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Montmorency

10-12-2018, 21:57

Not if that person is the victim.

Quick point, I recall the US government was using this type of logic (Gil's) to deport asylum claimants who attested to fleeing because of such persecution as being enslaved by gangs and watching family members be executed by gang members - because this made the asylum claimants accomplices.

Gilrandir

10-13-2018, 04:34

Blablabla, if all the time spent bickering over assumptions had been spent on a proper investigation...

You mean, instead of bickering here WE (I and Montmorency and Rory and others) should form an investigating body, assume some legal status and start our investigation? You might as well offer Pannonian to start his own negotiations with the EU as for Brexit.

And, if you have failed to observe, these boards are all about bickering.

Not if that person is the victim.
I don't believe that ONLY victims knew about the alleged crime and have kept silent for forty years. The witnesses' possible testimony needed as evidence would incriminate them right away. And you will need witnesses in that case, won't you?

Husar

10-13-2018, 16:46

You mean, instead of bickering here WE (I and Montmorency and Rory and others) should form an investigating body, assume some legal status and start our investigation? You might as well offer Pannonian to start his own negotiations with the EU as for Brexit.

And, if you have failed to observe, these boards are all about bickering.

Since you appear to know that starting your own investigation is a bit far-fetched, you might have failed to observe that that can't have been my point.
I don't even read your long posts about the woman anymore because I don't care what some manly man dude in medieval Ukraine thinks about her trustworthiness. ~;p

Gilrandir

10-13-2018, 16:56

I don't even read your long posts about the woman anymore because I don't care what some manly man dude in medieval Ukraine thinks about her trustworthiness. ~;p

Now I really see that you don't read my posts. It wasn't her trustworthiness that I questioned.

Strike For The South

10-16-2018, 16:06

Strike For The South

10-16-2018, 16:38

as an addendum, this in no way exonerates Trump. He was being racist. There really isn't much to say there, par for the course.

Csargo

10-16-2018, 21:46

Elizabeth Warren would have been better off ignoring Trump. This may have single handedly torpedoed her 2020 chances.

So there are many Native nations and varying rules regarding who is or can be a part of them. Some require a blood relative, some require a direct link to a person (think the Dawes roles), others may require something else. No matter what the requirement the core issue at stake is the Tribes sovereignty against the United States government.

Not only does Warrens blood ancestry fall very much in line with the wider white population but the way she uses said ancestry perpetuates a kind of "Native as an aesthetic" that is harmful. In Delorias "Playing Indian" he argues that Native culture was used to mold American identity, this is important distinction because it forces inclusion.

Warren is essentially trying to force in inclusion where many people want to retain their own exclusion. She has no ties to the Cherokee nation (beyond her "high cheekbones" and "Pow Wow Chow"). The Chrokee nation has asked her to stop claiming them. She has essientaly backtracked and said "Well it's in my blood, I'm not a member of the nation". She fails to realize her blood has nothing to do with it.

It is a breathtaking ignorance. A lot of white families in Oklahoma have some type of Native ancestor story (Delorias book talks about this too). For years she has used this family myth as cudgel against wider white society, while ignoring what Native peoples were actually saying. She isn't Cherokee not because she is "white", She isn't Cherokee because she has no ties to them as a people. (As an aside this is why the reclamation of Native children through adoption is a major issue, but thats another topic.)

It is why the resisters are screaming about elections while Native people are screaming about erasure. Native nations get to decide who is a part of them. Being a Native is not an accessory. Being Native is not about blood. It is insulting to Native peoples to reduce their culture to a small part of a white womans aesthetic

Also if anyone gets a chance, please read that book. It is not an understatement to say that it changed the way I think. Easily one of the top 5 books I have ever read.

I'm not sure when people will learn not to get dragged down in these frivolous debates with Trump.

It's a cultural thing vs genetic thing, no? She genetically has an ancestor 100-200 years?(6-10 generations I'm not sure what the equivalent would be) ago that was a Native American. Culturally, she's a middle class woman from Oklahoma City with no affiliation to any tribe. This is a pretty common American thing to do, or at least I've experienced it with a lot of people, saying I'm part x-nationality on x-parent's side, etc. Could you expand on this: " In Delorias "Playing Indian" he argues that Native culture was used to mold American identity, this is important distinction because it forces inclusion. "

Is is stripping Native American culture to force them to conform to American society, or was it American society assimilating Native culture? I'd like to understand the argument here if you could expand further on it. Where does the line get drawn then in regards to this? Is it at if you're not a part of a tribe then you have no claim to being Native American?

rory_20_uk

10-16-2018, 21:56

There is a massive misconception what these genetic tests do.

They do NOT show what ethnicity you have in the past. They show what percentage similarity you have to their database of what genes certain ethnicities have. And in some cases their database is very small.

So merely having a small percentage that corresponds to an ethnicity in fact means close to nothing.

~:smoking:

Csargo

10-16-2018, 22:47

Montmorency

10-17-2018, 02:25

Elizabeth Warren would have been better off ignoring Trump. This may have single handedly torpedoed her 2020 chances.

So there are many Native nations and varying rules regarding who is or can be a part of them. Some require a blood relative, some require a direct link to a person (think the Dawes roles), others may require something else. No matter what the requirement the core issue at stake is the Tribes sovereignty against the United States government.

Not only does Warrens blood ancestry fall very much in line with the wider white population but the way she uses said ancestry perpetuates a kind of "Native as an aesthetic" that is harmful. In Delorias "Playing Indian" he argues that Native culture was used to mold American identity, this is important distinction because it forces inclusion.

Warren is essentially trying to force in inclusion where many people want to retain their own exclusion. She has no ties to the Cherokee nation (beyond her "high cheekbones" and "Pow Wow Chow"). The Chrokee nation has asked her to stop claiming them. She has essientaly backtracked and said "Well it's in my blood, I'm not a member of the nation". She fails to realize her blood has nothing to do with it.

It is a breathtaking ignorance. A lot of white families in Oklahoma have some type of Native ancestor story (Delorias book talks about this too). For years she has used this family myth as cudgel against wider white society, while ignoring what Native peoples were actually saying. She isn't Cherokee not because she is "white", She isn't Cherokee because she has no ties to them as a people. (As an aside this is why the reclamation of Native children through adoption is a major issue, but thats another topic.)

It is why the resisters are screaming about elections while Native people are screaming about erasure. Native nations get to decide who is a part of them. Being a Native is not an accessory. Being Native is not about blood. It is insulting to Native peoples to reduce their culture to a small part of a white womans aesthetic

Also if anyone gets a chance, please read that book. It is not an understatement to say that it changed the way I think. Easily one of the top 5 books I have ever read.

Well, it's the technocratic aspect of the party as well.

She "technically" has ancestry that refutes Trump's attacks on her (separate from the question of ethnicity), but that wasn't what Trump was guffawing about in the first place. So it's like fact-checking the bully punching you, "False, I am actually not hitting myself!"

(Separately, I'm not sure how much I value the right of tribes to enforce racial rules. Ethnostates everywhere probably have to be dismantled.)

Strike For The South

10-17-2018, 15:27

Is is stripping Native American culture to force them to conform to American society, or was it American society assimilating Native culture? I'd like to understand the argument here if you could expand further on it. Where does the line get drawn then in regards to this? Is it at if you're not a part of a tribe then you have no claim to being Native American?

American society does not so much assimilate Native culture as it abuses it to its own ends. If you are not part of a tribe, you really are not a native, at least in the way Warren positioned herself. Her using a DNA test to prove her "Nativeness" is wrong (as the Cherokee point out). It is erasure of people. Your blood does not necessarily have anything to do with how Native you are.

Elizabeth Warren is a white woman who has lived as white woman, pulling the Native card when it suited her. She has absolutely no connection or lived experience with any Native culture. Her Nativeness is the same "Indian Princess" trope White Americans have been pulling since 1493. It is very insensitive the way this story is being packaged.

Native nations are better to be thought of as somewhere between a state and a country. The sovrigenty of these nations is very important. A blurring of these lines allows for the encroachment of the US and that, historically has not been a good thing. A clear line and identity between the two allows for the nations to more readily bring up the issues that are important tot them. If any white American with Native ancestry (pretty much all of them) could claim to be a Native, it would very much muddle that and drown their voices out.

She "technically" has ancestry that refutes Trump's attacks on her (separate from the question of ethnicity), but that wasn't what Trump was guffawing about in the first place. So it's like fact-checking the bully punching you, "False, I am actually not hitting myself!"

