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

[Zorral]

3 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Primary day for New York's state races. One thing I hope any NY posters or reader do is vote out IDC members if you live in their districts. (The IDC is a breakaway group of Democrats who have been caucusing with Republicans in the state senate, and it's been obvious all along the motivation has been just for the prime seats, pay raises, and perks that Republicans will throw them in order to retain control of the state senate.)

The group is supposedly going to come back to the fold now, but they've said that before and left Democrats high and dry afterwards. The fact that they're continuing to illegally fund through a PAC supposed to be set up for a 3rd party, (but which was chaired until recently by the head of the IDC and only ever seems to pay out to IDC members) shows that their corruption is certainly still in place, and that they're likely to remain a separate group.

Here's who the IDC members are, what district they represent, and who is challenging them on the ballot:

DISTRICT	IDC INCUMBENT	CHALLENGER
Senate District 11	Tony Avella	John Liu
Senate District 13	José Peralta	Jessica Ramos
Senate District 17	Simcha Felder*	Blake Morris
Senate District 20	Jesse Hamilton	Zellnor Myrie
Senate District 23	Diane Savino	Jasmine Robinson
Senate District 31	Marisol Alcantara	Robert Jackson
Senate District 34	Jeff Klein	Alessandra Biaggi
Senate District 38	David Carlucci	Julie Goldberg
Senate District 53	David Valesky	Rachel May

*Note: Felder is not actually with the IDC, but he is a Democrat who has been caucusing with Republicans separately.

Lets do our best to kick their asses right out office, change the direction of the state party, and clean up some of Albany's notoriously corrupt culture.

None of these guys are in my district.  Too much to take care of here this AM, so I'm going to the polls only now.  Cuomo and his crewz have revealed so publicly in the last few days just what cynically corrupt cronies they are. 

[Mexal]

More SCOTUS fun times.

 

[Zorral]

Evidently NY election shananigans -- by who else, by the Dem party . . . .

Quite a few people who have come to vote were shocked to learn they were no longer on the voter rolls.

So those who were removed, if they wish to vote, have to go to their local election board, file and affidavit and then vote.  It is being suggested, by the Dem state party, that those who were removed had filed absentee or some other voting means when last they voted, so they were removed from the poling place rolls.  Eff that.

The Dem party here has always been deeply invested in suppressing voting by every means, in favor the entrenched power brokers never ever being challenged or removed.  So this year, filled with challengers for the long non-challenged at all, who also happen not to be white men, really had to do something, evidently.

I had no problems at my place.  But then the local Dems / Independents are very active here.  And, tend to be tended by women.  Really, it seems, the only people who can actually get anything productive and positive accomplished or working these days are women. And not just here, but everywhere around the world.  

 

[Martell Spy]

UN Secretary-General: American Power Is in Decline, the World Is ‘in Pieces’

António Guterres confronts the “reemergence of irrationality” in global politics.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/09/antonio-guterres-united-nations/570130/

Quote

For the past two years, the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, has watched as President Donald Trump upends American foreign policy, engaging in trade wars while simultaneously disengaging from international agreements and alliances. And now Guterres has reached a verdict: The United States, once the guarantor of global stability, is losing its ability to influence world events.

 

[Morpheus]

32 minutes ago, Mexal said:

 

It will be ignored by Republicans, just as they ignored all the lies, the poor performance under pressure last week, the fact that he is a staunch ideologue, his general scummy nature. Criminalizing abortion and protecting a criminal president by givng him powers just shy of a monarch are the only things they care about.

[Martell Spy]

America’s Slide Toward Autocracy

Democracy has taken a beating under President Trump. Will the midterms make a difference?

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/building-an-autocracy/568282/

Quote

In this, Trump is not acting alone. He is enabled by his party in Congress and its many supporters throughout the country. Republican leaders and donors have built a coping mechanism for the age of Trump, a mantra: “Ignore the weird stuff, focus on the policy.” But the policy is increasingly driven by the weird stuff: tariffs, trade wars, quarrels with allies, suspicions of secret deals with the Russians. The weird stuff is the policy—and it is transforming the president’s party in ways not easily or soon corrected.

 

[Fragile Bird]

Geezus Murphy, I was just sitting here wondering if there were any stupidities built in the US like the Fukishima nuclear plant, since that was a US design (ie nuclear waste water stored on the roof), and yes indeed, there's a plant in Brunswick, NC, of the same design, built on ground only 20 feet above sea level.

Now, it was built in the 70s and has survived numerous hurricanes and is, thankfully, not right on the ocean (beachfront property probably too precious), but...it's only 20 feet above sea level. That sucker better be shut down before sea levels rise much more.

[Zorral]

More on NYC voter roll disappearances here:

 

[Bonnot OG]

We are a country of potemkin villages laced with screaming billboards governed by bought & bigoted politicians taught white washed history by underpaid & soon to be armed teachers that will help push out another generation of underpaid workers with crippling depression.
What a great fucking country.

