American politics 2016: Lawyers, Guns, and D-Money

The Koch network also provided funding to fine-tune budget proposals from Representative Paul D. Ryan, such as cuts to Social Security, so they would be more palatable to voters, according to the book. The Kochs were so influential among conservative lawmakers, Ms. Mayer reports, that in 2011, Representative John A. Boehner, then the House speaker, visited David Koch to ask for his help in resolving a debt ceiling stalemate.

“Dark Money” also contains revelations from a private history of the Kochs commissioned by David’s twin brother, William, during a lengthy legal battle with Charles and David over control of Koch Industries.

Ms. Mayer describes a sealed 1982 deposition in which William Koch recalled participating in an attempt by Charles and David to blackmail their fourth and eldest brother, Frederick, into relinquishing any claim to the family business by threatening to tell their father that he was gay.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/us/politics/father-of-koch-brothers-helped-build-nazi-oil-refinery-book-says.html?ribbon-ad-idx=13&rref=homepage&module=Ribbon&version=origin®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Home%20Page&pgtype=article

Some empty-chair ideas that will go unused tonight:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/01/12/other-chairs-empty-obama-speech-deaths-domestic-foreign-column/78631644/

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/01/12/mark-my-words-glenn-beck-predicts-tonight-will-not-be-obamas-final-state-of-the-union-address/

When I saw the headline, I assumed he was warning of a third-term coup. No--just arrogance. ("Arrogance.")

(Excuse the source. A Facebook friend argues with these folks in the comments section, so their posts show up on my wall.)

According to Beck "the last big, huge progressive president we had was Jimmy Carter." Uh.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/12/white-privilege-just-made-an-appearance-in-the-presidential-race-its-about-time/?tid=sm_fb

why did i read the comments why did i read the comments why did i read the comments why did i read the comments why did i read the comments why did i read the comments why did i read the comments why did i read the comments why did i read the comments why did i read the comments why did i read the comments why did i read the comments

And there were questions about whether the country is making more rapid progress on sexism or racism poll

uh, did anyone else watch the SOTU on amazon or the white house website? i mean i guess it's their right to make it a powerpoint presentation but i found it creepy and weird and a bad precedent

Noticed that, too. Seemed kind of lame.

the fuck is kim davis doing there

i mean imagine this with president ted cruz or trump or rubio or bush with stats and issues you don't agree with

http://i.imgur.com/6qraIzU.png
http://i.imgur.com/fPPARey.png
http://i.imgur.com/hO7Fxp1.png
http://i.imgur.com/gFMF16H.png

http://i.imgur.com/6iiscVq.png
http://i.imgur.com/HiKqf03.png

They didn't have any of that stuff on PBS

damn this nikki haley speech is brutal

Kinda creepy, like a dispatch from our new alien overlords

blaming Obama for "unrest in our cities"? fuck's sake...

This is awful - ending her national career before it starts.

Her smiles read as grimly gritted teeth

the Sputnik line was good.

definitely

also major jindal vibes, he did one of these a while back, right

lol talking about Haley obv

Her takeaway from Charleston is that it caused too many noisy black people

David Brooks seems to think she was criticizing Trump but that wasn't what it sounded like to me

man the abc pundits are such a fucking joke ,"she told her story and it's an American story" thanks cokie roberts. Oh let's bring Hugh Hewitt on, "she gave a terrific speech"

I don't watch much tv news has abc always been this bad

David Brooks seems to think she was criticizing Trump but that wasn't what it sounded like to me

― Check Yr Scrobbles (Moodles), Tuesday, January 12, 2016 10:34 PM

I think she was criticizing the English language for failing to come up with words and phrases that match her complex thinking.

RE: Karl Malone's screencaps -

Does anyone remember Bill Clinton's entrance at the 2000 Democratic Convention?

Apparently, the DNC (and Barbra Streisend) had wanted a bunch of statistics like the Obama ones above to scroll down the screen as The President made his way to the podium, but the networks weren't cool with that. So instead, viewers watched six minutes of him strutting down a hallway.

energetic kid in my office really talking up nikki haley

You can see some of it here, starting at 2:05:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJZoJuMS_NM

The stats are on the convention screens, but not the news feeds. Peter Jennings' commentary on HD sets is pretty valuable too.