Trumps attack is same kind of racial crap he has doubled down on. Warren is being insensitive though. She literally doesn't hear the voices she claims to be a part of. This is her trying to get out in front of attack ads in 2020. To many Natives this is a lot more than politics. That is what rubs me the wrong way

(Separately, I'm not sure how much I value the right of tribes to enforce racial rules. Ethnostates everywhere probably have to be dismantled.)

I wouldn't call them Ethno-states. The current Cherokee chief has very little "Cherokee" blood. Each Tribe has its own set of rules and frankly I am ignorant on a lot of the finer points of it. I do know I have seen Native people of all sizes, shapes, and colors.

Montmorency

10-17-2018, 22:51

I wouldn't call them Ethno-states. The current Cherokee chief has very little "Cherokee" blood. Each Tribe has its own set of rules and frankly I am ignorant on a lot of the finer points of it. I do know I have seen Native people of all sizes, shapes, and colors.

Native issues represent a significant gap in my knowledge, but I'm aware of many tribal membership and registration standards being racially or "blood (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_quantum_laws)"-based still, and this leading to political problems on reservations with disenrollment (https://slate.com/comments/news-and-politics/2018/06/native-american-disenrollments-are-waning-after-decades-of-tribes-stripping-citizenship-from-members.html) (stripping tribal members of status).

Montmorency

10-19-2018, 00:55

Husar

10-19-2018, 10:22

Latinx

In case you're gendering around, it's "Latinxs", but might as well call them Lynxes then. :creep:

a completely inoffensive name

10-19-2018, 20:37

No one would have voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primaries anyway. Predictit has Bernie and Kamala as the front runners.

Shaka_Khan

10-20-2018, 14:22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB8w3VzeWEo

Husar

10-20-2018, 21:38

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB8w3VzeWEo

Well, they're mostly right, but when they say the press shouldn't spread rumors, perhaps they themselves shouldn't spread the one that "maybe Kushner gave them the 'go ahead'?!".

Strike For The South

10-24-2018, 17:01

Oh, and btw here's an expert on the genetic aspect (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1052225045639176192.html) of Warren's claim and the backlash to it: virtually all African and European-Americans have zero Amerindian ancestry, like 95% and 98% of the population, respectively. Almost all Latinx have some. It is wrong to say that the average white American has a similar degree of Amerindian ancestry as Warren.

I bring it up because @Strike (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/member.php?u=13127) said

Getting caught up in percentages is part of the problem. There is many a white person in Oklahoma who claims to have Native ancestry.

Elizabeth Warren is a white woman, who looks like a white woman, who has lived life as a white woman, who society sees as a white woman. She has no connection to Natives peoples beyond her (very white) story about a distant Native relative. For her to claim she is Native is erasure of actual Native peoples. Americans using "Nativeness" as an aesthetic is a huge deal and that is exactly what happened here.

It is simply a bad look and really tone deaf on her part.

Hooahguy

10-25-2018, 02:51

No one would have voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primaries anyway. Predictit has Bernie and Kamala as the front runners.
Isnt Biden in there somewhere?

Either way, Warren was dumb to do the ancestry test. Pretty much for the reasons Strike mentioned. I personally think this kinda killed her potential nomination. I would be glad if she doesnt run honestly. The Dems need younger people to run, if Bernie runs it just shows he is in there for the self promotion. Just look at his recent tour around the country. Lots of talking about himself even when in support of other candidates. Hell I would take Biden over Bernie.

Montmorency

10-25-2018, 13:24

Getting caught up in percentages is part of the problem. There is many a white person in Oklahoma who claims to have Native ancestry.

Elizabeth Warren is a white woman, who looks like a white woman, who has lived life as a white woman, who society sees as a white woman. She has no connection to Natives peoples beyond her (very white) story about a distant Native relative. For her to claim she is Native is erasure of actual Native peoples. Americans using "Nativeness" as an aesthetic is a huge deal and that is exactly what happened here.

It is simply a bad look and really tone deaf on her part.

I heard you the first time. I'm just being pedantic.

I bring it up because Strike said

Not only does Warrens blood ancestry fall very much in line with the wider white population
Beskar, I accidentally deleted the post content that Strike is quoting when I was pulling it for my response. Could you please restore it? Thanks.

Beskar

10-25-2018, 13:34

Monty, below the post it says "last edited by", you can see the previous version through that, then copy and paste it in a new edit. Just did it now, but letting you know for future reference!

Montmorency

10-26-2018, 19:16

Political violence (https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/florida/fl-ne-bombs-opalocka-mail-20181025-story.html) is unavoidable because an increasing number of Americans (on the right) hanker for its catharsis.

21470

To be honest, maybe it would be for the best if some D elites were victimized first. More so than if regular folk get it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_serial_bombings), the political class might be activated out of self-interest.

a completely inoffensive name

10-27-2018, 02:32

Montmorency

10-27-2018, 02:56

Violence is always avoidable. The political violence isn't only because these mentally compromised people are having their fears and destructive thoughts escalated and amplified by an accommodating conservative media bubble.

There's something important I failed to include above: political violence is never really spontaneous. It is almost always fomented from above. (Every genocide, indeed, is organized. Even one-off pogroms against Jews and Negroes were organized from above.) Donald Trump benefits from political violence, indeed may not be able to survive without recourse to it, and has consciously agitated for violent retribution by his base against his enemies since the beginning. He does it more nakedly and shrilly as time passes. More importantly, Republican politicians and media icons around the country and on both state and federal levels have adopted and amplified this rhetoric.

One reason that extremist terrorist groups in post-war Europe or pre-war United States achieved no significant or lasting results, despite being unimaginably prolific by today's standards, was the unity of the political mainstream against them. And the European groups killed a lot of people during the Cold War, including major politicians and American figures. Today, apocalyptic confrontation is half the mainstream.

Things can only get much worse, and they will, unless you imagine a divine intervention to soften Pharaoh's heart. Time and pressure continue to grind away the layers of impossible > unthinkable > unfeasible > improbable > normal.

Have I mentioned that the only oath in all the depth of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family strong enough to capture the Trump phenomenon is nithing?

Strike For The South

10-27-2018, 17:00

This is directly on this administrations hands. The last thing this man posted was how Jews were funding the "caravan". We are slipping towards a tipping point. These are dark times.

Beskar

10-27-2018, 17:28

This is directly on this administrations hands. The last thing this man posted was how Jews were funding the "caravan". We are slipping towards a tipping point. These are dark times.

and the President suggested the democrats did it as a false-flag in a tweet..

Because someone who has their van decorated like this is clearly of a rational mind.
https://i.imgur.com/MMWqZiu.jpg

Montmorency

10-27-2018, 23:11

This is directly on this administrations hands. The last thing this man posted was how Jews were funding the "caravan". We are slipping towards a tipping point. These are dark times.

The escalation of agents of violence moves inward from the fringe of the, uh, mentally-defective and deranged toward the sane who are ideologically and physically committed to violence.

The next step down was illustrated already today by the Neo-Nazi terrorist who lethally shot up a synagogue (http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/what-to-know-about-the-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting.html) because Trump was not sufficiently nationalist and was not moving to exterminate the Jews.

There are some steps to go, but a transformative milestone will be reached once there is a symbiotic connection made between Republican political leaders and gangs like Patriot Prayer or the Proud Boys. If Republican figures realize that they can advance their aims by co-opting and deploying the "militias" for the purpose of political suppression and terror in localities where the police forces are congenial, the GOP at large will come to partake out of institutional gravity (https://www.thoughtco.com/understanding-max-webers-iron-cage-3026373) (just as they did with Trumpism); those who refuse will be the next round to exit the party. At that point, the proto-brownshirts will become the genuine article...

EDIT: Oh, and lookit that (https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/26/us/kentucky-kroger-shooting/index.html), potentially an anti-black terrorist in the mold of Dylann Roof just the other day.

Beskar

10-28-2018, 07:35

Montmorency;*two more hate crimes by the right*

In the minds of those people, the Purge is simply the next step, not a horror series...

a completely inoffensive name

10-28-2018, 18:20

Montmorency

10-28-2018, 19:25

And yet, his approval has been increasing recently.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

I find it remarkable how stable his approval ratings have been over the full term (perhaps only Obama is comparable in this regard out of the records of all Presidents as shown on 538). But his base will respond, thus slightly bumping his approval, every time he engages in his bailiwick, which is cultural-symbolic warfare and antagonism. Economics is literally meaningless in registering Trump's base support (as opposed to interest group or financial support).

