US Politics, March 2018: Why do people leave the White House for good?

this is a lot of thinking to waste on hope hicks

― Simon H., Thursday, March 1, 2018 3:59 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There was more typing than thinking involved.

You don't say.

No, I type. Rather fast at that.

I think Hope Hicks is my second favorite Trumpling to think about, after the Mooch. She's like Gary from Veep, but imagine if Gary was made Director of Communication? Nobody would believe that.

I shook my head when y'all fantasized about the Mooch last July too.

Hope Hicks was a (very young) PR professional before joining Trumpworld, and from a long line of same. It's worth noting, though, that her parents work for/with people who you would not necessarily think of as Trump folks. They met as Congressional staffers in the '80s, he for a "liberal" (and apparently closeted) Northern Republican, she for a blue dog rural Southern Dem, and he went on to work for Roger Goodell, not exactly Trump's best friend, then left after she went to Sauron to help head up the very-Clinton/Gore-tied Glover Park Group. She too came to the Trumps from a substantially Clinton/New York Dem-Tied PR firm. Does this mean she or her parents are secret progressives? No. He's a former oil and tobacco image smoother who donated to Romney in 2007, and his current gig may simply be working for the NFL on the outside, while she may well be an apolitical child of privilege who just lucked into a very unique position. But neither are James Comey or Robert Mueller.

NEWS: The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee have privately concluded that the HPSCI majority leaked Mark Warner's private text messages to Fox News. https://t.co/pn9uLfGtZN

— Nicholas Fandos (@npfandos) March 1, 2018

LINE BREAKS FFS xp

if that's true that's fucking outrageous

xpost

/evergreen us politics thread content

Hahah this is my kind of internecine warfare.

I apllaud moo vaughn just for the chutzpah. #nolinebreaks

Oh, the punishment's far from over.

John Kelly on leaving DHS to become White House chief of staff: "The last thing I wanted to do was walk away from one of the great honors of my life, being the Secretary of Homeland Security, but I did something wrong and God punished me I guess." https://t.co/rBphMQ7Awn

— Gabe Fleisher (@WakeUp2Politics) March 1, 2018

Nunes needs to be thrown overboard in the middle of the Mediterranean Ocean based on that leak report

Romeo-Nunez – then a 16-year-old student at St. Michael’s Academy in Manhattan – said at the time that Trump did not do anything to stop the attack. She recalled to The News on Thursday that she had just come out of a store at 45th St. and Ninth Ave. when the incident was ending, and that Trump arrived a few minutes later.

"A car pulls up, he gets out, people acknowledge his presence," she told The News Thursday. "He's looking around, seeing what's going on. Then he got back in and left."

The beatdown was never reported to the police.

Romeo-Nunez said she always wondered who the other unidentified witness was, but said that person's account was not true. The assailant "was running away" as Trump got out of the limo, and the attacker and Trump never spoke to each other, she said.

FFS what will it take to get Nunes the fuck out of there at least in regards to the Committee? he's a goddamn liar and obstructionist and it's been demonstrated over and over again.

one of the great honors of my life, being the Secretary of Homeland Security

this is what you're really going to hell for you piece of shit

he's a goddamn liar and obstructionist and just the sort of chairperson Speaker Ryan intends to keep on the job

He's worth creating a new ocean for, true

"He might be a goddam liar and obstructionist, but he's *our* goddam liar and obstructionist!"

What possible penalties could Nunes receive?

at what point do Nunes actions veer into obstruction or does it not really work like that in his particular position?

heh xpost

In other news, is there a good way to donate to the striking teachers in WV?

There's a strike fund - one sec.

https://www.gofundme.com/wv-teachers-strike-fund

What possible penalties could Nunes receive?

Theoretcially? Expulsion from the House. Or censure. Or a sternly worded public reprimand from the Ethics Committee. Or a few sharply disapproving looks from his colleagues as they pass in the hallway. Or an all-day lollipop from Speaker Ryan.

xpost Thanks. Also, can anyone vouch for this one?

https://www.gofundme.com/stoneman-douglas-yearbooks

Best I can do is say: looks legit!

xpost to Aimless then I'm betting the later takes place

*latter

“The New York Times, a prominent purveyor of leaks, is highlighting anonymous sources leaking information that accuses Republicans of leaking information,” [Nunes spokesman] said. “I’m not sure if this coverage could possibly get more absurd.”

this is some astounding, next-level disingenuousness

Dow dropped 500 points after tariff announcement

unpatriotic Wall St fuckers

AshLee Strong, spox for Speaker Paul Ryan, on NYTimes story on Intel Cmte/Nunes leak: “The speaker heard the senators on their concerns and encouraged them to take them up directly with their counterparts.”

