US Politics: Donnie and the Mystery of the Anonymous Op-Ed

[DMC]

2 hours ago, SpaceForce Tywin et al. said:

I think that’s just who he is. I’ve seen a few videos of him speaking publicly and he’s always bouncing off of the walls.  

Yeah he does have that reputation - but even taking that into account he seemed in rare form.

[Morpheus]

Trump was just praising fellow predator, Kavnaugh, falling back on that old “good man” chestnut which was shattered even before the sexual assault allegation with the perjury and whatnot.

[IheartIheartTesla]

4 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Georgia is a much better state that Alabama for Democrats.  Alabama was R+26 and R+30 in 2012 and 2016 presidential races, where Georgia was R+12 and R+7.  Atlanta is the driving force for the Democratic emergence in Georgia, the city keeps growing and with it college educated workers and minorities are making up a larger percentage of the state population.  It's not purple yet - Florida and North Carolina are both slightly Republican leaning and nonetheless better opportunities for Democrats.  But it's moving in that direction, and a good candidate (which Abrams looks to be) plus a Democratic enthusiasm gap might be enough to break through. 

I just remembered 538s post (and reread for good measure) on how for someone to win in Georgia they would have to hit 90% of the non-white vote, make sure at least 40% of the vote is non-white, and get at least 25% of the while vote. All three are possible because a) most of the non-white population is African American b) 40% of the total voting age population is non-white and c) Atlanta suburbs house much of the white population. Still, it also points to why Democrats can get close but ultimately lose in Georgia because of the need for all this to happen.

[Maithanet]

Yeah, I remember that article as well.  Georgia is like a slightly better version of Mississippi where there are very few swing/persuadable voters, and thus even though there's a large group of Democratic voters (enough to sometimes make elections look "close"), Democrats have a lot of trouble breaking through, because there are just more Republicans, and those Republicans vote.  Demographic trends are slowly making Georgia better, but it might be another ten years before it is truly in reach.  Or it's possible that Abrams will break through with a surprise win in seven weeks. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

I don't see in any story how the letter got to Feinstein, if Eshoo gave it to her or if it was leaked to her. But what part of confidential do you not understand? Sharing it with other Democrats on the committee is not keeping it confidential. While stories have played up the idea it was a unilateral decision made by Feinstein, the truth actually seems to be the letter clearly stated Ford wanted to keep the matter confidential. That's her right. 

You may be misinterpreting the extent of confidentiality, and when Ford courageously chose to go public.  There was a great deal of discussion between Ford and Eshoo and others about this beforehand. Eshbo forwarded it to Feinstein.  Which is why the polygraph test with the FBI.

More to the point when it comes to the confidentiality, is how quickly the rethugs got wind of it and the details, enough to research and find 50 classmates, compose a letter of support, get it signed by all of them and have it ready for publication even before Ford went public in the WaPo. That's the confidentiality one needs to be concerned with.

Again, Feinstein royally screwed up by sitting on the letter and then hinting about it, while refusing the content to be seen by her fellow DEMOCRATs on the committee.  This was her strategy with Kavanaugh, instead of pounding him like Florence's rains pound Wilmington, about his lying under oath, over and over, over the years.  Not to mention the hints of financial irregularities with the purchase of his house and that debt over baseball tix.  Among other matters.

[maarsen]

8 minutes ago, Zorral said:

You may be misinterpreting the extent of confidentiality, and when Ford courageously chose to go public.  There was a great deal of discussion between Ford and Eshoo and others about this beforehand. Eshbo forwarded it to Feinstein.

More to the point when it comes to the confidentiality, is how quickly the rethugs got wind of it and the details, enough to research and find 50 classmates, compose a letter of support, get it signed by all of them and have it ready for publication even before Ford went public in the WaPo. That's the confidentiality one needs to be concerned with.

Even more to the point is that Kavanaugh was investigated before the nomination and evidence of his drunken rapist behaviour probably came out before Feinstein ever got any letter from Ford or even knew who Ford was. The Republicans were prepared for this. They knew who Kavanaugh was and were still willing to go ahead.

[DanteGabriel]

1 hour ago, maarsen said:

Even more to the point is that Kavanaugh was investigated before the nomination and evidence of his drunken rapist behaviour probably came out before Feinstein ever got any letter from Ford or even knew who Ford was. The Republicans were prepared for this. They knew who Kavanaugh was and were still willing to go ahead.

