All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[PaulBullion]

Sure.

That said...

Firefighters were hurt, and someone died. With someone being hurt as an incredibly likely possibility, you'd think he could have just not mentioned his building and how well it was built.

You're talking about a guy who looked into a camera and called for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's emails.

[worstblogever]

Trump Tower has caught on fire this year without burning down entirely, and all I can discern from that is he sucks at everything, including arson.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I have a take similar to Stephanie Miller on this. She doesn't like advertiser boycotts because she knows that she has many of the same advertisers as people like Laura Ingraham or Sean Hannity, so a boycott hurts her, too. I also don't want people like Ingraham or Hannity taken off the air. I want them to answer for their stupidity. Make them accountable.

Losing their high profile TV jobs is how assholes like Ingraham and Hannity are held accountable in my book.

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

Democrats’ Chances Of Taking Over The House Just Got Better, Per New Forecast

The outlook is rosy despite Donald Trump’s rise in the polls. Even though the Dems have made plenty of mistakes since Trump took office, this is good news.

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Rep. Ted Lieu Urges Trump To Keep Pruitt As Symbol Of Administration’s Corruption

That should help the surging “Dem wave,” the California Democrat quipped. I agree with that assessment.

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Report: Trump Sons’ Private Trip To Dubai Cost Taxpayers $73,000

Costs covered hotel rooms for Secret Service, says CBS. And not so much as a peep from Republicans who would've screamed bloody murder if the Obamas did something like that.

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Trump’s Retail Website Only Pays Sales Taxes In 2 States. Amazon Pays Taxes In 45.

Is TrumpStore.com the real “no tax” company? Of course it is! The media should blast this story from the rooftops.

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Former Mexican President Vicente Fox Promotes Donald Trump-Trolling T-shirt

[Tendrin]

The Greitens mess continues.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...cid=spartandhp

he wife of Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) told a special committee of state lawmakers that the husband of the woman who claims to have had an affair with Greitens cyberstalked her and contacted her parents.
In a letter to lawmakers obtained by the Washington Examiner, Sheena Greitens alleged that the husband of a hairdresser who says she had an affair with Greitens conducted an "escalating campaign of harassment and spying" against the Greitens family.

"When I didn't respond to his anonymous emails, he sent me a letter," Sheena Greitens says in the letter.
"When a letter to me didn't produce the desired response, he contacted my parents. When letters didn't satisfy him, he made his accusations public on Twitter. And finally, when targeting our family on social media didn't fulfill his agenda, he secretly recorded his wife admitting to the affair and began shopping the audio tape to news outlets."

Seems like she's all in with smears. What a disaster.

[Mister Mets]

It's a thinly veiled threat, not a cognizant point in a civil discussion. It's a statement that says, "I think your death should be legal and just because you have a view point that is different than mine." And it's a point that highlighted by the fact that he didn't just say that he thinks the death penalty should be the punishment for abortion if it were illegal but that he specifically stated that they should be hung. There are ways to have a discourse about a divisive topic, and that isn't it.

I don't think it's meant as a threat, nor is he saying that someone's death should be legal because they have a different view point.

He does believe that abortion is very harmful. If someone wants something that is currently legal to be illegal, it doesn't meant they want people to go to jail for having different viewpoints. To use an extreme historical example, abolitionists didn't want slaveholders to go to jail because they had a view point that was different.

Williamson's point on hanging was more on the death penalty. He said he's “kind of squishy on capital punishment in general” but that if we're going to have it, it should not be sanitized and "antiseptic."

Nobody said there was one.

Just that he is incredibly tone deaf to say that at that time and that place. If he wants black people to vote for him in the primaries, the that is something he needs to look out for.

This is exactly the kind of thing that bit him in the ass in 2016.

So it's worth criticizing him when he's not saying anything incorrect. Wouldn't an understanding of why the party lost be better going forward, and doesn't that require a willingness to discuss things like losses in legislative elections?

Talk about defending stupidity.

Maher sticks to his principles even when it involves something unpopular and someone he doesn't like personally.

The Greitens mess continues.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...cid=spartandhp

Seems like she's all in with smears. What a disaster.

