The August 2019 US Politics Thread is dumb (stupid}

no pictures of corpses otm

XP Trump's funeral. They're gonna recreate that Trump Train t-shirt.

corpse paint yes, corpse photos no

technically not a corpse

https://i.imgur.com/U82ZF2a.jpg

i can actually hear it

No Corinthian itt

- Attacks Bill Maher
- Attacks Biden

There's your two stopped-clock moments right there

https://images.app.goo.gl/qF51wmxHkB38WLkdA

1 Corinthian
2 Corinthian
Red Corinthian
Blue Corinthian

Reuters - U.S. President Donald Trump's administration unveiled a new rule on Monday that could deny visas and permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of people for being too poor.
The long-anticipated rule, pushed by Trump's leading aide on immigration, Stephen Miller, takes effect Oct. 15 and would reject applicants for temporary or permanent visas for failing to meet income standards or for receiving public assistance such as welfare, food stamps, public housing or Medicaid.

I retired that one last November, hon. I didn't give you the keys to that old trunk.

I’m ok with pictures of Trumps corpse ITT

in this teetering economy, you take what's available and run with it

xp and not xp

The new immigration rule is freaking me out pretty hard. My wife is a green card holder who lost her job last December. Since we got our healthcare through her job we ended up qualifying for Medicaid. Being on Medicaid previously was fine for someone with her immigration status and now it’s possible for her renewal to be rejected. Pretty dang shitty tbh.

Is there no spousal sponsorship program in the US?

Prospective graduate students from outside the USA should no longer enter USA graduate programs. It is not worth the visa risks.

Yeah, this new immigration rule is incredibly fucked.

I retired that one last November, hon. I didn't give you the keys to that old trunk.

alfred, i am running on fumes. i need this. please.

also, you have used it at least 3 times since last November, albeit on non-political threads. according to the ilx charter screed, appendix 2, verse 19, that unlocks the old trunk and removes all copyright claims

goddammit ian, hoping this turns out OK

xps

i'm really sorry, ian. i have no ideas about the specifics (maybe no one does right now?). really hoping that it doesn't directly hit you and your spouse.

also, you have used it at least 3 times since last November, albeit on non-political threads. according to the ilx charter screed, appendix 2, verse 19, that unlocks the old trunk and removes all copyright claims

― Karl Malone, Monday, August 12, 2019

the clause allows non-political thread posting

Thx u Bill

ian hang in there, i'm so sorry about this totally stupid necessity to be anxious :(

Thx KM

I don’t think her green card is up for renewal for another three or four years, and who knows what the world will be like then. Still find it hard not to get anxious.

that's awful, ian

Maybe we will move to Ireland.

Hearts to you and H, ian.

my wife is also openly talking about moving us abroad

she's not on assistance and hopefully won't be anytime soon, but between this & shooters targeting Mexicans & brown kids in camps she's starting to get very nervous about staying here. like things aren't "that bad" at this moment but if he gets re-elected in 2020 it's not hard to imagine how awful things could get for non-citizens. luckily my son will probably 'pass' as white but my daughter won't and she's afraid that they're constantly being judged

ian, sent you an ilx message.

Meanwhile, the administration has turned Nixon into a tree-hugging hippie.

"Republicans have long sought to narrow the scope of the law, saying that it burdens landowners, hampers industry and hinders economic growth. They also make the case that the law is not reasonable because species are rarely removed from the list. Since the law was passed, more than 1,650 have been listed as threatened or endangered, while just 47 have been delisted because their populations rebounded."

gee, it almost sounds like there might be some sort of major, systemic "thing" happening to our entire world. definitely not anything caused by humans, i'm not saying that, but definitely some big nature thing that affects all these species. someone should definitely look into that. it's most likely just normal nature cycles and nothing to worry about, though

i just want everyone to follow the law

did you all hear about some sort of mass extinction event that we're all living through? word on the street is that it's the 6th one in earth's history. thing is, just thinking about it kind of hampers industry and hinders economic growth. i can't be bothered to consider earth's natural resources when i'm busy making sure that economic growth continues to grow exponentially for the rest of recorded human history.

