All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[WestPhillyPunisher]

All it means is that voters today still want the same thing as in 2016 which is why Hilary lost: change from career politicians. Both Sanders and Trump were unconventional politicians and represented change in Washington while Clinton represented the status quo. Both Trump and Sanders still represent candidates of change perception wise anyway as Trump has been a fairly typical republican in policy if not words and Sanders is obviously a career politician though an unconventional one. Warren though represents a return to the career politician status quo. I believe she also has the least chance of defeating Trump in 2020 due to her own self inflicted injuries over her fake racial heritage that Trump has been beating her over the head with for years and will do so in the future - it galvanizes his base and will hurt Warren with minorities who will see a rich entitled white woman who lied about being a minority for personal benefit - doesn't matter if she truly did benefit or not as the perception will be there that she did.

And nothing about the even more rich, entitled white MAN currently in the Oval Office who's lied about everything under the sun, who used his father's connections to avoid serving in Vietnam, who's scammed scores of people over the decades? Who's cheated on all three of his wives and openly lusted for his daughter? Who's kissed up to despots, strongmen and dictators while spitting in the collective eye of longtime allies? Who sought to interfere in the Mueller investigation but was saved only by his underlings who refused to follow his illegal orders? Who's used his office from day one to shamelessly fatten his pockets? Give me a break. The only thing unconventional about Trump is that he's a fucking moron who shoots off his mouth daily and has ZERO idea what he's doing. The fact people gravitated to that idiot says more about their lack of common sense after falling for his populist bullshit than his ineptitude and woeful lack of fitness to serve as president.

[Kirby101]

You forgot to add that most people actually chose Hillary over Trump. And the majority never approved of Trump.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

You forgot to add that most people actually chose Hillary over Trump. And the majority never approved of Trump.

Yeah, that too. The only reason Trump is in the White House at all is because of the Electoral College. Despite that, he's still bitching about having lost the popular vote to Clinton to this day.

[PaulBullion]

All it means is that voters today still want the same thing as in 2016 which is why Hilary lost: change from career politicians. Both Sanders and Trump were unconventional politicians and represented change in Washington while Clinton represented the status quo. Both Trump and Sanders still represent candidates of change perception wise anyway as Trump has been a fairly typical republican in policy if not words and Sanders is obviously a career politician though an unconventional one. Warren though represents a return to the career politician status quo. I believe she also has the least chance of defeating Trump in 2020 due to her own self inflicted injuries over her fake racial heritage that Trump has been beating her over the head with for years and will do so in the future - it galvanizes his base and will hurt Warren with minorities who will see a rich entitled white woman who lied about being a minority for personal benefit - doesn't matter if she truly did benefit or not as the perception will be there that she did.

Sanders has been a politician for something like 85 years, and he never held a non-politics job. It's quite brazen of him to market himself as an outsider just because his only legislative achievement is naming a post office.

[PaulBullion]

Still no word on whether Alec Baldwin is running, but something called a Seth Moulton has entered the Democratic primaries.

[Mister Mets]

His defense of it was an accident being sped up is silly and the fact a man you elected to lead this country decided to frame a reporter he doesn't like is more stupid to defend using this silly clip. Reporters aren't meant to be your friends. Nixon didn't like certain reporters. Obama didn't like Fox News as he joked. But he was an adult and knew that freedom of the press is a basic right this country needs. Not to try and demand the press not stand up against fucking lies repeatedly.

In the end Mets , this is who you elected. A man who used a clip because he was a coward to handle a reporter so he sought out a clip from a site that isn't trusted.

I have been rather open about the fact I did not vote for Trump, that I'm looking forward to voting against him in the primary, and that I'm willing to back several Democratic presidential candidates over him in 2020, including the guy currently leading in the polls.

Your version of the Acosta video mess goes beyond the main speculation, so that according to you, it wasn't just the White House who used a video they knew to be doctored, but that President Trump made the relevant decisions, which is probably giving him way too much credit, due to both his lack of attention to detail and poor technical savvy.

