American Politics / Current Events Thread

[Tulpa | 3,715]

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/10/republicans-presidential-election-fears-biden-trump

[Link | 2,880]

3 hours ago, Tulpa said:

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/10/republicans-presidential-election-fears-biden-trump

Cruz thinks it will be a landslide for Biden... or a landslide for Trump. You’d be better off taking beard advice from him than political advice, and that is a low, low bar. How he got national attention, I’ll never know.

Then McConnell, who has had a Trump hardon all the way because he feeds the Tea Party trends, is staying away because he recognizes a health risk for himself? The hypocrisy, selfishness, and projection never ends with these people. “Checks and balances...resonate”, my ass. 

[Californication | 1,491]

On 10/10/2020 at 7:29 AM, Kguillemette said:

All you people that are focusing on Trump being racist are being trolled so hard by our president right now. The more we talk about how racist he is, the less we talk about just how grossly incompetent he is at everything else.

Biden 2020! Not perfect, not even good, but certainly not incompetent.

I don't know if that is accurate. I don't think many Trump supporters see themselves as racist. Look at all the different excuses they have made for Trump so they can picture him as not supporting racism in this thread alone.

There are many people on Trumps base who have drank the kool aid and will be there no matter what he does. But there are others like educated white women that heard him say, Stand back and Stand By, and they won't be voting for him. People like this white educated women demographic may like his anti-immigrant policies and his policies that help the rich, but they don't like to see themselves as racist even though they are supporting racism through Donald Trump.

Besides that Kamala and Biden have shit policy. Not as bad as Trump, but a lot of it is hard to defend. Corona Virus is probably the one thing that we could expect a marked different response to from a Biden Harris administration. But the problem with a Biden Harris admin. is that Corona virus/economic response outside of executive order will probably get screwed over in the senate and making it hard to pass stimulus or infrustructure programs to turn the economy around. All in all there are not many ways to defend the harris-biden ticket and not much to be hopeful for except to try and anesthitize the damage done by the Trump admin.

Edited October 11, 2020 by Californication

[Californication | 1,491]

12 hours ago, Link said:

Cruz thinks it will be a landslide for Biden... or a landslide for Trump. You’d be better off taking beard advice from him than political advice, and that is a low, low bar. How he got national attention, I’ll never know.

Then McConnell, who has had a Trump hardon all the way because he feeds the Tea Party trends, is staying away because he recognizes a health risk for himself? The hypocrisy, selfishness, and projection never ends with these people. “Checks and balances...resonate”, my ass. 

It makes sense that McConnell has backed Trump since Trump is doing his part for getting all the judges McConnell has pushed. 

From what I have heard it sounds like there is a break starting between them. McConnell hasn't wanted to pass anymore stimulus and Trump does. Trump has resisted pushing for stimulus even though it could help get him re-elected partly because McConnell has been acting like the Senate would not go along with it. Also, McConnell is pushing for the Supreme Court nomination before the election and it actually benefits Trump and Republicans to wait until after because it drives voter turn out. McConnel probably thinks it is too risky to wait until after the election.

Friday, Trump finally started raising the amount they would send for stimulus, but is unlikely without Senate approval, and it's a little late in the game, because it doesn't make sense for Democrats to agree this close to the election.

Edited October 11, 2020 by Californication

[Tulpa | 3,715]

https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/strapped-cash-trump-yanks-tv-225339083.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlYXBpcy5jb20vYXV0aC9jaHJvbWUtY29udGVudC1zdWdnZXN0aW9ucw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFszWWCLgRyWLBLj6PL15kT3Nx7N8NFuX9ciE9JHPlSb7leBM5GF8PcZGqa1fso9FG27IFuMayE4C2q5dtjM8PNKGI5dUeOg9QV-RzLdNJDr8AcxUeoT7Td5ea_mpixc38HPbtBCH-SXoOIcmxcOGQ18Yr6l8qAtKEML09R-gdOX

[Link | 2,880]