...

Dem Congress really needs to be making public statements about this to keep the story afloat. so it will at least be clear that Ryan is willfully letting it continue

AshLeeeeeeee

Theoretcially? Expulsion from the House. Or censure. Or a sternly worded public reprimand from the Ethics Committee. Or a few sharply disapproving looks from his colleagues as they pass in the hallway. Or an all-day lollipop from Speaker Ryan.

― A is for (Aimless),

Set on fire. Defenestrated. Wrapped in burlap with a scorpion, asp, and chimp and tossed in the sea.

People For the American Way, the organization that runs Right Wing Watch, filed suit against the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development today to demand the release of documents concerning reported changes in federal policy toward LGBTQ people.

Right Wing Watch had filed Freedom of Information Act requests with both agencies asking for documents on reported actions removing mentions of LGBTQ people from federal announcements and programs.

These reported actions were being taken quietly and without public announcement, raising the questions of who made the decisions, what the decisions covered, and whether agency staff had been directed to implement certain policies regarding programs affecting LGBTQ people without public knowledge.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/were-suing-two-federal-agencies-to-release-information-on-secret-lgbtq-policy/

Is there a finite tenure for either Ryan or McConnell or are they just going to continue undermining any steps towards sanity for the next few years anyway.

nope

Rayburn and Mansfield were speaker and majority leader, respectively, for 15+ years

Ryan's been muttering via usual anonymous friends about wanting out this year. I suspect he's considered either alternate fate -- losing the House or stuck carrying Trump's ever more piss-colored water -- to be not worth it.

Dear God. There’s basically one person left in America who thinks our criminal justice system isn’t punitive enough. His name is Bill Otis. And Trump just nominated him to the US Sentencing Commission. https://t.co/e4jzNbbizX

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) March 1, 2018

From 2015:

Faced with the choice between two potential errors—continuing to imprison someone who’s no longer a threat and releasing someone who ends up harming new victims—Otis says he’ll opt for the former. “Error is an inevitable fact of life,” he says in an interview. “And the only realistic question that adults can ask is not what system are we going to adopt that is going to avoid error, because there is no such system. The only question you get to ask is, which system is going to give us the fewest errors and who should have to bear the risk of error?”

Though Otis usually eschews the theoretical vocabulary of criminologists for more pungent terms (a favorite device of his is to refer sarcastically to offenders as “Mr. Nicey”), the philosophy he gravitates to has a name: incapacitation. It holds that a surefire solution to crime is to remove likely offenders from society. Otis’ version of the idea embodies what Berkeley law professor Jonathan Simon calls “a kind of axiomatic success that is immune to empirical evidence.” If any parolees commit crime, well, there you go: case closed. And if locking them up is the only true insurance against future crimes, then the best crime prevention measure is locking up more people for longer sentences. Rather than see dramatically declining crime rates as cause for corresponding drops in imprisonment, Otis argues that now is not the time to tinker with a successful formula.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/07/bill_otis_meet_the_last_man_standing_who_thinks_criminal_justice_reform.html

Is there a finite tenure for either Ryan or McConnell

They will continue to serve until one of the following happens:

• they resign their position
• they retire from the House or Senate
• their caucus votes them out of their leadership positions
• they lose an election and do not return to Congress

I thought McConnell caused enough trouble in that minority position prior to the Republicans getting into power as it was.
if anybody is going to make an anchor out of Nunes couldn't he help weigh it down, please.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/momentum-builds-to-can-devin-nunes-from-house-intel-role.html

your 'left' party at work

https://splinternews.com/democrats-are-trying-to-help-the-banks-racially-discrim-1823427155

fuck Tim Kaine

this momentum builds but Ryan had an easy excuse to do it already and pretended he didn't know he could remove Nunes then.

I weep for them. I cry the bitterest of tears.

now that I know that the old people who actually vote are watching Sinclair broadcasting in their lounges I must agree that sounds extremely dangerous for our "democracy"

i get your angle tomboto but there's a lot of space between 'Sinclair is the death knell for democracy' & 'Sinclair's content has zero effect on the world'

also i think the comparison to clear channel in the 90s is a moderately decent one, insofar as both involve consolidation of media overlords and the narrowing of content. also, clear channel buying everyone out totally sucked for radio, and still sucks today. i don't get the comparison to beer companies buying each other out at all

as always, i admit my inherent bias toward caring about how old people are brainwashed by their tvs because my parents are old people who are brainwashed by their tvs. they watch local news every day and trust them more than the national broadcasts. i know i need to stop trying to change their minds but i still care. but the obvious counterpoint is that even if sinclair was dissolved and all the local stations somehow went back to being owned by local entities, my parents would still vote republican. their behavior would still be the same. there would just be one less daily 30 minute voice reconfirming their bullshit every night.

