All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[wjowski]

Its rare to get rich without exploitation and I also see it less as rich targeted and more "Bernies not that different guys"

It's a transparent attempt to get liberals at each other throats...and an unnecessary one given all the Swift Boat-esque attacks on Warren once she committed the unspeakable crime of surpassing Bernie Sanders in the polls.

[Tami]

Confirms the big play here - Barr’s crusade to undermine the Russian investigation is a way to exonerate Flynn, Manafort, Stone and other allies (Putin) who have been part of Trump’s ongoing years long crime spree.

Twitter Link

[jetengine]

It's a transparent attempt to get liberals at each other throats...and an unnecessary one given all the Swift Boat-esque attacks on Warren once she committed the unspeakable crime of surpassing Bernie Sanders in the polls.

Oh yes, but there is a certain irony in people going "He's so different" when he is indeed an old white guy like many of the others

[Malvolio]

Elijah Cummings Honored At Baltimore Funeral: ‘He Led From His Soul’

Friends, family and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama gathered to pay tribute to the congressman in his home district.

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Ex-Ethics Chief Issues Ominous Warning About ‘Anti-Patriots’ Backing Donald Trump

“We are in dangerous territory,” Walter Shaub cautioned in a lengthy Twitter thread. That goes without saying.

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Judge Rules DOJ Must Turn Over Mueller Grand Jury Evidence To House Democrats

Democrats had requested the material as part of their impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump. Good!

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Fox News Host Calls Out Trump’s ‘Petty’ Cancellation Of Newspaper Subscriptions

Howard Kurtz said the White House’s refusal to renew subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post is “a symbolic slap.” Whoa! Someone else who isn't toeing the Faux News pro-Trump party line? Say it ain't so!

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Tulsi Gabbard Goes On Fox News Before Announcing She Won’t Run For Congress Again

The Hawaii congresswoman criticized the House’s impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump as “very partisan.” So, Faux News is now a safe space for Tulsi the Russian Asset.

Doesn't surprise me that much about Kurtz. He's only been on FOX News for 6 years, since he left CNN. He's not a lifer for FOX, like Sean Hannity or Steve Doucey.

(BTW, one funny note. When I enter the name Doucey into my spell-check, the first suggestion to come up is "Douche.")

[Tami]

'Disorder and chaos': Trump and Republicans mount furious impeachment fight

Donald Trump has shown little taste for military adventure. He avoided the draft in Vietnam. He fell out with his once-beloved generals. He stunned the world by pulling troops out of Syria and abandoning America’s Kurdish allies.

But on the political battlefield, the president has shown how he and his allies intend to fight impeachment: with a blitzkrieg aimed at deflecting, distracting and discrediting. What he lacks in coherent strategy, he makes up for in shock and awe. Trump will send in the tanks and take no prisoners.

It appears that most Republicans are still willing to march behind him, not by defending what many see as indefensible – the president’s offer of a quid pro quo to Ukraine – but by throwing sand into the gears of the impeachment process. With the help of Fox News, they are set to intensify attacks on the legitimacy of the inquiry itself, demonising its leaders and sowing doubt wherever possible.

The great unknown is whether the approach will prove as effective as their efforts to undermine the special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, potentially boosting Trump in the 2020 election, or the case against him will be so compelling that he will be removed from office or defeated at the polls.

“Trump is using the same approach he did to subvert the Mueller report: undermining the legitimacy of the messenger, assigning political motives to those who testify and relying on the Fox News firewall to serve up propaganda to his base,” said Kurt Bardella, a former spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee.

“The difference is that with Mueller we had a lot of time where we didn’t know anything. In the impeachment inquiry we are getting a steady stream of new information that is providing context.”

[Tami]

Facebook Axed Pro-Vaccine Ads, Let Anti-Vaxxer Conspiracies Slip Through

Facebook promised to institute a stricter policy on anti-vaccination misinformation in ads back in February, a policy it expanded sitewide in March. That crackdown, however, appears to be penalizing some legitimate healthcare providers while letting some anti-vaccine conspiracies slide, even as the United States faces its largest outbreak of diseases preventable by vaccines in decades.

This month, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, the state’s official health department, bought 14 ads to promote a statewide program providing free pediatric vaccinations. Facebook removed all of them.

During the same time period, Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit founded and chaired by the nation’s most prominent vaccine conspiracy theorist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., successfully placed more than 10 ads stoking unfounded fear about vaccines and other medical conspiracy theories. Some of the ads skirted around their intent, and some did not: One promised to reveal the truth about the “MMR Vaccine’s Poison Pill”—the commonplace vaccine against mumps, measles, and rubella. It reached between 10,000 and 50,000 people, and Facebook took in between $100 and $500 for the ad.

