All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[shooshoomanjoe]

Twitter thread:

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1135053672071749632

What I find strange about this is that back in 2017 Facebook stated it would fight misinformation yet they didn't take down that video.

[PwrdOn]

What I find strange about this is that back in 2017 Facebook stated it would fight misinformation yet they didn't take down that video.

It's a pipe dream to expect Facebook to self-regulate, they need to be broken up now before they become too big to take down. One of the few points of bipartisan agreement these days is that social media is cancer and needs to be controlled, why exactly are we still hoping that they police themselves?

[mr_crisp]

It's really just about the babies and not at all about control and terrorizing women.

https://www.boredpanda.com/man-photo...mpaign=organic

Awareness and truth at the end of a stick?

[worstblogever]

In 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published profiles of U.S. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, a former pastor who has referred to same sex marriage as “an attack upon the family” while campaigning for office, thinks being gay is a choice, refers to climate change a myth, spoke at length about his frustration of endangered birds receiving more protection from the government than fetuses, blamed the Sandy Hook Massacre on “welfare moms overmedicating their kids to get more benefits” and n June of 2016 against a measure that would have made it illegal for firearms transfers to people who were suspected terrorists on the “no fly list”. His Christian principles lead him to believe migrant children should be thrown out of the country because in the Bible, being kind to strangers doesn’t specify that they should be citizens of the country you live in. Seriously, this guy is such a fanatic when he was asked about the national debt, his solution was to pray that it gets better. He currently is pushing for “religious freedom” legislation because he defines no being allowed to discriminate against gay people as “being targeted for his faith”, claiming they are the real victims in a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” situation. Lankford’s also prolifically absent in Congress when it comes time to vote, as he missed almost 10% of them from his final term serving in the House. Near the end of our 2015 entry about Lankford, we noted he had found himself amongst the #47Traitors, for writing a letter to the leaders of Iran trying to undermine the peace treaty that the Obama administration had arranged with them, and was campaigning to push for national “religious freedom” laws to allow for the discrimination of LGBT citizens and prevent them from having equal rights based on the supposed faith of who was discriminating against them. He has also voted to defund Planned Parenthood, voted to maintain the gun rights of people on the no-fly list so they could procure firearms for mass shootings, voted to try and block Syrian refugees from being resettled in the United States, and refused to consider Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court because “he isn’t conservative enough”, waiting a year to vote for Neil Gorsuch.

Since we last updated our annual look at James Lankford, he has made several troubling votes, including continuing to vote for every Trump administration nominee, no matter how unqualified or utterly appalling (including torture maven Gina Haspel to be the head of the COA), he voted against disaster relief funding for victims of Hurricane Harvey back in October of 2017, and in December of 2017, he voted for the big GOP Tax Scam.

For all that party line bulls***, does Sen. Lankford get any love from the White House. HA! No. Trump doesn’t even know his name, he calls him “Tom”. And yet… he still blindly supports him, by doing things like vote for Donald Trump’s supposed “national emergency” on the U.S./Mexico border.

We’ll continue to monitor Sen. Lankford’s activities, because he is, quite frankly, a partisan twit.

[SquirrelMan]

I'm hoping the people judged are harshest are those who were mistaken about fascism coming to the US.

Donald Trump is like a 20th-century fascist, says London Mayor

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has compared the language used by Donald Trump to rally his supporters to that of “the fascists of the 20th century” in an explosive intervention before the US president’s state visit to London that begins on Monday.

Writing in the Observer, Khan condemned the red-carpet treatment being afforded to Trump who, with his wife Melania, will be a guest of the Queen during his three-day stay, which is expected to provoke massive protests in the capital on Tuesday.

Khan said: “President Donald Trump is just one of the most egregious examples of a growing global threat. The far right is on the rise around the world, threatening our hard-won rights and freedoms and the values that have defined our liberal, democratic societies for more than 70 years.

...

“This is a man who also tried to exploit Londoners’ fears following a horrific terrorist attack on our city, amplified the tweets of a British far-right racist group, denounced as fake news the robust scientific evidence warning of the dangers of climate change, and is now trying to interfere shamelessly in the Conservative party leadership race by backing Boris Johnson because he believes it would enable him to gain an ally in Number 10 for his divisive agenda.”