The common thread is that none of these are worthy of freaking out about because over the long term they are largely meaningless. The consolidation of control over relatively minor, quotidian aspects of our lives is the kind of thing people need to not freak out about in general, because the difference between Sinclair running things and the government running things is who you think is more accountable to you and what kind of oversight you're comfortable with. I think that's the argument worth having, not whether one entity should be in charge of most of some stuff (moot), or if some cranks forcing TV talking heads to read a script is a real threat to our institutions (which are moribund and crumbling as it is, for reasons much more frightening than oligopolies).

Anyway: John Bolton is the national security advisor and Trump is going to Korea soon.

the other part of the common thread is that I used to care immensely about stuff like this and when I look back on what has actually happened that's changed the world, wow, I was dumb.

He is risen, Hallelujah

Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release. Getting more dangerous. “Caravans” coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 1, 2018

those "caravans" in full

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/article_small/public/thumbnails/image/2015/06/22/18/15-LGBT-Caravan-Rex.jpg

Remember when the epithet "flip-flopper" used to be contemptuously applied to politicians who compromised on their earlier stated positions? Trump doesn't even bother to have reasons for jumping around from one position to another. He just uses agitation as a substitute for direction, as in "look at all that commotion; he must be getting things done!"

oh no, the DACA deal, we were so close

"catch & release" is yet another dehumanizing euphemism

man I guess I'm either weird or old for always watching at least 10 mins of localnbews, usually in the mornings

Do u vote tho

i knew about the bullshit new "are you a US citizen?" question on the 2020 census, but i didn't know about this other stuff:

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/13/593272215/for-the-first-time-2020-census-will-ask-black-americans-about-their-exact-origin
https://www.npr.org/2018/02/01/582338628/-what-kind-of-white-2020-census-to-ask-white-people-about-origins

https://i.imgur.com/76OENDK.png

For the 2020 census, the U.S. Census Bureau is changing how it will ask black people to designate their race. Under the check box for "Black or African American," the bureau is adding a new space on the census questionnaire for participants to write in their non-Hispanic origins, according to a recent memo from the head of the 2020 census. "African American," "Jamaican" and "Nigerian" are listed as examples of origins on a questionnaire the bureau is testing for 2020.

The change means many black people in the U.S. may have to take a closer look at their family trees to answer what can be a thorny question: Where are you really from? While many black immigrants can cite ties to a specific country, that question is difficult, if not impossible, for many U.S.-born African-Americans to answer.

The bureau has not responded to NPR's questions about why it is making this change to both the "Black" category and the "White" category," which will also include a new write-in area for origins.

looks like moo vaughn's dreams are coming true

atlantean

he's a secret census overlord

xp

cash grab by ancestry.com imo

seems like there's a lot of public interest in this sort of information these days, good move that's quite a bit overdue

The Sinclair news anchor hivemind is eye-rollingly untroubling in a world where like >50% of the American population possesses the skepticism and critical thinking skills to look askance at such a ridiculous maneuver. If that country ever existed, it's clear that it doesn't at this particular time.

I’m sorry for being sick of ostensibly intelligent people having no memory and no ability to do math. That country exists right now. We live in it. Read the fucking polls and remember the popular vote.

For fuck’s sake.

Dude, people on every side of the election were taken by propaganda that flattered their worldview. Even ostensibly intelligent people have to make the individual effort to avoid being conned.

Sorry, not that many people voted for Jill Stein.

wheres the new thread at

For April I like, "big drug and people flows."

"Getting more dangerous"

US Politics, April 2018: Getting more dangerous (looks like moo vaughn's dreams are coming true)

looks like moo vaughn's dreams are coming true

― Karl Malone, Sunday, April 1, 2018 10:15 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, the one good thing the Dump Admin is doing.

Of course, it wasn't their idea - http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/04/federal-officials-may-revamp-how-americans-identify-race-ethnicity-on-census-and-other-forms/

cash grab by ancestry.com imo

― El Tomboto, Sunday, April 1, 2018 10:31 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe the 2000 census, etc. was too - https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2008/acs/2008_Brittingham_01.pdf. They were founded in '83.

a-a-a-and... that's a wrap!

don't we usually lock these?

yes. it's time to move on.