US Politics: them's indictin words

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

31 minutes ago, DMC said:

Looks like Sinema is gonna run.  Or at least she's fundraising enough, with $10 million cash-on-hand.  Albeit still being outraised by Gallego.  Should be an interesting three-way race.  The only poll this year has Gallego winning every hypothetical contest.  This is backed up by a Democratic firm as well.

How could Sinema ever win? Does she not have good people around her, or is she that much of a sociopath? 

[DMC]

19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

How could Sinema ever win? Does she not have good people around her, or is she that much of a sociopath? 

Maybe just nothing to lose?  

[Ormond]

22 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

How could Sinema ever win? Does she not have good people around her, or is she that much of a sociopath? 

The last half of this question makes no sense to me.  There could be many different reasons why one would decide to run in an election one is exceedingly unlikely to win, and very few of them would have any connection with sociopathy.  I have no idea where or not Sinema is a sociopath, but that by itself would not be an explanation for this decision.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

48 minutes ago, DMC said:

Maybe just nothing to lose?  

I guess when you're six feet under what's another foot?

42 minutes ago, Ormond said:

The last half of this question makes no sense to me.  There could be many different reasons why one would decide to run in an election one is exceedingly unlikely to win, and very few of them would have any connection with sociopathy.  I have no idea where or not Sinema is a sociopath, but that by itself would not be an explanation for this decision.

Look at the totality of her behavior then ask yourself the question again. 

[Paladin of Ice]

At this point I'm sure Sinema is only in it to try to be a spoiler for the Democrats, possibly as payback for "turning on her", in that way that narcissists do, and partly because she's chasing donor money.

[DMC]

24 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

At this point I'm sure Sinema is only in it to try to be a spoiler for the Democrats, possibly as payback for "turning on her", in that way that narcissists do, and partly because she's chasing donor money.

Frankly I'm not sure which party she's taking more votes from - and of course this is dependent on who the GOP nominee is.  But yeah, if you click that link it details all the money she's getting from certain corporations who will be who she turns to after she leaves the Senate.

[Kalbear]

I think she's running because she can get a lot of money if she runs. And what else is she going to do?

I don't think she is any more sociopathic than the average Pol. She's just a bit greedier and less able to gauge how to be successful.

[Paladin of Ice]

FBI forensic examiners misidentified suspects in hundreds of cases in the 80s and 90s, their results biased cases towards prosecutors and may have resulted in untold numbers of convictions, extended sentences, and even executions of innocent people.

Quote

Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to the convictions of potentially innocent people, but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled.

Officials started reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports that sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable forensic evidence in court trials. Instead of releasing those findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the affected cases, according to documents and interviews with dozens of officials.

In addition, the Justice Department reviewed only a limited number of cases and focused on the work of one scientist at the FBI lab, despite warnings that problems were far more widespread and could affect potentially thousands of cases in federal, state and local courts.

As a result, hundreds of defendants nationwide remain in prison or on parole for crimes that might merit exoneration, a retrial or a retesting of evidence using DNA because FBI hair and fiber experts may have misidentified them as suspects.

In one Texas case, Benjamin Herbert Boyle was executed in 1997, more than a year after the Justice Department began its review. Boyle would not have been eligible for the death penalty without the FBI’s flawed work, according to a prosecutor’s memo.

The case of a Maryland man serving a life sentence for a 1981 double killing is another in which federal and local law enforcement officials knew of forensic problems but never told the defendant. Attorneys for the man, John Norman Huffington, say they learned of potentially exculpatory Justice Department findings from The Washington Post. They are seeking a new trial.

Justice Department officials said that they met their legal and constitutional obligations when they learned of specific errors, that they alerted prosecutors and were not required to inform defendants directly.

The review was performed by a task force created during an inspector general’s investigation of misconduct at the FBI crime lab in the 1990s. The inquiry took nine years, ending in 2004, records show, but the findings were never made public.

In the discipline of hair and fiber analysis, only the work of FBI Special Agent Michael P. Malone was questioned. Even though Justice Department and FBI officials knew that the discipline had weaknesses and that the lab lacked protocols — and learned that examiners’ “matches” were often wrong — they kept their reviews limited to Malone.

But two cases in D.C. Superior Court show the inadequacy of the government’s response.

Santae A. Tribble, now 51, was convicted of killing a taxi driver in 1978, and Kirk L. Odom, now 49, was convicted of a sexual assault in 1981.