[aja_christopher]

"China releases official document that blames America for the trade war"

"“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” Wang said in English, echoing language used by officials on talks between the United Kingdom and European Union over Brexit. He added that both sides need to take a step back and argued that the countries should adhere to the direction agreed upon at the meeting of Trump and Xi in Argentina late last year.

The White House said the U.S. agreed not raise tariffs if a deal with China was reached on its most serious complaints, including China’s practice of forcing foreign companies to hand over their technology in exchange for access to China’s domestic market — so-called forced technology transfers.

In March, China passed a foreign investment law which it claims will improve intellectual property protection and prevent forced technology transfer. The law is set to take effect next year. Beijing says it has taken steps to allow greater foreign access to its financial and auto industries.

Especially since the latest round of U.S. tariffs, however, Chinese officials have been more vocal in stating they believe that America’s primary motive is to prevent China from growing stronger.

Increasingly, officials in Beijing talk of bracing for a dispute that will last decades."

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/02/chin...trade-war.html

[worstblogever]

Y'know, maybe we should mention Trump just had another lawyer quit on him. Emmet Flood, the best chance Trump had on his legal team against impeachment bailed yesterday.

[Kirby101]

Y'know, maybe we should mention Trump just had another lawyer quit on him. Emmet Flood, the best chance Trump had on his legal team against impeachment bailed yesterday.

Flood was replaced by his current lawyer, William Barr. Since Barr is acting as his personal lawyer not the AG.

[aja_christopher]

"Fox News stands by Laura Ingraham after she defends white supremacist, other extremists on her prime time show"

"Fox News on Friday afternoon stood by Laura Ingraham after she defended a white supremacist and several other fringe people who have been banned or disciplined by large social media companies.

Ingraham's defense of the extremists on her prime time Fox show "The Ingraham Angle" came during a segment on Thursday about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's criticism of Facebook for not removing a video doctored to make it appear she was drunk and slurring her words. Ingraham said calls for Facebook to remove the video were a "pretext to be able to silence voices."

Later during the segment, Ingraham displayed a graphic showing images of people she characterized as "prominent voices censored on social media."

"Facebook now, what do they monitor? Quote, hate? That sounds good until you realize hate," Ingraham said. "And these are some of the people they've shunned."

"It's people who believe in border enforcement, people who believe in national sovereignty," Ingraham added.

The graphic included Paul Nehlen, a white supremacist who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2016 and 2018. Nehlen, who refers to himself as "pro-white," has had his racism and anti-Semitism well documented. In April, for instance, he appeared on a podcast and admitted to wearing a shirt featuring Robert Bowers, the man accused of killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

"Because, I want to make a point that it will ultimately take -- it might not take a million Robert Bowers -- but it's going to take a lot of people all pushing in the same direction to do what needs to be done, and that is to rid white lands of Jews," Nehlen said on the podcast. "Because they are going to undermine our ability to thrive as a race. They are going to wipe us off the face of the earth."

Nehlen has also shared fringe conspiracy theories, including the idea that Bill and Hillary Clinton are murderers.

Nehlen, who was permanently suspended from Facebook and Twitter, is so toxic that even Gab, a platform used by members of the alt-right, banned him. In 2017, the far-right website Breitbart cut ties with Nehlen after he appeared on a white nationalist podcast."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/31/media...sts/index.html

[Mister Mets]

Just do what I did. Start supporting Open Borders so you don't have to keep arguing with Mets about it.

The argument isn't mostly about whether open borders is a good idea, but about the Democratic party's position on immigration limits.

Whether you think is awesome should be unconnected to what you think Democratic legislators want to do.

I don't "seem" to do anything Mets -- I don't support open borders and trying to paint my arguments as such is just desperation on your part.

What we need is a "limiting principle" on Republican dishonesty, corruption and bigotry - those are far more problematic to our society that false allegations about supporting "open borders".

