All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!(Part II)

[Dalak]

I haven't seen any of these here (or anywhere else) either. Then again, I was utterly shocked to find out that 25% of them voted for McCain, too! It's likely that I know a Hillary supporter who voted for him, but I've never actually heard anybody say that they did so.

I hope they will have learned something by the time Election Day rolls around. I haven't heard any from the #neverhillary crowd say that they would vote for any other candidate who isn't as far left as Bernie if they won the nomination, though, so I know there are a ton of people who haven't learned anything.

We still have more than a year for things to work out before it's anywhere close to the wire, so it really depends on how things shake out in the coming months whether it seems if anyone will have learned to ignore the same schtick played in 2016 & 2018 and vote as if their vote matters.

I'm one of Bernie's harshest critics for being kinda full of s*** about a lot of things, but I haven't seen anyone talk "Never Bernie". I voted for him in the 2016 Primary, and spent every moment after May 2016 going, "Goddamn it Bernie" as he blundered about in a no-win situation, weakened the woman who was the clear nominee, and then suddenly became quiet as a church mouse when the threat of a fascist racist demagogue winning the presidency became a very real possibility.

I like him still. I just don't see him through rose-colored glasses. He is a flawed candidate, as his most fervent supporters are loathe to admit.

This is about what I assumed at the worst.

[aja_christopher]

"O'Rourke says adding SCOTUS justices is worth exploring"

"Newly announced presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke said changing the makeup of the Supreme Court is "an idea we should explore."

He said at a campaign stop in Iowa that he thinks it could be a good idea to have each party choose five justices and then to let those justices choose five more justices.

“What if there were five justices selected by Democrats, five justices selected by Republicans and those 10 then pick five more justices independent of those who picked the first 10,” O'Rourke said. “I think that’s an idea we should explore.”

O'Rourke also floated the idea of putting term limits on the justices.

“There’s another idea of adding term limits on those justices so that there’s a more regular rotation through there,” he said. “ We’re a country of 320 million people. There’s got to be the talent and the wisdom and the perspective and that court should be able to reflect the diversity that we are composed of.

"This central objective that is to prevent the Supreme Court from continuing on this trajectory to become basically ruined by being a nakedly political institution," he said. "This idea of adding justices is one way to do it," he said.

"It may actually not be the most compelling way to do it," he continued. "I mean I’m interested in a policy where you would have five appointees of Republicans and five of Democrats on a 15 member court. And where you get the other five from is a consensus of the other 10 which has to be unanimous.""

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...orth-exploring

[InformationGeek]

Far from surprising. Trump will NEVER diss white supremacists who’s votes helped get him elected.

And the Prime Minister of New Zealand already responded:

Asked if she agreed with Trump that white supremacy is not a problem on the rise, NZ PM Arden responds swiftly, "No."

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

"O'Rourke says adding SCOTUS justices is worth exploring"

"Newly announced presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke said changing the makeup of the Supreme Court is "an idea we should explore."

He said at a campaign stop in Iowa that he thinks it could be a good idea to have each party choose five justices and then to let those justices choose five more justices.

“What if there were five justices selected by Democrats, five justices selected by Republicans and those 10 then pick five more justices independent of those who picked the first 10,” O'Rourke said. “I think that’s an idea we should explore.”

O'Rourke also floated the idea of putting term limits on the justices.

“There’s another idea of adding term limits on those justices so that there’s a more regular rotation through there,” he said. “ We’re a country of 320 million people. There’s got to be the talent and the wisdom and the perspective and that court should be able to reflect the diversity that we are composed of.

"This central objective that is to prevent the Supreme Court from continuing on this trajectory to become basically ruined by being a nakedly political institution," he said. "This idea of adding justices is one way to do it," he said.

"It may actually not be the most compelling way to do it," he continued. "I mean I’m interested in a policy where you would have five appointees of Republicans and five of Democrats on a 15 member court. And where you get the other five from is a consensus of the other 10 which has to be unanimous.""

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...orth-exploring

So let’s further cement the two party system and allow each side (even if one is a massive minority) to select partisan judges to counter the opposing side and then let a bunch of hacks fight over the tie breaker.

Sounds great

[GindyPosts]

Did she win the battle of "the real" Blexit yet?

