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

[Tendrin]

The national debt is one of those cases where we can claim both sides are just as bad as the other. Any surplus (if we ever see one again) will either go to new programs (if Dems are in charge) or to more tax cuts (if Repubs are in charge).

Note - just because I made that claim about one issue does not mean I think it's true for anything else, much less everything else.

This is definitely wrong.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

It's still not the same.
If those Democratic "programs give more money to those who don't have enough, it's going to get spent. Spent on products that have to be made, stored, shipped, sold. Creating employment.

The Kochs and Mercers are already spending as much as they'll spend.

And that ain’t a hell of a lot. Meanwhile, the GOP continues feeding everyone the baldfaced lie about trickle down economics which anyone with one working brain cell (which excludes Republican voters) clearly knows doesn’t work, never has worked and never will work.

[Malvolio]

Sidebar - This Jeanine Pirro lady really needs to be playing some sort of "Wicked Mother-In-Law" character on a telenovela somewhere. Whatever else she is doing is a complete waste of her actual talents.

I still say she reminds me of the schoolmarm from Blazing Saddles.

[Jack Dracula]

It's still not the same.
If those Democratic "programs give more money to those who don't have enough, it's going to get spent. Spent on products that have to be made, stored, shipped, sold. Creating employment.

The Kochs and Mercers are already spending as much as they'll spend.

Not true, the Kochs and Mercers will funnel more money into conservative think tanks and superpacs to ensure that their personal agendas are carried out while the average guys voice in Washington becomes weaker.

[TheInvisibleMan]

and for some BS reason, ICE has agents at the Super Bowl

under the guise of looking for counterfeit sports merchandise

Lying liars telling lies

[TheInvisibleMan]

Bernard Marks, a survivor of Auschwitz and Dachau, tells Sheriff Scott Jones and acting ICE director how he feels

https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2017/0...forum-sot.kovr

[Tami]

The Women Behind White Power

Few Americans know the name Cornelia Dabney Tucker, but the Jim Crow South would not have been the same without her.

After the Supreme Court issued its 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ending public-school segregation, Senator James Eastland, the cigar-smoking chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee, turned to Mrs. Tucker to help aid him in his two-pronged assault on the decision. While Mr. Eastland wielded his chairmanship to counter civil rights, delaying, for example, the 1967 vote to confirm Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice, he counted on Mrs. Tucker to organize grass-roots opposition. And organize she did: She marched outside the court, wrote letters and lobbied legislators, civic organizations, women’s groups and conservative coalitions to protest an “activist” judicial branch. All the while, she modeled how to emphasize issues like constitutional overreach and the “alarming march of communism” while playing down racial segregation.

Mr. Eastland today is remembered as one of the country’s leading opponents to integration; until 2012, the law library at the University of Mississippi was named after him. Mrs. Tucker, however, has faded into history.

[Iron Maiden]

I have been keeping pace of Jeanne Ives for some time. She's getting a profile before November, to be sure.

Saw clips of this ad on the Chicago New last night and I couldn't believe it. Disappointing to see that she is a West Point grad and an officer in the Army yet is so far right. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Trumpism has really brought the cockroaches out into the light. Time to turn the lights off and get out the RAID. She represents the 42nd District in Illinois which includes Naperville. I wonder if it is a result of gerrymandering since Naperville is pretty liberal as I recall. Maybe the Illinoisians here will bear that out

[GindyPosts]

Yes, the federal government was trying to tell the South how to live. They were telling them that maybe they should try to get through the day without having slaves do all the jobs they don't want to do.

You know; this is the core of the alt-right movement. They're too lazy to change or improve themselves, so they decide to bitch about how everyone else is getting breaks due to skin, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, whether they own a car, etc.. And how they are entitled to said breaks due to being white men.

[GindyPosts]

Some of you might want to go here and engage these folks in debate. WARNING: Some of the language is pretty rough.

[url]https://kiwifarms.net/threads/marvel

Nah, it's a waste of time. The only real complaint I have about Black Panther is if they'll just kill off Killmonger like the MCU has done with 92% of its villains. To them, there's not enough white on black murders, and that's what they hate about this movie.