You must understand - as so many have noted, but as this twitter thread (https://twitter.com/henryfarrell/status/1056214266850754561) does relatively succinctly - is that Trump's only option to build support is to divide the country (read the whole thing):

Starting from the proposal that Trump’s failure to even try to “unite” the country after the bombs doesn’t only stem from his character but his business model.

Or to put it otherwise, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his continued political success depends upon his not understanding it. Trump’s prospects for political survival don’t depend on uniting country, but on continuing to divide it in ways that are reinforced by the political geography of Senate, the rural-urban divide in House seats etc. Even if (implausibly) he wanted to build unity, he couldn’t stick to it without undermining his only viable political strategy (the people who hate him are going to go on hating him). This seems obvious.

What is maybe less immediately obvious is that the Democratic party faces very similar strictures. The broad aspirational claim that the country could be ‘united’ by a president depended on a very different ecosystem, where TV etc had a highly pronounced centrist bias.

As the historical work of @pastpunditry and the ecosystem mapping of @YBenkler et al. demonstrate, this has been radically transformed. We now have a bifurcated media ecosystem, with Fox News and its satellites radically at odds with the old consensus, which persuades viewers into a version of @normative epistemic closure (see also @drvox passsim). This means that Democratic presidents aren’t ever going to be able to unite the country either – a substantial minority will always believe they are part of a madrassa/benghazi/communist/globalist plot.

It’s notable that the last moment of purported ‘unity’ was GWB and the Iraq war – when the traditional media flocked to Fox’s view of the world, rather than vice versa. But there is a substantial minority that will never, ever be united beneath a president that has the (D).

So this creates a problem for the Democrats. They’re going to be asked to bring unity back to American politics, but they’re not going to be able to. When Clinton complained about the “deplorables” she was absolutely right. They may not be deplorable in the sense that they may be good to their neighbors, do not kick puppy dogs for fun etc, but they are going to be eager consumers of conspiracy theories, and they will be difficult to impossible to persuade given prevailing media structures.

What this means is that “uniting the country” is perhaps plausible as an organizing myth for a coalition that would like to think of itself as the unifying spirit of the country, but “uniting the country” should never be mistaken as a program for practical action. Indeed, that goal is likely to be a continuing problem, insofar as the coalition is likely to get cross pressure from a mainstream media that is still drinking its own home-brewed Kool-Aid, when that coalition takes politically divisive measures that are politically necessary under current circumstances. Justifying these measures in terms of broad political programs that are hard for media to assail because of their urgency – e.g. the need to restore American democracy a la Ezra, or the threat of global warming – is one possible way of responding that is obviously good on its own merits, albeit not always going to be effective in convincing media figures who still think they are in an earlier and very different America that operates according to different rules.

But if my barstool punditizing is right, then Trump’s immediate departure from uniting to dividing does not just represent his personal drive to spite and chaos. It also reflects the real state of a country that is so profoundly divided that Humpty Dumpty ain’t never going to be reassembled properly. While deploring the ways in which Trump uses this state of affairs, Democrats should be under no illusions it can be fixed.

Also, here is a useful article (http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/polarization-tribalism-the-conservative-movement-gop-threat-to-democracy.html) that elaborated on the recent topics of discussion here (re: compromise, extremism, partisanship), and explains why even alignment on economic policy between Democrats and Republicans will never allow for a meaningful coalition. (The TLDR is that the parties used to be similar enough that voters felt cross-pressured between identity groups associated with either party, but now they are more cleanly divided along lines like race, sex, and class)

Let me repeat my belief that this is our best option:

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

Montmorency

11-01-2018, 01:49

There's been some pretty dire shit going on in the past week or two of these bad times (https://hmmdaily.com/2018/10/30/these-are-the-bad-times/), including the President of the United States claiming to have the power to revoke or abrogate Constitutional rights by executive fiat

not even with reference to some national emergency requiring the temporary derogation of protections, but with reference to the President's opinion on what the Constitution ought to say

so it's time for a

HUMOR BREAK

A young right-wing provocateur Jacob Wohl (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/mueller-refers-sex-assault-scheme-targeting-him-fbi-investigation-n926301) was just outed for attempting to frame the Special Counsel Mueller with discrediting sexual assault allegations. His plot was apparently as follows (in this summation where I'm missing something, it's probably a detail that makes the whole enterprise even dumber and you can delve and chuckle for yourselves):

1. Pose as a fake woman contacting reporters claiming that Republican operatives are paying her to lodge false accusations of sexual assault against Mueller.
2. Contact a real woman and offer her money to sign a sworn affidavit alleging that Mueller sexually assaulted her nearly 50 years ago.
3. Use a fake firm to put out a fake report containing anonymous allegations of sexual assault by Mueller through Gateway Pundit, a far-right fake news mill that, among other things, pushed the narrative in October 2016 that pro-Trump FBI agents were going to leak damaging information about Clinton as an October Surprise (FBI Director James Comey infamously got out ahead of this by effectively leaking himself)
4. Something something MeToo
5. ???
6. Glory to God-Emperor Trump!

Apparently the front site they setup to distribute the final product (the report and accusations) was filled with stock photos of actors and models, and included/was registered to Wohl's personal email and phone number - as well as a phone number registered to his mother.

Wohl stopped responding to NBC News after being told Surefire's official phone number redirects to his mother's voicemail.

<insert preferred gif>

Mueller quickly got wind of it and the FBI is investigating. Wohl will be lucky to escape a federal prison sentence for suborning perjury among other things.

GilrandirThis is what politically-motivated accusations look like. Their hallmark is that they are very easy to debunk.

Gilrandir

11-01-2018, 12:40

There's been some pretty dire shit going on in the past week or two of these bad times (https://hmmdaily.com/2018/10/30/these-are-the-bad-times/), including the President of the United States claiming to have the power to revoke or abrogate Constitutional rights by executive fiat

not even with reference to some national emergency requiring the temporary derogation of protections, but with reference to the President's opinion on what the Constitution ought to say

so it's time for a

HUMOR BREAK

A young right-wing provocateur Jacob Wohl (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/mueller-refers-sex-assault-scheme-targeting-him-fbi-investigation-n926301) was just outed for attempting to frame the Special Counsel Mueller with discrediting sexual assault allegations. His plot was apparently as follows (in this summation where I'm missing something, it's probably a detail that makes the whole enterprise even dumber and you can delve and chuckle for yourselves):

1. Pose as a fake woman contacting reporters claiming that Republican operatives are paying her to lodge false accusations of sexual assault against Mueller.
2. Contact a real woman and offer her money to sign a sworn affidavit alleging that Mueller sexually assaulted her nearly 50 years ago.
3. Use a fake firm to put out a fake report containing anonymous allegations of sexual assault by Mueller through Gateway Pundit, a far-right fake news mill that, among other things, pushed the narrative in October 2016 that pro-Trump FBI agents were going to leak damaging information about Clinton as an October Surprise (FBI Director James Comey infamously got out ahead of this by effectively leaking himself)
4. Something something MeToo
5. ???
6. Glory to God-Emperor Trump!

Apparently the front site they setup to distribute the final product (the report and accusations) was filled with stock photos of actors and models, and included/was registered to Wohl's personal email and phone number - as well as a phone number registered to his mother.

<insert preferred gif>

Mueller quickly got wind of it and the FBI is investigating. Wohl will be lucky to escape a federal prison sentence for suborning perjury among other things.

GilrandirThis is what politically-motivated accusations look like. Their hallmark is that they are very easy to debunk.

This accusation abounds in "fake" words, so its not really an accusation. Just old woman's tales. Real accusations are not like that. But, anyway, be it real or false, any accusations of a politician which are that old are politically motivated.

Crandar

11-13-2018, 12:37

POTUS continues to prove that he's the epitome (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/10/trump-baltics-balkans-mixup-le-monde-belleau-cemetery-paris)of the average American. It's neither guns nor hamburgers, neither baseball nor cowboys. No, it's just pure and sheer ignorance of geography. Poor Melania.

rory_20_uk

11-13-2018, 13:30

Poor Melania.

She's a call girl on retainer. She sold out for as much as she could get. That is her choice - but I've no sympathy since if she wants she's free to divorce him... I assume the terms of the pre-nup mean she stands to loose too much.

