US Politics: Make Thread Titles Great Again

[Kalbear]

42 minutes ago, Ormond said:

This is a minor point, but why would you think the mayor of South Bend, Indiana would possibly become the governor of Illinois? When was the last time we had someone who began his or her political career in one state become the governor of another state?  I would think it would be a lot harder to be elected a governor than it is a senator in that situation -- and have we had examples of Senators within the last few generations who fit that criterion who are not named Kennedy or Clinton and have been Senators from any state other than New York? 

Because south bend is pretty close to Illinois and Indiana is becoming increasingly red. To point this out further, south bend is closer to Michigan and Chicago than Indianapolis. 

[Week]

4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Smollett may well be guilty as charged, but he was publicly crucified. The Chicago police always seem to do things by extremes.

Ya ... Pretty much

https://www.theonion.com/chicago-police-credit-their-extensive-experience-falsif-1832825796

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

 Comparing the climate situation to the kind of great problem of the depression and World War 2 - and linking how the US used that as a springboard to greater political and economic success - is remarkable. 

I like the World War 2 analogy for two reasons. For one, it's probably going to take an effort of that scale to deal with the problem. Secondly, there is a long tradition in public finance in how to pay for war, the upshot is that you pay for some it through taxes and then finance a lot of it through debt on theory that since future generations will benefit from the war (well, if you buy into that future generation always benefit from wars. questionable, but roll with me here) they should pay for some of the cost. Which gets to, how are we going to pay for the Green New Deal. The answer is borrow for a lot of it. Just assuming R > G, then future generations will have to pay taxes. But, you know, I'm going to guess that in 2090 or so, if we are successful, future generations aren't going to say, "yeah but we had to pay more in taxes".

[Rippounet]

3 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

As for the rest of this nonsense, I could continue, but I'm getting tired.

I sincerely commend your taking the time to point out just how much bullshit that article contained. There was so much of it I personally couldn't bother going into details.

[DMC]

4 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I'm just confused as to scheduling it so quickly.

The reason to schedule it so quickly is because there's no discernible reason to wait and doing so gains you nothing.  If you think the emergency declaration is illegitimate, why wait to rebuke it?  The only impact that could have is the GOP saying you're playing politics with the vote, and they'd be right.  And while it's certainly possible Pelosi and the Dem leadership know something about the Mueller report dropping that the public does not, this is, like, the seventh time there's been rumors the report is gonna drop soon.  Getting to the point where I'll believe it when I see it, and I doubt it played a role in the decision to schedule the vote.  Anyway, seems a bit like you guys are vastly overrating the political salience of the vote.  Yeah, it'll probably pass the Senate and he'll have to veto it, but I don't think that's gonna affect much at all.

51 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Because south bend is pretty close to Illinois and Indiana is becoming increasingly red. To point this out further, south bend is closer to Michigan and Chicago than Indianapolis. 

I agree with @Ormond that it's very unlikely he's going to change the state runs in.  As far as I'm aware, there's scant evidence of successful carpetbaggers since, ya know, reconstruction when the term was coined.  Hillary, I guess, but she hadn't actually held political office before and is a rather unique example anyway.  I remember the Illinois GOP recruited Alan Keyes to run against Obama for Senate in 2004 because Jack Ryan dropped out and no one else wanted it, but that definitely did not work out well.  Can't really think of other recent examples, successful or not.

[Fragile Bird]

Lol, 3 women who were sexually assaulted by a Tennessee state representative named David Byrd 30 years ago when they were students at high school and he was a coach, were stunned to see he was re-elected by 76% of the voters. And he's now been appointed as head of the Education Administration committee in the state.

One of the women phoned him and confronted him, and Byrd said he has suffered for his actions ever since, and apologized to her several times, saying he really suffers every Sunday when in church.

In a secretly taped conversation with the House Speaker, where he was confronted by the fact the women have been ostracized by their community, the Speaker said "if I were raped or sexually assaulted I would have moved". 

Ah, Republicans!

This was from a report on CNN. USA Today Tennessee apparently had a piece in the paper on the taping of the Speaker. The Speaker objected and said his comments were taken out of context.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Byrd said he has suffered for his actions ever since, and apologized to her several times, saying he really suffers every Sunday when in church.

Isn't suffering in church the whole point of church?

[Ormond]

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

Isn't suffering in church the whole point of church?

Funny, but more appropriate for Roman Catholics than Protestants.

Though since this guy is a United Methodist, his church services are probably going to be less entertaining than those of many other Southern Protestant. 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Funny, but more appropriate for Roman Catholics than Protestants.

Though since this guy is a United Methodist, his church services are probably going to be less entertaining than those of many other Southern Protestant. 

