US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

I had A Moment today driving to my job at a public university attended mostly by the children of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis supporters; this is just to show that I'm not all stern-looks-over-bifocals in this thread.

no amount of capitulating is gonna stop trump and his ilk from calling the dems an angry mob

just garbage political instincts.

meanwhile, on the jugular side

(A) report published by the Council of Economic Advisers warns that "socialism is making a comeback in American political discourse," and zeroes in on proposals to enact "Medicare for all" championed by progressive lawmakers.

The report comes between an op-ed by Trump in USA Today decrying government-run health-care proposals — which included a series of claims that were subsequently torn apart by fact-checkers — and the midterm elections in November, where Democrats are favored in most generic ballot polls to reclaim a majority in the House of Representatives.

"It is not unusual for the White House to issue statements that reinforce the political themes the president's party is campaigning on before an election," said veteran election attorney Brett Kappel, a partner at Akerman. "But it is very unusual for the Council of Economic Advisers — a supposedly nonpartisan body of experts — to be used for this purpose," he said.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning, the council's chairman, Kevin Hassett, said that "proposals on the table, like the Medicare for all proposal," are "very consistent with the design of socialism." He added that his role on the economic council "isn't to be a politician, it's to be an analyst."

Hassett did not reveal how much time and money were spent on the report.

The report, entitled "The Opportunity Costs of Socialism," does not directly attack Democratic politicians as political candidates, which could potentially be seen as a violation of the Hatch Act's restrictions on executive branch employees' political activities.

But it does refer numerous times to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a self-described democratic socialist who ran for president as a Democrat in 2016 and offered a sweeping health-care overhaul.

And under the heading "The Socialist Economic Narrative: Exploitation Corrected by Central Planning," the report associates Sanders and possible 2020 presidential contender Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., with famous figures often considered icons of leftist politics and ideology: Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong.

"The socialist narrative names the oppressors of the vulnerable, such as the bourgeoisie (Marx), kulaks (Lenin), landlords (Mao), and giant corporations (Sanders and Warren)," the report says.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/10/23/white-house-issues-report-slamming-socialism-as-trump-blasts-democrats.html

naming the oppressors of the vulnerable - my god! what next???

has anyone gotten an even somewhat accurate headcount of the caravan? read on here yesterday that it was 1,000. saw some right winger say it was 12,000+. just heard a Trumper on MSNBC say 7,000. wtf?

it is definitely more than 1000. i don't want to google for sure, because i don't feel like looking at a bunch of sensationalism and/or propaganda

get yourself a mug of hot tea, slip off your shoes, and relax with the stats

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/44430912_2204404869771090_9062668319282167808_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-1.xx&oh=4dd86bb60e46e157509a7deb606584cc&oe=5C84198C

that 'opportunity costs' report is delightful

liquidate the giant corporations

lmaoooooooo hoos

Stopping the caravan is not just about national security or preventing crime, it is also about national sovereignty and the rule of law. Those who seek to come to America must do so the right and legal way.

— Tyler Q. Houlton (@SpoxDHS) October 23, 2018

presenting yourself at the border and seeking asylum is the right and legal way you fuckin dum dums

chotiner strikes again

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/david-gelernter-donald-trump-why-liberals-hate-trump-op-ed.html

who is that fucking idiot? "What I’m doing here is literary criticism. That’s my genre." Uh, you're a computer science professor.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/10/its-just-incredible-what-some-people-can-believe?fbclid=IwAR2suav2Zd0Vf8SYp1of9ef7fBQ8iKLiaQhXC4zMQEXwI-I4iu6IQ4-hyT0

Why are computer science professors interviewed about Trump/politics in the first place?

if you wanna read up on them dirty Reds, here it is

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/The-Opportunity-Costs-of-Socialism.pdf

which new Perlstein?

― You like queer? I like queer. Still like queer. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),

his latest, i should say (invisible bridge). i only recently picked up a remaindered copy (and the last 2 years seem to have passed in a split second) so it feels fresh to me.

