All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[Mister Mets]

I'm not sure that trying to ridicule liberals for focusing on race is quite the winning play that conservatives think it is. There was never a time in American history when minorities didn't agitate for more rights, nor have whites ever wielded enough power to fully snuff out their aspirations, since the consumer economy is reliant on cheap labor and whites have never been able to fill that gap themselves. Just telling everyone to shut up about race is not working, and while all the gerrymandering and voter suppression might be helping the GOP win elections now, concentrating power in an ever shrinking rural white base is not going to be a good look going forward.

It's not that liberals are ridiculed for focusing too much on race, but that they are ridiculed for going too far with solutions. In a piece for Politico, a centrist mainstream news outlet, Ibram X Kendi, director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center at American University, did suggest creating a federal department of formally trained experts on racism (which he defines anything that results in racial inequity) with discipline (IE- fines and jail-time) and investigatory power.

https://www.politico.com/interactive...nal-amendment/

The goal post is not about whether we should shut about race (a different discussion and I don't think we should) bit just whether a policy suggestion is a good one.

For a guy that doesnt like Trump you stan for his party and their values consistently. Like we accept that in every party theirs good and bad. But the GOP have becone so cartoonishly villainous that anyone still going "Well I'm a Republican....but not a trump one!" is kind of rendered irrelevant when taken in the whole.

What specifically have I said that you object to?

In the current argument I'm asking how someone knows about the effects a hearing has had on voters. I've offered no opinion of the matter, because I do not know the answer.

I'm asking about their current comments, rather than my impression of them from years of interactions, so it's nothing personal.

One way I look at things in political discussions is that I don't care about what side I'm on with a particular issue. The important thing is the facts on the specific item.

There's a different approach where the main thing is whether you're on the right side, even if your rationale for doing so is incorrect. This tribalism represents a problem in politics, just because it leads to people being wrong without any consequences (even minor ones like correction and admonishment) and to ignorance about the details or the tradeoffs if even considering the downsides of an idea or different opinions puts you on the "wrong" side.

[Tami]

Calls for AG Barr’s Impeachment Intensify After ‘Lunatic Authoritarian’ Federalist Society Speech

Attorney General Bill Barr launched into an emotional tirade against “the left” at an annual meeting of the conservative Federalist Society on Friday evening. Now, lawyers and legal commentators are intensifying calls for Barr’s impeachment.

Barr’s eyebrow-raising speech was widely-panned after a video of the following portion made the rounds on social media:

“This is a very dangerous and indeed incendiary notion to import into the politics of a Democratic republic,” Barr continued before the elite group of right-wing lawyers in Washington, D.C. “The fact is, that, yes, while the president has certainly thrown out the traditional beltway playbook and punctilio, he was upfront about what he was going to do and the people decided that he was going to serve as president.”

“Another lunatic authoritarian speech as Barr goes from attacking ‘radical secularists ‘ [at Notre Dame Law School] to one month later attacking the ‘resistance’ at [the Federalist Society],” tweeted former White House ethics counsel Richard Painter. “Impeach Barr now!”

“Bill Barr is the type of bare knuckles lawyer the Church would have hired thirty years ago to cover up sex abuse cases,” Painter added. “The bishop would have been someone like Rep. Jim Jordan. Neither of these men belong anywhere near the impeachment inquiry.”

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) echoed that call late Saturday morning.

“Yesterday AG Barr addressed a radical political group and gave one of the most vicious partisan screeds ever uttered by a US cabinet officer,” Pascrell tweeted. “Barr says trump should have king-like powers. Barr is a liar and a fanatic and should be impeached and stripped of his law licenses.”

[ed2962]

I'm just wondering whether it makes a difference. You suggested this was bad for Republicans because the witnesses were being heralded as heroes, but that doesn't really indicate that anyone has been persuaded by anything. That's all.

It does depends on the statutes and the argument. Some of the regulations do require an officeholder to know that what they're doing is illegal, especially when it comes to cover-ups, so the mental state of the investigated official can be relevant.

There are other regulations that do not. And impeachment is ultimately a political question, due to the vagueness of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Trump is not too dumb to understand the mischief he indulges in...

[worstblogever]

How do you know that independents are becoming more pro-impeachment?

That's generally been my question. You say stuff like "Independents are becoming more pro-impeachment with each hearing" or "Two hearings over the past three days, and the witnesses are being heralded as heroes. GOING GREAT FOR YOU, PARTY OF TRUMP." but you're not establishing that it's making a difference.

It could be making a difference, but you're not really demonstrating that. You could just be convinced that everyone thinks as you do.

Tendrin pointed out online polls, so he's able to make the case that it's making the difference.

You answered your own question. Polls. I watch polling... and it's trending the way of the end of Trump, little by little.

