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

[worstblogever]

Don't know if this got a mention. Not exactly a surprising move. While I don't think much of them, they could do better...

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/4...oins-nbc-msnbc

And it's not at all hypocritical that you didn't complain when Fox News hired any number of former GOP Congressmen through the past fifteen years.

[numberthirty]

And it's not at all hypocritical that you didn't complain when Fox News hired any number of former GOP Congressmen through the past fifteen years.

If I gave a rip about FNC(barring that Doocy cookbook. That was a chuckle.)? Maybe you'd have some kind of a point?

As it stands, an outfit that's a toss up wasted no time in scooping up someone that it probably wouldn't hurt if they quit grumbling about AOC and just went away for a while.

It's not that it's them. It's that giving that particular person a bull horn was a dumb move.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Bo Watson, the President Pro Tempore of the Tennessee State Senate, and bowtie-clad extremist of the highest order. We noted that among the bills Watson supported were failed or often unconstitutional conservative staples like drug-testing welfare recipients, arresting transgendered citizens for using the "wrong" bathroom, allowing creationists to challenge evolution when its taught in school classrooms, blocking the Medicaid Expansion, bringing the electric chair back as a form of the death penalty, and to see to the creation a public list of "abortion statistics" that included the names and addresses of women who had sought out an abortion, presumably so they could be harassed or attacked by hard-right pro-life terrorists. He also is noteworthy for saying he would rather a local Volkswagen factory move to Mexico than have their employees join a union, which is one of the most jaw-droppingly stupid and petty anti-union statements you will ever hear a member of the GOP say. Watson also was calling for the University of Tennessee at Knoxville to be investigated because the Director of UT's Office of Diversity and Inclusiveness website offered up the idea of using the pronoun "ze" to professors with transgendered students to use, as an alternative to "he" or "she", and during the initial roll call in their first class, to find out which pronoun students preferred, and outrage that the school had a “Sex Week” to educate its students about safe sex and the prevention of STDs. By no means, is that the dumbest argument Bo Watson has ever unleashed, as we told the story of the time the Tennessee state legislature was talking about lifting a ban on mothers breastfeeding children in public over the age of one, and he started rambling on about people aged 14 or 35 with weird fetishes still being breast-fed in bars, because he's so terrified of a mother's nipple.

In September of 2018, Watson flipped out when finding out Nike had released a new ad campaign with Colin Kaepernick, and wanted to rescind the contract the University of Tennessee’s athletic department had with Nike in retaliation, because this ***hole just cannot go a year without finding a new battle in the culture wars.

Bo Watson was up for re-election in 2018, and since the 2014 elections, when he actually founded his own SuperPAC to extend his own electoral fortunes, Watson easily won re-election with 65% of the vote. We'll have to keep waiting and hoping for his career to come to an end.

[aja_christopher]

And it's not at all hypocritical that you didn't complain when Fox News hired any number of former GOP Congressmen through the past fifteen years.

I think the Trump administration alone is proof that he doesn't care what the Republicans do -- meanwhile Hillary, Nancy, and Kamala have to be put in check.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I think the Trump administration alone is proof that he doesn't care what the Republicans do -- meanwhile Hillary, Nancy, and Kamala have to be put in check.

Well, they're women, and we can't have those pesky females gumming up the works in Washington! (said with tongue in cheek)

[aja_christopher]

Well, they're women, and we can't have those pesky females gumming up the works in Washington! (said with tongue in cheek)

It's all I can do not to keep linking to the sexual harassment scandal in the Sanders campaign -- trying to lead by example, but some people make it very difficult to do so.

[aja_christopher]

Putin couldn't have planned this better: the election of Trump in America, the political crises in Britain and France and the exit of Merkel in Germany.

-----
"Brexit and the U.S. Shutdown: Two Governments in Paralysis"

"In Parliament, lawmakers are mired in gridlock over Britain’s departure from the European Union, with no clear path forward. In Washington, President Trump stormed out of a meeting with congressional leaders who oppose his border wall, hardening a standoff that has shut down much of the government for longer than ever before.

Two governments paralyzed. Two populist projects stalled. Two venerable democracies in crisis.

Rarely have British and American politics seemed quite so synchronized as they do in the chilly dawn of 2019, three years after the victories of Brexit and Donald J. Trump upended the two nations’ political establishments. The countries seem subject to a single ideological weather system — one that pits pro-globalization elites against a left-behind hinterland.