13 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/strapped-cash-trump-yanks-tv-225339083.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlYXBpcy5jb20vYXV0aC9jaHJvbWUtY29udGVudC1zdWdnZXN0aW9ucw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFszWWCLgRyWLBLj6PL15kT3Nx7N8NFuX9ciE9JHPlSb7leBM5GF8PcZGqa1fso9FG27IFuMayE4C2q5dtjM8PNKGI5dUeOg9QV-RzLdNJDr8AcxUeoT7Td5ea_mpixc38HPbtBCH-SXoOIcmxcOGQ18Yr6l8qAtKEML09R-gdOX

Dang, buddy, clean up your link!  

https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/strapped-cash-trump-yanks-tv-225339083.html

I thought Trumpy was all about self-financing his campaign. Or am I thinking of his promise to reject the salary? 

This, too: Biden has been sharply increasing his ad spending across the entire election map and has begun pouring money into states that once looked out of reach. Among them are Texas, Georgia, Ohio and Iowa. 

Why the democratic party is locked into this myth of forgoing states is one of many things I’ll never understand about them. My state would be red by square miles, but due to the major metro area[s] where most of the people actually live, conventional wisdom says it’s reliably blue. I think this would be possible in, for example, Texas, if democrats didn’t routinely ignore it. Certainly a strategy that lost in ‘16 with WI/MI/PA. See also: not actually helping people?

 

[Link | 2,880]

On 10/11/2020 at 12:23 AM, Link said:

Why is it that we should be confirming a new Supreme Court justice now, when the polar opposite was true 4 ½ years ago?

October 11, 2020 (Sunday)

Today’s political chatter was just bizarre. The talking point on the Sunday talk shows, pushed hard by Republicans and enabled by the media, was that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden needs to explain his stance on “court-packing,” that is, adding more justices to the Supreme Court. Some Democrats have begun to talk about that outcome if the Republicans ram through Amy Coney Barrett in these last few days before the election. 

This is bizarre first of all because the Republican Party did not even bother to write a platform this year to explain any policies at all for another Trump term, and Trump has been unable to articulate any plans for the future, while the idea of “court-packing” is a future hypothetical, dependent on what today’s Republican Senate does.

It’s bizarre because Trump is egging on his followers to violence—just today he urged supporters to “FIGHT FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP.” He is so misrepresenting the reality of the coronavirus pandemic that today Twitter tagged one of his tweets as a violation of Twitter rules and Dr. Anthony Fauci publicly objected to the Trump campaign’s misrepresentation of his statements about Trump’s handling of the pandemic. The campaign quoted Fauci out of context and without his permission, but campaign spokesperson Tim Murtaugh dismissed Fauci’s complaint, saying that they were indeed Fauci’s words, and Trump agreed. The New York Times has also continued its coverage of Trump’s taxes, showing him to be deep in what amounts to a pay-to-play scandal, in which he has essentially turned the U.S. government over to the highest bidder, revealing himself to be the most corrupt president in U.S. history.

And yet, today the chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, told Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face The Nation” that she would not talk about Trump’s financial scandals because “You have a Democrat running on the biggest power grab – the absolute biggest power grab in the history of our country and reshaping the United States of America and not answering the question. That’s all we should be talking about.” The media seems to be taking this distracting bait.

What makes this so especially bizarre is that it is Republicans, not Democrats, who have made the courts the centerpiece of their agenda and have packed them with judges who adhere to an extremist ideology. Since the Nixon administration began in 1969, Democrats have appointed just 4 Supreme Court justices, while Republicans have appointed 15. 

The drive to push the court to the right has led Republicans under Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to take the unprecedented step of refusing to hold a hearing for Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, the moderate Merrick Garland, on the grounds that it was wrong to appoint a Supreme Court justice during an election year. There have been 14 justices confirmed during election years in the past, but none has ever been confirmed after July before an election. 

Obama nominated Garland in March 2016, but now, in October, McConnell is ramming through Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett. 

Americans are worried that the increasingly conservative cast to the court does not represent the country. Four, and now possibly five, of the current justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote, and have been confirmed by senators who represent a minority of the American people: Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate support represented just 44% of the country.