The irony of ironies is that this group was created predominantly to follow an obnoxious and delusional person responsible for making a really awful fancomic about "electric hedgehog Pokémon" having sex and murdering enemies in a "kid friendly" setting. You'd think that their obsession with this one idjit would make them the very people they claim to despise.

[Mister Mets]

Saw clips of this ad on the Chicago New last night and I couldn't believe it. Disappointing to see that she is a West Point grad and an officer in the Army yet is so far right. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Trumpism has really brought the cockroaches out into the light. Time to turn the lights off and get out the RAID. She represents the 42nd District in Illinois which includes Naperville. I wonder if it is a result of gerrymandering since Naperville is pretty liberal as I recall. Maybe the Illinoisians here will bear that out

Gerrymandering in favor of Republicans would be hard in Illinois considering they held the Governor's mansion and the state legislature during 2011 when decisions were made following the 2010 census.

[GindyPosts]

I have never understood the concept myself and have felt that way for 40+ years. At least when I heard these debates for the very first time back then, I was still in elementary school.

When I grew up, I predominantly watched Fox Kids, where the X-Men & Spider-Man cartoons were aired, so I had that kind of ingraining.

And, while I think DC is cool as well, I just felt that Marvel characters lived more realistic lives and then DC characters. Like, the difference between Iron Man & Batman is Tony Stark usually has to worry about shareholders and board meetings and public relations (which was one reason, along with the death of War Machine, why he sided with that registration act in the original Civil War), while Bruce Wayne's company is typically the biggest, most successful enterprise in all of Gotham. It's not a knock on DC, per se, but there's a reason why DC has gone through two total retcons in the past decade.

Plus, I think Cyborg is a pretty boring character in DC. He's just your general, "Aw, shucks. I'm happy to be here" kind of character. It's kind of like how WWE typically books their African American performers; as either happy-go-lucky dancers or disgruntled guys (I know there's exceptions; when the New Day turned heel, they were delusional as hell but also were blessed with the freedom to do what they want as heels, and R-Truth as a villain was just insane).

[Mister Mets]

I want to step even farther back and look at what the Republican argument with the memo is. They are saying that because an investigation was partially funded by Democrats then nothing turned up in the investigation can be used against a Republican, that the information in inherently faulty because it was a Democrat that said it. What that is is nothing short of accusing Democrats of forging evidence to trick the courts into going after political opponents. What the actual f*ck kind of argument is that even supposed to be?!

Vox covers it.

2) The core of the Nunes argument
The FBI says it got its evidence from several sources, and typically FISA warrant applications require corroboration of the information.

But the Nunes memo implies the case was primarily built on the Steele dossier — and points out that it was funded partially by a law firm on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

And here’s the important part: Nunes says investigators misled the judge by not saying they were relying on the Steele dossier.

I'll note that I'm not opposed to the FBI investigation, but one argument would be that the process requires some corroboration in the beginning, and it would be fishy if it started with one potentially biased source.

My theory on Republican opposition is that the Russia stuff isn't too bad, but Republican leaders figure there's shadiness in the background of a major figure in the 1980s and 1990s New York real estate market that could get out with an expansive investigation, in addition for the potential for Trump to commit perjury when under oath.

[Gray Lensman]

Vox covers it.



I'll note that I'm not opposed to the FBI investigation, but one argument would be that the process requires some corroboration in the beginning, and it would be fishy if it started with one potentially biased source.

My theory on Republican opposition is that the Russia stuff isn't too bad, but Republican leaders figure there's shadiness in the background of a major figure in the 1980s and 1990s real estate market that could get out with an expansive investigation, in addition for the potential for Trump to commit perjury when under oath.

I find it funny that the article's conclusion is that the theory behind Yo Memo is more farfetched than Uranium One. I didn't think anything outside of something based on an acid trip could be more outlandish than that.

[JCAll]

I find it funny that the article's conclusion is that the theory behind Yo Memo is more farfetched than Uranium One. I didn't think anything outside of something based on an acid trip could be more outlandish than that.

It's the kind of theory that only makes sense to people that own a large amount of pushpins and red yarn.