The similarities abound: Brexiteers love to compare their cause to America’s war for independence. At a recent right-wing rally, one man marched with a scale model of the Liberty Bell. Mr. Trump has exuberantly backed Brexit, while his friend, the Brexit godfather Nigel Farage, appears on Fox News, invoking Europe’s migrant crisis as a reason to back Mr. Trump’s wall.

“It’s stunning how parallel this is,” said Stephen K. Bannon, who was an architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration policy as his former chief strategist, and is an ally of Mr. Farage. “If you’re going to challenge the system, the system is going to fight back.”

Mr. Bannon likened what he said was the growing possibility that Mr. Trump will declare a state of national emergency to build his wall over the objections of Congress to the once inconceivable but now real possibility that Britain will withdraw from the European Union in March without reaching a deal with Brussels — a so-called hard Brexit.

“Trump is getting ready for his own no-deal, hard-out,” Mr. Bannon said, even as Republicans and Mr. Trump’s aides and family are urging him not to take such a step.

The trans-Atlantic dysfunction has far-reaching ramifications, given the role the United States and Britain, pillars of the NATO alliance, play in counterterrorism operations, intelligence sharing, sanctions enforcement, and dealing with conflict zones like Syria.

With both countries also turning away from multilateral trade agreements, China has the opportunity to step in and play an even bigger role in the global economy. And Russia has seen an opening to expand its influence in Europe, where rising nationalism has threatened to fracture the European Union.

Mr. Trump and the Brexiteers have ridden a nationalist tide in their countries as well, using a potent anti-immigration message to appeal to mostly white voters who yearn for a more homogeneous society that no longer exists...."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/12/u...ain-trump.html

[aja_christopher]

"William Barr, attorney general nominee, backs away from prior comments pushing Clinton Foundation investigation"

"Attorney General nominee Bill Barr reaffirmed Tuesday that, if confirmed, he would allow special counsel Robert Mueller to finish the Russia investigation, but Barr's testimony surrounding a prior eyebrow-raising claim that more should be done to investigate the Clinton Foundation, and his related correspondence with a reporter on that issue, has caught the attention of his critics and raises fresh questions on how he'd handle the issue if confirmed.

Barr was interviewed by The New York Times in the fall of 2017 about the pressure President Donald Trump continued to mount on the Justice Department to investigate his political foes. The Times' Peter Baker reported at the time that some conservatives had latched onto a theory that a Russian energy nuclear agency donated to the Clinton Foundation in order to later secure Hillary Clinton's approval of its purchase of a uranium mining company when she was secretary of state -- otherwise referred to as "the Uranium One scandal" by some in conservative media.

Baker wrote that Barr "said he sees more basis for investigating the uranium deal than any supposed collusion between Mr. Trump and Russia," and quoted Barr in the article as saying: "To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility."

It was a noteworthy assertion even at the time given that the allegations against the Clinton Foundation have never been proven and Barr had previously served as attorney general under George H.W. Bush, and his comments only took on greater significance once Barr was picked to be the next attorney general by Trump since he would oversee the Mueller investigation and any probe into the foundation.

Yet when confronted with the article during Tuesday's Senate confirmation hearing, Barr appeared to distance himself from his past remarks, and said the broader point he was trying to make is that "whatever the standard is for launching an investigation, it should be dealt with evenhandedly...

Later Tuesday evening, Baker posted a screen shot of his email exchange with Barr, making it clear Barr "believed that the predicate for investigating the uranium deal, as well as the foundation, is far stronger than any basis for investigating so called, 'collusion'" -- suggesting that the Clinton matter had stronger predication for investigation than Mueller's probe into whether Trump's presidential campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election..."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/16/polit...one/index.html

[mogwen]

Well, I am french and in France, the far right party, the National Front of Marine Lepen is financed by a russian bank close to Putin.
See a pattern?

[aja_christopher]

Well, I am french and in France, the far right party, the National Front of Marine Lepen is financed by a russian bank close to Putin.
See a pattern?

Consider yourself fortunate, I suppose, that he isn't giving direct orders to your president.

