All purpose news and politics thread part VII: News & Politics Total Landscaping

[CaptainEurope]

Kamala Harris Is Almost as Popular as Beyoncé, New Poll Shows

[CaptainEurope]

Who would be a more popular candidate?

Here is a list: https://today.yougov.com/ratings/pol...oliticians/all

Note that most of the ones higher than Biden are "elder statesmen" who are out of day to day politics.

It looks like nobody told Yougov that Herman Cain died from COVID.

Say, Hillary Clinton is quite a bit more popular than Biden and Trump and also younger. Maybe that could have worked.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Says aggregate polls. Biden is currently less popular than trump was.

Polls don't mean jack squat since they can be twisted to suit one party's agenda or the other. I don't pay them even a second's worth of attention.

[Kirby101]

Says aggregate polls. Biden is currently less popular than trump was.

Maybe if the Press reported on his accomplishments instead of concentrating on his age, he would be doing better.

https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/stat...69406581920212

https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...house-00154219

[Kirby101]

I will also add that 538 had a Red Wave taking Congress and the Senate in 2022.

[achilles]

Harvey Weinstein's NY conviction on rape has been overturned, a new trial has been ordered. Wasn't he also in a case in LA? This is breaking news, so details are scant.

Sounds like the prosecution screwed up and used improper witness testimony that had been excluded by the judge. You want a conviction to stick, you get it right.

[Jack Dracula]

West must boost defence as era of peace in Europe is over, says Ukrainian foreign minister










As a side note, I can't believe that Mike Johnson comes out of this as some sort of hero.

European leaders do need to internalize the fact that Putin is a threat to all Europe and understand where they’ll be if Ukraine’s agricultural and mineral resources fall under his control.

Johnson should be praised for going against Trump and Putin’s Freedom Caucus. Republican lawmakers need to see they’ll be supported by Republican voters and not punished at the poles for doing their jobs.
Anything promoting collaboration and bipartisanship is good imo.

[kidfresh512]

More trials!

Giuliani, Meadows charged in Arizona ‘fake elector’ indictment

I found it interesting that the RNC's new “election integrity” lawyer is listed here under indictment.

RNC’s ‘election integrity’ lawyer charged with election crimes

The Republican lawyer’s name might not be immediately familiar to national audiences, but Bobb made headlines last month after Trump took over the Republican National Committee and hired Bobb to serve as senior counsel for election integrity.

In other words, a grand jury in Arizona has indicted the RNC’s election integrity chief on election-related crimes. Specifically, the indictment includes charges of conspiracy, fraud and forgery.

Whether anyone at the Republican National Committee will actually mind remains to be seen. A Washington Post analysis from last month made clear that Bobb’s not just another Republican lawyer.

And that was just a sampling. Bobb talked in 2022 about a plot to overturn the 2020 election results and possibly reinstate Trump to the White House. A year later, the lawyer raised the possibility of someone “intentionally” having released Covid as part of a scheme to interfere with Trump’s re-election effort.

A year after that, she suggested that it shouldn’t much matter whether a presidential candidate was found guilty of insurrection.

Complicating matters, in 2022, a leading Justice Department official went to Mar-a-Lago with a few FBI agents in the hopes of retrieving documents Trump improperly took and refused to voluntarily give back. As part of that meeting, as regular readers might recall, it was Bobb who signed a certification statement, indicating that the former president had fully complied with a grand jury subpoena and no longer had any classified materials at his glorified country club.
That statement, we now know, wasn’t true: As the FBI discovered during a search two months later, Trump still had plenty of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Bobb later told investigators that she did not draft the statement she signed and blamed the mess on another Trump attorney.

Only the best people though. And Biden's old!

[WestPhillyPunisher]

European leaders do need to internalize the fact that Putin is a threat to all Europe and understand where they’ll be if Ukraine’s agricultural and mineral resources fall under his control.

Johnson should be praised for going against Trump and Putin’s Freedom Caucus. Republican lawmakers need to see they’ll be supported by Republican voters and not punished at the poles for doing their jobs.

Yeah, Republican voters who remain levelheaded and haven't gone down the MAGA rabbit hole. While don't trust Johnson any further than I can throw him, he deserves kudos for doing the right thing in this instance. Still, given my mistrust, I can't help but wonder if there's a shoe about to drop somewhere. Now, if the Nutbag Caucus does call for Mikey's head, should Democrats support him? I hate myself for saying this, but yeah, they should. Madam Howler Monkey and Rapey McForehead led the charge that got Craven Kevin McCarthy bounced, if history repeats itself with Johnson, you can bet the farm his replacement will be just as deranged as the rest of the Trump slurpers in the party, and that wouldn't be a good thing.