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"An open border is a border that enables free movement of people between jurisdictions with few or no restrictions on movement, that is to say lacking substantive border control."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_border
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No prominent Democrat is seriously advocating open borders -- they actually repeatedly propose strengthening the border -- but there's plenty of evidence that the Republican party is advocating a white ethnostate that doesn't believe in LGBT rights or a woman's right to choose, and where Russian interference in our election goes unchecked.



And to be clear these aren't intended to be "cheap shots" at the Republican party -- these are real concerns shared by American citizens who are the ones losing our right to be treated as equals under actual Republican policy.

When you quoted one thing, and responded with an "and" it would follow that you agree with my initial statement that your argument is selective and are adding to it.

There's a fig leaf argument that most Democrats don't want open borders because they want some restrictions (IE- background checks to verify that people coming in do not have criminal records, or ties to terrorist organizations) but that won't affect most of the people who want to get into the country. Nor is it really going to be that much more popular with voters, given the polling on the matter.

It wasn't aimed solely at you, but which dozen or so would you like to address?

Mainly it's to show you the difference between assumption and actual policy -- your talking points regarding theoretical "open borders" does not justify Republicans attacking and ignoring the civil and human rights of others, whether American citizens or otherwise.

If it was to show the difference between assumption and policy, you could have said so.

Open borders isn't really that scary of a position, for the first 100 years of US history there were no immigration restrictions of any kind and indeed immigration was seen as necessary to sustain the growth of the nation. Of course, that was only because most of the early immigrants were white, and the country needed them to swamp native lands with settlers and do the dirty work formerly done by slaves, all to service the grand dream of a white ethnostate in the New World. Once non-whites started showing up in any significant numbers, Congress clamped down on that right quick.

The very nature of how the USA is set up requires a constant flow of immigrants. Each wave of immigrants starts off doing the undesirable low-paying work, but their children inevitably refuse to do so and aspire to greater social status, so that new workers must be brought in from further afield. This is a product of our collective delusion that an entire country of 300+ million people can somehow all simultaneously live comfortable middle class lifestyles, and that these lifestyles are somehow sustained by our own hard work and ingenuity rather than relying on the exploitation of billions, some at home and others abroad. Once we can all admit that we are full of shit about that, then we can start talking about limiting immigration.

There's a lot to unpack here.

One argument is that recent changes in technology have made it so that we don't need as much low-skilled labor as the country previously absorbed. Our lifestyles are supported by automation and overseas labor.

Anyone who likes a minimum wage is probably going to be against the idea of bringing in immigrants to work at a lower-wage. Rigorous enforcement of the minimum wage (which can be easier when most of the immigrants are able to come in legally) will keep the salaries of the new immigrants higher, with the exception of those who won't be able to get jobs, because companies don't find their services worth the minimum wage.

It's easier to travel than ever before, so there are less barriers for getting to the United States. As a result, with anything close to open borders, you could have larger numbers than we've ever had before.

[Kirby101]

Notice how Mets keeps up the Trump/GOP line that immigration is THE issue. (and how Dems don't want to solve it) A current "crisis" of Trumps own making. This helps push out the talk of the catastrophic damage Trump and the GOP are doing, the stomping on the Constitution, and the much more important issues we need to address. The issues the GOP want to ignore or exacerbate. Climate Change, income inequity, health care, etc...

[PwrdOn]

The argument isn't mostly about whether open borders is a good idea, but about the Democratic party's position on immigration limits.

Whether you think is awesome should be unconnected to what you think Democratic legislators want to do.

Honestly, I wish the Democratic party had a secret open borders agenda, but that would take way more courage than they have right now. Most likely the next Democratic president will just try to find some compromise with Republicans and get completely stonewalled like Obama was, all while people continue to cross the border illegally because white people are too lazy to scrub their own toilets.

Notice how Mets keeps up the Trump/GOP line that immigration is THE issue. (and how Dems don't want to solve it) A current "crisis" of Trumps own making. This helps push out the talk of the catastrophic damage Trump and the GOP are doing, the stomping on the Constitution, and the much more important issues we need to address. The issues the GOP want to ignore or exacerbate. Climate Change, income inequity, health care, etc...

