US Politics: The American Messias, Greenland and attacks on Jews voting Democrats. Or as we call it Wednesday.

[argonak]

1 hour ago, TrueMetis said:

Bolsonaro.

I'm surprised Bolsonaro wasn't trying to use the amazon fires as environmental blackmail to get money from the other 1st world nations.   I thought that was where he was going with it, and then he didn't.   Kinda strange.

[sologdin]

ind that those who meet their definition of having a “need for chaos” 

reminiscent of neumann's analysis of the third reich in behemoth.

[TrueMetis]

50 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

At best he’s environmental Hitler. Really only the U.S. President and the Emperor of China could be the next Hitler, but neither will be. Thankfully the Germans gave up on conquering Europe militarily and turned to economics instead to finish off their ambitious conquest. That said, one must never take their eyes off of the Soviets:

 

Tell that to all the ingenious people he's killing. Make no mistake, there's already a genocide happening in Brazil.

[Maithanet]

Politico posted an article titled: "Republicans fear drubbing in next round of redistricting"

Quote

Democrats were caught napping in the 2010 election ahead of the last round of redistricting — and it cost them control of Congress for nearly a decade.

Now Republicans are warning the same thing could happen to them.

Senior Republicans concede they’re at risk of losing dozens of state-level elections that will determine who wields power over the post-2020 congressional map — and potentially which party controls the chamber for the following 10 years. While Republicans are establishing a massive national infrastructure devoted to reelecting President Donald Trump and winning congressional majorities, party officials say the state legislative races are being overlooked.

I am very glad that the Democrats are finally paying attention to state legislative races, given their incredible importance in shaping the overall political makeup of the country.  I very much hope that Democrats do indeed make significant gains in the legislatures in 2019 and 2020.

However, this article is FAR too optimistic, to the point of being kind of ridiculous.  Republicans had FAR more power in state legislatures after 2016 than they did after 2010.  At the end of 2017, Republicans controlled both chambers in 33 of the 50 states, with 4 more split.  Republicans controlled the legislature in TX, FL, NC, AZ, MI, PA, MN, NH, WI, VA, OH, and IA (or to put it another way, every single swing state)!  After 2018 things got a little better, but it's still 31 Republican legislatures, 18 Democrats and 1 split (MN).  That's still dismally bad.

The idea that Republicans could get wiped out in 2020 the same way Democrats were in 2010 is absurd.  Democrats would need another election at least as good as 2018 just to get to an even playing field (in which case they'd probably pick up VA, NC, and MN, and hope to at least split AZ, PA and MI). 

[DMC]

17 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Politico posted an article titled: "Republicans fear drubbing in next round of redistricting"

You totally ninja'd me on this, came here to post the article.  I agree it's a bit optimistic, but still encouraging.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

3 hours ago, drawkcabi said:

 

One of my favorite Twain quotes is "History doesn't repeat but it sure does rhyme."

I don't think Trump is Hitler but sure do think he's Mussolini. Thankfully, there's currently no Hitler equivalent in the position of power and influence as the original was for Trumpolini to follow on the heels of, but Putin is a fair stand in for Stalin and I guess that's the next best thing.

That is a great quote, and I think we probably do a disservice to the issue of rising white nationalism by comparing it literally to Hitler. I'm sure there are enough historical differences that people can dismiss that comparison. The fact that the current situation is even an echo of that past is terrifying.

[Zorral]

40 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

The idea that Republicans could get wiped out in 2020 the same way Democrats were in 2010 is absurd.  Democrats would need another election at least as good as 2018 just to get to an even playing field (in which case they'd probably pick up VA, NC, and MN, and hope to at least split AZ, PA and MI)

Especially, for instance, as the DNC just shut down their office all together in South Dakota.  Following the same playbook that did so much to lose in 2016.

In the meantime the RNC's gerrymandering strategies and methods must be kept secret at all costs:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/us/gerrymander-north-carolina-hofeller.html

Quote

 

... But a senior official at Common Cause North Carolina, the public-interest organizing group that helped bring the successful suit against the state’s legislative maps, argued that the public interest demanded that Mr. Hofeller’s digital archive be open to scrutiny.

“We’ve already seen that these files have been instrumental in exposing lies around the effort to add a citizenship question to the census and around subverting a court’s order to redraw gerrymandered lines,” Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for the group, said in an interview.

“The Hofeller files are important because they’re the only thing that will allow the American people to know the truth behind the efforts to rig redistricting and elections,” she added. “They have to be made public.”....

But a senior official at Common Cause North Carolina, the public-interest organizing group that helped bring the successful suit against the state’s legislative maps, argued that the public interest demanded that Mr. Hofeller’s digital archive be open to scrutiny.

“We’ve already seen that these files have been instrumental in exposing lies around the effort to add a citizenship question to the census and around subverting a court’s order to redraw gerrymandered lines,” Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director for the group, said in an interview.

“The Hofeller files are important because they’re the only thing that will allow the American people to know the truth behind the efforts to rig redistricting and elections,” she added. “They have to be made public.”

None of those guidelines were followed when the legislature last drew district maps in 2011 and 2017....

 

 

[Kalbear]

I don't think history repeats so much as humans don't change that much. Manipulating humans via tribal lines, hate of the other, feel-good rhetoric that makes them blameless for their place in the world and shifting anger to those who can't fight back. This isn't ever going to change until we change humans to suck less. That is the ultimate lesson of Nazi Germany from the Germans themselves - that if it can happen there, it can happen ANYWHERE, and it does. 