So there is talk of increasing the size of the Supreme Court. This is legal. The Constitution does not specify the size of the court, and it has changed throughout our history. But the current number of justices—9— has been around for a long time. It was established in 1869. Nonetheless, in 2016, when it looked like Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidency, Republicans announced that they would not fill any Supreme Court seats during her term, and if that meant they had to reduce the size of the Supreme Court, they were willing.

Instead, with Trump in the White House, the Republican Senate has pushed through judges at all levels as quickly as it possibly can.

This is no accident. Since Nixon, Republicans have made control of the nation’s courts central to their agenda. But while most voters tend to get distracted by the hot-button issues of abortion or gay rights, what Republican Supreme Courts have done is to consolidate the power of corporations. 

In 1971, a corporate lawyer for the tobacco industry, Lewis Powell, wrote a confidential memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warning that corporate America needed to work harder to defend what he called “free enterprise.” Angry that activists like Ralph Nader had forced safety regulations onto automobile manufacturers and the tobacco industry, he believed that businessmen were losing their right to run their businesses however they wished. Any attack on “the enterprise system,” he wrote, was “a threat to individual freedom.” 

Powell believed that business interests needed to advance their principles “aggressively” in universities, the media, religion, politics… and the courts. “The judiciary,” he wrote, “may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.” He wrote that “left” institutions like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), labor unions, and civil rights activists were winning cases that hurt business. “It is time for American business—which has demonstrated the greatest capacity in all history to produce and to influence consumer decisions—to apply its great talents vigorously to the preservation of the system itself.”

The following year, Nixon appointed Powell to the Supreme Court. During his tenure in office, Nixon would appoint three more justices. Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, would appoint another.

Democratic President Jimmy Carter, who followed Ford, appointed none.

Under President Ronald Reagan, cementing the interests of business in the Supreme Court would become paramount. Reagan’s Attorney General, Edwin Meese, deliberately politicized the Department of Justice in an attempt, as he said, to “institutionalize the Reagan revolution so it can’t be set aside no matter what happens in future elections.” Reagan made 4 appointments to the Supreme Court. 

During Reagan’s term, lawyers eager to push back on the judicial decisions of the post-WWII Supreme Court that had expanded civil rights and the rights of workers began to organize. They wanted to replace the current judges with ones who believed in “originalism” and who would thus cut regulations and expanded civil rights. 

In 1982, law students at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Chicago organized the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies to advance a legal ideology that opposed what they believed was “judicial activism.” Judges who expanded rights through their interpretation of the laws were “legislating from the bench,” they believed, intruding on the rights of the legislative branch of the government.

By the time of President George W. Bush, the Federalist Society was enormously influential. Members of the society made up about half of his judicial appointments. The society also urged Bush to stop letting the American Bar Association rate judicial nominees, believing the ABA was too “liberal” and therefore rated conservative judges more harshly than others. 

During the Obama administration, justices who were associated with the Federalist Society were deciding votes for the 2010 Citizens United decision permitting businesses unlimited contributions to political campaigns and the 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Under Trump, its power has grown even greater. Five of the 8 current members of the Supreme Court—Samuel Alito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh—and now Supreme Court nominee Amy Barrett, are members of the Federalist Society. 

While Republicans desperately want to make the Barrett nomination about her religion, the reality is that the members of the Supreme Court who are wedded to an originalist interpretation of the document threaten far more than reproductive rights. Among other things, the court is taking up the Affordable Care Act just a week after the election. 

Most Americans believe that the Barrett nomination should wait until after the election, but a key Republican constituency is demanding it. Americans for Prosperity, a pro-business group backed by billionaire Charles Koch, has launched a campaign on her behalf. It aims to mobilize voters to pressure senators who might otherwise try to avoid a confirmation at such a time. AFP also launched fights for Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

[Tulpa | 3,715]

12 hours ago, Link said:

Dang, buddy, clean up your link!  

 

Sorry, that was on my tablet.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,931]

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,931]

On 10/10/2020 at 9:51 AM, arch_8ngel said:

Absolutely true, and more importantly, the more the left rails on his racism, the more entrenched the right becomes in a "we're not racist" counter-argument that rallies them together.