It is good politics though, the Democrats are extremely weak on this issue because they are way too scared of losing moderate voters to adopt a stronger pro-immigration stance. Most of those other issues it's the Republicans who don't have a clear policy, so they obviously don't want to draw attention to those.

[Mister Mets]

No, it's really not. The only reason to talk about the boston marathon bomber is because you want to pretend it's about that and not keeping the rest of the population of prisons from voting. It's ridiculous.

In this context, I mentioned it as an example of a politician saying something unpopular.

It should be possible for a politician to come up with a policy that allows prisoners to vote that still carves out exceptions for the most egregious criminals.

One thing is clear to me about the Supreme Court - it needs to look a lot more like the country it serves, and in more ways than one.

Not just the ethnic/gender makeup of the court, but other things as well.

Only one member, Neil Gorsuch, has any real history from someplace other than the east coast. Stephen Breyer was born in California, but his legal history is all tied to the east coast like the other 7 justices.

Only one member, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, has any real history of representing people against the government or businesses. Even the other liberal justices have represented the government or corporations before becoming judges.

Which is how you get stupid decisions like this one - https://slate.com/news-and-politics/...buse-case.html - giving a freer hand for the police to arrest people for filming then so long as they can pin even a nuisance crime on them even if the real reason is blatantly retaliatory. And since the rather scathing dissent was penned by Gorsuch that means that at least one of the so called liberals had to sign off on that travesty (I'm looking at you, Breyer). This on top of Roberts flagrantly abandoning his usual stance of 'if the law produces undesirable result then Congress, not the courts, is supposed to change the law".

I sincerely hope that the next PotUS pledges (and follows through on said pledge) to only nominate people who have a history of fighting for citizens to any court, not just the big one.

That's a bit vague. Prosecutors will argue that they've fought for citizens.

Using Roberts as an example, he'll certainly say that as Assistant Counsel to the President, and Deputy Solicitor General, he helped the President fight for the American people.

You assume the people with the guns will be pointing them at the tyrant rather than the people the tyrant claims are causing the problems.

There are plenty of armed people on all sides.

I for one, speaking as someone that lurks for long stretches but still pays attention, would take your efforts at supposition and sifting for evidence of a hidden Democratic agenda a bit more seriously if you have not been dismissing concerns about Republican actions as hysteria even when they are very explicit.

What specific concerns have I dismissed as hysteria?

I'm just gonna throw this out there, the breakdown of the US government would be really bad. Like, cataclysmicly bad. Tens of millions dead in the US, probably ten times that worldwide. It would be so huge that I have a hard time even imagining the fallout.
We should do our very best to keep a situation where violently dismantling the government is necessary from ever happening in the first place.

The knowledge that the breakdown will be really bad helps avoid the situation.

So evidently Facebook doxed the guy who created the fake Nancy Pelosi video and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

There are some freaking out about this on right-wing twitter.

I think it's fine. This is a person who made an intentionally misleading video, and spread it for public dissemination using Facebook. In this case, revealing his identity is okay.

Notice how Mets keeps up the Trump/GOP line that immigration is THE issue. (and how Dems don't want to solve it) A current "crisis" of Trumps own making. This helps push out the talk of the catastrophic damage Trump and the GOP are doing, the stomping on the Constitution, and the much more important issues we need to address. The issues the GOP want to ignore or exacerbate. Climate Change, income inequity, health care, etc...

I'm not the one who brought up open borders.

Aja_christopher brought up my views on the matter in a response to a post on a different controversy.

Legal immigration limits do remain a massive deal since there would be major consequences to raising the limits to 6,000,000 people an year or something. It's not the only issue that matters, but it is significant.

[aja_christopher]

The argument isn't mostly about whether open borders is a good idea, but about the Democratic party's position on immigration limits.

There's no "argument" there -- there's only your talking point, which no one is buying.

The Democrats can stand on their record with regards to immigration -- you're busy attacking imagined evils in order to distract us from your party's actions.

[SquirrelMan]

There are some freaking out about this on right-wing twitter.

I think it's fine. This is a person who made an intentionally misleading video, and spread it for public dissemination using Facebook. In this case, revealing his identity is okay.

Facebook doesn't even consider the video in violation of their TOS. The video is still up.