The accusations she's making seem to be verifiable based on written records, so how do you know it's a smear?

[Tendrin]

The accusations she's making seem to be verifiable based on written records, so how do you know it's a smear?

It's certainly *possible* that they're true. Given everything else that's gone on with Governor Ball Gag, however, I'm inclined to believe otherwise. Also, how on earth does a hairdresser 'spy' on the frigging Governor?

[thwhtGuardian]

I don't think it's meant as a threat, nor is he saying that someone's death should be legal because they have a different view point.

He does believe that abortion is very harmful. If someone wants something that is currently legal to be illegal, it doesn't meant they want people to go to jail for having different viewpoints. To use an extreme historical example, abolitionists didn't want slaveholders to go to jail because they had a view point that was different.

Williamson's point on hanging was more on the death penalty. He said he's “kind of squishy on capital punishment in general” but that if we're going to have it, it should not be sanitized and "antiseptic."

So it's worth criticizing him when he's not saying anything incorrect. Wouldn't an understanding of why the party lost be better going forward, and doesn't that require a willingness to discuss things like losses in legislative elections?

Maher sticks to his principles even when it involves something unpopular and someone he doesn't like personally.

The accusations she's making seem to be verifiable based on written records, so how do you know it's a smear?

If he were a policy maker in the Senate or House of Representatives talking about a law in abstract you may have had a point but when we're talking about an open and rational discussion, which is what a publication like the Atlantic is supposed to represent, yes it very much is a threat not a measured and rational point that can be discussed further.

Person A says, " I believe having an abortion is a personal choice, and should not be intruded upon for reasons x,y and z" then that's rational and can be debated back and forth but if person B's response is, "If abortion were made illegal tomorrow I think those who make that "personal choice" should be tried, found guilty and then hung to death." then there's no discussion taking place after that as indeed, contrary to what you put forward, that response does say,"Your view is wrong, and you deserve to die for it." to the person on the other side, and you can't reason with that, there is no rational response to that so when you print that message you're not opening up the discussion you are seen as endorsing a view that does nothing but shut down discussion and if that's not the tone you want your publican to present and the person in question won't walk it back then you fire them, and it seems that's what we've seen happen here.

[Mr. Mastermind]

You don't get to decide how the black people in the audience heard it, though. The reactions shows it upset them, which makes it tone deaf.

They also heard it in context of knowing Sanders once thought a primary challenge to Obama would be a good idea for Democrats.

Sanders wanted a primary challenge because Obama was and is a centre right politician who considers George Bush Sr to be a major inspiration for his foreign policy and has very little in common with Sanders or anyone remotely left wing. Sanders should be proud of his call to primary him. Sanders also had strong criticisms of the Clinton and every other right wing Democract administration.

Sanders does understand that you can’t be too critical of Obama so he’s toned it down recently but you’re attacking him for having decency and principles here.

[Tendrin]

ICE is evil.

Xilong Zhu, 27, who came from China in 2009 to attend college in the United States, enlisted in the Army and was caught in an immigration dragnet involving a fake university set up by the Department of Homeland Security to catch brokers of fraudulent student visas.
Zhu paid tuition to the University of Northern New Jersey, created by DHS to appear as a real school, long enough to ship to basic training using the legal status gained from a student visa issued to attend that school.
Then ICE found him and asked the Army to release him for alleged visa fraud. He left Fort Benning, Ga., on Nov. 10, 2016, in handcuffs as an honorably discharged veteran. He was detained for three weeks and released.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.8df30616954a

ante Atkins Retweeted Kyle Griffin
This is insane. DHS set up a fake school. Noncitizens were duped into enrolling. Then ICE began deportations against them for fraudulent student visas, including someone with an honorable discharge.

[mathew101281]

This is going to be the next gun control battle right here.

[Jack Dracula]

I think the point Bill Maher was doing a rather poor job of making is that boycotting sponsors in order to get a tv personality fired is a sword that cuts both ways.
If it becomes commonplace eventually nobody will dare to say anything inflammatory, whether true or not.

[Kirby101]

I think the point Bill Maher was doing a rather poor job of making is that boycotting sponsors in order to get a tv personality fired is a sword that cuts both ways.
If it becomes commonplace eventually nobody will dare to say anything inflammatory, whether true or not.

