US Politics: Ruthless ambition

[Fragile Bird]

11 minutes ago, Week said:

Is a "I told you so, but actually I didn't because I thought it was controversial at the time so I waited until immediately after I could confirm I was right." Really useful here?

Regardless, I don't think that's particularly controversial or accurate. 

There should be some culpability on whomever planned and approved the no-knock raid on the wrong house. In addition to murder charges.

I really didn’t feel like having a fight at the time, emotions were pretty high in this thread.

I do think it’s accurate. It went to a Grand Jury, and you can be sure that was the essential point for them. The long standing story has always been police keep getting charged and juries keep giving them the benefit of the doubt.

I absolutely agree there has to be an explanation about what went wrong. Taylor’s drug dealing boyfriend was being targeted and it was suspected that she was helping him. There was a month between the time the warrant was requested and served, and that boyfriend had moved out. No one checked up on that. But hey, I won’t wait this time - I predict there will be no ramifications out of this point. “We don’t have the resources to carry out the warrants faster or double-check to see if the guy still lives there”.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I think the SC judges will worry that by adopting such a rule they will be enshrining that interpretation as final and therefore own the conduct of every judge that comes after.

I think it's rather silly to assume the justices would be worried about setting such a precedent - to be clear, only for themselves, not for all federal courts - especially considering if later justices have an issue with the precedent to such an extent that it's glaring they're free to "overturn" such a "non" precedent (as in it's not establishing any firm rule - hell, they could just refuse to take the case if a circuit court already overturned the law).  Not to mention if mental competency is an issue there is still impeachment available (if almost certainly unrealistic, justices would still point to it as the proper remedy).  You seem to be vastly underestimating how driven justices are by self-interest just like any other politician.

10 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

But did he get stuff wrong? Yes.  This was a big one.  His best defense (and it would be a valid one) is if he tried, politely, and she demurred.  Fine - that's on her then.

Obama made mistakes, of course, but this is definitely not one of them, let alone a big one.  You seem to be operating under the assumption that Ginsburg would be at likely to acquiesce simply by Obama politely approaching her.  You think Ginsburg needed Obama approaching her to understand the ramifications of her decision not to retire?  She was clearly determined to stay on the court.  Whether he did or not, it's subsequently clear any amount of pressure Obama levied was not going to work.  In fact, there is something honorable about Obama leaving it up to her if that's what he did.  I think attributing any blame to him for Ginsburg's decision is decidedly juvenile.

14 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

it was one of those "Coexist" signs coupled with Trump 2020...very bizarre. 

Sounds like a very confused teenager.

[Fragile Bird]

And now for something different, the markets took another hit today. The Nasdaq was down 3%, or 330 points, the Dow was down 2%, or 525 points, and the S&P was down 2.4%, or 79 points.

Apparently about 3,500 US companies have brought lawsuits against the US government because of the China tariff policy. And the US government has announced it is going to bring anti-trust lawsuits against various tech companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon. There’s been talk about bringing lawsuits for years now, but I suspect certain owners of certain companies aren’t donating enough money (or hell, any money) to Republicans. Or writing nasty things about adds and tweets. But that might just be the cynic in me. Like the little voice that says Tik Tok got into a forced sale because of Tulsa.

[Mindwalker]

Cindy McCain endorses Biden now.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

So they just played a quick clip of Trump on the news that reportedly just came from a few minutes ago, and in it he firmly said he won't commit to a peaceful transfer of power, and if he doesn't agree with the results the ballots will have to be examined which will then lead to a continuation of his power.

So that slow slide continues to snowball...

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Second Ex, who was a legit weapons dealer, called those guys “Tommy Tacticals”.

Are we talking RDJ's Tony Stark kind of arms dealer or Nic Cage's Lord of War arms dealer?

[karaddin]

21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

So they just played a quick clip of Trump on the news that reported just came from a few minutes ago, and in it he firmly said he won't commit to a peaceful transfer of power, and if he doesn't agree with the results the ballots will have to be extend which will then lead to a continuation of her power.

So that slow slide continues to snowball...

Just for everyone else

The ballots have been terrible, everybody knows it, especially the Dems. Apparently. 

[Jace, Extat]

I'm a little surprised, to be honest. If masses of devotees all over the country are organizing themselves around and at the behest of one man to supplement regressive policing actions in non-local areas, in a specifically martial manner... 