i think the plan is to stop recording human history in about 3 weeks

still seeing the FB "let's settle for Biden, deal with climate change in '24" threads; very sensible

one thing that annoys me about the climate change conversation is that global warming is only a small fraction of the damage our species has been doing to this planet over the past couple of centuries

casinos will save us

Owners of one of Illinois’ largest video gambling companies are behind efforts to influence city politics, expand gambling and build a casino near land they control. https://t.co/RfKgAIEIBh

— ProPublica (@propublica) August 8, 2019

This is a slightly interesting post from Talking Points Memo:

For all the arguing and analyzing and prognosticating about the 2020 presidential race I am surprised how little attention has been given to what may or I think likely will play the biggest role in the outcome: third party candidates.

One of the truths about the 2016 election is that Donald Trump didn’t do any better in 2016 than Mitt Romney did in 2012 if you’re looking at the percentage of total votes cast. Indeed, he did significantly worse. Romney won 47.2% of the national vote while Trump won 46.1%. Electoral votes count, not popular votes. And that was Trump’s critical advantage. But it’s really the unusually high 5.7% of the vote going to three third party candidates — Gary Johnson, Jill Stein and Evan McMullin — that made it possible for Trump to win as a minority candidate.

As we’ve seen both before his election and since, Trump is a minority candidate, essentially a factional leader, who has incredibly durable support of between 35% and 45% of the population. He really, really needs the presence of spoiler candidates to pull the contest down into the mid-40s where it was in 2016. I’d never say never. But I think there’s a good argument that a significant third party/spoiler candidacy — or ideally more than one — are the necessary predicate of Trump’s reelection.

People probably think mostly of a third party left candidate like Jill Stein. But just as plausible and just as dangerous is a “center” candidate like Starbucks baron Howard Schultz wanted to be. Stein-type candidates could flourish with a Biden ticket and a Bloomberg or Schultz type could with a Sanders or Warren one.

Ideally for Trump you’d have both — a billionaire centrist to peel off preenish Never Trumpers who don’t want higher taxes and a Jill Stein wrecker-type candidate to peel off purism voters on the left. Yes, the Electoral College is a big deal. But third party candidates are what make an Electoral College victory at roughly 45% of the vote plausible.

How to combat this isn’t that obvious. Party unity is the answer of course. But saying it isn’t a strategy. Where we should focus attention is on the idea that the Trump team undoubtedly knows all this too. So Trump and his reelection team will do everything legitimate and probably illegitimate to get strong third party contenders into the race. I would assume Russian efforts in 2020 will focus on this too.

I don’t have a great answer to what Democrats do about this. But it needs a lot more focus than it is currently getting. Because there’s every reason to believe it will be of decisive importance for the outcome.

The reason I say slightly interesting is because while the theory is sound, the reality is that I don't see any third party candidates on the horizon at the moment. Has Stein made any noises about running again? Schultz has already fucked off, right? Ballotpedia claims there are 816 people who have registered to run for president in 2020, but none of them other than the Ds seem to merit serious consideration. Or am I wrong? Is there someone out there that should be taken seriously as a spoiler next year?

Stein sure strikes me as the type to make the same mistake multiple, multiple times.

Steyer has explicitly said he won't run 3rd party fwiw.

bill weld is currently running for the republican nomination, but i guess he could continue as an independent or 'conservative'

i doubt he should be taken seriously, but he at least has some name recognition

One of the billionaires said he'd only run if Bernie got the nomination IIRC

Fucking Howard Schultz. Was it just Bernie, or was anyone but Biden?

who was the Libertarian candidate in 2016?

Many people are making the "mistake" of running for president. If you don't like them, don't vote for them. You don't get to police other peoples' franchise on behalf of the goddamn Democratic Party.

who was the Libertarian candidate in 2016?

the first one named in that quote

i don't get to police, but i sure get to judge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nOy4WtAc4c

oh yeah, that guy.

i know a Democrat who yells JILL STEIN JILL STEIN for four (or 12) years. Not very good at math or logic.

https://www.thecut.com/2019/08/trump-baby-photo-el-paso-shooting.html
worth the read