Except the Right has been shouting Boycott! for decades, including Maher's first show. Now that it has traction with the mainstream (I won't say this Ingrahm boycott is by the Left, it is by the decent) the Right wants to call a truce on it.
Good luck.

[Mister Mets]

If he were a policy maker in the Senate or House of Representatives talking about a law in abstract you may have had a point but when we're talking about an open and rational discussion, which is what a publication like the Atlantic is supposed to represent, yes it very much is a threat not a measured and rational point that can be discussed further.

Person A says, " I believe having an abortion is a personal choice, and should not be intruded upon for reasons x,y and z" then that's rational and can be debated back and forth but if person B's response is, "If abortion were made illegal tomorrow I think those who make that "personal choice" should be tried, found guilty and then hung to death." then there's no discussion taking place after that as indeed, contrary to what you put forward, that response does say,"Your view is wrong, and you deserve to die for it." to the person on the other side, and you can't reason with that, there is no rational response to that so when you print that message you're not opening up the discussion you are seen as endorsing a view that does nothing but shut down discussion and if that's not the tone you want your publican to present and the person in question won't walk it back then you fire them, and it seems that's what we've seen happen here.

You're exaggerating his views a bit which is really unnecessary when someone's talking about an item that's already quite controversial: capital punishment for abortion. It would be literally impossible for abortion to be made into a death penalty offense in the space of one day.

The elucidation of a viewpoint isn't meant to shut down discussion, and that was not the context in which he ever made the statement.

Colin Fridersdorf of the Atlantic explained why he thinks his bosses made the wrong move.

Cathy Young, who is especially clear-eyed about the uncertainty around Williamson’s exact position, probes all the nuances for those so inclined, but as best I can tell, his position is this: if he were writing the laws, abortion would be treated as homicide but homicides would not be punished by death; whereas in places where the law did punish homicide by death, he’d nevertheless favor charging abortions as homicides.

Does he want to execute women who have abortions? No. Would he charge them with homicide even knowing that the state would kill them were they convicted? Yes.

Even if I am mistaken, it doesn’t matter for our purposes, both because I vehemently reject every plausible interpretation of Williamson’s position, and because what I dissent from today concerns matters that transcend the abortion debate, or anything I might believe as a conflicted civil libertarian who deeply respects the emotions that it evokes among the “pro-life” and “pro-choice.”

More specifically, I dissent from the way that Williamson was dragged, regardless of his position. That dragging would be a small matter in isolation, but it is of a piece with burgeoning, shortsighted modes of discourse that are corroding what few remaining ties bind the American center. Should that center fail to hold, anarchy will be loosed.

And I dissent from the termination that followed—a matter for which responsibility must fall on The Atlantic, not on Williamson’s critics, even those critics who most egregiously distorted his words or their prominence in his journalism.

What about the mode of Williamson’s dragging alarmed me?

Word of Williamson’s hiring was greeted by some as if by mercenary opposition researchers determined to isolate the most outlying and offensive thoughts that he ever uttered, no matter how marginal to his years of journalistic work; to gleefully amplify them, sometimes in highly distorting ways, in a manner designed to stoke maximum upset and revulsion; and to frame them as if they said everything one needed to know about his character. To render him toxic was their purpose.

That mode was poison when reserved for cabinet nominees; it is poison when applied to journalistic hires; and it will be poison if, next week or year, it comes for you.

Insofar as opinion journalists indulged in it, the mode is also a professional failure. The best illustration of why that is so requires reading a 2015 post by Williamson where he reflects on his “unplanned” conception by parents who chose to give him up for adoption. “It is not as though I do not sympathize with women who feel that they are not ready for a child,” he wrote. And later, he added, “It is impossible for me to know whether the woman who gave birth to me would have chosen abortion if that had been a more readily available alternative in 1972. I would not bet my life, neither the good nor the bad parts of it, on her not choosing it.”

A journalist plumbing the depths of Williamson’s personal archive with the intention of fully informing their readers would surely note that context in their renderings.

How many who dragged him noted it at all?