[Bonnot OG]

The fascists are not coming, they're already here. Fascism is here. It's no more evident than a government denying / ignoring the deaths of 2,975 people, citizens of the country they claim to love no less. This is what a fascist government does.

[Kalbear]

52 minutes ago, Zorral said:

More on NYC voter roll disappearances here:

 

I've said this before - this would be by far the easiest way for Russia to disrupt voting. 

[Fragile Bird]

Did you see a 12 year old in Iowa went to school with a gun and tried to shoot his teacher, but the gun didn't fire?

Just imagine the teacher with a gun shooting the kid dead.

The boy actually told his classmates to drop to the ground first.

He didn't realize the safety catch was on. The female teacher wrestled the gun away from him.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/11/pistols-safety-catch-may-have-stopped-year-old-shooting-his-teacher-face-report-says/?utm_term=.f0c2e0077510

 

[Zorral]

7 minutes ago, Casablanca Birdie said:

Did you see a 12 year old in Iowa went to school with a gun and tried to shoot his teacher, but the gun didn't fire?

Just imagine the teacher with a gun shooting the kid dead.

The boy actually told his classmates to drop to the ground first.

He didn't realize the safety catch was on. The female teacher wrestled the gun away from him.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/11/pistols-safety-catch-may-have-stopped-year-old-shooting-his-teacher-face-report-says/?utm_term=.f0c2e0077510

 

Holy ----!  I hadn't see that. This is going to happen, it really will, a teacher shooting a kid. Then the teacher, who is armed because it was demanded, will be fried by the same people who demanded s/he be armed.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

On 9/12/2018 at 1:04 PM, Darth Richard II said:

I feel like we went through the looking glass inside the looking glass. It's like...looking glassception, or something.

 

22 hours ago, Bonnot OG said:

This is also a good related story
https://www.newsweek.com/puerto-ricans-restore-power-after-hurricane-maria-1114070

I’ve been out of it with school so I’m just hearing about the Trump / Trump follower freak out over the PR - Maria death toll.

Trump’s idiocy should be hung around the neck of the Republican Party for a generation. These people should never be allowed within light years of the levers of power ever again and any Democrat that doesn’t support this view; they can fuck off too. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

56 minutes ago, Casablanca Birdie said:

Did you see a 12 year old in Iowa went to school with a gun and tried to shoot his teacher, but the gun didn't fire?

Just imagine the teacher with a gun shooting the kid dead.

The boy actually told his classmates to drop to the ground first.

He didn't realize the safety catch was on. The female teacher wrestled the gun away from him.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/11/pistols-safety-catch-may-have-stopped-year-old-shooting-his-teacher-face-report-says/?utm_term=.f0c2e0077510

 

So, “The gun worked” is what you’re saying...

[lokisnow]

11 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

So, “The gun worked” is what you’re saying...

But isn’t the NRA opposed in principle to guns having or being required to have a “safety”

[Zorral]

Who owns the weather?  Let's privatize all the weather info -- even though it comes from the federal government that tax money pays for!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-14/trump-s-pick-to-lead-weather-agency-spent-30-years-fighting-it

Privatizing access to the information collected by the federal government started with Reagan and came on then under both the Bushes like a hurricane, especially under bushwa2.  Now, even more.

Either Joel Myers, AccuWeather’s founder, or his brother Barry Lee Myers, was seen visiting the agency in D.C. just recently. Joel Myers has been complaining about the National Weather Service giving out weather information on radio, tv, online, to newspapers 'for free' for 30 years.

Quote

What Santorum does recall about the meeting is that his visitor had a gripe about the National Weather Service. The NWS was giving away forecasts on its website, radio stations, and elsewhere, when businesses such as AccuWeather charged its clients for theirs—never mind that AccuWeather relied on the service’s free data to formulate its own predictions. Santorum agreed that commercial weather companies deserved protection.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Trump’s idiocy should be hung around the neck of the Republican Party for a generation. These people should never be allowed within light years of the levers of power ever again and any Democrat that doesn’t support this view; they can fuck off too. 

We said this about Dubya too.....

........How'd that work out?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Looks like the Dems came out pretty well from the Defense Bill negotiations. Republicans get their bloated defense package while Democrats get more spending on the domestic front, as well as stripping the bill of a lot of language that makes conservatives weak in the knees. Trump won't like this, so we'll see if he signs it or decides to shut down the government just weeks before the midterms. 

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/13/pentagon-spending-deal-government-shutdown-787233

 

[Zorral]

Further in the news one hopes is fake, tell us that Bloomberg is not going to run for POTUS in 2020!  He'll be frackin' 78!

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/bloomberg-set-to-run-against-trump-in-2020-qvbfcrswg

Listening to Market Place just now.  The tariffs are going to make rebuilding after Florence even more expensive and difficult.  Not only will materials such as lumber that are foundational to rebuilding going to cost a lot more, but as well, there are likely to be shortages of the much more expensive materials and items such as, say, bathroom fixtures, etc.