Aye, although there certainly are Protestant denominations that do the guilt thing as much as Catholics.  Although, yeah, I didn't know he was Methodist.  Doesn't sound like a good example.  Hell, I had a friend in high school whose mother was a Methodist minister.  /record scratch.

[Ormond]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

Aye, although there certainly are Protestant denominations that do the guilt thing as much as Catholics.  Although, yeah, I didn't know he was Methodist.  Doesn't sound like a good example.  Hell, I had a friend in high school whose mother was a Methodist minister.  /record scratch.

Most "mainline" Protestant denominations ordain women as clergy. The United Methodists have since 1956. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

44 minutes ago, DMC said:

And while it's certainly possible Pelosi and the Dem leadership know something about the Mueller report dropping that the public does not, this is, like, the seventh time there's been rumors the report is gonna drop soon.  Getting to the point where I'll believe it when I see it, and I doubt it played a role in the decision to schedule the vote.

I saw a report at lunch, per NBC, that a senior official at DoJ said the report is not dropping next week. They also insinuated that there still is no time table (but that was not directly from the source). 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@Ormond

I did a little digging and I couldn't find any modern examples of what you described. The reverse happened with Romney, but he already had roots in Utah. 

Not that it matters, but there was a time when it looks semi-common: the expansion era. 

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I saw a report at lunch, per NBC, that a senior official at DoJ said the report is not dropping next week.

This might not be the one you're referring to - it was published around 4 (or 3 for you) so that's a pretty late lunch - but yeah I saw the same:

Quote

Special counsel Robert Mueller will not deliver a report to the attorney general next week, as was previously reported by multiple outlets, a senior Department of Justice official told NBC News on Friday.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, DMC said:

This might not be the one you're referring to - it was published around 4 (or 3 for you) so that's a pretty late lunch - but yeah I saw the same:

 

I left the break room at 2:30 and it had just been reported on, so it's basically the same, just a different part of the NBC web.

But I agree with you, at this point there's no reason to believe it's coming out until it's out. And even once Mueller's done, who knows how long the AG will take to discuss it or what he'll reveal to Congress and the public. 

[Darth Richard II]

6 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

It's saying basically the same thing, though, that there exists a culture of victimhood in the U.S.

Is this a joke?

[DMC]

17 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Most "mainline" Protestant denominations ordain women as clergy. The United Methodists have since 1956. 

True, but evangelicals outpace mainline populations, by a lot.  And since he is a Republican from Tennessee, I figured he was probably Southern Baptist, who are evangelical and don't ordain women.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And even once Mueller's done, who knows how long the AG will take to discuss it or what he'll reveal to Congress and the public. 

Should be noted Barr is required to make a report to Congress, and while he technically has complete discretion, Congress has standing and precedent to subpoena the actual report and not just Barr's report on the..report.

Sorry about the successive replies everyone, I'm all scattered multitasking.

[lokisnow]

Long politico article about Betos hyper-scale, scattershot approach to volunteer recruitment in Texas. 

While they obviously succeeded at the goal of discovering and turning out one million New Democrat voters in Texas (good tactics, betos organization was 1/5 the size of Obama’s 2012 national organization) their poor strategy implementation as scale demands increased and their poor strategy shift from maximizing volunteer recruitment to maximiIng voter turnout is likely their key underperformance—when push came to shove they weren’t equipped to pivot to granular detail to maximize the net vote efficiency and implemented a lot panic strategies as a result.

https://politi.co/2GCLbRL

its interesting because a campaign that took this hyperscale approach to all fifty states might result in surprising wins in some of them, but it also would have obvious problems on a national stage since it ran into strategic problems scaling up to Texas size.

[Martell Spy]

Quote

Among the state criminal charges that Manafort could face are tax evasion and violating laws related to proper records of accounting, according to Bloomberg, which cited an unnamed source familiar with the investigation. State prosecutors had begun investigating Manafort as early as 2017, The New York Times reported, but put their work on hold until recent months in order not to interfere with Mueller’s probe. 

New York Prosecutors Will Charge Manafort In Bid To Prevent Trump Pardon: Reports
The president has so far refused to take pardoning his former campaign chairman off the table.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/manafort-state-charges-ny-trump_n_5c7038b7e4b06cf6bb256cf7

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

55 minutes ago, DMC said:

Should be noted Barr is required to make a report to Congress, and while he technically has complete discretion, Congress has standing and precedent to subpoena the actual report and not just Barr's report on the..report.

Sorry about the successive replies everyone, I'm all scattered multitasking.

I know. My question is how long will that take? I doubt there's an actual answer, but my fear is he could run out the clock and not release it before the election with ample time to comb through it. That said, he's a long time friend of Mueller so I'd hope he wouldn't do that.