And then the termination: I worry that the firing was a failure of “the spirit of generosity,” a value that The Atlantic has long touted as a core value. I know that it raised thorny, unresolved questions about what exactly is verboten at the magazine. I fear it will make it harder for the publication to contribute to the sort of public sphere where the right and the left mutually benefit from fraught engagement. And I expect many of my colleagues will bear the burden of being dragged in ways that opportunists on the right and left will now take to be effective.

Finally, I worry that the dragging and the firing were failures of tolerance.

That virtue is unfashionable these days. And I believe that those who minimize, dismiss, or reject it underestimate its value and the potential consequences of its atrophy, even as many who value tolerance have lost the words or the stomach to defend it.

I have not.

I believe that justice is best advanced, that repressive outcomes are best avoided, and that vulnerable groups benefit disproportionately from a polity in which the public sphere is characterized by tolerance, forbearance, deliberate cross-ideological engagement within moderating institutions, and attempts at moral suasion rooted in love. At the group level, my sort of public sphere serves as a bulwark against the threat of authoritarianism that targets minorities; on an individual level, I believe engagement within it causes many to soften their most extreme views.

And I draw a distinction between the position that a given belief “is not something that belongs anywhere in the mainstream,” and the crucially distinct belief that a person who holds any such position should be totally excluded from mainstream institutions, even if their participation in them never broaches the outlying view.

The latter approach fuels balkanization.

Those judgment calls are informed by my experience as a civil libertarian. Over the years, I’ve oft returned to subjects like the evil of torture; the misery inflicted by insufficiently constrained drone strikes; the outrage of Stop and Frisk; the barbaric practice of throwing humans in cages for possessing marijuana; and the carnage wrought by catastrophic wars of choice. Engaging on those subjects quickly cures one of the fantasy that any person’s antagonists are simply deplorable and irredeemable—most of us want good outcomes as surely as anyone.

Civil libertarians also quickly learn that morally repugnant policies cannot be stigmatized out of the mainstream; that moral grandstanding cannot substitute for persuasion; and that Twitter mobs seldom choose the objects of their ire wisely. Marc Thiessen acts as a regular apologist for torture—yet Bari Weiss was dragged for a micro-aggression in a well-intended tweet congratulating an ice-skater. Don’t drag Thiessen either. Purifying media institutions of beliefs that enjoy a measure of mainstream popularity, or of people most Americans do not regard as beyond the pale, merely guarantees that the terrain where fraught subjects are inevitably contested shifts to Reddit or Joe Rogan’s podcast.

In an era without gatekeepers, purity-seekers threaten the relevance of journalistic institutions. And forcing people toward fringes, even in those rare cases where they earnestly want to more closely engage the mainstream, threatens civil society.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Except the Right has been shouting Boycott! for decades, including Maher's first show. Now that it has traction with the mainstream (I won't say this Ingrahm boycott is by the Left, it is by the decent) the Right wants to call a truce on it.
Good luck.

Agreed. The right wants it both ways, to boycott anything they don’t like, then play the victim card and cry foul when their favorites are in the crosshairs. Now that the Decent are putting their collective feet down and demanding scumbags like Ingraham be called to task for their reprehensible behavior, conservatives are running scared. Speaking of Laura Ignoramus, I heard she lost a sponsor while she was on her “vacation” last week, something I’m sure is making the suits at Faux News take notice and maybe, just maybe wonder if keeping her around is good for the bottom line.

[Mister Mets]

ICE is evil.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.8df30616954a

What should Immigration and Customs enforcement do about student visa fraud?

Except the Right has been shouting Boycott! for decades, including Maher's first show. Now that it has traction with the mainstream (I won't say this Ingrahm boycott is by the Left, it is by the decent) the Right wants to call a truce on it.
Good luck.

Was your argument against the boycotts when the right was calling for them an argument that the cause was wrong, or did it also involve arguments against boycotts?

I did grow up with the understanding that boycotts were called by silly conservatives (who protested Dogma, Ellen's lesbian episode, Teletubbies, etc. but that might just be due to the period being the exception for whatever reason (liberals picking less fights during the Clinton administration?), since there were plenty of left-wing boycotts before, and there have been plenty since.