Karl malone did you see https://thebaffler.com/salvos/time-bandits-perlstein

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, October 23, 2018 12:49 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i did! i actually read that a while back, around the time it was published. i don't mean to sound like one of the many people he quotes in that article ("this is JUST like 1968!"). just that reading his books helps me to provide a deeper understanding of the historical precedent for today's events which often seem so unprecedented

xp he's not just a computer science professor, he's an archgenius (who doesn't believe in man-made climate change)

really love the prep-school kids and yale profs who think they understand the 'average american' better than anyone else

This is good: https://www.vox.com/2018/10/23/18004478/hack-gap-explained

I haven't gotten to Invisible Bridge yet (because I needed a goddamn breather already), but having read the two preceding volumes of Rick Perlstein's History of Conservative Termites Slowly Decimating the Foundations of 20th Century America within the past year, I am definitely feeling your vibe, km.

xpost problem is what do you do about the Hack Gap? How do you mitigate the damage this does to any possibility of fact-based debate? Yglesias doesn't offer solutions.

Sea level rise, fool.

he was also a unabomber victim. guess crazy is contagious

just that reading his books helps me to provide a deeper understanding of the historical precedent for today's events which often seem so unprecedented

― Karl Malone, Tuesday, October 23, 2018 5:01 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah the "nothing new under the sun" aspect of nixonland is weirdly comforting.

the emphasis on how outside the standard of ‘culture’ of the GOP Nixon was, was really the eye-opener to me, reading it, last year

maybe ‘the elite political establishment’ rather than the GOP

been watching the GA gov debate. Brian Kemp is such a scumbag

So, I'm a partisan, but I'm trying to figure out what crime Andrew Gillum committed by accepting Hamilton tickets from an FBI agent other than possibly lying about where he got them? What quid pro quo happened?

He paid the cast to accost Pence!

well was it Broadway or the tour?

It was George Hamilton

hamilton is lame (except that song wait for it, which is OK), but—and this may surprise some of you here—i'd still vote for gillum if i lived in florida

you’re lame

The crime he committed was being a democrat afaict. Had he been a republican, it would have been acceptable for him to lift the tickets off the body of an undercover FBI agent he'd just eaten and partially devoured (particularly if he did so while denouncing abortion and perhaps also making a vulgar comment about a woman).

that's quite mean xp

'killed and partially devoured' is what I meant to say, of course.

to me this is the worst sort of political reporting. Okay, fine, a contradiction has emerged about the tickets, but what does it prove? It's a classic squid-ink story. Even the Politico story buries the lead:

Zimet said the acceptance of gifts by Gillum is “probably not” a federal “theft of honest services” crime “if there’s not some quid pro quo attached to it,” and a quid pro quo can either be a vote “or a promise to do something that gets you closer to criminality.”

“Florida politician fails to commit crime” might be newsworthy tbh

As soon as I opened this thread and saw this dumb Hamilton thing I knew CNN would be breathlessly reporting on it in large type font as if it was a scandal equivalent to (insert whatever Trump did today.)

The revelation is the latest development regarding a federal investigation into public corruption in Tallahassee, Florida, where Gillum has been mayor since 2014.The records, which were subpoenaed by the state ethics commissions last week according to the Tampa Bay Times, cast doubt on the explanation from Gillum's campaign that the mayor received the ticket from his brother Marcus.

The FBI probe centers on whether developers successfully influenced city projects. At one point in the probe, an undercover agent successfully infiltrated Gillum's inner circle. No one has been charged with any wrongdoing.

Gillum has repeatedly said the FBI told him he is not a focus of the investigation. But his attendance at a Broadway show with lobbyist and longtime friend Adam Corey, along with his brother and the federal agent, who went by Mike Miller, has been used by political opponents to suggest Gillum is potentially under more direct scrutiny.

I mean "has been used by political opponents" -- awesome use of passive voice, burying lead, etc

“and yet the GOP suggests otherwise” being used as implicit evidence for the purposes of a hard hitting news story is such a trash, amoral hack move.

Politico also wrote a fluff piece on Rick Scott today. Almost like they had an agenda

but he's so fluffy

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

lol. he should also be in prison for defrauding Medicare

let's end this

Human existence, you mean? I'm game.

This is good: https://www.vox.com/2018/10/23/18004478/hack-gap-explained

is there a media criticism thread? so much of our current agony is directly related to the neverending stream of bullshit that we have to wade through in order to locate pieces of the truth. i have no idea how to "fix" it, or if it can be fixed.

Now two days in a row. Happening all over again. pic.twitter.com/r1RYRnbF0n

— Mark Copelovitch (@mcopelov) October 23, 2018

Used to be a popular NYT thread, but that seems to have been exhausted.