Sanders has been a politician for something like 85 years, and he never held a non-politics job. It's quite brazen of him to market himself as an outsider just because his only legislative achievement is naming a post office.

Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington in 1980. He was elected to Congress in 1990. It's definitely wrong for anyone to suggest he's not a career politician (you could get away with outsider, but his salaries since before I was born have involved elected office.)

There is the counterpoint that Sanders didn't serve elected office until he was in his late 30s, but I'm curious about what kind of career his supporters would say he had prior to that.

Yeah, that too. The only reason Trump is in the White House at all is because of the Electoral College. Despite that, he's still bitching about having lost the popular vote to Clinton to this day.

The electoral college wasn't exactly a campaign secret.

Still no word on whether Alec Baldwin is running, but something called a Seth Moulton has entered the Democratic primaries.

There are impressive qualities to him.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...1dO/story.html

[PaulBullion]

Electoral college was originally created to put the slave-owning states on equal footing as the free states for the power to elect the President of the United States. Now they are using Electoral College to give both conservative states and liberal states equal power in electing the POTUS. Many red states like Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Idaho rank as some of the least populous states in the Union.

It basically favors empty states with a few more affluent white folks. It should be unconstitutional.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Electoral college was originally created to put the slave-owning states on equal footing as the free states for the power to elect the President of the United States. Now they are using Electoral College to give both conservative states and liberal states equal power in electing the POTUS. Many red states like Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Idaho rank as some of the least populous states in the Union.

I understand how the Electoral College works and the history behind it, so you could've saved yourself some keystrokes. The thing is, Trump was too fucking stupid to understand how it worked, even though the College put him in the Oval Office, he whined and bitched and moaned about Hillary having gotten more votes than him, even going so far as to scream bloody murder about voter fraud. Just one of many examples of how that orange shitgibbon is too damn inept to hold the highest office in the land.

[InformationGeek]

Soooooooooo has something to hide.

JUST IN: Trump Org. says it is suing the House Oversight Cmte. over the cmte.'s subpoena seeking to obtain financial documents from President Trump’s accountant.

[jetengine]

The Electoral college is frankly a useless remnant that needs to be removed or updated for modern day politics.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date back in 2015 that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” had a profile of Stephen “Stephanie” Meade, who ran on the ballot for Congress to represent California’s 51st District in the U.S. House of Representatives as “the first transgendered candidate to run for Congress”. We don’t think doing so would make anybody crazy or stupid, except for the fact that Meade was not actually transgendered, and was only a transvestite who started wearing women’s clothes when he was in his eighties. His actual policy stances included eliminating funding to Planned Parenthood, a hawkish stance on foreign policy, and reducing the corporate tax rate. Oh, but rather than raising the minimum wage, Meade wanted it reduced to a mere $5 an hour. He also wanted to break up television and cable service providers, and finally get the United States to institute the metric system. Since he seems very unlikely to ever win office now that he’s ninety and the California GOP actively tries to throw him out of their meetings.



In 2016, 2017, and 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented its original profile of the U.S. House Representative from Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District, Jackie Walorski, who during her time in the Indiana House of Representatives from 2004-2012, gained some notoriety for being a co-sponsor of a widely contested Voter ID bill to curtail the statistically non-existent problem of in-person voter fraud that led to a slew of lawsuits, was barely upheld in a U.S. Supreme Court challenge, and was then duplicated by various other Republican-controlled state legislatures to ensure voter suppression as a national tactic. What really made Jackie Walorski stand out, however, was her complete dedication to attacks on a woman’ right to choose, often sabotaging common sense legislation in the Indiana state legislature by adding on riders or amendments regarding abortion that would be the “poison pill” to make Democrats in Indiana forced to no longer support it. She used this tactic most famously (and disgustingly) to sabotage legislation to prevent hate crimes against the LGBTQ community by putting in an amendment to consider fetuses a protected group. Walorski decided to make the jump to national politics and hoped to ride the Tea Party Wave to Washington, D.C., to represent Indiana’s 2nd District in the 2010 elections, challenging Democratic Congressman Joe Donnelly for his U.S. House seat. During that campaign, she spoke about privatizing Social Security, and with her radical record in the Indiana state legislature, voters still balked at the idea of putting her into office.