That sounds like a fucking militia to me.

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

I'm a little surprised, to be honest. If masses of devotees all over the country are organizing themselves around and at the behest of one man to supplement regressive policing actions in non-local areas, in a specifically martial manner... 

That sounds like a fucking militia to me.

it's an alternative militia

[S John]

Has anyone watched the Social Dilemma documentary on Netflix? Nothing in there was super new to me, or I would wager any regulars of this thread, but it painted a pretty bleak picture with regard to social media and political polarization, not just here but everywhere. I think maybe it naturally gives a little more weight to social media’s role in this than maybe it strictly deserves as there are clearly other factors at play, but damn, it’s certainly a major part of the problem. 

Not a big social media user myself and I have been consciously diminishing my online presence for years, but I can’t imagine being a kid and growing up with the kind of information bombardment that comes from the internet and social media in particular. It’s so clearly horrible for many people on an individual level as well as on society as a whole. I’m so thankful that I experienced what life was like before these devices hijacked everyone’s brains.

And not only that, but according to various media I’ve consumed recently that is percolating in the back of my head (so to be taken with a grain of salt), the human brain apparently isn’t fully developed until about age 25. I gotta say, whether or not that is strictly true, that kind of tracks with me. That feels about right. I was a fucking idiot so many times from adolescence until about that age. I did and said things that I regret and would vehemently oppose today. I have evolved in many opinions with age and experience. If I could interact with my 20 year old self I would at least give him a vicious noogie for being a knucklehead half the time.

But like the millions of years of humans evolution preceding me I mostly experienced those awkward, brain-not-fully-cooked, naive, ignorant years of finding ones real adult self in the world of before. I really feel bad for kids and young adults growing up today and using social media who are always going to have a public record of all their most miserable takes immortalized on the Internet. I think that really fucking sucks, and I also wonder to what extent that could retard personal growth on the individual level. Like if you get tied to some dumb opinion you once held as a 20 year old, does the fact that it is always going to be hanging around your neck cause some people to just dig in on it, rather than evolve to a different stance if that shitty opinion had been allowed to float off into the ether relatively undetected?

Fuck, I can already feel that I’m gonna be the uncool strict dad who won’t let their kid get a smart phone or social media until long after 90% of their friends have it. You can read ANY print book you want, but Facebook is not a book!

[Fury Resurrected]

On 9/22/2020 at 10:24 PM, Lord of Rhinos said:

Hi Fury, I'm a white male. 

I said voting in aggregate matters.  Clearly, systemic voter suppression is going to matter which is why the GOP is pursuing it and why voter registration drives are also a thing.  Reducing barriers to voting obviously helps with aggregate turn out.  I vote because my state has made it exceptionally easy to do so.  If I lived somewhere where I had to wait four hours on a particular day to vote I don't know that I would.

I've never listened to Joe Rogan but if he talks about votes not mattering he has a large enough platform that he could potentially alter the aggregate which is way normally celebrities encourage voting.

Your distinction between the individual and the aggregate is nonsensical. There is no aggregate without the individual, and individuals encouraging others around them is a HUGE driver of voter turnout. And the individual absolutely does matter if you look at margin numbers in local elections- which are of great and terrible importance to people’s lives.

Here in beautiful Minneapolis, we had a shitty county sheriff for fucking ever named Rich Stanek. He was a hate criming awful sack of shit who was bad at his job, encouraged his subordinates to be bad at their jobs, and sent military grade gear and sheriffs office personnel to shoot water cannons at peaceful water protectors, journalists, and tribal elders during the winter at Standing Rock to defend oil company property that wasn’t even in this state. He always squeaked by in re-elections on minuscule margins. And he finally lost on one too. When we elected Al Franken that was on such a tiny margin the recounts went for months after the Senate was seated.

Minnesota was a caucus state and one year when I lived in a rural area I was one of three people at my precinct caucus, the other two were my state rep and her husband. I could have endorsed Mr T and awarded him my precinct’s delegates if I wanted to, all by myself. This happens way more than you think.

[Rorshach]

2 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Here in beautiful Minneapolis, we had a shitty county sheriff for fucking ever named Rich Stanek.

Side note, is there something with this name? I only know about two, but ...

