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

[GindyPosts]

Nope. I'm trying to show a correlation. Despite the guy cowardly killing black union officers he was honored in Arkansas and Mississippi with a city named after him. And apparently with the law in Tenn he continues to be honored. The Confederate is an racist institution in the South. Something like this can't simply be dismantled by shaming someone for carrying out the orders of a law that was already on the books. If the Democrats are serious about rebuking the first KKK leader they need to launch a campaign and repeal all of the honors that had been bestowed on him since the Civil War.

But they are only trying to bank political points by blaming the Republican.

No, your argument was this: the person the governor of Tennessee honored, who just happened to found the Ku Klux Klan, founded a town in Arkansas that just so happens to still be named after him. Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas.

Coincidence? I think NOT!

Look; I'll be frank. It's okay to be a black conservative. As far as I'm concerned; there are various aspects that encourage African-Americans to lean more towards the right than to the left socially and culturally, but from a historical perspective, it's not like social conservatives in America have been friendly to minorities, regardless of political leanings. My main issues with black conservatives tend to boil down to how ignorant they tend to be about party lines (i.e. the Democrats have always been about slavery and the Republicans are always fighting for the fellow man because Lincoln) and that most assume they're this rare unicorn that must be treated special and with the utmost care even though they aren't.

Also, Democrats ARE trying to get rid of Confederate monuments and namesakes. For starters, there's opposition from people (generally Republicans and people who vote Republican) who want to keep the monuments up for the sake of history, either due to their own innate bigotry, or out of fears of anger from their voting constituents and not wanting to lose reelection. There's a difference between keeping something like Auschwitz standing, which is to illustrate the horrors of ethnic cleansing plus serve as a reminder that something of this nature should never happen again (even though we have people today act like it either didn't happen or wasn't that big of a deal, which shows you the stupidity of mankind), and showing off pride towards bumpkins who lost a war. Seriously; unless you're purposefully trying to play revisionist history, why would you go out of your way to celebrate those who did not lead you to victory or surrendered? Second, there's a buttload of monuments to deal with, with the greatest one being Stone Mountain itself, and that giant rock carving. From there, it's statues, generic monuments, and then namesakes. Tackling all that will take time, and as I mentioned, there will be opposition.

But, again; you just wanna go "Them Democrats be evil because they keep the brothers in chains! #WalkAway", so as far as I'm concerned, you're not bringing anything to the conversation. You're just being an asshat.

[Malvolio]

I think a lot of them don't understand the situation. It's described as if this governor went out of his way to honor a confederate, when the law mandates him to make these proclamations. The law should be changed, but that is an onerous process, while time and resources are finite.

Maybe it's an onerous process for the average citizen, but for the Governor of the State? I think he could have tried a little harder to get rid of that law, and he didn't seem to try at all. It's like complaining about being handcuffed when you have access to the keys to said handcuffs.

[Tami]

Jeffrey Epstein: how US media – with one star exception – whitewashed the story

hen Julie K Brown of the Miami Herald approached a former police chief of Palm Beach, Florida, in 2017, hoping to get him to open up about his investigation of the child sex crimes for which the wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein had been fleetingly jailed a decade earlier, she was surprised by how unresponsive he was.

Michael Reiter told Brown he had been down this road many times and was sick of it. As Brown recalled in a WNYC interview last month, Reiter said he had talked to many reporters and told them precisely where to find damning evidence against Epstein. But nothing ever came of it.

“He was convinced that a lot of media had squashed the story and he was fed up,” she said.

Reiter warned Brown what would happen were she to continue digging: “Somebody’s going to call your publisher and the next thing you know you are going to be assigned to the obituaries department.”

Brown did not heed his warning. She flung herself at the investigation and eventually persuaded Reiter to go on record. Her resulting, award-winning three-part series last November exposed a vast operation in which 80 potential victims were identified, some as young as 13 and 14 at the time of the alleged abuse. She persuaded eight to tell their stories.

That silence stretches all the way back to 2003, when Vicky Ward wrote a profile of Epstein for Vanity Fair. During her reporting, she was introduced to a mother and her two daughters from Phoenix, Arizona who alleged Epstein assaulted the girls, one of whom was 16 at the time.

Ward told the Guardian she spent a lot of time with the family discussing whether they should go public.

“They were frightened,” she said. “The mother told me that every night when she walked the dog she looked over her shoulder.”

Eventually, the women agreed to go on the record, Ward said, and when Epstein was told about their accounts he went “berserk”. Epstein had already threatened to get a witch doctor to put a curse on Ward’s unborn children – she was pregnant with twins at the time – and now he campaigned to stop Vanity Fair publishing the allegations, even turning up unannounced at the office of the then editor, Graydon Carter.

