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

[worstblogever]

Considering how thorough Mueller seems to have been so far, I wouldn't doubt that he has already thought of this. I wonder if the relevant AG's are either already in the loop, or he just has everything in a neat little package to send them the moment any federal pardons hit.

New York A.G. Schneiderman is in the loop enough to follow the news, and we know he's more than willing to take on the Trump Foundation members. He went after them on Trump University, and made them settle out of court for $25 million in November of 2016. All signs are he's ready to put a foot in Trump's ass again, if need be.

The Virginia and Maryland A.G.s both haven't even waited on Mueller's investigation. They've already filed corruption charges against Trump.

[Tami]

Do you guys think this is the 1st time Russia has influenced one of our elections? Do we ever try to influence theirs?

They may have tried in the past, but usually without much success. This si the largest, most aggressive operation Russia has ever done. It's the difference between a minor skirmish and an all out military campaign. The difference between Charlottesville and Pearl Harbor.

I can't say the U.S. has ever tried to influence theirs, though consider that Putin has been controlling Russian government for years, maybe decades. Putin apparently was convinced that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was trying to overthrow him when she made comments in support of the protestors who were trying to oppose Putin at the time. Which was a pretty paranoid opinion since many countries were also showing support for the anti-Putin Protestors. Clinton was just the most visible on doing it.

Still, Clinton's comments at that time is extremely different than what the Russians did in 2016 and are still trying to do.

[Tami]

New York A.G. Schneiderman is in the loop enough to follow the news, and we know he's more than willing to take on the Trump Foundation members. He went after them on Trump University, and made them settle out of court for $25 million in November of 2016. All signs are he's ready to put a foot in Trump's ass again, if need be.

The Virginia and Maryland A.G.s both haven't even waited on Mueller's investigation. They've already filed corruption charges against Trump.

As a general rule, States usually go second in deference to Federal Criminal investigations. As long as they don't step on each other's toes, don't see why they shouldn't take preemptive steps towards criminal charges.

[Kirby101]

Do you guys think this is the 1st time Russia has influenced one of our elections? Do we ever try to influence theirs?

Probably not. But it is the first time a major party candidate collaborated with that interference in order to win. It is the first time a major party candidate made overtures to the Russians for their help. It is the first time a major party candidate owed their business to the Russians.

[GindyPosts]

157 human beings died in Arpaio's jail and concentration camp. 75 of them were listed as "unknown circumstances." Of the remainder 39 were labeled as "suicides." Of the remaining 43 two died from being denied medical treatment while in custody. One from a stomach ulcer. For the crime of riding a bike on the wrong side of the street, He died in pain on the floor of a cell coughing up his own blood. The other was a woman who fell into a diabetic coma after being denied insulin.
Arpaio cost the taxpayers of his city over $140,000,000 in lawsuits and used his departments money and resources to investigate and harass two judges and their families for the "crime" of trying to make him do his job according to the laws he had sworn to uphold.
And after all of that he still would not stop harassing and torturing people entrusted to his care. In fact he repeatedly bragged about it to anyone who would listen.
"Poor old Joe"
That's the man you're defending. That's the man the idiot you voted for pardoned and called a "good guy."
Of course he's white so he gets a free pass.

The man refuses to speak ill of Fearless Leader. It's a lost cause.

[BeastieRunner]

Moscow Confirms Receiving Email From Trump Organization Lawyer: Michael Cohen claims he sent email in January 2016 to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the topic wasn’t raised with Russian President Vladimir Putin because business requests that come through the Kremlin’s public press email address aren’t considered.


No business dealings in Russia, eh Trump?

[Tami]

I Ignored Trump News for a Week. Here’s What I Learned.

It wasn’t my aim to stick my head in the sand. I did not quit the news. Instead, I spent as much time as I normally do online (all my waking hours), but shifted most of my energy to looking for Trump-free zones.

My point: I wanted to see what I could learn about the modern news media by looking at how thoroughly Mr. Trump had subsumed it. In one way, my experiment failed: I could find almost no Trump-free part of the press.

But as the week wore on, I discovered several truths about our digital media ecosystem. Coverage of Mr. Trump may eclipse that of any single human being ever. The reasons have as much to do with him as the way social media amplifies every big story until it swallows the world. And as important as covering the president may be, I began to wonder if we were overdosing on Trump news, to the exclusion of everything else.

President Trump is inescapable.

The new president doesn’t simply dominate national and political news. During my week of attempted Trump abstinence, I noticed something deeper: He has taken up semipermanent residence on every outlet of any kind, political or not. He is no longer just the message. In many cases, he has become the medium, the ether through which all other stories flow.

[BeastieRunner]

More on Trump Tower Moscow.

Kremlin says it got the Trump Tower email but didn’t respond.

[Mister Mets]

As a general rule, States usually go second in deference to Federal Criminal investigations. As long as they don't step on each other's toes, don't see why they shouldn't take preemptive steps towards criminal charges.

The extent to which state and federal prosecutors can coordinate efforts in order to circumvent potential pardons is relatively untested (IE- Can state prosecutors offer lighter sentences in exchange for testimony to Meuller?)

The difficulty in navigating this would of course be Trump's fault, but it is a potential complication.

157 human beings died in Arpaio's jail and concentration camp. 75 of them were listed as "unknown circumstances." Of the remainder 39 were labeled as "suicides." Of the remaining 43 two died from being denied medical treatment while in custody. One from a stomach ulcer. For the crime of riding a bike on the wrong side of the street, He died in pain on the floor of a cell coughing up his own blood. The other was a woman who fell into a diabetic coma after being denied insulin.
Arpaio cost the taxpayers of his city over $140,000,000 in lawsuits and used his departments money and resources to investigate and harass two judges and their families for the "crime" of trying to make him do his job according to the laws he had sworn to uphold.
And after all of that he still would not stop harassing and torturing people entrusted to his care. In fact he repeatedly bragged about it to anyone who would listen.
"Poor old Joe"
That's the man you're defending. That's the man the idiot you voted for pardoned and called a "good guy."
Of course he's white so he gets a free pass.