[Zelena]

A more sympathetic news:

Brussels proposes return to pre-Brexit mobility for UK and EU young people

Well, now, I find out the offer has been rejected… to my astonishment and that of other people too…

[Jack Dracula]

Yeah, Republican voters who remain levelheaded and haven't gone down the MAGA rabbit hole. While don't trust Johnson any further than I can throw him, he deserves kudos for doing the right thing in this instance. Still, given my mistrust, I can't help but wonder if there's a shoe about to drop somewhere. Now, if the Nutbag Caucus does call for Mikey's head, should Democrats support him? I hate myself for saying this, but yeah, they should. Madam Howler Monkey and Rapey McForehead led the charge that got Craven Kevin McCarthy bounced, if history repeats itself with Johnson, you can bet the farm his replacement will be just as deranged as the rest of the Trump slurpers in the party, and that wouldn't be a good thing.

I think Democrats should support him as well. It may serve to crack the wall of support Trump has in Congress at the moment.

[Username taken]

Harvey Weinstein's NY conviction on rape has been overturned, a new trial has been ordered. Wasn't he also in a case in LA? This is breaking news, so details are scant.

Sounds like the prosecution screwed up and used improper witness testimony that had been excluded by the judge. You want a conviction to stick, you get it right.

Exactly.

10 char.

[kidfresh512]

I think Democrats should support him as well. It may serve to crack the wall of support Trump has in Congress at the moment.

The caveat to the support should be that they all say that Hakeem Jeffries should be the speaker so we can get the work of the people done voters need to send us the people that will get there. Repeat it every time they are asked if they will bail out Johnson on votes. That way yes Johnson can get Dem support but the clear message of GOP dysfunction and lesser of 2 evils until we can get the majority and bypass the infighting and nutjobs over there.

They really need to use the platforms and microphones shoved in their face about saving Johnson to do both things. Highlight the disfunction and only one side is ready to govern at this point. And yes still reluctantly support him because yes at least he is doing bare minimum working to keep the govt running and getting the Ukraine aid etc through.

People shouldn't be confused that he is a good speaker or anything. He still wouldn't put the bipartisan border bill out for vote, and many other legislative priorities the people actually want.

[Jack Dracula]

The legal issue with Tiktok is not about misinformation, but about the way the Chinese government could make Bytedance hand over the data of American citizens.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiktok-...s-reasons-why/

Congress has officially called for Tiktok to be sold, and has given the company a year to do so.

There are a few major differences.

We have a first amendment protecting freedom of speech. There is no equivalent amendment protecting the freedom to make money with minimal regulations.

As a result, there's a legal framework in environmental law that often includes a need to get approval before undergoing a new project. We don't have anything like that with the media, because that would clash with the freedom of the press.

Modern media is fast and regulations can be slow. It takes a lot more time to build a factory that pollutes the environment than it would to make a website based on ridiculous and harmful claims (IE- Every member of Congress knows that Pizzagate is real and that Donald Trump is a threat to the pedophile conspiracy.)

It's probably a good thing that the first amendment stands in the way of an EPA against bad media. These regulations could easily be abused. Just imagine a second Trump administration taking advantage of these laws. They could go after anyone on the left who is hyperbolic or says something debunked (that Michael Brown had his hands up when he was shot, or that Matthew Shepard was targeted because of his sexuality.) They could also use it to slow down their critics, slow-walking approval of a new MSNBC show or something.


The initial problem was the selection of Kamala Harris as Vice-President. Realistically, it's either her or Biden.

You’re making assumptions an agency similar to the EPA would operate and regulate the same way. Obviously it wouldn’t.

Any law or regulation can be abused depending on the circumstances and Trump or someone like him would find ways to persecute the media no matter what the situation. We know for certain that a lack guardrails for the distribution of online and broadcast information has increased partisanship and hostility in our society to a dangerous degree so doing nothing will only make our situation worse.
We have the benefit of history to guide us on what not to do. Let’s not pretend like we’d be operating blindly and uniformed. Changes and rules can be made incrementally and adjusted over time.

[JackDaw]

See Harvey Weinstein rape conviction has been overturned on appeal. ( Majority verdict 4 to 3 by NY court.)

The grounds for overturning were that the judge allowed evidence from women who had experienced similar stuff from Mr Weinstein, but were not included in the charges listed against him.That seems a curious decision if the true aim of the trial was to reliably establish if he was guilty or not.