While it is certainly true that he says a lot of things that resonate with genuine racists, it really isn't a very productive line of attack.

Agree very much with the both of you.  Trump has a very linear type of thinking:

1.  What can I say that makes me look amazing?

2.  What can I say that people who love me want to hear?

3.  How can I blame everything on the people who don't love me?

He's a narcissist and manipulator, not a racist.  Sometimes those things appear to have overlap.

[Kguillemette | 1,612]

@LinkThat was a good read, did you write that? I agree with much of it.

If we remember Merrick Garland, he was championed as a true moderate. Not too liberal or conservative. He was someone that Mcconnell may actually consider. Instead he gambled on Trump winning to get a nominee much closer in ideals to the recently deceased and proud constitutionalist Scalia. Enter Neil Gorsuch. You think any of these judicial nominees came from Trump? Hell, while the public was busy squabbling over whether Trump is racist, etc, nobody was paying attention to all the federal judges McConnell was packing the bench with. Trump is literally just another political "swamp" member. Now that his vulnerability is apparent, it seems that he is getting chewed up and spit out just like anyone else. McConnell's focus on ramming through Barrett instead of economic relief funds is a huge disservice to reelecting Trump, but he really doesn't care at this point. Trump has 4 more years max, and McConnell's job is to look beyond that and take any political advantage he can in the present. Relief funds can wait

While it is not a forgone conclusion Trump will lose, my guess is the republican political climate view him as more of a liability than the asset he was 4 years ago. Right now, the best play is a "wait and see" move. If Trump finds himself to be a lame duck in a couple weeks, Republicans will turn so hard on him and cut ties with any members of congress who dared to hitch their political careers to his wagon. Look how distanced they are now to Graham compared 4 years ago.

This is just how politics works, for better or worse. 

[Link | 2,880]

6 minutes ago, Kguillemette said:

LinkThat was a good read, did you write that?

haha! No, I wish I could ever be that astute. A friend shared it on facebook from Heather Cox Richardson. 

I find McConnell extraordinarily destructive. From test driver Limbaugh to Graham to him, this is the path. They may dump Trump but they like what he does to our system. QAnon has a serious foothold now.  

Thank you for your analysis. 

[Kguillemette | 1,612]

35 minutes ago, Link said:

haha! No, I wish I could ever be that astute. A friend shared it on facebook from Heather Cox Richardson. 

I find McConnell extraordinarily destructive. From test driver Limbaugh to Graham to him, this is the path. They may dump Trump but they like what he does to our system. QAnon has a serious foothold now.  

Thank you for your analysis. 

You are welcome! I was going to say, you should being writing opinions for major news publications, not on a message board for schmucks like me!

 

I want to add Dick Cheney to your list. He's the one that really jump-started the whole Neo-Conservative movement in my opinion. 

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

14 minutes ago, Kguillemette said:

You are welcome! I was going to say, you should being writing opinions for major news publications, not on a message board for schmucks like me!

 

I want to add Dick Cheney to your list. He's the one that really jump-started the whole Neo-Conservative movement in my opinion. 

I thought that was more to do with Newt in the 90's.

[Kguillemette | 1,612]

25 minutes ago, arch_8ngel said:

I thought that was more to do with Newt in the 90's.

Good point. Him too.

[Rhino | 105]

If people really hate Trump and Biden so much, why don't they vote for Jo Jorgensen? If you take one of those quizzes, you'll probably be surprised how much you match up with her. jo20.com 

[Rhino | 105]

On 10/8/2020 at 7:58 PM, Californication said:

 

So what your saying is Blacks are 360% more likely than whites to be killed by the police even though there are 250m whites and 44m blacks?

I don't know if your numbers are right, but that sounds pretty bad.

The percentage is misleading. The odds are so small that a 360% increase almost means nothing. It'd be like playing the lottery. If your odds of winning are 1 in a million, buying 3 more tickets really doesn't change your odds in a meaningful way. Now if this was going from a .1% chance to .5 or even .01% to .05, that'd be alarming. 