He hasn't been prosecuted, let alone convicted, for any of that.

[Mister Mets]

Do you guys think this is the 1st time Russia has influenced one of our elections? Do we ever try to influence theirs?

There had been efforts by the Soviet Union to interfere in presidential elections, although in most cases the canddiates approached (Adlai Stevenson in 1960; Hubert Humphrey in 1968) told them to go to hell. They ran a smear campaign against Scoop Jackson in 1976 when he was running for the Democratic primary.

http://www.politifact.com/north-caro...ies-tried-int/

There is a 1983 memo detailing efforts by Ted Kennedy to reach out to the Soviet Union (at a time when he was seen as a plausible potential presidential candidate) though the evidence is spurious, and has been exaggerated in some of the coverage in the right-wing media.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact...eeting-never-/

Joel Osteen faces criticism on social media for closing Houston megachurch's doors amid Harvey


This dude has a MEGA CHURCH, that building is huge.
But I bet he'll take that money though...

This story appears to be exaggerated.

On Monday afternoon, I spoke with Don Iloff, a spokesman for Lakewood (and Osteen’s brother-in-law). Contrary to rumors online, Iloff said, Lakewood was not “closed”—it simply had not opened as a formal shelter, in large part because the city had not asked them to do so as part of its extensive preparation for the hurricane. Six or eight staff members had remained on site during the flood, and they had been instructed to open the doors to anyone who needed help. “We are open,” Iloff said. “Anyone who comes there, we’ll let in.”

Of course, if reporters have to call a spokesman to find out whether a church’s doors are open, it isn’t exactly extending hospitality to strangers. But despite Lakewood’s size, there are several factors that would have made it an imperfect venue to serve as a major overnight shelter during the hurricane’s worst days: It has no showers and no kitchen, its parking garage is underground, and it is located right off Interstate 69, which suffered major flooding. Significantly, the building is known to be prone to flooding. Then home to the Houston Rockets, the Compaq Center experienced major flooding during Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, for example. At the time, Lakewood Church occupied a large building in northeast Houston, which it opened up as a shelter for 5,000 people.

In some cases this week, the city of Houston reached out to specific churches and asked them to register as temporary shelters, but Iloff said Lakewood was not asked to do so. (He said the church focused on other efforts, including mobilizing its large volunteer force.) Some other churches who decided to throw open their doors as unofficial impromptu shelters quickly found themselves overwhelmed. When First Baptist Church North Houston opened as a makeshift shelter, they quickly ran out of food and water for the 300 people assembled on their gym floor, and the toilets backed up. Obviously Lakewood is much bigger than First Baptist, but it’s still not as easy as it sounds for a church to simply declare itself a safe, functional shelter. Iloff said Lakewood installed floodgates after it took over the Compaq Center 2003, but was still nervous about the building’s propensity to flood, which would be disastrous if it were filled with people. As of Monday, the water was about a foot away from the floodgates, and much more rain was expected throughout the week.

Even if Lakewood’s decision to focus on less visible flood-relief efforts made sense in the moment, its messaging was disastrous. The church's claim that it was "inaccessible" looked to skeptical readers like a bald-faced lie, easily refuted by a few snapshots. Osteen’s relentlessly chipper Twitter feed, a stream of inspirational quotes, mentioned Harvey only once over the weekend. Osteen tweeted that he would pray for victims, but did not mention making financial or logistical plans to help his suffering city.

Osteen is a “scapegoat” both within Houston and among mainstream evangelical Christians, said Kate Shellnutt, an associate editor at Christianity Today who has been reporting on local churches’ responses to Harvey. (She previously lived in Houston for several years as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle.) “Any criticism you want to lob at Christianity, people see an angle with Joel Osteen,” she said. He’s rich, he’s slick, and and he’s a suspiciously adept fundraiser. He preaches a message of glorified self-help (annoying theologically conservative Christians) that implicitly blames the poor for their troubles (annoying theological progressives). In other words, no one likes Joel Osteen—except the millions of people who do. On Tuesday, the church had changed gears. “Lakewood’s doors are open,” Osteen tweeted. The Houston Chronicle reported that about 50 people had been admitted to register for shelter by Tuesday afternoon, and the church was also accepting formula and diaper donations on behalf of the city. But this felt like too little, too late: the fact remained that while the community had been actively suffering, Lakewood and its wealthy pastor looked indifferent and remote.

[TheInvisibleMan]

because the state enabled him

THAT's WHY

a man died, because he was thrown in jail for riding a bike on the wrong side of the word

and no one was held responsible

how does that not compute with you?

o wait, he was brown so we're not really humans to you anyway

[Malvolio]

I Ignored Trump News for a Week. Here’s What I Learned.

This is why Trump will not resign. He doesn't like the job of being President, but he does like that as President, he is not only the center of attention, he is the center of EVERYONE'S attention.

[Carabas]

Do you guys think this is the 1st time Russia has influenced one of our elections? Do we ever try to influence theirs?

The issue is not that Russia tried to influence your elections. That is normal. The issue is that the Republican candidate was just fine with that, and was probably in on it.

[Carabas]

He hasn't been prosecuted, let alone convicted, for any of that.

That does not make the facts any less real.

[master of read]

well, got our internet back. we are still alive.