There are like 5 groups vying for that title. Like an poorly strategized game of thrones.

And the reward is to be the whitest black person in the room.

[BeastieRunner]

"O'Rourke says adding SCOTUS justices is worth exploring"

"Newly announced presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke said changing the makeup of the Supreme Court is "an idea we should explore."

He said at a campaign stop in Iowa that he thinks it could be a good idea to have each party choose five justices and then to let those justices choose five more justices.

“What if there were five justices selected by Democrats, five justices selected by Republicans and those 10 then pick five more justices independent of those who picked the first 10,” O'Rourke said. “I think that’s an idea we should explore.”

O'Rourke also floated the idea of putting term limits on the justices.

“There’s another idea of adding term limits on those justices so that there’s a more regular rotation through there,” he said. “ We’re a country of 320 million people. There’s got to be the talent and the wisdom and the perspective and that court should be able to reflect the diversity that we are composed of.

"This central objective that is to prevent the Supreme Court from continuing on this trajectory to become basically ruined by being a nakedly political institution," he said. "This idea of adding justices is one way to do it," he said.

"It may actually not be the most compelling way to do it," he continued. "I mean I’m interested in a policy where you would have five appointees of Republicans and five of Democrats on a 15 member court. And where you get the other five from is a consensus of the other 10 which has to be unanimous.""

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...orth-exploring

So let’s further cement the two party system and allow each side (even if one is a massive minority) to select partisan judges to counter the opposing side and then let a bunch of hacks fight over the tie breaker.

Sounds great

Terming the SCOTUS picks or letting them go to a non-partisan popular vote are better than adding, IMHO.

[numberthirty]

What O'Rourke proposed there just sounds like a recipe for wheels spinning in the mud.

Think about if you had to try to get the current court to agree unanimously to choose just one more justice.

We'd all drop dead waiting for that to happen.


As for term limits, I have my doubts.

You could just wait until you have the ratio to get whatever you want done, and go pretty far to the left or the right to create settled law.

It would be quite a bit easier to get a favorable ratio if all you had to do was wait out a term limit. The idea that you would move away from "Nakedly Political" seems unlikely.

[Tazirai]

Gohmert trashed on Twitter over his reaction to New Zealand massacre
Texas GOP rep said there are alternatives to ‘resolve controversies’ instead of ‘cold blooded murders’

Rep. Louie Gohmert was skewered Friday for his statement after a white supremacist shot Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 49 people.

“There are courts, dispute resolutions, and legislatures to resolve controversies — there is no place for cold blooded murder,” the Texas Republican said in his statement.

[Tazirai]

Far-right Australian senator blames New Zealand attack on Muslim immigrants
Fraser Anning has a history of inflammatory remarks, but this one stands out.

Sen. Fraser Anning from Queensland put out a statement ostensibly condemning the attacks — but then seized the opportunity to spew incendiary and Islamophobic remarks that echoed the rhetoric of the suspected gunman’s manifesto.

“I am utterly opposed to any form of violence within our community, and I totally condemn the actions of the gunman,” Anning said. “However, whilst this kind of violent vigilantism can never be justified, what it highlights is the growing fear within our community, both in Australia and New Zealand of the increasing Muslim presence.”

[BeastieRunner]

https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/14/p...voting-age-16/

Speaker Pelosi expressed support for lowering the voting age to 16. Rep. Ayanna Pressley joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss the amendment she introduced on the voting issue.

Are they kidding. Most 18-year old people are still dependent on their parents, don't have full-time jobs and do not pay taxes. Now they want to lower the voting age to 16?

We have near 60% of 18-27 year old Americans living at home, not paying taxes, living off their parent's insurance.

Better take their right to vote away, too!

Better yet, let's just go back to the old way: White, male, land owners.

/s

[numberthirty]

https://dailycaller.com/2019/03/14/p...voting-age-16/

Speaker Pelosi expressed support for lowering the voting age to 16. Rep. Ayanna Pressley joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss the amendment she introduced on the voting issue.

Are they kidding. Most 18-year old people are still dependent on their parents, don't have full-time jobs and do not pay taxes. Now they want to lower the voting age to 16?

No.

That Right has nothing to do with status as a dependent/having a full-time job/being a taxpayer.

