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

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I'm voting for whoever the Democratic Nominee is.

Sanders is still not my first choice.

Again that has nothing to do with the actual point.

[Kevinroc]

And it's again worth noting that the last time the Democratic Party decided they wanted to change rules to combat Mitch McConnell's bad behavior he told them they would regret it and then turned around and used their own actions against them to stall Obama on Merrick Garland and paved the way for the Republicans to install Gorsuch. So whatever rule change you decide to make, realize that those rules work across the board, and if someday you need the filibuster to protect you from Republicans, it won't be there.

If you think they weren't going to do that anyway...

Again that has nothing to do with the actual point.

The actual "point" is that the left are getting screwed on all sides. And we have a number of crises on our hands that will not have a hope of a chance of actually getting done.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump Has Reportedly Been Pushing To Reinstate Migrant Family Separation

According to reports, outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen had been arguing against reinstating the hardline immigration policy. Of course, Trump wants to destroy more brown skinned families and create more monsters out of traumatized kids separated from their parents, perhaps NEVER to be reunited.

**********

Bernie Sanders Says Fox News Is A Propaganda Arm Of Trump Administration

NO ****, SHERLOCK! You just figuring that out, Bernie?

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Jake Tapper: Trump Coached Border Agents To Turn Away All Immigrants — And Lie To Judges

Border Patrol bosses in California later told agents to ignore the president and follow the law, the CNN host said, citing sources. Follow the law, or follow Trump? Those agents faced a devil's choice that shouldn't have existed.

**********

They Say It’s Bad Now But Republicans Disclosed Private Tax Returns In 2014

They used the very same law to attack Obama officials that Democrats are hoping will shed light on Trump’s finances. The sneaky moves Republicans made years ago has come back to bite them in the ass, and they don't like it.

**********

Most Americans Want To See Trump’s Tax Returns

They want to see Democratic presidential candidates’ tax forms, too. This should've be a law for running for ANY political office, not just president.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Virginia State Senator Dick Black, a man whose voting record included support for welfare drug testing, statistically unnecessary voter ID laws, medically unnecessary ultrasounds for women seeking abortions, and trying to allow adoption agencies to deny gay couples the ability to adopt children based on “religious principles”. But where Black truly stands out is a series of comments through the years he’s made. Black is a former military prosecutor who has stated his feeling that rape was “as predictable as human nature”, and once argued that he wouldn’t prosecute spousal rape because women “wear nighties”. Black also has referred to birth control as “baby pesticide”, blamed the Columbine Massacre on children not being forced to respect their elders by calling them “ma’am or sir” in school, and argued against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because he felt it would cause HIV and AIDS to spread through our military’s ranks. He’s also ranted about illegal immigrants spreading the Ebola Virus, praised Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, compared abortion to the Holocaust, and sent tiny dolls of fetuses to the entire Virginia State Assembly, asking them if they would “kill the child” he had sent them by voting against an anti-abortion bill. To put it succinctly, this guy is a friggin’ loon (there’s WAY more in that original entry).

Black made a run at a seat in Congress in 2014, trying to represent Virginia's 10th Congressional District, and failed, and going into the 2019 elections, he's probably going to be more concerned about holding onto ANY seat. Black was regrettably re-elected in the 2015 election in Virginia, with views on social issues more appropriate to 1820. This may have had a lot to do with the fact that he exploited paranoid fears over Planned Parenthood based on a certain faux "sting" video created by the Center for Medical Progress and accused his opponent, a pediatrician named Jill McCabe, of being in favor of late term abortions because she "supports late term abortions. Larger baby parts are more profitable." That was enough of a lie to earn a "Pants on Fire" rating from Politifact, but still dragged Dick Black to the finish line, where he won with 52% of the vote.