Nixon, as Roger Ailes once lamented, didn't have a state news network to brainwash people. Trump has that. That's the only reason this hasn't blown up completely as far of public sentiment.

By the by, I also look at things like stats on the number of people who watched... 13 million people. On a weekday. Imagine if it was in primetime.

[Jack Dracula]

No form of conservatism is ever truly sustainable, since they all depend more or less on the assumption that the people at the bottom will just quietly accept their lot rather than agitating for a bigger slice of the pie. And sure, all the excesses of the 80s seem pretty cool in hindsight, just as I'm sure the antebellum South or the British Empire at its peak must look pretty magnificent from a certain point of view. But that's all forgetting that, even among the privileged classes living at the height of luxury, people were deeply unhappy and constantly fretting about trying to keep up with the Joneses or pondering the meaning of their lives, no doubt a reflection of the subconscious guilt they felt about building their society off the exploitation of others, and the impending collapse of these societies as the underlying contradictions began to unravel them from within.

Conservatism may not have been sustainable before the age of the internet. Now we have half of the electorate rabidly defending their right to be constantly screwed-over.

Well, yeah. I've often said that Trump says with a bullhorn the same things many Republicans have been saying with a dog-whistle for years.

Exactly.
Proclaiming yourself a Republican but disliking Trump is just like saying " I was on board for the systemic racism, bigotry, religious zealotry, sexism, hypocrisy, financial excess, environmental pollution, military jingoism and corporate influence & corruption, but this Trump guy is a real turn-off."

[Tami]

Republicans could lose a second red state governor's election

(CNN)It's down to the wire in Louisiana's gubernatorial runoff election. In the Saturday election, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is trying to hold on against Republican Eddie Rispone. It's the second election in a deep red state in as many weeks that's pitted local versus national factors.

History and polling suggest it's really close, though perhaps with the slightest edge to Edwards.

Edwards is, by all accounts, a popular governor. His approval rating is north of 50% in pretty much every poll taken of the Louisiana electorate. He wins if this election is a referendum on his record.

Rispone hopes to capitalize on a trend of governor elections becoming increasingly nationalized. Republican President Donald Trump is popular in the state, and Rispone could be helped by the President's visit to the Pelican State this week. Trump on Saturday urged Louisianans to vote for Rispone, tweeting that the GOP candidate would lower taxes and auto insurance rates in the state. (Trump attempted to help usher unpopular Republican Gov. Matt Bevin to victory in Kentucky, but the governor on Thursday conceded his close loss to Democrat Andy Beshear.)

[Celgress]

I still doubt Trump will be removed from office due to the makeup of the Senate, but we'll see.

[Tami]

Six charged after gunfire breaks out during New Jersey high school football game, leaving three injured

Six people face charges after a Friday night shooting at a New Jersey high school football game left at least three people injured, authorities said.

The incident, which sent fans and players rushing for safety, occurred as Pleasantville High School hosted Camden High in a playoff game. The sound of “about a half dozen” bullets rang out in the air, the Press of Atlantic City reported, sending players and onlookers scrambling for safety.

The shooting occurred just a day after two people were killed and three others were wounded in a shooting at a high school in Santa Clarita, Calif., adding to the panic.

Alvin Wyatt, 31, has been charged with three counts of attempted murder along with other charges, Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon G. Tyner said in a statement Saturday. Michael Mack, 27; Tyrell Dorn, 28; Shahid Dixon, 27; and Vance Golden, 26, were charged with unlawful possession of a weapon. Dixon is also charged with eluding.

[Tami]

Saudi spies hacked my phone and tried to stop my activism. I won’t stop fighting.

In the fight against the online campaigns targeting Saudi citizens, I had a powerful ally and friend in Jamal Khashoggi, who recognized the power of Twitter to shape public opinion in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world. Jamal was murdered because he was willing to fight trolls and propaganda with truth and ideas. But we are still learning how far Saudi Arabia — and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — is willing to go to monitor and silence critics online.

Last week, the Justice Department announced that it was charging two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia by accessing the company’s information on dissidents on the platform. I was one of the targets.

It’s all been part of a coordinated campaign of harassment. Saudi Arabia, using spyware sold by the Israeli company NSO Group, hacked my phone to read my messages with Jamal, with whom I was working to identify and combat Saudi trolls on Twitter, which we called the “electronic bees.” We were working together to organize an army of volunteers to counter them.

The Saudi government deployed every tactic to get me to drop the project. They arrested my relatives and friends to pressure me. They imprisoned my brothers and asked them to convince me to stop working on our volunteer campaign. Jamal was shocked they had learned about it and asked me to never discuss it publicly.

To understand why they cared so much about protecting their Twitter trolls you have to understand the popularity and importance of Twitter for Saudis.