They wouldn't have had to dig far just in to turn up problematic known associates. The co-rapist in the room with him  sounds like a rapey drunk shitstain that you couldn't write as a fictional character because one person couldn't embody that many stereotypes of the overprivileged sociopathic fratboy. Who writes stupendously stupid conservabro sports takes in his spare time.

[Rippounet]

A new interview of Noam Chomsky, which doesn't say anything most people here don't already know, but which has the merit of articulating it in a very clear and concise manner.

Quote

 

https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/9675

Now, while attention is focused on Trump’s latest mad doings, the Ryan gang and the executive branch are ramming through legislation and orders that undermine workers’ rights, cripple consumer protections, and severely harm rural communities. They seek to devastate health programs, revoking the taxes that pay for them in order to further enrich their Constituency, and to eviscerate the Dodd-Frank Act, which imposed some much-needed constraints on the predatory financial system that grew during the neoliberal period.

That’s just a sample of how the wrecking ball is being wielded by the newly empowered Republican Party. Indeed, it is no longer a political party in the traditional sense. Conservative political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have described it more accurately as a “radical insurgency,” one that has abandoned normal parliamentary politics.

[...]

It’s no secret that in recent years, traditional political institutions have been declining in the industrial democracies, under the impact of what is called “populism.” That term is used rather loosely to refer to the wave of discontent, anger, and contempt for institutions that has accompanied the neoliberal assault of the past generation, which led to stagnation for the majority alongside a spectacular concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

Functioning democracy erodes as a natural effect of the concentration of economic power, which translates at once to political power by familiar means, but also for deeper and more principled reasons. The doctrinal pretense is that the transfer of decision-making from the public sector to the “market” contributes to individual freedom, but the reality is different. The transfer is from public institutions, in which voters have some say, insofar as democracy is functioning, to private tyrannies – the corporations that dominate the economy – in which voters have no say at all. In Europe, there is an even more direct method of undermining the threat of democracy: placing crucial decisions in the hands of the unelected troika – the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission – which heeds the northern banks and the creditor community, not the voting population.

These policies are dedicated to making sure that society no longer exists, Margaret Thatcher’s famous description of the world she perceived – or, more accurately, hoped to create: one where there is no society, only individuals. This was Thatcher’s unwitting paraphrase of Marx’s bitter condemnation of repression in France, which left society as a “sack of potatoes,” an amorphous mass that cannot function. In the contemporary case, the tyrant is not an autocratic ruler – in the West, at least – but concentrations of private power.

 

I'm always awed by the way Chomsky ties it all together. Foreign & domestic policies, US, Europe & the world, economics and politics, the past and present... etc. And he makes it seem so easy...

The bolded is, I believe, what matters in the long-run. There is an attempt to destroy the very web of society - and civilization - itself. And it is succeeding.

The rest of that volume can be of interest as well. There's an article on race in the US by one of my old teachers that some here would no doubt agree with:

Quote

 

https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/9832

A century and a half after their accession to citizenship, black Americans still struggle to achieve full acceptance in every walk of life. The cult of racial homogeneity, if not racial purity, has often justified exclusionary policies towards Native Americans, Blacks, and Mexicans. Massive immigration, especially non-white or viewed as such, has always been socially and economically disruptive; the nativistic reactions of the 1850s against the Irish, of the 1890s and 1910s against eastern and southern Europeans, or the Chinese Exclusion Act, anti-Japanese agitation, the literacy test campaigns, the Immigration Act of 1924, are among the numerous examples of this. The immigration issue in Donald Trump’s United States today harks back to these troubled times when illegal aliens appeared as some sort of Trojan horse that imperiled the whole Republic.

[...]

Trump’s performance since he became Chief Executive has essentially defined itself by its opposition to his predecessor’s. His agenda, however, includes other priorities, maintaining the racial divide, scaring and reassuring in turn his white base, bullying minorities, especially Blacks and Latinos, and stopping the immigrant invasion by building a wall on the U.S. southern border.

[...]

The heart of the matter is that racial and ethnic groups are not treated equally, although an overwhelming majority of Whites believe they are, and that one group bears the brunt of violent crime—African Americans, a cohort most likely to be critical of law enforcement and supportive of police reform, notably stricter accountability for officers using excessive force or evincing racial bias. Trump’s approach, as Bouie puts it, is “part and parcel of the white racial nationalism that fueled his campaign, informed his administration, and now shapes his rhetoric as President,” an indication that “he will govern with the same eye toward division and racial antagonism he had as a candidate.” And most Whites seem to subscribe to this highly racialized vision of American society.