In 2016, Black was trying to ban “sexually explicit” instructional material from public schools in Virginia, supporting HB 516, and the main offending work that outraged a parent and moved the bill forward was Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”, but critics of the bill noted that the ban could have applied to any book that included sexual themes, at all. So watch out, huffing and puffing at the door of obscenity was Dick Black, who went online to rail against “Beloved” and its scene where t “a hunchbacked older man fantasizes in detail about raping a little girl and leaving her in a pool of her own blood”, continuing, “If it's so graphic that Gwaker can't even print it for their adult readers, then parents should have the right to know.”.… but apparently attacked the wrong Toni Morrison book, discussing explicit content from her first book, “The Bluest Eye”, and misidentifying the online news site Gawker.com with a glaring typo. And Gawker was just not going to let that stand, not only correcting him, but highlighting Twitter users that point out the Bible has scenes where graphic drunken incest and prostitutes being dismembered are written about, and that’s not a problem for Dick Black.

Again, Black supported HB 516, but Gov. Terry McAuliffe was there with a veto stamp to save the day, because it was a glaring violation of our First Amendment and all that. Dick Black spent the 2016 elections to get Ted Cruz nominated as the GOP's pick for president. During that failed effort, he managed to pop off and again brazenly lie about a lady running for office. this time claiming that Hillary Clinton's immigration policy, that she supported the idea, amounted to "ethnic cleansing", ranting in particular about Muslims coming into our country from the Middle East. So you would think that railing against ethnic cleansing would mean Dick Black is disgusted by dictators who kill their own people by the thousands, right? HA! Remember, we're talking about a deranged moron who has previously praised Bashar-al-Assad. That made it a bit less surprising that in January of 2017, Black openly praised the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, for carrying out a brutal "war on drugs" that was just a cover for executing thousands of homeless people in his country. Black regarded these Duterte death squads as a good thing, because here in the U.S., we just allow people to smoke marijuana cigarettes.

Almost immediately after we ran our last profile of Dick Black, he made the news in Virginia again by going out of his way to make statements about how Syrian dictator Bashar-al-Assad could not have ordered nerve gas to be used against his own people because he has “no motive” to do so:

"If you look at it, there is absolutely no motive for President Assad to launch a gas attack...he was winning the war on all fronts why would he launch a gas attack against women and children that he knows is going to outrage the entire world?"

Yes, Dick Black is trying to make people believe that the poor Assad regime is just being framed by ISIS.

Again, we were regretting that Dick Black’s state senate seat isn’t up for re-election until this fall, because he would have likely been booted from office in the 2017 Blue Wave election in Virginia’s state legislature. However, we have some outstanding news… as of January 2nd, 2019, Dick Black announced he would not be running for re-election, likely realizing he would be on the losing end this November. We can only hope that he does no more damage in his remaining months in office.

[jetengine]

While not as egregious as "Democrat Party", it would be helpful if people didn't continue to succumb to Frank Luntz's linguistic games. He got everyone saying that because focus tests showed it weakened people's association of the Democratic Party with democracy (nevermind it is the proper name of the party).

He also got people to start saying "climate change" instead of "global warming" because people feel global warming is urgent and must be addressed and climate change is fairly neutral. (Which is ironic since he's changed his opinion of global warming since).

I'm british, the finer details of your system are still making themselves known to me.

[aja_christopher]

"The Stephen Miller Presidency"

The more politically frustrated Trump becomes, the more he embraces his most extreme adviser.

"Stephen Miller is winning. In recent days, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for policy has overseen a purge of officials who were seen as insufficiently extreme on immigration. Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen was pushed out on Sunday. Two days earlier, Miller persuaded Trump to cut ties with Ronald Vitello, the president’s nominee to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Ron’s a good man but we’re going in a tougher direction,” Trump told reporters.

And Miller’s not done. On Monday, CNN reported that Miller also wants the president to fire two more high-ranking immigration officials. “He’s actively trying to put in place people who have very different points of view than the current leadership within the agencies,” a former DHS official told Politico, referring to Miller. “His idea is basically [to] clean house.” Trump reportedly has informed aides that the 33-year-old Miller will oversee all immigration initiatives.

In a White House defined by dysfunction and turnover—the departments of justice, defense, and veterans affairs are all led by acting directors—Miller is the thriving cockroach. It’s no secret why: He has shown an unwavering commitment to Trump’s toxic immigration agenda, perhaps even more so than the president himself. Miller’s expanding influence and seemingly permanent tenure suggest that Trump’s immigration policies will become even more radical than those he implemented during his first two years in office.