But alas, she still wasn’t giving up hope, especially after Indiana’s 2nd District was gerrymandered after the 2010 elections by House Republicans so that Walorski could get another chance at weaseling her way into Congress again, once it had a +6 Republican lean, rather than the previous rating, only a +2 lean, that it had when she lost to Joe Donnelly in 2010. Donnelly didn’t want a rematch, and instead, ran a successful campaign in 2012 to be elected to the U.S. Senate.

Jackie Walorski would lose any advantage she might have gained from fundraising, though, after she was involved in a scandal regarding her attempts to fundraise off of a Planned Parenthood “sting” video. No, not the ones that popped up over the summer of 2015. Walorski was using footage from a pro-life activist pretending to be a 13 year old girl and go to a Planned Parenthood to raise money for her campaign coffers even prior to that slander. She sent the fundraising letter out during a period when it wasn’t allowed, then tried saying the ethics committee who were investigating her for doing so were “overlooking the rape and sexual abuse of a 13-year old minor”. (Which, again, wasn’t true, she wasn’t 13, wasn’t raped or abused, and wasn’t pregnant.) Anyway, Walorski’s Democratic opponent was an Iraq War Veteran Brendan Mullen, and as the polling showed the race tightening in August of 2012, she made the classy decision to doxx him, and release his home addresses in Washington, D.C., to the public in a campaign ad. Sadly, this tactic may have worked, as Walorski won office by only about 3,800 votes, 49 to 48%.(And we remind you, this was after the district was gerrymandered to help her as a Republican.)

Since she arrived in the capitol, Walorski's voting record includes votes against disaster relief funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy, voting to defund the Department of Homeland Security to protest President Obama's executive orders on delayed deportations, voting for the 2013 Government Shutdown and all anti-choice legislation that comes to the floor. Oh, and she did react to the more recent faux-controversy over Planned Parenthood because of the Center for Medical Progress bogus "sting videos, accusing the organization of "selling baby body parts." Which if you recall, is the exact kind of rhetoric that motivated Robert Dear, the shooter who attacked and killed several people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, so thanks for that, Jackie.

Ironically, in 2016, Rep. Walorski survived both a primary challenge because of how she pulled her own anti-choice bill, HR 7, because she realized too late that it would not provide exceptions for rape, unless it was reported to authorities. Both Walorski and Rep. Renee Ellmers panicked, and called for their own legislation to be dropped before they risked reigniting the War on Women claims the GOP had been battling in a big way (considering they schedule the vote on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, yeah, it would have been pretty bad). Walorski was immediately branded a traitor to the Pro-Life movement, and did her best to earn back their good graces by getting her name down as a co-sponsor on HR 36 in May of 2015, but to no avail. That’s all it took, was pulling back on one anti-abortion measure for how it phrased its exceptions for rape, and she was No True Scotsman. So Jeff Petermann came onto the scene to try to swipe her seat in Congress out from under her. But alas, Petermann failed to unseat her, and Walorski returned to office with 59% of the vote in the general election against Democrat Lynn Coleman.

Walorski was re-elected in 2018 with 55% of the vote, her poorest showing in any election since she came to Washington, D.C. And, she has continued to underwhelm her constituents with a voting record like this:

• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Walorski also voted against HR 648, because she was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Jackie Walorski votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Walorski votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.

Indiana as a whole is trending further and further right all the time, and we’re curious to see if there’s a point where the people of Indiana’s 2nd Congressional District realize that after eight years in office, she’s not achieved anything legislatively noteworthy, and that they might not want to wait until the Congressonal map gets redrawn in 2020 to be rid of her.

[Mister Mets]

Electoral college was originally created to put the slave-owning states on equal footing as the free states for the power to elect the President of the United States. Now they are using Electoral College to give both conservative states and liberal states equal power in electing the POTUS. Many red states like Wyoming, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Idaho rank as some of the least populous states in the Union.