~:smoking:

Gilrandir

11-13-2018, 15:14

Seamus Fermanagh

11-13-2018, 16:17

She's a call girl on retainer. She sold out for as much as she could get. That is her choice - but I've no sympathy since if she wants she's free to divorce him... I assume the terms of the pre-nup mean she stands to loose too much.

~:smoking:

I am not quite so emotionally cynical as to assume any marriage is a form of prostitution (which is possible inductive extrapolation of your statement).

Her choice to remain with him is, as you note, her choice.

I do not know the tenor of their relationship with one another, or what guidelines they have worked out between and for themselves. Their union, their choice. Not my concern.

Montmorency

11-28-2018, 21:23

A great essay (https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/11/the-mob-movie-goodfellas-tells-us-everything-we-ne.html) comparing the Trump worldview to the movie Goodfellas. I urge you to read it :

The most interesting connection between Goodfellas and Trump isn’t that “Trump behaves like a mafia don.” It’s that the President thinks that being a mafia don is the best possible life. And that is desperately sad.

Praising its “stellar cast,” Mr. Trump has referred to the 1990 film as “great entertainment.” — CBS News

Goodfellas is the Rosetta Stone for the Trump Presidency (some spoilers ahead). My brother (we’ll call him N.) and I were watching the heartwarming, blood-splattered classic over Thanksgiving. In the second half, Henry Hill is rolling in money from his Pittsburgh coke connection. Henry’s wife Karen is flaunting their regained wealth to Morrie and Belle. Karen pushes a button on a remote control. A pair of doors swing open, revealing the most garish home entertainment center this side of a Dubai strip club. It’s Scorsese taking a cold-eyed look at Seventies mob taste. My brother and I started laughing. N. said, “This is what Trump thinks is classy.” And that’s the key to our glorious President: he thinks he’s in this story.

I’m not the first to note parallels between Scorsese’s 1990 crime epic and Trump. Back in August, the New York Times noted:

“When I first heard that Trump said to Comey, ‘Let this go,’ it just rang such a bell with me,” said Nicholas Pileggi, an author who has chronicled the Mafia in books and films like “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” ... Mr. Pileggi traced the president’s language to the Madison Club, a Democratic Party machine in Brooklyn that helped his father, Fred Trump, win his first real estate deals in the 1930s. ... Mr. Trump honed his vocabulary over decades through his association with the lawyer Roy Cohn, who besides working for Senator Joseph McCarthy also represented Mafia bosses like Mr. Gotti, Tony Salerno and Carmine Galante.

But these are surface comparisons, and miss the point. The most interesting connection between Goodfellas and Trump isn’t that “Trump behaves like a mafia don.” It’s that the President thinks that being a mafia don is the best possible life. And that is desperately sad.

Henry begins the film by telling us, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. To me, being a gangster was better than being President of the United States.” Trump is what happens when you try to have it both ways.
With the possible exception of Fight Club, Goodfellas is the most misinterpreted movie in history. Let me clarify. If you watched Goodfellas, and took away “They’ve got it made,” if you watched The Sopranos and thought “Man, Tony’s got it figured out”—or if you watched Breaking Bad and said “Wow, Walter has grown into a hero”—then, my friend, have I got tough news for you.

Goodfellas is one long gag on the audience—You really think the mob is about glamour and loyalty? Check these guys out! Trump is the kind of man who takes a joke literally. It’s almost as if the movie was designed to appeal to him. The story of Henry Hill is essentially a narrative about half-witted narcissistic sociopaths with weird hangups … who take themselves and “respect” incredibly seriously. Paulie’s weirdness about using the phone could be a Trump peccadillo. Trump’s dearest associates are either people who believe this, or are criminal grifters. Both of these types appear in Goodfellas.

Thirty years after its release, Goodfellas shadows over all crime fiction. Scorsese’s masterpiece has perfect atmosphere. There are details about postwar Mafia culture that only close-hand observers would know. The film seems inexpensive but never cheap. As Bill Burr once said, every scene’s a closer.

And Goodfellas illustrates the squalor of Henry’s world. And Trump’s.

As someone once said, Trump is a dumb man’s idea of a smart rich man. But we forget just how dumb that idea is. I mean, here’s a guy in big awkward suits, surrounded by dopey cronies, who lives in a golden penthouse, uses words like “rats,” and chooses to spend his time with thick-necked real estate brokers in Mar-a-Lago.
Goodfellas nailed Trump’s type down to a T. Even if you believe wealth and power and strength are inherently admirable (they’re not), Goodfellas portrays the cheapest, shoddiest versions of those glories—the Trumpian versions, as it were.

During my twentieth time watching it, I was reminded of how weird and broken the characters are, and honestly how little they settle for. Their idea of money is a couple of free hundreds. Their idea of masculinity is bullying their friends. And their idea of power is—what, not getting bothered by the cops and scoring a seat at the Copa?
Trump: A man whose idea of power is large crowds. A man whose loyalty goes one way. A man who forgoes clever lying for easily disproven brags. A thin-skinned man who gives into performative public explosions instead of building power wisely. A profoundly dull, needy, unimaginative man, easily provoked and easily upset.
The underworld of Henry Hill seems so shabby once you’ve read about people with real wealth and real power and real strength. Selling your soul is bad enough, but doing it for so little is doubly humiliating. In the play A Man For All Seasons, Thomas More says: “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales?”

Another point that Goodfellas is very clear about: everyone here is deluded. Just as Trump is deluded. Every claim Henry makes for The Life is disproven in the course of the film. The whole movie is one long, extended exercise in How Men Miss The Point. And Henry, from the first to the last, takes the wrong lesson. Much as Trump does. That’s the tragic thing about nihilists. They sacrifice so much just to believe in nothing. And nothing is what they get.

We’re told again and again in the film how much loyalty matters. But loyalty doesn’t matter. Not in this film, and not to Trump. The respect economy is make believe. The point of Goodfellas is that these are literally not “good fellas.” Organized crime is a business pretending to be a family. Goodfellas is a story about false laughter, false camaraderie, false everything. These are predators pretending to be blood brothers. That’s why so much of the male friendship in the movie has this bizarre, edgy dream logic to it. These are paranoid, insecure, desperate losers clawing at each other to stay afloat. Human feeling is alien to them, as it is to Trump.

Goodfellas feeds into the The Sopranos, and The Sopranos feeds into Trump. As one Reddit user put it, Tony Soprano’s descent into dark misanthropy—his alienation of everyone in his life—is the path of the MAGA suburban dad. Tony is unable to stop being selfish, or to tell himself the truth. He couldn’t face his own choices, any more than Henry or Karen could. That’s Trump’s base, and it’s Trump himself.

Sure, Horatio Alger was the lie that square America told itself. But the edgy alternative, Goodfellas, is also a shabby untruth. The lie that, with the right friends, or the right crew, or the right deal, you can jump in line ahead of all those suckers. People who take Goodfellas at face value are distantly related to people who take Fox News seriously. There’s nobody easier to con than people who think they can’t be conned. When you get a free second, ask an Alex Jones listener about nutritional supplements.

The Trump White House (like Goodfellas) is full of people who spent their lives conning other people, only to fall for the biggest con of all, as Paul Manafort’s week has detailed. They all played themselves into following a deluded schmuck, and believing his childish lies. Like Henry Hill, Trump wants to avoid living his life like an average nobody. But the point of the movie is that only a schnook would seriously believe in The Life. There’s no fool like a man desperate to be nobody’s fool, and guess what? He’s the President. Donald, you sure are a funny guy.

EDIT: I especially appreciate the article because I only ever saw the middle third or half of Goodfellas on TV some years ago.

Montmorency

12-12-2018, 00:50

Did Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer just trick Trump into having a "Trump shutdown"???

Anyway, another piece (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/opinion/trump-gop-authoritarian-states-power-grab.html) on the GOP going fashy, but what caught my attention was a comment:

I live in a state with 1-party rule. Complete, lock stock and barrel, north to south, 1-party rule.

I live in California.

Two reasons mitigate the authoritarian tendency that I can think of – removal of gerrymandering as a means of voter control, and removal of mandatory R vs D fall elections. Come election time, I have a choice between 2 people within (typically) the same party, the top two vote getters in the primary. With policy differences that matter. I must research the candidates to understand their platforms, while with R vs D it would be a party line. The polarization is gone, the cookie cutter reflexivity to party line is gone. Town halls and open offices are held more frequently. If you are disconnected from your constituents, you will lose as the other guy is no longer ideologically the opposite. It no longer pays to be extreme.