Prematurely balding, with a somewhat vampiric face, Miller is an experienced troll after Trump’s own heart. In high school, he would try to own his liberal classmates by railing against feminism and bilingualism, and in college he accused Maya Angelou of exhibiting “racial paranoia.” Over the past two years, he has been one of Trump’s most vociferous defenders, shouting at any TV host who dares to criticize the president.

In the White House, Miller has been the architect of many of the administration’s most extreme policies. Just days after Trump’s inauguration, he and then-adviser Steve Bannon crafted an executive order that banned travel into the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries, resulting in massive protests across the country. Over the next two years, Miller would play a prominent role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Homeland Security’s child separation policy, and the GOP’s racist midterm message.

Miller has defended this approach on political grounds. “You have one party that’s in favor of open borders, and you have one party that wants to secure the border,” Miller told The New York Times.“ And all day long the American people are going to side with the party that wants to secure the border. And not by a little bit.” But Miller’s favored policies have been enormously unpopular. A majority of Americans consistently opposes the wall. Voters rejected Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric by delivering a historic midterm defeat for the Republicans last November.

And yet, as Trump has become more frustrated with the situation at the border—and with his political failures more broadly—he has further embraced Miller’s far-right agenda. According to The New York Times, Trump had previously castigated Nielsen over her reluctance to implement his most severe, sometimes illegal, policies, like family separation, blocking migrants from seeking asylum, and closing the southern border. With Nielsen gone, the administration is considering further restrictions on asylum seekers and reinstating child separation.

Again and again, Trump has responded to crises and defeat by embracing extreme immigration policies, which have always backfired. This underlines his weakness as a president. He has so few allies that he dares not risk alienating the base that helped him win the White House. But this also speaks to his actual political philosophy, which elevates cruelty—often misconstrued as “strength”—into a perverse virtue. Those who express uneasiness about this approach are dismissed as weak. Miller only advocates for the cruelest available options, and therefore rises in Trump’s favor.

This does not bode well for the nation as Trump flails through the remainder of his first term. His political fortunes, which have been wobbly since Day 1, are threatening to tumble over the next year as the economy slows and Congress accomplishes little now that Republicans have lost their unified control. As these problems mount, and the 2020 election nears, he will double down (or rather, quadruple-down) on his signature issue—and Homeland Security will be led by officials who will do the president’s bidding, without question or conscience..."



https://newrepublic.com/article/1535...ler-presidency

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-...-policy-report

[aja_christopher]

"EU-U.S. Trade War Escalates Over Disputed Aviation Subsidies"

"The European Union is preparing retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. over subsidies to Boeing Co., significantly escalating transatlantic trade tensions hours after Washington vowed to hit the EU with duties over its support for Airbus SE.

The two sets of planned punitive measures are the latest twists in a 14-year-old dispute that the U.S. and EU have fought at the World Trade Organization, with each side accusing the other of illegally subsidizing their main aircraft makers. President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday said it would impose tariffs on $11 billion in imports from the EU because of the European aid.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said that EU support for Airbus had caused “adverse effects” when announcing the new measures, which would target European goods including jetliners, cheese, wine and motorcycles. The EU called the $11 billion sum cited by the USTR “greatly exaggerated” and said preparations were underway to hit back. While the EU hasn’t disclosed the amount of American goods it would target, Airbus said the bloc would proceed with “far larger countermeasures against the U.S.”

The proposed measures are relatively minor compared with the U.S.’s ongoing trade war with China, in which the two sides have imposed tariffs on about $360 billion of each other’s goods in the past nine months. But they mark a significant escalation in tensions with the EU, which has implemented retaliatory duties on 2.8 billion euros ($3.2 billion) of U.S. imports following Trump’s trade restrictions on foreign steel and aluminum.