Didn't Obama promise a different sort of SOTU? Was he talking about the power point, because otherwise it seemed pretty same ol'.

His rhythms were off for a lot of it; the jokes were better.

after the SOTU i expected that everyone else would have been freaked out by the accompanying visuals - the ones i posted above along with dozens of others. but (not just here but everywhere) i don't think anyone cared. which i sort of feel like a crazy person today! very twilight zoney.

i guess i'm not completely in the twilight zone yet because i understand no one would care. most people probably didn't even see it, to start, because they had something better to do on a tuesday night. or, if they did watch, most probably watched it on tv or some other stream other than the whitehouse/amazon/youtube version, and apparently the tv version was the "normal" one without the powerpoint visuals. it's possible that they've used the visual accompaniment in previous years so now it's just old news. and i guess the biggest thing is that for the charts and graphs and bullet points, at least, they were just supplementing the content of his speech. if a someone is trying to communicate an improvement in the economy and is citing stats via the spoken word, i can see why having a graph on the side supporting the point could be acceptable.

but man, it was not acceptable. it was fucking bizarre. it wasn't just charts and graphs, it was PR photos and inspirational messages and subtle attacks. it disturbed me even though i agreed with most of what he was talking about. it was just straight up propaganda, it just happened to be propaganda i mostly agreed with. i realize the argument is What do you expect when you tune in to whitehouse.gov to watch a speech? and the real purpose of the SOTU is to persuade, not to inform. but Amazon video and Youtube were also carrying the whitehouse.gov version of the speech (with all the splitscreen pictures of obama literally kissing babies), and neither one of them displayed a "WARNING: THIS IS A PROMOTIONAL VIDEO STRAIGHT FROM THE GOVERNMENT" disclaimer. i don't know. it's just creepy. and what a shitty precedent it sets. imagine cruz doing something like this in January 2016. it would be absolutely nauseating to watch. imagine him speaking while the splitscreen shows a group of elementary school children hugging him in a classroom and misleading overlaid text boasts about president cruz' education reform plan.

judging by the lack of any internet response to it, i'm alone in this, but if nothing else you'd think people would be creeped out by official whitehouse feed spilling out into other popular channels like youtube and amazon.

sorry for many typos and poor reasoning but i just wanted to try to freak out the internet before my 10 am meeting

It's never the wrong time to freak out on the internet.

Repetitive, as always, but I thought the last four minutes, theatrical or not, was fantastic. (I watched the CNN repeat--glad I dodged the charts.)

Were you watching it on the WhiteHouse account on YouTube?

I don't know anything about what Amazon does except that they sell books.

feel like ppl who are wont to freak out over obama WH propaganda have already freaked out enough over obama himself that doing so over the graphics would be a step down

Hoping the upcoming Obama roadshow features more zings and name-names. I expect good things from his transition to campaigner-in-chief.

I only read the transcript, but it seemed like pretty weak tea for a final SOTU. Although I did appreciate his implicit disavowal of Trump's worldview throughout.

I always scan SOTU as STFU.

The President should given an annual STFU address.

Were you watching it on the WhiteHouse account on YouTube?

started out watching it on amazon video, then checked to make sure whitehouse.gov and youtube were streaming the same version.

i mean, if you were watching it on TV on NBC or whatever and suddenly this happened

http://i.imgur.com/hO7Fxp1.png

would you raise an eyebrow? would you think, 'i'm surprised NBC is so directly serving as a subordinate to the state right now'? again, maybe not. probably not. from what i can tell most lefties are like "but the media is ALREADY a subordinate to the state, maaaaaaan", everyone on the right already thinks that obama is the antichrist, and there are only two people in the "center", and they live in a cabin without the internet way out in the woods and weren't available for immediate comment on this post. but hypothetically, if you're in the twilight zone with me and you would think it was weird if NBC carried a version of the speech that included the PR visuals, why is it any less weird when the white house partners with youtube and amazon to do the same thing?

"The rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. There's no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I'll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office."

