-BBLsT6m?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580

 

 

I've been saying this since the campaign. Don't let him use you as a foil and don't give him the attention he so craves. It only helps him. If you starve him of the latter he might deflate like a New England Patriots' football.

(sorry Dante and Week, could not resist)

[Serious Callers Only]

The problem here is that Fox News is a literal minitrue and the others leaving means more propaganda brainwashing to the meme that 'the media is with Trump' that right now they can only have with editing.

 

But you're sorta right in that it doesn't matter - the racism and evil of the average Fox News viewer can't actually be touched by reality in any way they might accidentally interact with it, so the amount of propaganda is mostly irrelevant (them leaving or CNN et all leaving doesn't matter).

 

I'm actually pretty convinced this will end in civil war, if not now, later. Pretty sure Trumpnite voters are just itching for 'apartheid 2.0', 'sexual slavery classic' and sequel 'gas chambers 3000'. There will be a more intelligent Trump using the same tools that the GOP left lying around.

 

Speaking of this did Putin really threaten in that conference to give out suitcase nukes to terror groups? Pretty false flaggy assumption that the JCS don't just nuke moscow. 'Deniably'.

[Martell Spy]

Judge orders full restart of DACA program

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/03/daca-trump-administration-court-judge-restart-order-722167

Quote

 

A D.C.-based federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to restart in full the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The decision is the latest legal blow against President Donald Trump’s decision to phase out the Obama-era program, which offers deportation relief to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

The restart won’t be immediate. U.S. District Judge John Bates said Friday that the order would be delayed until Aug. 23 to allow the government to appeal, but he denied a Justice Department motion to reconsider his earlier decision, saying there were still deficiencies in the administration's rationale for rescinding DACA.

“The court has already once given DHS the opportunity to remedy these deficiencies — either by providing a coherent explanation of its legal opinion or by reissuing its decision for bona fide policy reasons that would preclude judicial review,” said Bates, “So it will not do so again.”

Bates in April became the third federal judge to order the administration to restart renewals for people previously approved for DACA.

He also threatened to vacate the memo ending DACA — and thereby restore the program in full — if Trump officials could not present an adequate reason for ending it.

 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

53 minutes ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

I wonder if this QAnon nonsense will pick up steam. They say people are leaving clues on message boards. Perhaps there are some here. I can't think of anyone who would leave them though. And I certainly wouldn't try and name names. That would be absurd.

@Jace, Basilissa

@Casablanca Birdie

@Mexal

Q butt poop 1qua non turd splash a one queue butthole

[Morpheus]

171717wwg1wga

I is live in  a Metal Gear Solid

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

I wonder if this QAnon nonsense will pick up steam. They say people are leaving clues on message boards. Perhaps there are some here. I can't think of anyone who would leave them though. And I certainly wouldn't try and name names. That would be absurd.

@Jace, Basilissa

@Casablanca Birdie

@Mexal

What Is this about?

[Serious Callers Only]

A russian operation to radicalize conspiracy theorists and to catch younger kids on the troll culture to get those new 'conservative' voters. Pretty much a alt-right* and bot swamp now. A bit like 4chan but more transparently a grown operation.

 

 

* this is a pretty funny name since the newspeak turned against itself here, due to historical internal fission. Newspeak of Newspeak.

[maarsen]

5 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Let's assume Warren took the test and it proved the claim false; Was she a liar all her life? I mean, it's not like she could have taken a DNA test back in college.  The types of testing kits people are using to determine ancestry today weren't even available until just a few years ago.

Warren is from Oklahoma.  Her family was several generations in Oklahoma, possibly going back to the Oklahoma land run.  The idea that she might have a recent native american ancestor isn't that crazy.  There are a lot of people from Oklahoma who have similar family stories.  That doesn't make them liars.

Now, the co worker of mine who claims his family might be descendants of Robert the Bruce (a popular family legend among people of Scots-Irish descent).  He's full of shit.

If your co-worker is Scottish in descent, going back to Robert the Bruce is approximately 36 generations. Assuming this there are about 68 million ancestors contributing to his or her DNA. Scotland did not contain anywhere near this amount of people so anyone from there has a huge amount of shared ancestry, including Robert Bruce, and his pigsty mucker also. 

[Jace, Extat]

24 minutes ago, Serious Callers Only said:

A russian operation to radicalize conspiracy theorists and to catch younger kids on the troll culture to get those new 'conservative' voters. Pretty much a alt-right* and bot swamp now. A bit like 4chan but more transparently a grown operation.

 

 

* this is a pretty funny name since the newspeak turned against itself here, due to historical internal fission. Newspeak of Newspeak.

Lame.

[LongRider]

About that voter fraud;

Quote

A Democrat who served on President Trump's voter fraud commission wrote in a letter to the White House this week that the findings presented by Vice President Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach were "false" and did not contain actual evidence of voter fraud.

In a letter to Pence and Kobach, the chairmen of the now-shuttered voter fraud commission, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap (D) wrote that when it came to evidence of widespread voter fraud, the committee's final report was "glaringly empty."

Dunlap posted the commission's findings online this week after previously suing the panel to obtain them.

"I have reviewed the documents made available to me and they do not contain evidence of widespread voter fraud," Dunlap wrote of the commission's work.