[Tulpa | 3,715]

55 minutes ago, Rhino said:

If people really hate Trump and Biden so much, why don't they vote for Jo Jorgensen? If you take one of those quizzes, you'll probably be surprised how much you match up with her. jo20.com 

The problem with libertarians is they can't get a cohesive message across their supporters.

Libertarian Jones: "I want smaller government."

"So you want to get rid of meat and dairy inspections and make food less safe?"

Libertarian Jones: "Well, no, that's silly."

"But Libertarian Smith says he's a libertarian and he wants to do away with meat inspections."

Libertarian Jones: "Um ... well..."

You ask two different libertarians on what they want and they'll give you two totally different answers. Until they get their act together on the details they'll never get past third party status.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Tulpa

[CodysGameRoom | 2,014]

14 hours ago, Rhino said:

If people really hate Trump and Biden so much, why don't they vote for Jo Jorgensen? If you take one of those quizzes, you'll probably be surprised how much you match up with her. jo20.com 

3 Ways To Vote For Trump in 2020.

1. Vote for Trump
2. Vote for anyone except Joe Biden
3. Don't Vote

 

Also, Libertarians are silly

[Rhino | 105]

8 hours ago, CodysGameRoom said:

3 Ways To Vote For Trump in 2020.

1. Vote for Trump
2. Vote for anyone except Joe Biden
3. Don't Vote

 

Also, Libertarians are silly

By that logic, if you vote for Jorgensen, you're also voting for Biden. I agree, the Libertarians could get their messages across better. One day there will be a competitive 3rd party, or perhaps a replacement for the Republican party.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,931]

The attack ads around here keep referencing NRA grades.  So I checked them out:

https://www.nrapvf.org/grades/

It's pretty goddamn silly.  Go ahead and click on any state, for any race.  Literally, any of them.

 

 

 

We're becoming a caricature of ourselves.  The divide has become so shamelessly partisan that I'm honestly embarrassed.

[Californication | 1,491]

It really seemed like people started calling themselves libertarians after the last Bush presidency. I just remember so many conservatives being embarressed to call themselves Republican. It seemed like people would either say, "I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative," or "libertarian." I am in California, so that could have just been out here, but no one seemed proud to call themselves Republican after the bush presidency. 

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

6 minutes ago, Californication said:

It really seemed like people started calling themselves libertarians after the last Bush presidency. I just remember so many conservatives being embarressed to call themselves Republican. It seemed like people would either say, "I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative," or "libertarian." I am in California, so that could have just been out here, but no one seemed proud to call themselves Republican after the bush presidency. 

I feel like the rise on this issue correlated with the intensifying of the discussions around gay marriage and the now-on-going discussion of legalizing marijuana.

Those are really the two key "socially liberal" issues for "otherwise-fiscal-conservatives", IMO.

 

EDIT: though from the early Bush era -- it is ALSO a split related to how much was being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Since those are clearly NOT "fiscally conservative" events, by any stretch.

Edited October 15, 2020 by arch_8ngel

[Californication | 1,491]

6 hours ago, arch_8ngel said:

I feel like the rise on this issue correlated with the intensifying of the discussions around gay marriage and the now-on-going discussion of legalizing marijuana.

Those are really the two key "socially liberal" issues for "otherwise-fiscal-conservatives", IMO.

 

EDIT: though from the early Bush era -- it is ALSO a split related to how much was being spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Since those are clearly NOT "fiscally conservative" events, by any stretch.

I could be wrong, but it really felt like people just didn't want to call themselves Republican. I understand that those groups can sometimes be associated with specific views, but policy seemed secondary. It really seemed as vapid as thinking a libertarian is more thoughtful or more pragmatic or less conservative than a republican.

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

8 minutes ago, Californication said:

I could be wrong, but it really felt like people just didn't want to call themselves Republican. I understand that those groups can sometimes be associated with specific views, but policy seemed secondary. It really seemed as vapid as thinking a libertarian is more thoughtful or more pragmatic or less conservative than a republican.

It very definitely went hand-in-hand with the Republicans entrenching themselves on those key social issues, though, from what I recall.