Publication was delayed, then Ward was told the paragraphs on the abuse of the women had been deleted.
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“I was extraordinarily upset,” she said. “I asked the women what they were going to do and they said they would lick their wounds and retreat, as this was exactly what they feared would happen.”

[Tami]

Jeffrey Epstein was Ehud Barak’s business partner as late as 2015

American financier Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender now embroiled in a sex-trafficking case involving minors, was an active business partner with former prime minister Ehud Barak as late as 2015.

Barak formed a limited partnership company in Israel in 2015, called Sum (E.B.) 2015, to invest in a high-tech startup then called Reporty, now named Carbyne, which developed video streaming and geolocation software for emergency services. A large part of the money used by Sum to buy Reporty stock was supplied by Epstein, Haaretz reported Thursday.

American financier Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender now embroiled in a sex-trafficking case involving minors, was an active business partner with former prime minister Ehud Barak as late as 2015.

Barak formed a limited partnership company in Israel in 2015, called Sum (E.B.) 2015, to invest in a high-tech startup then called Reporty, now named Carbyne, which developed video streaming and geolocation software for emergency services. A large part of the money used by Sum to buy Reporty stock was supplied by Epstein, Haaretz reported Thursday.

The report appears to raise new questions about the connection between Barak and the disgraced Epstein — a relationship that has become a favorite election talking point for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Barak reentered the political fray last month, announcing a new party formed for the purpose of unseating Netanyahu.

[Kirby101]

I think a lot of them don't understand the situation. It's described as if this governor went out of his way to honor a confederate, when the law mandates him to make these proclamations. The law should be changed, but that is an onerous process, while time and resources are finite.

And if he just didn't because...the KKK and all, then what.

Amazing how Republicans continue to defend racism.

[Tami]

And in other news

9th Circuit rules in favor of Trump admin in 'sanctuary city' case

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled in favor of the Trump administration's efforts to prioritize federal dollars for local policing to towns and cities that complied with certain immigration policies.

The ruling, a split 2-1 decision, said the Department of Justice (DOJ) was within its rights to withhold Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants from sanctuary cities and states over their refusal to work with federal immigration enforcement authorities and instead prioritize agencies that focused on unauthorized immigration and agreed to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) access to jail records and immigrants in custody.

The city of Los Angeles first sued the administration after it was denied a $3 million grant on the grounds that it did not receive the money because it did not focus on immigration for its community policing grant application. The decision reversed a district court’s ruling.

“The panel rejected Los Angeles’s argument that DOJ’s practice of giving additional consideration to applicants that choose to further the two specified federal goals violated the Constitution’s Spending Clause,” wrote Judge Sandra Ikuta, joined by Judge Jay Bybee.

[Kirby101]

In one of the more blatant violations of the Hatch Act from the Trump administration (and that's saying something considering the s*** Kellyanne Conway's been pulling), Donald Trump used his official Twitter account to retweet a Trump organization ad about Trump golf courses. That would be the same Trump organization whose affairs he's supposed to be removed from, and his children run without him.

This is violation of the Emollient Clause of the Constitution, much more serious. The President enriching himself from his office. The Hatch Act is about using an office for campaigning, something the Trump and the whole WH do daily.

[Tami]

It Won’t Be Easy For Many Democrats To Make The September Debate

[wjowski]

It Won’t Be Easy For Many Democrats To Make The September Debate

Sanders is doing exactly what I predicted he'd do; splitting the vote hard-left between him, Warren, and Harris.

If Biden ends up getting the nomination it's going to be squarely on Sanders' head.

[4saken1]

Sanders is doing exactly what I predicted he'd do; splitting the vote hard-left between him, Warren, and Harris.

If Biden ends up getting the nomination it's going to be squarely on Sanders' head.

Harris is hard left?

[Tami]

Harris is hard left?

She kind of sounded like it in the first debate.

[worstblogever]

Harris is hard left?

Depends on the issue. On financial stuff? She's not as hard left as the other two. On civil rights, particularly LGBTQ rights, she's left of the other two.

I'd still say she's the farthest right of the three.

[numberthirty]

Harris is hard left?

Herbalife just laughed out loud at this assertion.

Never mind that sex workers are probably going to take issue with her being "Left".

[Spike-X]

Democrats might support much of what I've suggested regarding the migrant camps, but that stuff only works if we also go with the policies that resolve the problem of too many people claiming asylum.

You mean like stop bombing the bejesus out of their countries, and economically devastating them? Is that the kind of resolution you mean?

[numberthirty]

You mean like stop bombing the bejesus out of their countries, and economically devastating them? Is that the kind of resolution you mean?

The problem there is that lousy US policy when it comes to that is not something that Republicans have the market cornered on.

It's not like there has ever been a legitimately serious Democratic effort to change US drug policy.