Dunlap added that the fact that "the commission predicted it would find widespread evidence of fraud actually reveals troubling bias."

“It’s calling into the darkness, looking for voter fraud,” he told The Associated Press. “There’s no real evidence of it anywhere.”

This links to what Dunlap put online;   http://paceidocs.sosonline.org/

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

What Is this about?

#QAnon, the scarily popular pro-Trump conspiracy theory, explained

I like it because it gives homeless people on the street rambling about the end is nigh relative dignity.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

3 hours ago, maarsen said:

If your co-worker is Scottish in descent, going back to Robert the Bruce is approximately 36 generations. Assuming this there are about 68 million ancestors contributing to his or her DNA. Scotland did not contain anywhere near this amount of people so anyone from there has a huge amount of shared ancestry, including Robert Bruce, and his pigsty mucker also. 

Also, there's no reason to believe his ancestors from that time period are exclusively British.  Some Great, Great so-and-so emigrates to America and takes a German or Polish spouse and the geographical area gets considerably larger.  This isn't even counting how people might have moved around in the preceding centuries (war, trade, etc) 

This became a news story a few years ago having do with a John McCain family history where they claimed descent from both Robert the Bruce.  Aside from what you read on the internet (which is always correct), The Brits had a somewhat different view.  It turns out they take this genaeology stuff fairly seriously.  Two problems:

1. Unless you are actual nobility, it is virtually impossible to reliably trace your family tree back to the medieval period.  I'd imagine that even for nobility it get's pretty dodgy in places.**

2. Robert the Bruce had a dozen children, including the bastards. His descendants today likely number in the millions.

So "really hard to prove" and "not that special if you did."  I just don't understand this fascination some people have about being a distant royal descendant.

**Edit: without documentation.  Apparently such documentation exists for some people

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

29 minutes ago, LongRider said:

About that voter fraud;

This links to what Dunlap put online;   http://paceidocs.sosonline.org/

This voter fraud garbage is on the same level as the satanic panic of the 1980's.  

The justice department has been actively investigating voter fraud at least since the late '90's.  The kind of voter fraud you get is the occasional person who sends in an absentee ballot and then shows up at the polling station on election day.  Or votes in the wrong district. Or the recent case of a green card holder who got busted voting and claimed (sincerely I think) that she didn't know she couldn't.  The number of prosecuted cases is infinitesimal compared to the hundreds of millions of votes cast.

In order to swing an election you'd be talking about hundreds of thousands (or millions) of votes coordinated across multiple districts and states.  Something that could not be done without leaving a trail.  Oh, wait that is going on: invalid or illegal voter purges like what happened in Florida before the 2000 election.  That's it.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

38 minutes ago, DMC said:

#QAnon, the scarily popular pro-Trump conspiracy theory, explained

I like it because it gives homeless people on the street rambling about the end is nigh relative dignity.

I can barely keep up with the crazy these days.

[DMC]

So the OH-12th special election on Tuesday should be an interesting test for the "Democratic wave."  It was a district gerrymandered for Pat Tiberi, and he's won by about 2-1 in the three cycles since (which mirrors the registration breakdown).  Trump beat Clinton 53-42, and the district is much wealthier and educated than the typical "Obama-Trump" district - especially compared to the rest of Ohio. 

The contest also, importantly, hasn't raised nearly as much money or interest as most other special elections since it's so close to, ya know, the actual midterms.  Empirically, this is why I like it as a test - if anything, it should be more prone to a type II rather than type I error (i.e. a false negative rather than a false positive).  In other words, if the Democrats can pickup such a seat given the lack of interest and money (let alone the demos), it bodes quite well for them come November.

[Guy Kilmore]

8 hours ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

I figured I’d just address our CD with Ace and discuss the governor’s race here. I too am leaning towards Walz. He’s the most charismatic of the three and he can appeal to white rural voters in a way that Swanson and Murphy cannot. Another appealing aspect about him is that he could have national ambitions, and he’d be great on the ticket. Swanson’s best argument is that she’s already won statewide three times and frankly, she’d probably make a better governor since she has all the connections in St. Paul. However, I find it really odd that she got primaried and ended up pulling out. I have no idea what happened there, but it’s not a good sign. Murphy is the one I have no interest in.

We also need to talk about the elephant in the room: Sen. Tina Smith. She’s never won a race as the candidate and frankly she’s a milquetoast campaigner. Dayton really screwed up there considering he had a ton of qualified people he could have chosen from to replace Franken (and I still don’t think he should have resigned). He should have picked either Kelliher, Walz, Nolan, or McCollum.

Swanson is a weird one and her recent primary loss and pulling out makes me uncomfortable with her. 

Yeah, I am not sure what Dayton was thinking about with Tina Smith, I think she is making the seat vulnerable, which is also why I kind of like the Walz pick, as he might be able to prop up the Senate race too.  I think both races are bolstered by Klobuchar running and I still feel like she is extremely popular and can prop up both of these seats.

I am a little worried by a Pawlenty pick by the Republicans.  I think there is a lot of monkey poo to throw at him from his time to Governor, but I wonder if he might get the benefit of some rose colored glasses.

ETA:  But you are much more clued in on local politics than I am.  I am still curious about all the stuff that went down with Swanson.