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

[Tami]

As usual for a member of the GOP, Johnson is getting showered with praise in the media for doing the bare fucking minimum. The lowest of expectations is unreservedly allowed for our conservative party.

Having allowed the GOP fringe to kick out McCarthy seems like it's paying dividends, as McCarthy had proven again and again that he was all too willing to knife the Democrats at every opportunity.

You need to show encouragement, even if it is for the bare minimum. Shame, really, but we're dealing with the GOP, the party of Geometrically Obtuse and Premature (mentally).

[WestPhillyPunisher]

As usual for a member of the GOP, Johnson is getting showered with praise in the media for doing the bare fucking minimum. The lowest of expectations is unreservedly allowed for our conservative party.

Having allowed the GOP fringe to kick out McCarthy seems like it's paying dividends, as McCarthy had proven again and again that he was all too willing to knife the Democrats at every opportunity.

Well, I still don't trust Johnson. Let's not forget, he killed the bipartisan border security bill, allegedly on orders from Trump who wanted an issue to hammer Biden on. Let's see if Mikey will cooperate with Democrats in the future on other legislative matters.

[JackDaw]

Part of it might depend on a judge's sense of why it was included.

Was the evidence of women who weren't included in the charges relevant to establish patterns of behavior, to preempt an argument that he's not the type of guy who would do this?
Or was the evidence of women who weren't included in the charges meant to prejudice the jury, to suggest that Harvey Weinstein is a guy who really deserves to be punished, even if they're not sure he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of this particular crime.

Not sure how anybody could reasonably argue that it didn’t establish patterns of behaviour. And…of course..the women who came forward were there to be cross examined by the defence team.

I think it’s incredibly hard to argue that the trial judge made a clear error in law, or there was any reasonable reason to believe there had been a miscarriage of justice. I think UK appeal courts would almost certainly have backed the original judge. Though maybe I’m being optimistic there.

[Tendrin]

He doesn't have to sit down for an interview with them, but he should sit down for an extensive interview with somebody.

He says, on the day Biden is apparently live with Howard Stern.

Don't think any of us saw that coming.

[Tuck]

It is just horrifying that these people are even considering this. Honestly, how in the world can they reasonably interpret that a President can just sit there and commit crimes and be immune. I get that they want to help Trump. But, jesus the doors it would open are exactly what you need to take a Democracy to dictarorship.

You want more power as president just take it. Commit some crimes.

One of the judges on the lower court hearing this asked Trump's lawyer if the President should be allowed to kill a political opponent, and Trump's lawyer equivocated.

You have to have brain damage to want to grant that kind of power.

[Kevinroc]

Biden did an interview with Howard Stern. The NYT can continue coping.

[Mister Mets]

He says, on the day Biden is apparently live with Howard Stern.

Don't think any of us saw that coming.

It's an obvious enough move to go with a long-form interview with someone friendly who won't sandbag the president. Stern also has appeal to swing voters, has a reputation for integrity, and no longer seems to be seen as a controversial figure.

[Kevinroc]

Stern interviewing Biden is apparently quite the softball interview. That's not terribly surprising.

https://twitter.com/KBAndersen/statu...81822633382369

Listened to
@JoeBiden’s conversation with @HowardStern. *Total* softball interview, mostly about his personal life—but lovely, sweet, human, and Biden was terrific, consistently clear, detailed, charming, moving. Which was the point. SO much better than his opponent could do. 1/2

And 15 minutes on election, Trump, etc.

Biden: Gotta be careful what I say about the Supreme Court.
Stern: Why!? They’re nuts!

And Stern on debating Trump: “Just stand there & say over & over, ‘Can you find me 11,000 votes?’ You don’t get to run if you fixed an election!” 2/2

(But it's important to note that Stern isn't a journalist. He's an entertainer first and foremost.)

[Jack Dracula]

You need to show encouragement, even if it is for the bare minimum. Shame, really, but we're dealing with the GOP, the party of Geometrically Obtuse and Premature (mentally).

Ideally, we want to see praise and support from Republican voters.
GOP lawmakers need to see their constituents will come out for them if Trump vilifies them for doing their jobs.

[Jack Dracula]

Or just packing the Court. Get Schumer to ram a few nominees through the Senate. Then have those nominees give Biden immunity if any Republicans object. I mean, what's good for one side is good for the other, right?

Court packing goes against decades of established democratic norms and is typically a move made by authoritarians.
When both parties abandon established norms things usually don’t end well.

The Democrats are trying to preserve the democratic framework while the Republicans are trying to weaken it to get their agendas pushed forward for their big donors. Trump just wants to tear it down.

[Jack Dracula]

One issue with McCarthy is that Democrats felt that he was an unreliable negotiating partner. At the moment, it seems they trust Johnson to keep his word.