The key difference is a fundamental respect for voting rights and transparency. I am free to vote for whomever in the primary, and the differences between the two candidates in the fall are the differences that matter to my district, not to a political party. I get a text saying when my absentee ballot is counted. My representative didn’t get to influence my district boundaries. My vote is respected.

In a way, California has gone back to the basics, the initial idea of America, where there were no political parties.

ACIN

a completely inoffensive name

12-12-2018, 07:02

a completely inoffensive name

12-12-2018, 07:17

Those outside the state will write off our views as nothing but Dems having enough "illegals" inflating their numbers to institute one party rule.
Meanwhile, the next generation of CAL conservative students wants to forgo the public relations effort that CALGOP tries to hind behind, and prefers to call their non-white non-binary citizens "degenerates".
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Degenerate-and/244871

Seamus Fermanagh

12-13-2018, 02:00

No trick needed at all. Trump likes to be tough. The trumpeteers listen to Limbaugh who assures them that government shutdowns are good and show how the government isn't all that necessary. Say no to a Trump policy you loathe and that his Trumpeteers adore. Trump gets to bathe in the purity of his followers love. His followers thank him for the shutdown. The media and the Dems tie the shutdown to the GOP with a huge Christmas bow (happens every time, regardless of who is in power in what branch or combo, GOP earns the stupid shutdown points).

Those relatively modern elements of the GOP get hammered for it, encouraging the GOP ever further into the Trumpeteer corner and ramping up the polarization even more.

I don't know who will make a move towards sensible governance. Conservatives like me drift away from the GOP day by day leaving only the Reactionaries and the out-and-out White Supremacists. Sad, sad, sad....

And in doing so, the DEMS have managed to ramp up their fruitbat fringers into a self-chosen bi-coastal elite who presumes that the Heartland and the South are congenital idiots who need to be kept semi-sedated and away from the adult table. Doesn't make the DEMS all the appealing either. Though I will admit that Euro-style social democracy is less damaging than Trump's reactionary zeitgeist.

A plague on both their houses. I'd love a fusion party running a ticket like governors Bullock and Sandoval. The USA is in pretty good shape, we don't need to be revamped from top to bottom on some idiot quest for ideological purity.

Too old now. Will probably not live the 5 decades needed to see us reach some reasonable political climate again. Gah.

Strike For The South

12-13-2018, 15:20

Montmorency

12-14-2018, 05:01

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/12/donald-trump-deport-vietnam-war-refugees/577993/

What is the point of this? Why would you ever deport these people? 1995 was nearly 25 years ago, the war even longer than that, what are they supposed to go back too?

Stephen Millers fingerprints are all over this naked cruelty.

ICE arrested 170 immigrants seeking to sponsor migrant children (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/ice-arrested-170-immigrants-seeking-sponsor-migrant-children-n946621)

So then of course you have to keep the kids in the camps, because the family, adopters, or foster parents who would have taken them were themselves deported or sent to the camps.

Fuck the Herrenvolk

Shaka_Khan

12-14-2018, 14:59

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/12/donald-trump-deport-vietnam-war-refugees/577993/

What is the point of this? Why would you ever deport these people? 1995 was nearly 25 years ago, the war even longer than that, what are they supposed to go back too?

Stephen Millers fingerprints are all over this naked cruelty.

Now all pre-1995 arrivals are exempt from the 2008 agreement’s protection.

This reminds me of this poem:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

-German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller

Husar

12-14-2018, 16:44

Remember how Obama totally came for the gun owners....

These freedom lovers seem pretty quiet now if they're not marching with tiki torches.

Montmorency

12-18-2018, 23:00

So Trump's charity, the Trump Foundation, is currently being sued into oblivion by the State of New York for being up to 100% fraud and is now being dissolved. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-agrees-to-shut-down-his-charity-amid-allegations-he-used-it-for-personal-and-political-benefit/2018/12/18/dd3f5030-021b-11e9-9122-82e98f91ee6f_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3934f25fc197)

The largest donation in the charity’s history — a $264,231 gift to the Central Park Conservancy in 1989 — appeared to benefit Trump’s business: It paid to restore a fountain outside Trump’s Plaza Hotel. The smallest, a $7 foundation gift to the Boy Scouts that same year, appeared to benefit Trump’s family. It matched the amount required to enroll a boy in the Scouts the year that his son Donald Trump Jr. was 11.

lol

Of course, like much of Trump's criminality, this (https://medium.com/@JordanArizmendi/donald-took-7-out-of-his-charity-to-pay-for-his-sons-boy-scout-membership-fees-i-can-t-make-3274d4d12aeb) has been an open secret (https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/06/06/how-donald-trump-shifted-kids-cancer-charity-money-into-his-business/#19fe95ec6b4a) for a long time.

IN ORDER TO understand the Eric Trump Foundation, you need to understand the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The president was never known for giving his foundation much money, and from 2009 to 2014, he didn't give it anything at all. Outsiders still donated, though, allowing Trump to dole out their money to a smattering of more than 200 charities as if it were his own, with many of the donations helping his business interests.

Until this board turnover, the Eric Trump Foundation pretty much did what it told its donors it would: send its money to St. Jude [pediatric cancer research center]. But starting in 2011, more than $500,000 was redirected to a variety of other charities, many of which were personal favorites of Trump family members and several of which had nothing to do with children's cancer--but happened to become clients of Trump's golf courses.

:angry:

Some half-jokingly speak about guillotining/eating the rich, but I have a better idea. White collar prosecution is at one of its all-time lows (http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/crim/514/), because going after the rich and powerful is difficult and unpopular (with the rich and powerful). After this family is put away, the IRS should have its funding (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/business/economy/irs-tax-fraud-audit.html) restored, the Special Counsel's Office should be redesignated as a White Collar Task Force, and they should be set loose on a mission to ruthlessly investigate and prosecute all the riches. Since there is a hangup over giving elites real jail time, the penalties should be largely (and severely) expropriative. But don't worry, none of the targets will starve with mere millions remaining.

Investigate how many 0.1%ers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBKXu3Kg4yg

Edit: Any White Collar Task Force should be funded to the tune of billions, in order to pursue its mission properly. It'll pay for itself soon enough. Perhaps also fairer and more efficient than disproportionately auditing people (https://www.propublica.org/article/earned-income-tax-credit-irs-audit-working-poor) literally on the poverty line.

Seamus Fermanagh

12-19-2018, 06:05

Rooting out fraud in business dealings of all sorts SHOULD be a government function -- and this coming from a small government oriented fellah.

rory_20_uk

12-19-2018, 12:34

Montmorency

12-20-2018, 16:42

I think this is something that should be done - if for no reason than to make hiding the money harder.

And here's how I would do it (NB I have nothing bar Google so I'm probably missing loads of more convoluted ideas)

1) Move the money to an overseas Foundation. as such you are neither the controller or owner of it. Of course all the assets are for your personal access. Doing this is quite easy and legal. The document stating who has access to the money is not a publicly visible document.
2) Have overseas companies owned by the Foundation - preferably in different jurisdictions. They can do things like invest and make it all the more difficult to even find out what is at the top of the pile.

The costs for setting up this framework starts at a few thousand pounds. That's nothing really. So finding where the money is would be quite the undertaking (since if anyone starts even starting proceedings on one entity you can fold it, move all the assets to another off-the-shelf asset (so the date of creation is potentially years ago), destroy all the paperwork and the search starts afresh.

And aside from those with conspicuous displays of wealth (such as Donald and brood), holidays are paid by money from abroad, the contents of one's house is paid from abroad - hell, have second or third houses all not technically owned by oneself. So knowing who has modest means and who only appears to have modest means would be extremely difficult to discern.

~:smoking:

I agree, but you're placing an emphasis on international tax evasion in your post. As Trump and others have demonstrated, one can openly flout domestic laws using domestic methods and institutions, and the government will do basically nothing, or else maybe sue you a little bit, maybe enter into a little non-prosecution agreement promising to clean the slate if you pay back a small portion of your ill-gained/kept wealth. Second, rich individuals and large corporations can commit all sorts of crimes or offenses, not strictly tax-related, but that nevertheless may be related to self-enrichment and impose externalities on society/workers/contractors. Trump was infamous for ignoring building safety codes and renter protections and other regulations, as well as for simply not paying debts or for services rendered.