Key evidence at each of their trials came from separate FBI experts — not Malone — who swore that their scientific analysis proved with near certainty that Tribble’s and Odom’s hair was at the respective crime scenes.

But DNA testing this year on the hair and on other old evidence virtually eliminates Tribble as a suspect and completely clears Odom. Both men have completed their sentences and are on lifelong parole. They are now seeking exoneration in the courts in the hopes of getting on with their lives.

Neither case was part of the Justice Department task force’s review.

...

The Post found that while many prosecutors made swift and full disclosures, many others did so incompletely, years late or not at all. The effort was stymied at times by lack of cooperation from some prosecutors and declining interest and resources as time went on.

Overall, calls to defense lawyers indicate and records documented that prosecutors disclosed the reviews’ results to defendants in fewer than half of the 250-plus questioned cases.

Michael R. Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor and the inspector general who investigated the FBI lab, said in a statement that even if more defense lawyers were notified of the initial review, “that doesn’t absolve the task force from ensuring that every single defense lawyer in one of these cases was notified.”

He added: “It is deeply troubling that after going to so much time and trouble to identify problematic conduct by FBI forensic analysts the DOJ Task Force apparently failed to follow through and ensure that defense counsel were notified in every single case.”

 

Link

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:

I think she's running because she can get a lot of money if she runs. And what else is she going to do?

Well, feel like it should be noted she can only spend the $10 million on certain things, but yeah.  Also agree she's not especially sociopathic for a politician.  Frankly, if she was a good sociopath, she would have fallen in line with the Dems when she didn't.  Just seems like she's beholden to certain interests that prevented the Dems from repealing the Trump tax cuts.

[Zorral]

And even outside the USA YAY, a whole buncha idiots fell for the fascist manipulation, including the mom of Harry Potter They wanted hate, They sponsored hate, and a whole buncha dumsters ate it with a spoon.

Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives
Defeated on same-sex marriage, the religious right went searching for an issue that would re-energize supporters and donors. The campaign that followed has stunned political leaders across the spectrum.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/us/politics/transgender-conservative-campaign.html

Quote

 

When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago, social conservatives were set adrift.

The ruling stripped them of an issue they had used to galvanize rank-and-file supporters and big donors. And it left them searching for a cause that — like opposing gay marriage — would rally the base and raise the movement’s profile on the national stage.

“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.”

What has stuck, somewhat unexpectedly, is the issue of transgender identity, particularly among young people. Today, the effort to restrict transgender rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as an animating issue for social conservatives at a pace that has stunned political leaders across the spectrum. It has reinvigorated a network of conservative groups, increased fund-raising and set the agenda in school boards and state legislatures.

The campaign has been both organic and deliberate, and has even gained speed since Donald J. Trump, an ideological ally, left the White House. Since then, at least 20 states, all controlled by Republicans, have enacted laws that reach well beyond the initial debates over access to bathrooms and into medical treatments, participation in sports and policies on discussing gender in schools.

About 1.3 million adults and 300,000 children in the United States identify as transgender. These efforts have thrust them, at a moment of increased visibility and vulnerability, into the center of the nation’s latest battle over cultural issues.

“It’s a strange world to live in,” said Ari Drennen, the L.G.B.T.Q. program director for Media Matters, a liberal media monitoring group that tracks the legislation. As a transgender woman, she said, she feels unwelcome in whole swaths of the country where states have attacked her right “just to exist in public.”

The effort started with a smattering of Republican lawmakers advancing legislation focused on transgender girls’ participation in school sports. And it was accelerated by a few influential Republican governors who seized on the issue early.

But it was also the result of careful planning by national conservative organizations to harness the emotion around gender politics. With gender norms shifting and a sharp rise in the number of young people identifying as transgender, conservative groups spotted an opening in a debate that was gaining attention.

“It’s a sense of urgency,” said Matt Sharp, the senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that has provided strategic and legal counsel to state lawmakers as they push through legislation on transgender rights. The issue, he argued, is “what can we do to protect the children?”

Mr. Schilling said the issue had driven in thousands of new donors to the American Principles Project, most of them making small contributions.

The appeal played on the same resentments and cultural schisms that have animated Mr. Trump’s political movement: invocations against so-called “wokeness,” skepticism about science, parental discontent with public schools after the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns and anti-elitism.

Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, a group that fights discrimination against L.G.B.T.Q. people, said there was a direct line from the right’s focus on transgender children to other issues it has seized on in the name of “parents’ rights” — such as banning books and curriculums that teach about racism.

“In many ways, the trans sports ban was the test balloon in terms of how they can frame these things,” she said. “Once they opened that parents’ rights frame, they began to use it everywhere.”

For now, the legislation has advanced almost exclusively in Republican-controlled states: Those same policies have drawn strong opposition from Democrats who have applauded the increased visibility of transgender people — in government, corporations and Hollywood — and policies protecting transgender youths.

The 2024 presidential election appears poised to provide a national test of the reach of this issue. The two leading Republican presidential contenders, Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has not officially declared a bid, have aggressively supported measures curtailing transgender rights.
It may prove easier for Republicans like Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis to talk about transgender issues than about abortion, an issue that has been a mainstay of the conservative movement. The Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion created a backlash among Democrats and independents that has left many Republicans unsure of how — or whether — to address the issue.

Polling suggests that the public is less likely to support transgender rights than same-sex marriage and abortion rights. In a poll conducted in 2022, the Public Policy Research Institute, a nonpartisan research group, found that 68 percent of respondents favored allowing same-sex couples to marry, including 49 percent of Republicans.

By contrast, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that 58 percent of Americans supported requiring that transgender athletes compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth; 85 percent of Republicans held that view.

“For many religious and political conservatives, the same-sex marriage issue has been largely decided — and for the American public, absolutely,” said Kelsy Burke, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. “That’s not true when it comes to these transgender issues. Americans are much more divided, and this is an issue that can gain a lot more traction.”

The focus on perceived threats to impressionable children has a long history in American sexual politics. It has its roots in the “Save Our Children” campaign championed in 1977 by Anita Bryant, the singer known for her orange juice commercials, to repeal a local ordinance in Dade-Miami County that prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation, a historic setback for the modern gay rights movements.

The initial efforts by the conservative movement to deploy transgender issues did not go well. In 2016, North Carolina legislators voted to bar transgender people from using the bathroom of their preference. It created a backlash so harsh — from corporations, sports teams and even Bruce Springsteen — that lawmakers eventually rescinded the bill.

As a result, conservatives went looking for a new approach to the issue. Mr. Schilling’s organization, for instance, conducted polling to determine whether curbing transgender rights had resonance with voters — and, if they did, the best way for candidates to talk about it. In 2019, the group’s research found that voters were significantly more likely to support a Republican candidate who favored a ban on transgender girls participating in school sports — particularly when framed as a question of whether “to allow men and boys to compete against women and girls” — than a candidate pushing for a ban on transgender people using a bathroom of their choosing.

With that evidence in hand, and transgender athletes gaining attention, particularly in right-wing media, conservatives decided to focus on two main fronts: legislation that addressed participation in sports and laws curtailing the access of minors to medical transition treatments.

In March 2020, Idaho became the first state to bar transgender girls from participating in girls’ and women’s sports, with a bill supporters in the Republican-controlled legislature called the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.”

A burst of state legislation began the next year after Democrats took control of Congress and the White House, ending four years in which social conservatives successfully pushed the Trump administration to enact restrictions through executive orders. .....

 

Think about it, all you anti-trans folks like Rowling who believe they are the smartest person in the room always: they not only grabbed the hook, they swallowed the whole line.  What does ths tell the world about you?

[Larry of the Lawn]

14 hours ago, Paladin of Ice said:

FBI forensic examiners misidentified suspects in hundreds of cases in the 80s and 90s, their results biased cases towards prosecutors and may have resulted in untold numbers of convictions, extended sentences, and even executions of innocent people.

 

Link

Meanwhile we're giving more money to this horrible system, and even Dems are attacking the modest gains made by bail reform in places like NY.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

16 hours ago, DMC said:

Well, feel like it should be noted she can only spend the $10 million on certain things, but yeah.  Also agree she's not especially sociopathic for a politician.  Frankly, if she was a good sociopath, she would have fallen in line with the Dems when she didn't.  Just seems like she's beholden to certain interests that prevented the Dems from repealing the Trump tax cuts.

Doesn't that also assume she's good at her job? Sinema likes to flaunt, back when she was a liberal activist and now as a total corporate shill. To me the scary ones are who can do exactly what she's done and you'll never know their name. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

17 hours ago, DMC said:

Well, feel like it should be noted she can only spend the $10 million on certain things, but yeah.  Also agree she's not especially sociopathic for a politician.  Frankly, if she was a good sociopath, she would have fallen in line with the Dems when she didn't.  Just seems like she's beholden to certain interests that prevented the Dems from repealing the Trump tax cuts.