Since we didn’t have a lot of options for entertainment in Saudi Arabia, we coped with our environment by living a different reality on our smartphones. Twitter soon became crucial to exercise the first element of individual liberty: freedom of expression. The platform’s popularity exploded among Saudis virtually overnight. We lived democratically on Twitter. People posted freely.

That all changed with the rise of MBS. Saudi Twitter gradually morphed into a propaganda platform, with the government deploying trolls and pressuring influencers to amplify its messages. More than 30 influencers told me that the Saudi government blackmailed them with material obtained by hacking their phones. They were given two options: Tweet propaganda or have your private content, including pictures, released on Twitter.

McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, prepared a report on how public opinion is shaped on Twitter (according to a source the report was reviewed by MBS but the company denies it was prepared for him). They identified me among the top three most influential users on Twitter. I’m now in exile; another got arrested, and the third user vanished. His tweets were all deleted.

[babyblob]

I still doubt Trump will be removed from office due to the makeup of the Senate, but we'll see.

I dont think Trump will be removed from office either. But with the Dems putting all of this information out there and having public hearings it should be enough to get informed people to vote Trump out of office in 2020. Which to be honest is what I think may be some of their motivation in all of this.

[Celgress]

I dont think Trump will be removed from office either. But with the Dems putting all of this information out there and having public hearings it should be enough to get informed people to vote Trump out of office in 2020. Which to be honest is what I think may be some of their motivation in all of this.

I hope you're right because I'm not sure it will be enough. Most of my friends are "normies" who don't care about politics they are mostly ignoring the Impeachment Hearings, so far.

[Tami]

I dont think Trump will be removed from office either. But with the Dems putting all of this information out there and having public hearings it should be enough to get informed people to vote Trump out of office in 2020. Which to be honest is what I think may be some of their motivation in all of this.

Bottom line, the Republicans in Congress should be nervous.

Basically they are screwed either way.

If they vote to Impeach (House)/Convict (Senate) they risk running afoul of loyal Trump supporters

If they vote against either, they risk running afoul of everyone else, not to mention how their opponents can use their votes against them on the campaign trail.

[Malvolio]

Conservatism may not have been sustainable before the age of the internet. Now we have half of the electorate rabidly defending their right to be constantly screwed-over.


Exactly.
Proclaiming yourself a Republican but disliking Trump is just like saying " I was on board for the systemic racism, bigotry, religious zealotry, sexism, hypocrisy, financial excess, environmental pollution, military jingoism and corporate influence & corruption, but this Trump guy is a real turn-off."

Trump makes it difficult for Republicans to deny the racism, sexism and basic cruelty of their party. Not impossible, mind you, but difficult.

[InformationGeek]

Louisiana remains blue in the governorship.

AP calls it.

It's a wonder Rispone lost when his final big rally featured inspiring messages like @SenJohnKennedy's "it must suck to be that dumb" and @realDonaldTrump's "you gotta give me a big win, please, okay?"

Too bad we're out of races to nationalize before 2020.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Bottom line, the Republicans in Congress should be nervous.

Basically they are screwed either way.

If they vote to Impeach (House)/Convict (Senate) they risk running afoul of loyal Trump supporters

If they vote against either, they risk running afoul of everyone else, not to mention how their opponents can use their votes against them on the campaign trail.

I have ZERO sympathy for Republicans who, judging from their appalling performance at the impeachment hearings, decided to take their chances with the latter option rather than piss off Trump and his cultists. Meanwhile....

====================

Testimony Ties Trump Closer To Pressure On Ukraine

Tim Morrison, a former National Security Council aide, told impeachment investigators about revealing conversations with Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Tick tock, Donnie, tick tock....

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William Barr’s Partisan ‘Authoritarian’ Trump Defense Triggers Calls For His Impeachment

The attorney general drew backlash after calling Democratic “resistance” against the president a dangerous “holy mission.” It's frighteningly clear Droopy Dog Barr has put defending Trump ahead of the country and the Constitution. A definite "gots to go" situation for Barr.

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Pete Buttigieg Jets To The Top As Clear Frontrunner In New Iowa Poll

“We’ve felt a lot of momentum on the ground,” says a pleased Buttigieg. A pleasant surprise indeed. To be honest, I didn't think Mayor Pete had a chance to go this far in the campaign.

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Fox Business Host Calls Trump ‘Big Dumb Baby’ For Attacking Yovanovitch

Lisa Kennedy said the president would have been better off keeping quiet during the former ambassador’s testimony. So, how much longer before Kennedy is sent packing for daring to insult Dear Leader Trump?

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Barack Obama Issues Warning To 2020 Democrats Against Veering Too Far Left

“Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision, we also have to be rooted in reality,” said the former president.