If that's the wannabe-bourgeois Trump family, imagine what billionaires and big multinationals must get up to. Well, you don't need to (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-cancer-special-report/special-report-jj-knew-for-decades-that-asbestos-lurked-in-its-baby-powder-idUSKBN1OD1RQ) with the latest in exposed malfeasance.

Basically Johnson & Johnson knew about injurious asbestos contamination of its talc products for generations, worked to suppress this information, and successfully lobbied lawmakers against setting more stringent industrial regulations wrt asbestos.

Notice that the related settlements adjudicated against J&J this year, $4.7 billion (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/business/johnson-johnson-talcum-powder.html) and $26 million (https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/24/health/johnson--johnson-talc-asbestos-verdict-california/index.html) before reduction that I can find, do not clearly negate the margin of profit for neutralizing government action and concealing and suppressing the data on their product and materials. If such a thing could even be reliably calculated over a period of so many decades. Also note that if you google the subject, the first result on every page is a J&J ad informing the reader that "Our Talc Is Safe‎. Thousands of Tests Repeatedly Confirm This. Don't Take Our Word For It - Learn More Today."

This type of (at best) aggressive negligence happens so often and in so many guises that it's background noise for most of us. As I said recently, if shareholder value is the foremost and only priority, and the cost of crime and sub-illegal devastation remains below the returns, businesses MUST maximize the damage to the public.

A neat ordeal to impose would be to give a year's notice for firms and individuals to clean up their crimes and negligence, while proceeding with investigations. After a year, start hitting the worst offenders with the most severe penalties conceivable. I'm talking corporate death penalty, estate seizure (for individuals), expropriation, nationalization, and prosecution of the C-suite. Give no regard to the size or alleged indispensability of the targets. Begin diverting the proceeds to a sovereign wealth fund (https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/). Now we have a test of the system. Either:

1. Lesser offenders are deterred into adjusting their behavior. Maybe the economic framework is sustainable in some form.
2. "And then the murders began (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/and-then-the-murders-began)". The economic framework is an annihilation spiral.

a completely inoffensive name

12-21-2018, 00:32

Mattis is leaving. The last adult in the room is gone. That weird bald headed dude that loves Trump is arguing on CNN right now that the government is shutting down just before christmas if we dont have a border wall funded.

It is finally happening? Is this the beginning of chaos?

Shaka_Khan

12-21-2018, 01:48

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mattis-resigns-as-defense-chief-citing-differences-with-trump/ar-BBReYyY?ocid=spartanntp

“Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,” Mattis said in the letter to Trump released by the Pentagon.

Hooahguy

12-22-2018, 22:56

If the reports that Mattis stopped some of the truly boneheaded Trump ideas (like assassinating Assad) are true, then I think this is worrying, depending on who he replaces him with.

Seamus Fermanagh

12-23-2018, 03:56

Trump is a geopolitical neophyte. His base's orientation is much more isolationist than any candidate since Buchannon an any President since Hoover.

Montmorency

12-23-2018, 05:46

Trump is a geopolitical neophyte. His base's orientation is much more isolationist than any candidate since Buchannon an any President since Hoover.

Misconception! Trump is not an isolationist at all in mindset, rhetoric, or policy - he is a unilateralist.

His understanding of strength, because he is a weak and insecure man, is embodied through throwing our weight around and intimidating other countries (especially friendly ones).

An isolationist does not see an active role for a country in world affairs. Trump merely intensifies the logic of American interventionism as a mechanism to deliver goodies. There is no pretense that multilateral arrangements should be something other than tribute-taking exercises. Recall the infamous blog in 2011 in which brainstormed occupying Libya in exchange for "half their oil".

Don't call Trump an isolationist, it's not evidenced. This is his vision for American participation:

https://i.imgur.com/tppiptX.gif

Husar

12-23-2018, 14:07

Well, yes, "America First".

Of course many say that every leader should think like that, to which I say we had them shortly before WW1, see how that turned out.

Seamus Fermanagh

12-24-2018, 18:05

Misconception! Trump is not an isolationist at all in mindset, rhetoric, or policy - he is a unilateralist.

His understanding of strength, because he is a weak and insecure man, is embodied through throwing our weight around and intimidating other countries (especially friendly ones).

An isolationist does not see an active role for a country in world affairs. Trump merely intensifies the logic of American interventionism as a mechanism to deliver goodies. There is no pretense that multilateral arrangements should be something other than tribute-taking exercises. Recall the infamous blog in 2011 in which brainstormed occupying Libya in exchange for "half their oil".

Don't call Trump an isolationist, it's not evidenced. This is his vision for American participation:

https://i.imgur.com/tppiptX.gif

I tend to think of him as a Russell Mead "Jacksonian" isolationist. I don't think you and I are far off on this, but I do take your point.

Montmorency

01-04-2019, 23:19

I tend to think of him as a Russell Mead "Jacksonian" isolationist. I don't think you and I are far off on this, but I do take your point.

I read the article (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/22/andrew-jackson-donald-trump-216493#superComments) I inferred you were referring to. It has a serious lmitation: it doesn't at any point elaborate what Jacksonian foreign policy was, nor what connections can be made to either Trump's rhetoric or administration. As it turns out, I have no knowledge of Jackson's particular foreign policy record other than the typical antebellum conflicts being fomented over Texas on one hand and the Canadian border on the other.

That's a weakness of these kinds of micro-profile articles [didn't I just write on the Org recently about having written this phrase on the Org before???] is they're more concerned with painting a picture of the subject and conveying an impression to the reader rather than relaying many facts of the underlying matter.

The fairest simple apprehension may be to take into account the differing baselines between time periods. In the pre-liberal United States, isolationism meant something with respect to European geopolitics specifically. Pretty much everyone in the young United States favored expansion within the Western hemisphere on the other hand. Today however almost no one is really an isolationist in that sense. Not even Ron Paul believed that the United States could or should simply ignore great power politics in the world. The term probably should not be applied anymore unless proceeding from a unique contemporary distinction.

Another way to put this is that Trump carries the 'one step forward, two steps back' logic of US internationalism to its logical conclusion. That is, the US created a law-based, norm-based, rights-based international order, and then proceeded to undermine it very cynically to the point that lawless gangsterism became the real norm. Trump merely finally came forward and proclaimed, 'Hell yeah I'm a gangster too. My dream is to become the biggest gangster ever, dattebayo!' *raises fist for bump from Duterte, Putin, etc.*

For example, the US had criticized Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba, among other countries - including John Bolton referring to them as a "troika of tyranny (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troika_of_tyranny)" a few months ago - for rejecting the authority of Latin American transnational human rights frameworks like the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Now the US under Trump has the same kind of posture as Cuba does, and is ranked among the bottom tier by those same human rights bodies. :smash:

EDIT: Meanwhile, here is the President (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/4/18168860/trump-news-conference-shutdown) suggesting that he might invoke national emergency powers to proceed with construction of the "Wall".

Meanwhile meanwhile, here is an essay (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/presidential-emergency-powers/576418/) published a few weeks ago describing the hundreds of emergency powers the office of POTUS is imbued with that could literally be used to instate a totalitarian system of government if the office holder were so inclined.

Happy New Year everybody, welcome to 20XX (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfZVu0alU0I)

Gilrandir

01-05-2019, 12:57

EDIT: Meanwhile, here is the President (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/4/18168860/trump-news-conference-shutdown) suggesting that he might invoke national emergency powers to proceed with construction of the "Wall".

21968

Seamus Fermanagh

01-05-2019, 21:40

The Jacksonian thing is to mostly avoid foreign entanglement. When forced to act, smack the crap out of them hard (unconditional surrender), but then Jacksonians tend to opt out and go home.

Beskar

01-06-2019, 14:33

Trump actually signed something productive into law.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/2076/text

Husar

01-06-2019, 16:32

Trump actually signed something productive into law.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/2076/text

Given that many have already suspected that he has dementia of some sort....what if it's just another selfish move? :sweatdrop:

a completely inoffensive name

01-07-2019, 00:53

Montmorency

01-07-2019, 01:39

There was also a very good prison reform bill that was passed.

I will have to give it to the GOP, they did work with Dems on some good bills that were needed.
Note that neither the bills mentioned got any significant press attention until their passing, lest the public see compromise in action.