Wouldn't call her a sociopath, more an opportunist. I assume her calculus was, that AZ is still more of a conservative state, so she tried to position herself as second John McCain, who will stand up to the libruls. Had Kelly lost his seat, then she would've been able to say see, that's what happens when you tilt too far to the left in state like Arizona. That didn't work out, and after Kelly defended his seat, she found herself with a bunch of pissed off Democrats back home, with no excuse whatsoever to pacify them. That left her with two choices, the honorable one getting primaried by Gallego, or trying her luck as indepedent. Given that an US Senator is somewhat better paid than a social worker, I can see the appeal of the cash grab an indepedent run offered. 

Her voting record is really not that horrendous overall, she just picked the big ones for headlines, which unsurprisingly pissed of Democrat primary voters/activists.

[Larry of the Lawn]

19 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Wouldn't call her a sociopath, more an opportunist. I assume her calculus was, that AZ is still more of a conservative state, so she tried to position herself as second John McCain, who will stand up to the libruls. Had Kelly lost his seat, then she would've been able to say see, that's what happens when you tilt too far to the left in state like Arizona. That didn't work out, and after Kelly defended his seat, she found herself with a bunch of pissed off Democrats back home, with no excuse whatsoever to pacify them. That left her with two choices, the honorable one getting primaried by Gallego, or trying her luck as indepedent. Given that an US Senator is somewhat better paid than a social worker, I can see the appeal of the cash grab an indepedent run offered. 

Her voting record is really not that horrendous overall, she just picked the big ones for headlines, which unsurprisingly pissed of Democrat primary voters/activists.

Lol, the cash grab comes when she's out of office, she's not going to be a social worker.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

7 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Lol, the cash grab comes when she's out of office, she's not going to be a social worker.  

Not exactly. It came when she was in office and first had real power. Sinema has been in politics for a long time, but for the most part she never had any power and was always in the minority. The moment she actually was in the majority and could do something she threw everything and everyone away, would not talk to the people who helped her climb, but the bag.... oh boy was it right there and she took it and stomped on everyone and everything she said she cared about. 

It makes you ask yourself who she ever really was. 

[Fez]

19 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Lol, the cash grab comes when she's out of office, she's not going to be a social worker.  

That depends. I'm sure some lobbying firm will throw her a ton of money for a little bit. But I suspect she'll be wildly ineffective as a lobbyist and get cut off pretty quickly. She burned too many bridges with Democrats, they'll never listen to her. And Republican-orientated firms have enough ex-Republican congresspeople that they don't need her.

[DMC]

31 minutes ago, Fez said:

And Republican-orientated firms have enough ex-Republican congresspeople that they don't need her.

I dunno, there are still a portion of GOP Senators that really like her and, obviously, worked closely with her on key legislation the past couple years.  I imagine she'll be very well compensated going through the revolving door.

[Martell Spy]

Accused shooter in Kansas City shooting of Black teen who went to the wrong house is White man in his 80s

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/us/kansas-city-teen-shot-wrong-house/index.html

CNN
 — 

Quote

A white man in his 80s is the individual who apparently shot and seriously wounded Ralph Yarl, a Black teen, on April 13 in Kansas City, Missouri, according to a CNN review of property records, police statements and detention records.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Not exactly. It came when she was in office and first had real power. Sinema has been in politics for a long time, but for the most part she never had any power and was always in the minority. The moment she actually was in the majority and could do something she threw everything and everyone away, would not talk to the people who helped her climb, but the bag.... oh boy was it right there and she took it and stomped on everyone and everything she said she cared about. 

It makes you ask yourself who she ever really was. 

The implication I was responding to was that a Senator's salary is more than what she'll be earning afterwards.  

[Fez]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

I dunno, there are still a portion of GOP Senators that really like her and, obviously, worked closely with her on key legislation the past couple years.  I imagine she'll be very well compensated going through the revolving door.

Perhaps. I don't know enough about the finances of it to know if having a portfolio of 10-15 senators is enough to be worthwhile to a lobbying firm when there's so many other ex-congresspeople/cabinet secretaries/etc. ready for the job as well.

But if not, I suppose she could always go the paid speech route instead. I'm sure Third Way would love to give her money.