[IheartIheartTesla]

16 hours ago, DMC said:

It was just the first thing I found on google that described what I was looking for.  I don't use minitab or JMP - use STATA mostly and R if I have to.  What do you mean you're not allowed?

It was a joke since we have JMP site licenses.....I can read whatever webpage I want.

Some good polls from the NYT/Upshot for Biden in Iowa (+3) and GA (even), although he is -3 in TX. The lack of Latino outreach is hurting him there the most - I think in AZ the local Democratic party has it covered, and the state is full of moderates amenable to his message.

[Mindwalker]

Sorry if this has already been posted. An in-depth look at all the ways the Republicans are trying to steal the election and how it might play out.

The Trump-campaign legal adviser I spoke with told me the push to appoint electors would be framed in terms of protecting the people’s will. Once committed to the position that the overtime count has been rigged, the adviser said, state lawmakers will want to judge for themselves what the voters intended.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

21 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Sorry if this has already been posted. An in-depth look at all the ways the Republicans are trying to steal the election and how it might play out.

The Trump-campaign legal adviser I spoke with told me the push to appoint electors would be framed in terms of protecting the people’s will. Once committed to the position that the overtime count has been rigged, the adviser said, state lawmakers will want to judge for themselves what the voters intended.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/

Basically there are six swing states with Republican legislatures, and one path to victory is having each Republican state party sue over the election results, pushing it to the date the electors are required so they can appoint Trump friendly electors and instruct them to ignore the states' popular vote.

The Republican party isn't even trying to hide that they'd take a dictator on their side over losing in a fair democratic process. 

[Rippounet]

Quote

This year, with a judge no longer watching, the Republicans are recruiting 50,000 volunteers in 15 contested states to monitor polling places and challenge voters they deem suspicious-looking. Trump called in to Fox News on August 20 to tell Sean Hannity, “We’re going to have sheriffs and we’re going to have law enforcement and we’re going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys” to keep close watch on the polls. For the first time in decades, according to Clark, Republicans are free to combat voter fraud in “places that are run by Democrats.”

[...]

Trump was panicked enough by the blue shift in somebody else’s election to fabricate allegations of fraud. In this election, when his own name is on the ballot, the blue shift could be the largest ever observed. Mail-in votes require more time to count even in a normal year, and this year there will be tens of millions more of them than in any election before. Many states forbid the processing of early-arriving mail ballots before Election Day; some allow late-arriving ballots to be counted.

Trump’s instinct as a spectator in 2018—to stop the count—looks more like strategy this year. “There are results that come in Election Night,” a legal adviser to Trump’s national campaign, who would not agree to be quoted by name, told me. “There’s an expectation in the country that there will be winners and losers called. If the Election Night results get changed because of the ballots counted after Election Day, you have the basic ingredients for a shitstorm.”

[...]

Both parties are bracing for a torrent of emergency motions in state and federal courts. They have already been skirmishing from courthouse to courthouse all year in more than 40 states, and Election Day will begin a culminating phase of legal combat.

Great article. Really tells you what's likely to happen.

In a nutshell, Republicans have started preparing a coup if the election is not unambiguously for Biden.

[Martell Spy]

I don't really buy that any sort of coup is coming. Chaos, a huge tantrum, and violence, yes. Another Bush v. Gore, quite possibly. The sad truth is that it's Trump that needs to win this election. Republicans don't as they are taking the Supreme Court. They can simply wait for the usual election reversals to put them back in power and in the meantime bottle up most progress. And shame moderate Democratic Senators in to doing nothing. (I mean nothing too extreme that would actually threaten Republican's long-term power)

Also, it's ok they are no longer called Handmaids, they have a new brand. Article doesn't say what the new title is though.

Judge's faith becomes early flashpoint in Supreme Court fight
Amy Coney Barrett, a contender to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, belongs to a tight-knit charismatic Christian community whose conservative views alarm some liberals.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/24/amy-coney-barrett-faith-420928

Quote

 

Oregon in the ’70s and ’80s, has taken to campaigning against the group, citing alleged abuse she endured as part of the experience. “I was humiliated and tortured and shunned and shamed,” she said. “The bottom line is the People of Praise community is about conformity and obedience of women.”