It is a Right independent of those things for a reason.

[Tendrin]

It was during the Vietnam War that the discussion over dropping the voting age to 18 was most intense. It was reasoned, after all, that if you could be asked to die for your country then you ought to have a say in how its run.

Today, we regularly ask sixteen year olds to be willing to die for the right of others to bear arms. The same logic applies.

[aja_christopher]

Far from surprising. Trump will NEVER diss white supremacists who’s votes helped get him elected.

I think it's fair to say that he's counting on their support to maintain power and possibly even hoping they can start the "race war" they've been talking about since at least the Oklahoma bombing incident, which was inspired by The Turner Diaries and mentioned in manifestos by both Dylan Roof and the Christchurch shooter. Manson made a go of it as well, but in the internet age they've gotten much more organized -- and much more deadly.

It's an insane thought, but given the choice between going to jail and dividing this country -- violently if necessary -- so that he can stay in power, it's safe to say Trump has already made his choice. Cohen even warned us as much with regards to Trump giving up power.

The only question now is not how far will he go, but how far will those who follow and support him go to achieve their agenda.

[wjowski]

Terming the SCOTUS picks or letting them go to a non-partisan popular vote are better than adding, IMHO.

Nice try but FDR he ain't.

Term limits, yes. Popular vote, absolutely not. Packing, never.

[aja_christopher]

"Before there was an alt-right, there was The Turner Diaries.

First published nearly 40 years ago, the infamous dystopian novel depicts a fictional white nationalist revolution culminating in global genocide.

The events of the book open 25 years ago today—September 16, 1991, the date of the first entry in Earl Turner’s diary. The fictional diary describes a racist’s vision of a nightmare world, in which “The System”—African American enforcers led by Jewish politicians—attempt to confiscate all guns in the United States. A secretive organization known as The Order rises up to take back the country for white supremacists, eventually winning an apocalyptic insurgency and nuclear war, first taking over the country and later the world.

The Turner Diaries was created in the 1970s by William Luther Pierce, leader of the neo-Nazi group the National Alliance. Crudely written and wildly racist, The Turner Diaries has helped inspire dozens of armed robberies and more than 200 murders in the decades since its publication. The Turner Diaries first made headlines when a violent white nationalist gang appropriated the name of The Order, following the tactical blueprint for terrorism in the book. Turner catapulted to national prominence when it was revealed to be a key inspiration for Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people using a truck bomb strikingly similar to one described in detail in the book. Since then, The Turner Diaries has inspired hate crimes and terrorism across the United States and in Europe in more than a dozen separate plots through the present day.

But beyond the violence committed by its readers, The Turner Diaries was also the seed of significant shift in white-nationalist ideology and recruitment, the effects of which are increasingly relevant today...

It began with The Order, a real-life terrorist cell that was directly based on the organization described in The Turner Diaries. In a yearlong spree starting in 1983, The Order killed three people and stole millions of dollars, much of which was then distributed to white nationalist leaders and never recovered. Members of the group referred to Turner as their “bible.”

One member of The Order, David Lane, became a prolific writer in prison after authorities broke up the gang in 1984. Although he wrote a number of lengthy ideological tracts, one of his most important works was the three-page “White Genocide Manifesto,” which took Pierce’s dislike for complex ideological formulations to new heights, instead arguing from a platform of “Nature's laws, common sense and current circumstances.” The manifesto argues that “’racial integration’ is only a euphemism for genocide,” and that the “white race” is on the verge of extinction due to interbreeding with other races.

Lane later distilled his views further into a one-sentence statement now known as the 14 Words and widely quoted by white nationalists: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Lane died in prison in 2007. His simplified formulation avoided the alienating and stigmatized imagery of neo-Nazism and the elaborate Biblical convolutions of Christian Identity, allowing the highly factionalized white nationalist movement to coalesce around a theme on which they could all agree – an existential threat to the “white race.”

The manifesto itself was soon reduced to the simple phrase “white genocide,” which proliferated at the start of the 21st century and has become the overwhelmingly dominant meme of modern white nationalism. The theme was promoted by white nationalist Robert Whitaker, who added what he called “the mantra”—“Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.” These two phrases were deliberately repeated and spread widely online, among white nationalists of various ideological persuasions..."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...nalism/500039/