US Politics December 2018: ~very legal and very cool~

Academics and writers are going to have to be much crisper about discussing the involvement of online disinformation in real-world events. The Russian trolls love to draft behind legitimate movements; IRA pushed #BlackLivesMatter, that doesn’t invalidate BLM’s legit issues. https://t.co/Rexf25PtxZ

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) December 8, 2018

Effective propaganda has always taken advantage of whatever strongly motivates its target audience and then harnesses that motivation as a means to its own ends. The amount of disinformation included is just enough to direct the energy into the desired course. A good propagandist uses accepted truth and facts wherever possible, because that lends legitimacy to the entirety of the contents.

This stuff is all elementary and everyone in the media ought to know it before they toddle into their first assignment.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ayers-not-taking-job-as-white-house-chief-of-staff/ar-BBQIS0X?ocid=spartanntp

Trumpie couldn't even get this right.

This stuff is all elementary and everyone in the media ought to know it before they toddle into their first assignment.

― A is for (Aimless), Sunday, December 9, 2018 8:02 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But do they know it's Christmas

narrator: maybe?

Not sure if this will embed but tommorow oughta be interesting.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BrL2FjyhqBO/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=rr7t666croxy

Smock weed every day iirc

good morning!

"Smocking Gun" is my favorite Robert Cray jam...

Our president and his brain worms

The brain worms are what his fans love about him!

Smocking guns would come in very handy for unsmocked art teachers whose hands are already covered in paint, wishing Dems luck in their continued search.

Just, again: I hate that I have to be alive during this particular stretch of the human experience. I wonder how much it costs to have a coma induced upon oneself.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0d/30/d2/0d30d29de50542a19b6099a66f971b96.png

ffs that wasnt even i typo he misspelled it twice, he for reals can't spell smoking .

Found this v helpful.

https://sewguide.com/smocking/

My mom used to be super into that. All my handmade dresses had smocked front panels for a while.

Just, again: I hate that I have to be alive during this particular stretch of the human experience. I wonder how much it costs to have a coma induced upon oneself.

look on the bright side: there's a pretty good chance that when you're revived the world will be worse than when you went under

The world could always be worse. I just shudder to think that it could somehow be stupider.

https://i.imgur.com/We9qIq2.jpg

7D tic tac toe

The brain worms are what his fans love about him!

― big crime for a SPECIAL WHATEVER (voodoo chili),

Unreal

thanks obama

Top Obama aides are running the health care front group aiming to kill Medicare for All. https://t.co/21Nb89tQJM

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) December 10, 2018

Butina to flip, per court filing

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) December 10, 2018

i don't know who that is

ah yes now i remember

She's big, because she could further hurt the (failing?) NRA.

yes

The possibility of someday watching the NRA implode may be worth staying out of a coma for.

i just remembered oliver north is the president of the nra

what a country

Butina was prosecuted by U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, rather than special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — an indication that Mueller may have determined that her activities did not directly connect to his investigation, which involves scrutinizing any links between Russia and President Trump’s campaign.

is it wrong that I am kinda hoping for an economic crash in terms of how that will affect Trump's political fortunes and global GHG emissions

I have a tab open every day this past week to watch the dow fall it kinda sucks but what can u do

boy, POLITICO doesn't miss a shot to frame stories establishment vs insurgents, eh

Roberts and Kavanaugh vote against allowing states to cut off PP funding

that's... not what happened

Chief Justice John Roberts and the newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh, joined the court's four liberal jurists in turning away a pair of petitions from Kansas and Louisiana seeking the ban on abortion providers.

Did I phrase it wrong? lol

idk I guess it was ambiguous to me, nm

that's... a pleasant surprise?

In the most positive sense of the utterance, I must ask...WTF?

Thomas wrote a dissent for the three conservatives, saying the court isn't doing its job.

"What explains the Court's refusal to do its job here?" Thomas wrote.

"I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named Planned Parenthood," he wrote.

I suspect it does.

I suspect Roberts and Kavanaugh either didn't think this case merited the controversy it would engender, or thought there was some more important legal principle at stake (standing, I would guess?)

my theory is that Kavanaugh is a clueless entitled dudebro pig but still has some sort of moral pulse (maybe cuz he got shook so bad in the hearings, just theory), whereas Thomas is genuinely evil. but as per Outic, Roberts & Kavanaugh may have had some other nefarious agenda here.

maybe Kavanaugh got advice from his frat buddies

idk if its nefarious necessarily it's just that the law and legal reasoning is often different from political reasoning, because if you, say, blatantly override precedent or established principles all the time, then the entire legal system completely falls apart, and if there's anything the three branches of federal government have in common it's that they all tend to jealously guard their perogatives/power.

i haven't been following anti-abortion legal strategy too much, but i assume there are many, various ways they are trying to attack?

my first thought when reading that kavanaugh sided with the liberals (and roberts) is that he's waiting for a more powerful attack to come before the SC. that way he can vote to make it harder to get an abortion while having a "pro-choice" vote in his past, giving him a veneer of ...what is it...oh yeah, a judicial temperament

In February, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that Kansas was wrong to to end Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding, writing that states can’t cut off funding for reasons “unrelated to the provider’s competence and the quality of the healthcare it provides.” Four other appeals courts have ruled that Medicaid patients have the right to access the provider of their choice.

But the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has held that states do have the right to terminate a provider’s Medicaid contract and that residents have no right to challenge that decision.

The Supreme Court's action Monday allows the split decisions to stand in different federal circuits. Thomas, in his dissent, wrote that the Supreme Court should have taken the cases to resolve conflicting findings from lower courts.

is it wrong that I am kinda hoping for an economic crash in terms of how that will affect Trump's political fortunes and global GHG emissions

― Οὖτις, Monday, December 10, 2018 8:52 AM

I'm going with yes. the pain from an economic crash falls on the just and the unjust alike, and disproportionately harms the powerless.

so not exactly win-win

xp