[...]

Democracy could very well be at risk in today’s United States. By ignoring and defying norms and traditions, the 45^th President has exposed the flaws of the American Constitution. Globally, the Republican Party has moved further to the right since the beginning of the 21^st century; it has obviously radicalized in recent years and absorbed its Tea Party fringe. The demise of bipartisanship is now a given in congressional politicking. Conservatives have developed a panoply of insults and coded terms to derogatorily depict Democrats as left-wingers. Electorally, “a house divided” has fallen prey to the tyranny of the minority. The Republicans are positioned to dominate the three nationwide democratic arenas (House, Senate, Presidency) even without a majority of voters for any one of them—and Trump’s judicial picks are likely to make the Judiciary more conservative in the years to come. Reaction rather than progress seems to be the new mantra, and it slants towards the extreme right.

 

And of course, I may or may not have contributed something myself in there...

 

[Zorral]

OTOH, perhaps Feinstein was thinking tactically? 

Sit on it, let the fumes start percolating. And let it fummmp out the very final days before the vote?

Nobody's suggested this anywhere I know of.  Also, is Feinstein that clever?

If Kavanaugh's nom is withdrawn for whatever reasons, this is really the end of the orange nazi.

More sanguine types than myself are certain he is going down anyway.  No way will he be the rethug nom for 2020.

The destruction though that has already been wreaked, and the more that will be, no matter what -- it's still the end of the USA as anything that matters or is credible for a very long time.  Most of all, as usual, if the Dems comes back, they are left once again, as they have been for over a century, to pull the economy back out of death throes.  The new crash is coming and the nation is how many trillion in debt?

[Altherion]

30 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

The bolded is, I believe, what matters in the long-run. There is an attempt to destroy the very web of society - and civilization - itself. And it is succeeding.

This is a truism in that there is always an attempt to destroy society and civilization and it is always succeeding. If you were able to travel a century back in time and convince somebody from that era that in a century, 40% of births would be out-of-wedlock, they'd assume that at this point society and civilization have pretty much already been destroyed and Satan has won (a view that would be reinforced when you told them about what happens to organized religion). What is it exactly that you want to preserve? If the goal was preventing concentrations of private power capable of remaking society in a way that gets them even more power, then that ship sailed a long time ago.

[Martell Spy]

Senate to Hold Public Hearing on Kavanaugh Sexual-Assault Allegation

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/senate-will-hold-hearing-kavanaugh-allegation-christine-ford-supreme-court.html

Quote

But Susan Collins thought otherwise. Early Monday afternoon, the Maine Republican tweeted, “Professor Ford and Judge Kavanaugh should both testify under oath before the Judiciary Committee.” Hours later, the senator decided to clarify the stakes of her suggestion. “I believe in order for me to assess the credibility of these allegations, that I want to have both individuals to come before the Senate Judiciary Committee and testify under oath,” she told reporters. Collins went on to say that Kavanaugh had assured her on Friday that the allegations were false — and that if he is found to have lied about that subject, she would consider that “disqualifying.”

 

[Martell Spy]

23 minutes ago, Zorral said:

OTOH, perhaps Feinstein was thinking tactically? 

Sit on it, let the fumes start percolating. And let it fummmp out the very final days before the vote?

Nobody's suggested this anywhere I know of.  Also, is Feinstein that clever?

If Kavanaugh's nom is withdrawn for whatever reasons, this is really the end of the orange nazi.

More sanguine types than myself are certain he is going down anyway.  No way will he be the rethug nom for 2020.

The destruction though that has already been wreaked, and the more that will be, no matter what -- it's still the end of the USA as anything that matters or is credible for a very long time.  Most of all, as usual, if the Dems comes back, they are left once again, as they have been for over a century, to pull the economy back out of death throes.  The new crash is coming and the nation is how many trillion in debt?

If the nomination goes down, I would think the Koch brothers machine would insist another nomination be rammed through, no matter the costs.

A few things may happen though if the nomination tanks. The new justice may not be quite as horrible on Executive power. Hopefully, the new justice would not be a sexual abuser. And ramming a Justice through right before or after the election may have profound political costs to the Republicans. 