The group’s communications director, Sean Connolly, disputed the charge of sexism. “People of Praise recognizes that men and women share a fundamental equality as bearers of God’s image,” he wrote in an email. Citing the high volume of media inquiries, he did not immediately offer a response to the claims of former members.

The group’s longtime use of the term “handmaid” to describe women who act as advisers to other group members has drawn comparisons to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” the iconic 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood. The book imagined a dystopian United States in which a Christian theocracy has reinstituted an Old Testament version of gender relations, with men wielding absolute authority over women. In the book, fertile young women called handmaids are sent to live with older men and their wives in order to bear children with the men.

People of Praise has stopped using the term in recent years because of its newfound notoriety, and Connolly discouraged any mention of the book in connection with the group.

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

I’m sitting here laughing my ass off over American democracy. First I ask how a state can pass laws taking away the constitutional right of someone to vote, and you all tell me, it’s illegal, the laws will be struck down. Then one of those suits goes to a federal court of appeal, and the court of appeal upholds the law. You tell me it’s Trump packing the courts. He has appointed 6 of the 12 judges on the court. Obama appointed 4, Clinton appointee 1, Bush appointed one, the Chief Judge.

Then I talk about Bloomberg saying he’ll spend $100 M to help Democrats in Florida, and you yell at me “why doesn’t he pay off the fines of felons!” So I tell you that he’s raised enough money to pay off the fines of 30,000 felons, and not a peep. Btw, nobody mentioned that between the lower court decision and the Appeal Court decision 85,000 former felons were registered to vote and that status remains unchanged.

But now the AG of Florida has sent a letter to the FBI demanding an investigation into Bloomberg’s fund raising activity as a violation of Florida law, because after the voters of Florida voted to allow former felons to vote Florida passed a law saying no person can give anyone anything of value to influence the way they vote. And the AG is saying the Bloomberg group is helping black felons who will vote for Biden, so they are obviously breaking the law. Gaetz, that wonder of wonders from Florida, is calling for a bribery investigation.

Ah, democracy!

[sologdin]

i've read about this sort of political paranoia before.

Quote

For the GOP, it was axiomatic: what was compliant had to be isolated from what was unruly and intractable. Trump had seen it many times, wandering the labyrinth of possibilities that was the rightwing populist ideology: The liberal judge's assassination. The rise of a theocratic crypto-fascist to take her place. The apocalyptic conspiracies. The counterfeit war against white supremacists. The accumulation of premeditated disasters. The sacrifice of whole nations to the gluttony of the Russian oligarchs. The United States crashing into char and ruin.

calm, kids.  the difference is one of degree, rather than type, in this current rightwing. hofstadter's paranoia is however supposed to be an attribute of the rightwing--birchers, teabaggers, trump cultists; liberal persons need to have faith in expertise, institutions, and the good faith of fellow citizens.

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I’m sitting here laughing my ass off over American democracy. First I ask how a state can pass laws taking away the constitutional right of someone to vote, and you all tell me, it’s illegal, the laws will be struck down. Then one of those suits goes to a federal court of appeal, and the court of appeal upholds the law. You tell me it’s Trump packing the courts. He has appointed 6 of the 12 judges on the court. Obama appointed 4, Clinton appointee 1, Bush appointed one, the Chief Judge.

Then I talk about Bloomberg saying he’ll spend $100 M to help Democrats in Florida, and you yell at me “why doesn’t he pay off the fines of felons!” So I tell you that he’s raised enough money to pay off the fines of 30,000 felons, and not a peep. Btw, nobody mentioned that between the lower court decision and the Appeal Court decision 85,000 former felons were registered to vote and that status remains unchanged.

But now the AG of Florida has sent a letter to the FBI demanding an investigation into Bloomberg’s fund raising activity as a violation of Florida law, because after the voters of Florida voted to allow former felons to vote Florida passed a law saying no person can give anyone anything of value to influence the way they vote. And the AG is saying the Bloomberg group is helping black felons who will vote for Biden, so they are obviously breaking the law. Gaetz, that wonder of wonders from Florida, is calling for a bribery investigation.

Ah, democracy!

It gets more awesome than that re: Gaetz.

He is accusing Kelly Loeffler of trying to bribe Trump with a $50 million campaign donation in return for getting Trump's help in convincing Collins to drop out of the race against Loeffler. 

It's like if the Keystone Kops had their fingers on the nuclear button.