Another page promoted a link to a website called vaccineholocaust.org without issue in June. The group Michigan for Vaccine Choice, which advocates for exemptions from mandatory vaccines, is still running an ad that began mid-July. All of the ads draw ideas from a debunked web of conspiracy theories arguing that vaccines pose hidden dangers and the risk of “vaccine injury” means children should be denied potentially life-saving immunizations.

The Minnesota Hospital Association, which lobbies the Minnesota legislature on behalf of the state’s hospitals, buys Facebook ads to fight vaccine disinformation and promote conversations with healthcare providers about vaccines. Over the last two months, Facebook has removed dozens of their ads. Facebook flags the group’s advertisements referencing vaccines far more often than any of its other ad campaigns, which cover medical issues like mental illness, addiction, and vaping-related illnesses.

[Tami]

Healthcare algorithm used across America has dramatic racial biases

An algorithm used to manage the healthcare of millions of Americans shows dramatic biases against black patients, a new study has found.

Hospitals around the United States use the system sold by Optum, a UnitedHealth Group-owned service, to determine which patients have the most intensive healthcare needs over time. But the algorithm, which has been applied to more than 200 million people each year, significantly underestimates the amount of care black patients need compared with white patients, research published on Friday in Science magazine found.

Although the algorithm did not explicitly apply racial identification to patients, it still played out racial biases in effect. That’s because the parameter the algorithm used to signify health – cost of care – had racial biases baked into it.

Less money is spent on black patients with the same level of need as white patients, causing the algorithm to conclude that black patients were less sick, the researchers found. The study showed black patients incurred about $1,800 in medical costs each year less than white patients at the same level of illness.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Facebook Axed Pro-Vaccine Ads, Let Anti-Vaxxer Conspiracies Slip Through

I remember zuckerberg was on the news after the 2016 elections claiming Facebook was going to ban conspiracy/fake news accounts and i believed him. But it seems to me that both Facebook and Twitter are supporting these type of accounts.

[zinderel]

Trump speaks at HBCU Benedict College as students are asked to stay in dorms

So...Trump goes to a black university, but for ‘security reasons’, doesn’t have to actually deal with more than a handful of black students.

Ok...nothing super-racist about that, I guess...

[jetengine]

So...Trump goes to a black university, but for ‘security reasons’, doesn’t have to actually deal with more than a handful of black students.

Ok...nothing super-racist about that, I guess...

I saw less racism and more "Oh shit I'm going to get mobbed by people who hate me so limit who's there". Not to say he isnt racist of course, merely that in this case its just avoiding an incident.

[shooshoomanjoe]

I saw less racism and more "Oh shit I'm going to get mobbed by people who hate me so limit who's there". Not to say he isnt racist of course, merely that in this case its just avoiding an incident.

Because blacks are more likely to mob him?

[Gray Lensman]

Because blacks are more likely to mob him?

Considering his approval ratings with that segment of the population, I'd say yes. See also, LGBT, Hispanics, Muslims, people with a college education, or just about anything other than white evangelicals.

[jetengine]

Because blacks are more likely to mob him?

Because minorities, the educated and the youth are likely to hate him. Again, its easier to quell the issye before it starts. Case in point, during his visit to the south of England they shut down any place that sold milkshakes near him for fear of him getting Milkshaked

[Jack Dracula]

It's still a stupid argument. By congressional standards Bernie Sanders isn't that rich, he's advocating for policies that would lessen his own personal wealth and the bulk of his millionaire status comes from writing book. It's a pretty weak attack. He's worth like 2 million. Which is kinda like barely passing the threshold to label him and quite frankly that's like "you did something moderately successful once money" like some musician who is just starting to getting notoriety or an author who just had their first book that did well type money.

The guy who just made a million or two million isn't the problem with society. It's the big business owner who is paying 75% of his workforce minimum wage while he is making 100's of millions. Or the owners of Wallmary who quite literally make double Bernie's net worth in about an hour while their employees are treated like expendable jackasses.

To me it's very difficult to make the case that "Bernie's not that different". It's kind of a cheap gotcha attack based primarily on him having one book that did well.

I'm not a big fan of Sanders but do I agree with all of this.

[JCAll]

I saw less racism and more "Oh shit I'm going to get mobbed by people who hate me so limit who's there". Not to say he isnt racist of course, merely that in this case its just avoiding an incident.

So he's just allowed to be as racist as he wants, and everyone else is supposed to protect him from the public fallout. F' that.