It wasn't just about slavery since owning land was a requirement for voting for the first ten presidential elections. Only 3.4% of Americans cast a vote in 1824, as it was restricted to land-owning white men.

We have a different understanding of allowing every adult their voice than the nation did during the constitutional convention, but there are still some practical considerations.

The Popular Vote compact is the most likely way to have elections be determined by popular vote, although it has difficulty getting swing states and conservative states on board. Swing states don't want to lose their power. Red states don't want to go with a movement that exists mainly to reduce Republican power.

It is possible that the popular vote compact will go through. If this is a major agenda item for Democrats, and they sweep a few governorships and legislatures, they might get the 81 electoral votes needed (they are currently at 189).

There are some potential issues down the road. Should this pass, and should it make a difference in a presidential election, you're going to have a major court fight.

States do have different standards in determining voting regulations, which poses some big questions when all the votes are pooled together (currently if one state wants same-day registration, it only affects that state's electoral votes in a presidential race.)

It basically favors empty states with a few more affluent white folks. It should be unconstitutional.

There does not appear to be a correlation between wealthy white people in a state, and a state being favored in the electoral college.

Alaska is the only small red state with a top ten median income.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-sta...erica?slide=11

A contributing factor is that sparsely populated rural states tend to have a relatively cheap standard of living.

However, there are two major imbalances that have resulted in the electoral college being controversial.

The first is that Democrats are more likely to live in urban areas, and the electoral college is biased against cities.

The second is that California has become very liberal. It is unusual for the most populated state in the country to give a major party candidate their highest margins of any state in the continental US. If California were as liberal as Oregon in terms of the percentage of the vote for Hillary Clinton, Trump would beat Hillary in the popular vote narrowly (64,542,377 VS 64,296,806)

[InformationGeek]

Of course, of course. Of course this happened.

Speaking to children and families from the balcony at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, President Donald Trump delivered a truly bizarre address, touting his own popularity with the nation’s egg producers and bragging about his handling of the economy at an event for people not yet old enough to recite the alphabet without assistance.

“This is 141 years that we’ve been doing this. I don’t remember the first one,” said Trump, who hadn’t yet been born in 1878.

With First Lady Melania Trump by his side, ramrod straight and expressionless, the president went on to thank the White House Historical Association and the Marine Corps Band, but had special praise for “a group of people that do a wonderful job.”

“I love them, I know they like me, too,” said the president ratcheting up the excitement. “It’s the egg farmers of this country, the egg farmers. And they brought thousands and thousands of eggs. I don’t know if you can use them all, but I have a feeling with these young, very ambitious children, they’re going to find a reason.”

“Maybe most importantly, I want to wish everybody a very happy Easter,” Trump said, celebrating one of the most holy days in the Christian religion -the resurrection of Jesus Christ- by touting his handling of the economy. “Our country is doing fantastically well. Probably the best its ever done economically. We’re setting records on stock markets, we’re setting records with jobs, and unemployment numbers are the lowest they’ve ever been.”

“And do we love our military? Our military’s building, is literally being completely rebuilt,” Trump continued, commemorating Easter with boasts about the nation’s ability to prosecute wars against its enemies. “All with great product, the best product in the world, and you know where it’s made? In the USA.”

“So, again, happy Easter,” the president said. “Enjoy yourselves, and I’m coming down right now to be with you.”

“Well, there you have it,” deadpanned MSNBC’s Craig Melvin as cameras cut back to the studio. “The whole scene actually a bit surreal.”

[worstblogever]

Reuters poll shows that in the past week, Americans leaned +8 towards impeaching Trump, with it now standing a a virtual dead heat of 42/40.

Robert Mueller still is being called to testify before Congress to elaborate on his report (which still has a bunch of Trump crimes redacted in the summary, that were relayed to other prosecutors).

[Detox]

Soooooooooo has something to hide.

Water's wet.