I didn't watch it cuz I have shit to do in the evenings and this is really minor but what a weird thing to say - Lincoln presided over a civil war and was murdered, he was hardly a conciliatory figure. And the right-wing has always completely and utterly loathed (and continue to loathe) FDR, who was just better at outmaneuvering his opponents.

i'm with you on this ZS, fighting this sort of mindcontrol marketing is a worthy cause

xpost
lincoln presided over a civil war, but he may have been the only thing that kept the country together in the end. source: Lincoln by george lucas
i imagine by "Roosevelt" he was allowing some of the people in the room to think that he might have been referring to Teddy.

i was watching as he said that bit. it's hard to guess at his intentions but at the time he said it, the subliminal message to the audience (congress) seemed to be "even IF lincoln or roosevelt [insert presidential hero here] were president right now, they'd have difficulties bridging the divide too because all of you are insane"

the white house partners with youtube and amazon to do the same thing?

I totally hear you, but I'm asking if you were watching the address on the White House channel on YouTube. If you were, then I think that's just as acceptable as it would be for Youtube/user/satansatansatan to show the video with goat horns superimposed on everyone.

i feel you karl. that shit makes my skin crawl. complete lack of media literacy education here in the 21st fucking century doesn't help re: other people's lack of response.

powerpoint in general is a plague but that's for another thread.

oh, i got you! sorry, i misunderstood. i'm not totally sure, i just clicked over to youtube and clicked the first thing that said State of the Union. i imagine it was probably on their white house channel, you're right. ok. so that's a little less creepy to me. i remain creeped out by the amazon video version of it, though.

I dislike the incorporation of memes into the state of the union mainly in terms of aesthetics: I think they look ugly

charts look like they're playing to the vox media crowd

i have to admit i laughed when they put they made the chart fullscreen and hid obama behind it

http://i.imgur.com/gFMF16H.png

sorry I wasn't around last night but if you didn't think Nikki Haley was blasting Trump with both barrels during that speech, you need to listen to it again; you also need to read this:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/01/13/nikki-haley-donald-trump-republicans-2016/78729616/

‏@mtaibbi
Alan Dershowitz Threatens to Leave Democratic Party: Dems Cross Fingers In Hopes He Means It

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/312243-harvard-law-professor-i-will-leave-democratic-party-if-they

NC GOP law stripping gov of power has been temporarily blocked by the courts

are the various last minute actions the NC congress took actually illegal or just very sleezy?

That line is what we have judges for

If they're determined to be discriminatory = illegal

New worries about Chuck Schumer:

But the job that Reid had in mind for Schumer when he anointed him as his successor isn’t the one Schumer will actually be doing. “Schumer would be a very good majority leader under President Hillary Clinton, and that’s what he thought he was signing up for,” says one prominent Democratic strategist, noting how aggressively Schumer waded into several Democratic Senate primaries in 2016. “He made the calculation that he wanted to win the Senate with people who were easily tamable and then he could be a majority leader like LBJ, just ramming things through.” As a minority leader with a Republican in the White House, however, Schumer will have a very different task — and there’s concern among some Democrats that he might not be cut out for it. “Chuck will go to the ramparts on an issue when it’s polling at 60 percent, but as soon as it gets hairy, he’s gone,” says one senior Democratic Senate aide. “Chuck wants issues to have no negatives, but it’s the Trump era. He’s looking at polls ­showing 60 percent for the Carrier deal” — in which Trump persuaded the company to keep a furnace plant in the U.S. in exchange for $7 million in tax breaks — “and thinking to himself, Maybe we should support that."

count on it

Interesting that DT has rebuked the House GOP for gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics.

Very mildly, though.

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 37m37 minutes ago
........may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS
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Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 41m41 minutes ago
With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it
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I thought he had given up Drain The Swamp?

I think he tried to, but big dumb Gingrich opened his big dumb mouth.

unfair as it ............may be

Any chance any Republicans will bolt and vote against that when the full House votes on it today?

why would they do that

It looks even more sneaky and underhanded than usual, and Lord God Trump criticized it. I don't really think it'll happen, I was just wondering what ILX's other political tacticians thought.

Except he didn't, and there's no reason to believe Republican politicians care about what Trump says.

why would they do that

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, January 3, 2017 10:14 AM (one hour ago)

You knew the answer to this question before you asked it, right?

time for a new thread buddies

What a charmer Jeff Sessions is/was.