EU, China Said to Rescue Summit Plan to Show Trump United Front

Some EU members, led by France, are already skeptical of the value of negotiations with the U.S., which were agreed to last July in a bid by the EU to avoid auto tariffs Trump has threatened. Furthermore, a draft of the mandate seen by Bloomberg specifically gives the EU an opt-out if the U.S. were to impose new tariffs on the bloc.

“It’s in the interests of the U.S. and the EU to find a friendly accord on the issue of penalties in the airplane sector,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters in Paris on Tuesday. “When I see slowing world growth, I don’t think that we can afford a trade war, even if it’s just in one industrial sector.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...of-new-tariffs

[ZombieHavoc]

Catching up on the past 8 or 9 pages this morning has been fun. You guys argue about stuff like any of it's actually going to change. Ha.

[Kirby101]

Catching up on the past 8 or 9 pages this morning has been fun. You guys argue about stuff like any of it's actually going to change. Ha.

So Obama - Trump, no difference? Democratic Congress - Republican Congress, no difference?

[Dalak]

Catching up on the past 8 or 9 pages this morning has been fun. You guys argue about stuff like any of it's actually going to change. Ha.

So Obama - Trump, no difference? Democratic Congress - Republican Congress, no difference?

I always love when people who claim to be 'progressive' prove their true colors when push comes to shove. The sad thing is that they'll expect us to just forget about it and pay attention to them as if they are genuinely honest lefties.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

"The Stephen Miller Presidency"


https://newrepublic.com/article/1535...ler-presidency

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-...-policy-report

I was of the belief Turtle Boy McConnell was running the show behind the scenes in the Trump White House, now, I think I'm wrong, it looks like the REAL power is Kid Jackboot. Sure, McConnell is a first class weasel, but not even he would push the sort of vile, abhorrent policies Miller has advocated, and as he gains more stature in the administration, the more extreme, if not flat out dangerous he figures to become.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I always love when the usual suspects who spend half the thread shitting on left wing candidates and calling their policies untenable and the rest of the time calling progressive voters divisive decide to take it upon themselves to make false barometers and litmus tests on what is a progressive policy so they can dismiss the candidate they already don’t like.

Let alone the humor that the closest comparison to their litmus test already cost them a Supreme Court seat. Let alone the obvious myriad of ways it could hurt the country.

But yeah I really am all ears to hear from people who support Gillibrand and Booker what does and doesn’t make someone progressive while they advocate for destructive policies.

[Dalak]

I always love when the usual suspects who spend half the thread shitting on left wing candidates and calling their policies untenable and the rest of the time calling progressive voters divisive decide to take it upon themselves to make false barometers and litmus tests on what is a progressive policy so they can dismiss the candidate they already don’t like.

Let alone the humor that the closest comparison to their litmus test already cost them a Supreme Court seat. Let alone the obvious myriad of ways it could hurt the country.

But yeah I really am all ears to hear from people who support Gillibrand and Booker what does and doesn’t make someone progressive while they advocate for destructive policies.

As many have said on this thread and not, I think that waiting until the field narrows itself down and actual policy debates between the candidates occur before firmly deciding on a vote and closing your mind to all other options is preferred. I also don't think anyone on this thread who doesn't like Sanders has advocated to not vote for him if he's the eventual nominee. However I will freely admit that I'm wrong on that if someone will point it out. I'd also like to see evidence of how many left-wing candidates other than Sanders the 'usual suspects' in this thread **** on unfairly, but I know you won't give it to me as providing proof for your statements is too hard and time-consuming. I don't think it exists either, but I'll openly admit I'm wrong if you can produce it.

Oh, every policy is seen as destructive and horrible or a step in the right direction by someone out there. And if Warren is your first pick why weren't you calling her out for supporting what you deem such a destructive policy?

[BeastieRunner]

Arab vote is at a historic low for Isreal. They installed cameras in the Arab polling locations. Turnout is low, too.

Looks like Trump's buddy won.

[Dalak]

Arab vote is at a historic low for Isreal. They installed cameras in the Arab polling locations. Turnout is low, too.

Looks like Trump's buddy won.

What does that mean for his court troubles?