The federal prison bill wasn't actually that significant, affecting as it did a small subset of the federal prison population, which is itself a tenth of the overall prison population. It is an improvement, at least for sentencing going forward. Hey, I'm not going to resist making life easier for 5 or 10 thousand people here or there. But it's no 'great compromise', it is (or should be seen as) boilerplate.

a completely inoffensive name

01-07-2019, 07:22

The federal prison bill wasn't actually that significant, affecting as it did a small subset of the federal prison population, which is itself a tenth of the overall prison population. It is an improvement, at least for sentencing going forward. Hey, I'm not going to resist making life easier for 5 or 10 thousand people here or there. But it's no 'great compromise', it is (or should be seen as) boilerplate.

Your expectations are too high. If this bill got out in front of the public early, it would have been pounced upon as being soft on crime, same as with any bill that treats prisoners as anything more than cheap labor.
That fact that most Republicans agreed to come to the table at all on this topic, whether it was for 5 prisoners or 5 million, took some amount of political courage.

Montmorency

01-07-2019, 09:29

Your expectations are too high. If this bill got out in front of the public early, it would have been pounced upon as being soft on crime, same as with any bill that treats prisoners as anything more than cheap labor.
That fact that most Republicans agreed to come to the table at all on this topic, whether it was for 5 prisoners or 5 million, took some amount of political courage.

Did it? Why did Republicans in both chambers overwhelmingly support the bill of it was so politically costly?

What I'm telling you is that your posture sets our expectations dangerously low, like an uncle calling their 10-year-old nephew a math whiz because they correctly answer, "What is 12 x 12?" Just say "cool" and go on with working; blowing an accomplishment out of proportion isn't productive.

If this bill got out in front of the public early,

Also, interesting point - if this bill had "got out" in front of the public, it would mean that the media were prioritizing it as something to report on, something to invest prime time into. And if they were prioritizing it as a subject, it would be because the Republicans were prioritizing it. Because Republicans often set the media's agenda (e.g. Obamacare criticism, Benghazi, Ebola, Clinton emails, migrant caravans).

It follows that mainstream conservatives were not interested in opposing or bashing the legislation before the nation.

It's boilerplate, dude.

Strike For The South

01-07-2019, 19:42

Montmorency

01-08-2019, 02:23

The reform bill is a pebble in the ocean.

The United States criminal justice system is a failure and has resulted in this country having 1/4 of the worlds total prisoners. There needs to be a massive concerted effort to fundamentally change it. A black man in America has more than double the chance of being in prison than someone during Stalins gulag. That is not justice.

There has been a talking point going around for a few years that the US imprisons more people now than Stalin's gulags did at their height. This is basically untrue. (https://seansrussiablog.org/2013/05/11/us-prison-industrial-complex-versus-the-stalinist-gulag/)

HOWEVER

While accounting that Stalin's USSR had more or less half the population of the contemporary United States (WW2 = more or less), it is true that America's incarceration rate and absolute numbers are quite comparable to the Stalinist system, which is certainly scary.

From the link above:

The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens.

It is no hyperbole to say that the US prison industrial complex is unacceptable, especially for a country that purports itself the world’s preeminent democracy. But it is hyperbole because placing the US next to Stalinism (and Nazism for that matter) is inherently hyperbolic. The rhetorical move is supposed to provoke an emotional reaction not stimulate critical awareness. And as much as American liberals would like to think that the numbers of bodies ensnared in the US prison industrial complex is as bad, if not worse, than Stalinist Russia, the situation is far more complicated.

Here I don’t mean the quality of the Stalinist system No one is claiming that the US system is worse than Stalin’s forced labor camps. I only mean the quantity of humans in both systems.

The Stalinist penal system was a complex network of punishments and detentions: prisons, noncustodial forced labor, corrective labor camps, forced labor detention (katorga) special settlements, and corrective labor colonies. I won’t go into the meanings and various differences between these. Though experts make clear distinctions between these various units, to the popular mind, they all fall under the general name of gulag. The numbers of people, which also included children, in this penal machine at any given period remains partial. Up 20 percent of the gulag population was released every year, new inmates went in, corpses went out, some even managed to escape. But exactly how many people under Stalin’s correctional supervision is unknown.

Check the graphs in the link, as I won't reproduce them.

If the US has up to 2.5 million people incarcerated at some point in time, that is less - though only slightly less! - than the number of people in Stalin's gulag system in 1938-40, and a little more than 1935-7. If 6 million Americans are held under "correctional supervision", then the analogous number is not really know for prewar USSR, which may well be higher.

According to the straight numbers, the Stalinist system did not exceed the US’ six million during the years of the Great Terror. In 1938, there were 2.7 million people in the “gulag.” But this doesn’t include everyone under Stalinist “correctional supervision.” Therefore it doesn’t take account of prisons and released gulag prisoners who were forced to carry “Form A” which detailed their past crime, prison term, the deprivation of civil rights up to five years, and restricted where they could settle. There were roughly 2 million people released from the gulag between 1934 and 1940 which etches the Stalinist number closer to the United States.

Of course the Stalinist system reached its peak shortly before his death, upon which it was rapidly dismantled, and here the gulags were clearly absorbing more in absolute numbers than the American penal/carceral system ever has.

This means an estimated 7.4 million people were under Stalinist correctional supervision 1953, exceeding Zakaria’s and Gopnik’s 6 million for the United States. Again the numbers are probably higher since these numbers don’t include everyone in the Stalinist penal system.

Things get even more complicated when you consider the gulag population per 100,000 citizens. According to Eugenia Belova and Paul Gregory, the Soviet institutionalized population in 1953 was 2,621,000 or 1,558 per 100.000. When you include special settlements, the numbers jump to 4,301,000 or 2,605 per 100,000. This puts the 760 per 100,000 in the United States into perspective.

So the takeaway should be that, while the US has never really exceeded Stalinism's excesses (EDIT: Leaving aside the early years), it does come frighteningly close, at least in raw numbers. Which is bad. Real bad.

A more interesting comparison might be to Maoist China (which had about double the population of the contemporary US, as opposed to 50-60% like the USSR) and to contemporary China, which imprisons relatively few people but seems to have quite a lot in reeducation camps and the like, such as the notorious figure of up to 1 million Uighurs alone.

a completely inoffensive name

01-08-2019, 05:37

Did it? Why did Republicans in both chambers overwhelmingly support the bill of it was so politically costly?

What I'm telling you is that your posture sets our expectations dangerously low, like an uncle calling their 10-year-old nephew a math whiz because they correctly answer, "What is 12 x 12?" Just say "cool" and go on with working; blowing an accomplishment out of proportion isn't productive.

Also, interesting point - if this bill had "got out" in front of the public, it would mean that the media were prioritizing it as something to report on, something to invest prime time into. And if they were prioritizing it as a subject, it would be because the Republicans were prioritizing it. Because Republicans often set the media's agenda (e.g. Obamacare criticism, Benghazi, Ebola, Clinton emails, migrant caravans).

It follows that mainstream conservatives were not interested in opposing or bashing the legislation before the nation.

It's boilerplate, dude.

The reform bill is a pebble in the ocean.

The United States criminal justice system is a failure and has resulted in this country having 1/4 of the worlds total prisoners. There needs to be a massive concerted effort to fundamentally change it. A black man in America has more than double the chance of being in prison than someone during Stalins gulag. That is not justice.

In 2019 one of my resolutions was not to be so mad and stressed about everything. It is very tiring. I want to practice a more pragmatic reformist philosophy. Where I can push for the big goals but remain pleased with steps forward, no matter how small. I just can't sustain my political engagement if every act is to be judged against a criteria that will undoubtedly cause it to fall short of the target. And it is certainly worse to burn out and become numb to political events at this time.

Montmorency

01-08-2019, 06:53

Strike For The South

01-08-2019, 18:10

In 2019 one of my resolutions was not to be so mad and stressed about everything. It is very tiring. I want to practice a more pragmatic reformist philosophy. Where I can push for the big goals but remain pleased with steps forward, no matter how small. I just can't sustain my political engagement if every act is to be judged against a criteria that will undoubtedly cause it to fall short of the target. And it is certainly worse to burn out and become numb to political events at this time.

I'm not mad or stressed. It simply is not enough. It really is not anything tangible. It is better than stasis, I will grant you that.

@monty There is a massive racial element to those numbers and it is one of the reasons why the majority still supports insane "tough on crime" measures. There is a whole cottage industry (since 1776) around convincing white people that black people are dangerous. That is a whole nother thread though.