-----
"Putin must be smiling as he watches Trump carry out his agenda"

"Every day, it seems, brings another load of disturbing information about President Donald Trump's interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A few days ago, we learned that Trump's behavior was so troubling that the FBI opened a counter-intelligence investigation to find out if Trump was working, "on behalf of Russia against American interests." The probe merged with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, so we don't know what Mueller may have concluded.

More recently, we discovered that Trump has held five face-to-face meetings with Putin for which he made sure there was no written record, not even for his own top staff to review, going as far as confiscating the notes from his interpreter and warning him not to repeat a word of what he heard. Details from those meetings are even more troubling.

Trump spent two hours talking with Putin on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in July 2017 on the day he found out the US media were about to reveal explosive information that top Trump campaign figures met in 2016 with a Kremlin-linked lawyer at Trump Tower. The next day, on the flight home, Trump dictated a misleading email about what his campaign staff discussed with the Russians.

On top of this soaring mountain of tectonically suspicious behavior, we learned that Trump has repeatedly told his aides he wants to pull the US out of NATO, a move so drastic, and so clearly beneficial to Russia, that it must rank far, far above Putin's wildest dreams. It would essentially destroy NATO, with incalculably dangerous consequences, at a steep cost to the United States..."



https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/17/opini...tis/index.html

[mogwen]

Consider yourself fortunate, I suppose, that he isn't giving direct orders to your president.

-----
"Putin must be smiling as he watches Trump carry out his agenda"

"Every day, it seems, brings another load of disturbing information about President Donald Trump's interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A few days ago, we learned that Trump's behavior was so troubling that the FBI opened a counter-intelligence investigation to find out if Trump was working, "on behalf of Russia against American interests." The probe merged with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, so we don't know what Mueller may have concluded.

More recently, we discovered that Trump has held five face-to-face meetings with Putin for which he made sure there was no written record, not even for his own top staff to review, going as far as confiscating the notes from his interpreter and warning him not to repeat a word of what he heard. Details from those meetings are even more troubling.

Trump spent two hours talking with Putin on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in July 2017 on the day he found out the US media were about to reveal explosive information that top Trump campaign figures met in 2016 with a Kremlin-linked lawyer at Trump Tower. The next day, on the flight home, Trump dictated a misleading email about what his campaign staff discussed with the Russians.

On top of this soaring mountain of tectonically suspicious behavior, we learned that Trump has repeatedly told his aides he wants to pull the US out of NATO, a move so drastic, and so clearly beneficial to Russia, that it must rank far, far above Putin's wildest dreams. It would essentially destroy NATO, with incalculably dangerous consequences, at a steep cost to the United States..."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/17/opini...tis/index.html

Yeah, great! It just means we will fall soon. It's a coordinated attack on our democracies and we're losing, there's nothing to feel good.

[aja_christopher]

Yeah, great! It just means we will fall soon. It's a coordinated attack on our democracies and we're losing, there's nothing to feel good.

Democracies -- when healthy -- can adapt to these kinds of attacks so long as the people respond accordingly.

We have a unique opportunity with the advent of the internet as well: in the same way they can use our technologies to divide us, we can use it to get to the truth.

Realistically speaking, it's too soon to say there's been any kind of failure -- much of that depends on the upcoming elections.

Edit: I mean failure in the sense of a great tragedy, like the Holocaust, the Great Depression or the Iraq War.

[mogwen]

Democracies -- when healthy -- can adapt to these kinds of attacks so long as the people respond accordingly.

We have a unique opportunity with the advent of the internet as well -- in the same way they can use our technologies to divide us, we can use it to get to the truth.

I wish I could share your optimism! But for me people, or at least a good part of them, are no longer interested in the truth or facts, we live in an era of opinion, and with opinion comes prejudice.
I feel like we're living in the 1930's again.

[aja_christopher]

I wish I could share your optimism! But for me people, or at least a good part of them, are no longer interested in the truth or facts, we live in an era of opinion, and with opinion comes prejudice.
I feel like we're living in the 1930's again.

That wasn't optimism -- that was an objective analysis.

I'm honest enough to admit that I have no idea what's going to happen in the future -- I write Sci-Fi but Trump is like nothing I would have ever imagined.

[mogwen]

That wasn't optimism -- that was an objective analysis.

I'm honest enough to admit that I have no idea what's going to happen in the future -- I write Sci-Fi but Trump is like nothing I would have ever imagined.

I understand you, and I'm sorry for you all, my american friends!