I'm trying to figure out the mechanics of a possible policy. One of the important things would be to make sure an EPA for misinformation never penalizes someone for telling the truth. You would need officials who are good at determining the line between something no one can reasonably believe and something that is a legitimate topic of contention.

Bad actors in politics will use whatever tools are at their disposal, but that's a further argument for restricting anyone's ability to abuse a new limitation.

Part of it might depend on a judge's sense of why it was included.

Was the evidence of women who weren't included in the charges relevant to establish patterns of behavior, to preempt an argument that he's not the type of guy who would do this?
Or was the evidence of women who weren't included in the charges meant to prejudice the jury, to suggest that Harvey Weinstein is a guy who really deserves to be punished, even if they're not sure he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of this particular crime.

Do we currently have a situation where none of our regulatory agencies haven’t or will never mistakenly prosecute someone for violations? No, we do not. Nevertheless we still employ these agencies because the situation warrants it. Remember in a previous comment when you alluded I was “Making the perfect the enemy of the good”?

Bad actors will find ways to abuse any situation. They currently abuse the trust of their constituents by lying to them which corrodes the entire public’s trust in our government and democracy in the long term.

[achilles]

Wow, that Noem creature is a monster, why is she not in prison? And why did she think revealing that would make people do anything other than want to toss her into a prison cell forever? She sounds like a psychopath, a real monster who is a danger to absolutely everyone. Perhaps they should look into unsolved serial killings in her area; she sounds like a prime candidate for that sort of thing.

[Tami]

Wow, that Noem creature is a monster, why is she not in prison? And why did she think revealing that would make people do anything other than want to toss her into a prison cell forever? She sounds like a psychopath, a real monster who is a danger to absolutely everyone. Perhaps they should look into unsolved serial killings in her area; she sounds like a prime candidate for that sort of thing.

Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book

But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.

She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.

By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.

Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.

Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.

When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.

Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.

Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.

At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.

“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”

[Mister Mets]

Wow, that Noem creature is a monster, why is she not in prison? And why did she think revealing that would make people do anything other than want to toss her into a prison cell forever? She sounds like a psychopath, a real monster who is a danger to absolutely everyone. Perhaps they should look into unsolved serial killings in her area; she sounds like a prime candidate for that sort of thing.

Is this about her comments about killing a dog that wouldn't behave? That was gross.

I've heard two theories on why she said something so stupid. The first is that she does not want to be Trump's running mate and is trying to Producers her way out of contention. The second is that she's trying to appeal to Trump by presenting herself as tough, especially against dogs, which is fine because Trump doesn't like dogs.

Do we currently have a situation where none of our regulatory agencies haven’t or will never mistakenly prosecute someone for violations? No, we do not. Nevertheless we still employ these agencies because the situation warrants it. Remember in a previous comment when you alluded I was “Making the perfect the enemy of the good”?

Bad actors will find ways to abuse any situation. They currently abuse the trust of their constituents by lying to them which corrodes the entire public’s trust in our government and democracy in the long term.

In the earlier conversation, the context was the extent to which Nazis were stopped with the fall of Hitler's Germany.

The process of going further to eliminate Nazis would likely have led to diminishing returns, as well as the potential that it wouldn't be as effective as what the civilized world ended up doing. We also can look at 80 years of history to see what happened.

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are constitutionally protected, so there is a difference between regulations that affect this and regulations that don't affect an enumerated right. A difference with second amendment issues is that questions on whether to restrict speech are often time-sensitive.

Bad actors likely taking advantage of anything at hand isn't an excuse to give them more a new tool to abuse.

In addition, it's not just about bad actors. People will legitimately believe they're obviously right and that no reasonable person can disagree with them on all sorts of topics. And some of these people would be the types who would fill this new agency. Sometimes they'll be wrong, and their ability to do so should be reduced.

One mechanism would be that if there's doubt, the decision should be in favor of free speech. Another mechanism is some kind of penalty if the government and its agents abuse any power.

Not sure how anybody could reasonably argue that it didn’t establish patterns of behaviour. And…of course..the women who came forward were there to be cross examined by the defence team.

I think it’s incredibly hard to argue that the trial judge made a clear error in law, or there was any reasonable reason to believe there had been a miscarriage of justice. I think UK appeal courts would almost certainly have backed the original judge. Though maybe I’m being optimistic there.

The legal case wasn't about patterns of behavior, but whether Harvey Weinstein was guilty of a specific crime.

This is probably an example of America taking the rights of the defendant very seriously.

[Kevinroc]

Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog – and goat – in new book

The fact that this doesn't instantly kill her chances of being Trump's VP nominee is a damning indictment of the Republican Party.