Also, if the nomination is even delayed enough, Kavanaugh  may not be there for the upcoming SC term on October 1st.

[Zorral]

The thing is they are all sexual abusers to some degree or another, they are all corrupt and they are all complicit.  That is who is these people are and have always been.  And the orange nazi is one of them and with them and complicit with them  They are all one and the same.  Shocking, but there you go.

 

[Rippounet]

12 minutes ago, Altherion said:

This is a truism in that there is always an attempt to destroy society and civilization and it is always succeeding. If you were able to travel a century back in time and convince somebody from that era that in a century, 40% of births would be out-of-wedlock, they'd assume that at this point society and civilization have pretty much already been destroyed and Satan has won (a view that would be reinforced when you told them about what happens to organized religion). What is it exactly that you want to preserve? If the goal was preventing concentrations of private power capable of remaking society in a way that gets them even more power, then that ship sailed a long time ago.

An interesting point.
Are you familiar with Bourdieu's criticism of neo-liberalism? Have I posted this here before?
https://mondediplo.com/1998/12/08bourdieu

Anyway, drawing on Bourdieu's arguments I'd say that today we have a rejection of the very concept of a public interest, and an attempt to define politics exclusively through the individual lense. I'm sure it isn't completely new and that an accomplished historian could find traces of this individualist ideology at various points in the past, perhaps even as far back as ancient Rome or something. But it is very influential today and I think it poses a threat to the fabric of society that is somewhat new because it uses modern consumerism and materialism to prop its twisted philosophical basis.

As to the bolded, the ship may have sailed but like the Titanic, it isn't as unsinkable as it is said to be. The very success of neo-liberalism makes it harder to hide from the masses.

[The Anti-Targ]

So our news websites picked up this story about a coast guard guy showing the "OK" hand sign on TV. And also some Republican operative in the Kavenaugh hearing (?) doing the same. Seems most people in my part of the world aren't aware of the co-opting of the "OK" hand signal by the White nationalists / neo-Nazis. Just wondering how much traction there is on these stories in the USA? It appears from the report I read that the Coast Guard guy has been stood down from the Hurricane Florence response.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

This is a truism in that there is always an attempt to destroy society and civilization and it is always succeeding. If you were able to travel a century back in time and convince somebody from that era that in a century, 40% of births would be out-of-wedlock, they'd assume that at this point society and civilization have pretty much already been destroyed and Satan has won (a view that would be reinforced when you told them about what happens to organized religion). What is it exactly that you want to preserve? If the goal was preventing concentrations of private power capable of remaking society in a way that gets them even more power, then that ship sailed a long time ago.

It seems to me the difference is that the notion of humans as a social species (like bees, wolves, elephants, chimpanzees, gorillas) is being attacked at its foundations. Whereas your 100 years ago observer of the future is just lamenting that social norms have been destroyed, which is not the same as destroying the very concept of society.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

When did the “okay” handsign become a white power hand sign?

[SkynJay]

10 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

When did the “okay” handsign become a white power hand sign?

It is dicey.

It looks like it started as a 4-chan 'joke' among the alt-right; 'let's own the libs by pretending this is our new calling card and see if they report on it.'  Now it is jumbled and confused, a calling card that the alt-right will use then deny means anything.  As it has no history these assholes will pretend it means nothing at all, then flash it in photos regularly.

As to when, this is rather recent.  This year I think.

edit:  Here is a link that goes into it.  Looks like it started last year.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, SkynJay said:

It is dicey.

It looks like it started as a 4-chan 'joke' among the alt-right; 'let's own the libs by pretending this is our new calling card and see if they report on it.'  Now it is jumbled and confused, a calling card that the alt-right will use then deny means anything.  As it has no history these assholes will pretend it means nothing at all, then flash it in photos regularly.

As to when, this is rather recent.  This year I think.

edit:  Here is a link that goes into it.  Looks like it started last year.

Lord 4chann is just the most noxious pit of assholes assembled in recent memory, aren’t they?

[SkynJay]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Lord 4chann is just the most noxious pit of assholes assembled in recent memory, aren’t they?

Gamergate, with it's numerous death threats.  The Incel movement, connected to the Toronto attack.  The driving force behind the alt-right.  Yes, it is a cesspit.  And one that hides behind the 'just trolling' defense and anonymity.  

The news goes nuts when a midwest white girl gets recruited by ISIS and overlooks the indoctrination going on in 4chan forums.