Hell, it's not like the US hasn't had a massive history of ethnic cleansing and brutality. The notion that the US is somehow immune is laughable on its historical face. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Tell that to all the ingenious people he's killing. Make no mistake, there's already a genocide happening in Brazil.

That was guaranteed once he was elected. I'm not trying to down play his atrocities, but I do think it's important to keep scale in mind when making Hitler comparisons.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

JFC, Trump has been tweeting all day about the hurricane hitting Alabama. This is insane. Idk how anyone can look at our situation at this point and not conclude that the president is not well mentally.  

[sologdin]

president is not well mentally.

is 18 USC 2074 fake news, motherfuckers?

[DanteGabriel]

37 minutes ago, Triskele said:

More evidence that the DeVos Dept of Education isn't just fucking with loan forgiveness for the defrauded students but for the public service loan forgiveness students too even when a Congress with some GOP support added a lot of money to that program to make it work better.  

This one is even more difficult to understand because the money is already appropriated and it's not as far as I can tell on behalf of for-profit lenders since anyone in this program only owes money to the federal government.  Is pure malice the motive?  

 

Destroy a public good so the private sector can profit would be my guess.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

It doesn't make sense, tho. I get beating teachers down so they are broken peddlers of capitalism, but to rob them (and most working Americans) of almost all capital? It's like the elite are begging for a violent revolution.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

It doesn't make sense, tho. I get beating teachers down so they are broken peddlers of capitalism, but to rob them (and most working Americans) of almost all capital? It's like the elite are begging for a violent revolution.

Story of the last 10-15 years that just keeps getting more and more blatant.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 hours ago, sologdin said:

president is not well mentally.

is 18 USC 2074 fake news, motherfuckers?

I meant to ask this yesterday, but, ya know, football. Is this illegal?:

 

The jobs number was lower than expected, and artificially high because of short term government hiring. Wages are also largely flat, and growth for the year is on track to be just over 2%.

[sologdin]

the counterfeit weather report is totally unlawful, yes; the employment exaggeration is less obviously fraudulent; stupid is always a plausible defense to a charge of intentional misrepresentation.

 

 It's like the elite are begging for a violent revolution.

this question has been a primary concern for marxist literature for over a century. the summarized version is that a bourgeois confidence in pacific proletarians is warranted.

the goal is manifest in the language of this regime's judicial appointments. consider, for instance, the cynical dissent in this fifth circuit opinion, wherein the trump appointee disagrees with the conservative majority, which affirmed the district court's granting of summary judgment to an employer on a FLSA claim, by arguing that, even though he agrees that the claim should be dismissed on the basis of the applicable statute, the controlling regulations mandate relief to the employee, which he regrets, and furthermore which relief should be impossible in the original constitutional vision (his reading of the regulation is woefully inadequate, NB)--and accordingly he would punish industry for the state's having erected an administrative state, a goad to industry groups to push for dismantling federal agencies.  he therefore expressly calls for a revival of the non-delegation doctrine to kill off administrative agencies, mentioning four votes on the supreme court for his position, with citations. the polemos here is the new deal--trump's judges are not rationally pro-business, like prior conservative judges--they are actively anti-modernity.  the future for them is the past, and we can expect their saccharine coating of rhetoric about the cult of the founders and constitutional liberties to palliate sufficient numbers of impecunious proletarians long enough to make revolution at best a difficult proposition.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 minute ago, sologdin said:

the counterfeit weather report is totally unlawful, yes; the employment exaggeration is less obviously fraudulent; stupid is always a plausible defense to a charge of intentional misrepresentation.

The exaggeration isn’t in and of itself the issue. It’s the misuse of government information to manipulate the markets that I’m talking about. Isn’t it basically insider trading?

[sologdin]

 Isn’t it basically insider trading?

this has been a suspicion for some time--the intentional release of information, true vel non, with the intent to manipulate the prices of securities.  they'd need to show that interests controlled by his proxies benefited from the 'rational' movements in response thereto.  i'd expect it more from the crazy bad news than from anodyne recitations of employment figures, which tend to be manipulated by whoever releases them.

[Toth]

Just to whomever it may concern: I recently introduced a ritual to my politics classes where at the beginning of each lesson two students recap the events of world politics of the last week for 5 minutes, with the other students adding information, position themselves and question the sources used by the presenters.

... so during the very first presentation I already saw myself forced to say "Okay guys, I'm afraid we have to skip all things falling into the category of 'dumb things the US president said', because otherwise we are going to sit here the entire day."

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

14 minutes ago, sologdin said:

 Isn’t it basically insider trading?

this has been a suspicion for some time--the intentional release of information, true vel non, with the intent to manipulate the prices of securities.  they'd need to show that interests controlled by his proxies benefited from the 'rational' movements in response thereto.  i'd expect it more from the crazy bad news than from anodyne recitations of employment figures, which tend to be manipulated by whoever releases them.

Let’s set aside the possibility (and honestly likeliness) that he’s telling friends and family what he’s going to do beforehand when he attempts to manipulate the markets. We know his greatest interest is being reelected, and he and his staff have all but admitted that he’s trying to manipulate the markets to increase his likelihood of having a second term. Isn’t that alone enough to show that he’s defrauding the markets to obtain something of great personal value?