A reminder for tonight, There is no crisis at the border. There is no need for a ridiculous wall. Trumps desire for one is equal parts vanity, base whipping, and racism. Any attempt to declare an emergency will be challenged and that challenge will succeed. Just one more norm that we will have to codify.

This obsession with illegal immigration is an effort to squeeze a group of people. It is not an to get rid of them (which would hurt the bottom line) so much as it is an attempt to strip them of their voice while the country extracts their labor. Fear is the goal here. It is unacceptable.

Husar

01-08-2019, 19:24

There has been a talking point going around for a few years that the US imprisons more people now than Stalin's gulags did at their height.

Why even go there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

The US tops the list of per 100k, imprisons 3-4 times as many people (per 100k) as Venezuela and yet it keeps bitching about how oppressive Venezuela supposedly is.

The next decent country on the list is Luxembourg at 145 and that's a tax haven...
So the next decent first world country on the list is actually Germany at 172 with 75 per 100k.
(yes, British colonies, tax havens, baguettes that riot over environment taxes, countries with nazi parties in the government and incompetent Belgians don't count ~;p )

Ok, maybe you have the UK at 140, but they're Brexiteers...

Anyway, you don't need to compare the US to Stalin to see that it's either a country that breeds criminals or one that imprisons way too many people. Pick your poison.

Montmorency

01-09-2019, 00:34

@all above: Yes.

Meanwhile, Trump supporter (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/florida-government-shutdown-marianna.html) reacts to government shutdown and attendant deleterious economic impact:

A few miles away, another prison employee, Crystal Minton, accompanied her fiancé to a friend’s house to help clear the remnants of a metal roof mangled by the hurricane. Ms. Minton, a 38-year-old secretary, said she had obtained permission from the warden to put off her Mississippi duty until early February because she is a single mother caring for disabled parents. Her fiancé plans to take vacation days to look after Ms. Minton’s 7-year-old twins once she has to go to work.

The shutdown on top of the hurricane has caused Ms. Minton to rethink a lot of things.

“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”

https://i.imgur.com/ndp2Ir6.gif

(Sorry ACIN, this might raise your blood pressure more than mine)

a completely inoffensive name

01-09-2019, 03:11

Listening to the speech right now. We don't build walls because we hate those outside, but because we love those inside. LOL

Husar

01-09-2019, 03:52

Listening to the speech right now. We don't build walls because we hate those outside, but because we love those inside. LOL

That incidentally also explains all the prisoners...

Montmorency

01-09-2019, 05:31

I'm sorry to post so much, but amazing bullshit keeps happening.

Trump wants your money for the wall (https://secure.donaldjtrump.com/official-secure-the-border-fund) (but actually legally is a campaign donation and definitely going to his pockets):

Official Website of Donald J. Trump for President
SECURE THE BORDER
The American people are demanding Democrats finally put America First and BUILD THE WALL....but Chuck and Nancy simply won’t listen.

That’s why I want to do something so HUGE, even Democrats and the Fake News won’t be able to ignore.

We need to raise $500,000 in ONE DAY.

Please make a special contribution in the next FIVE MINUTES to our Official Secure the Border Fund to add your name to the President’s list.

You don't want your name on the President's list.

Listening to the speech right now. We don't build walls because we hate those outside, but because we love those inside. LOL

Liberal media bias (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/7/18172419/trump-immigration-speech-networks-obama):

In 2014, Obama was ready to announce a series of executive actions on immigration in the wake of the collapse in negotiations over a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill.

[...]

This was, naturally, very controversial. And Obama, naturally, wanted to try to make it less controversial by convincing people that it was a good idea.

Conservative pundits were, at the time, pushing the notion that Obama was essentially seizing power like a Latin American dictator, so essentially anything that refocused the conversation on banal policy details would have played to his advantage. TV networks, however, didn’t give him what he wanted, in part because it was November sweeps time, but officially because he was playing partisan politics rather than addressing a true national emergency.

A network insider tells Playbook: “There was agreement among the broadcast networks that this was overtly political. The White House has tried to make a comparison to a time that all the networks carried President Bush in prime time, also related to immigration [2006]. But that was a bipartisan announcement, and this is an overtly political move by the White House.”

Husar

01-10-2019, 18:15

Re: The Border Wall:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39mZ4tqemf8

rory_20_uk

01-10-2019, 20:46

The man flip-flops mid sentence - so that he said the opposite over a decade ago isn't really that surprising.

~:smoking:

Montmorency

01-10-2019, 23:39

Re: The Border Wall:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39mZ4tqemf8

I see your irony and raise you this:

Trump the Conman Builds a Wall, 1958

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=Gs6UcgiDwg0

Judge: You here about Trump?
Concerned Citizen: Yes sir, what're you gonna do about 'im?
Judge: Whaddaya want me to do?
CC: Stop him.
Judge: From what?
CC: From taking the town?
Judge: Can you prove that that's what he has in mind?
CC: Wh- it's obvious.
Judge: Heh, but can you prove it? In order to arrest him, a sheriff has to have a charge! And Trump hasn't given him a thing to go on.
CC: Well *sigh* there's gotta be a way to stop 'im.
Judge: Well if there is, I don't know it. Ahh, it's a funny thing.
CC: Sir?
Judge: When we were kids, we were all afraid of th' dark. And we grew up, and we weren't afraid anymore, but - it's funny how a big lie can make us all kids again.

Narrator: Obie had checked the town. The people were ready to believe. Like sheep, they ran toward the slaughterhouse - and waiting for them was the high priest of fraud.
Trump: I am the only one. TRUST ME. I can build a wall around your homes that nothing can penetrate.

...

???: You're under arrest, Trump.

We live in a comic book universe. :smash:

Husar

01-11-2019, 00:04

The man flip-flops mid sentence - so that he said the opposite over a decade ago isn't really that surprising.

I don't really think he is flip-flopping, he just has different standards for poor people and for the children of rich people.
When rich people talk about how to increase social mobility, most of them are simply lying. I doubt they actually want to become poor and/or see others become as rich as they are.

rory_20_uk

01-11-2019, 11:05

I don't really think he is flip-flopping, he just has different standards for poor people and for the children of rich people.
When rich people talk about how to increase social mobility, most of them are simply lying. I doubt they actually want to become poor and/or see others become as rich as they are.

He is constant on self-enrichment for him and himself and "winning" things.

But look at Stormy Daniels saga - the story repeatedly changed. He was for and against the Iraq war. Mexico was going to pay for the wall and then he said he never said that; he's great at technology and also said he doesn't do the email thing; the President is responsible for government shutdowns under Obama, took responsibility for it at the start then now it is everyone but his.

Whenever I've heard people talk about social mobility and redistribution of wealth I've yet to hear any of them express the view that they'd loose something by this: those poorer in the UK think they should get more from the richer, not that everyone in the UK should be giving to the truly poor abroad; of course the UK housing should be sorted out... but I've yet to hear home owners advocating schemes that would impact on them.

~:smoking:

Husar

01-11-2019, 13:56

He is constant on self-enrichment for him and himself and "winning" things.

But look at Stormy Daniels saga - the story repeatedly changed. He was for and against the Iraq war. Mexico was going to pay for the wall and then he said he never said that; he's great at technology and also said he doesn't do the email thing; the President is responsible for government shutdowns under Obama, took responsibility for it at the start then now it is everyone but his.

Whenever I've heard people talk about social mobility and redistribution of wealth I've yet to hear any of them express the view that they'd loose something by this: those poorer in the UK think they should get more from the richer, not that everyone in the UK should be giving to the truly poor abroad; of course the UK housing should be sorted out... but I've yet to hear home owners advocating schemes that would impact on them.

Absolutely, I just don't think his flip-flopping is necessarily responsible in this case, because it's the same with many people who hold these "positive thinking" speeches in front of students. To some extent it even seems as though the students at elite universities get to hear different things than other students.

And yes, obviously people who complain about factory relocations to China don't give a damn about unemployed Chinese people. That's one reason I don't like these "national socialists" like Corbyn a whole lot either. They'll throw people in other countries under the bus to help "their own" either because they're stuck in tribal thinking or because it would be too complicated to think of solutions for everyone. :shrug:

Montmorency

01-12-2019, 05:35

Whenever I've heard people talk about social mobility and redistribution of wealth I've yet to hear any of them express the view that they'd loose something by this: those poorer in the UK think they should get more from the richer, not that everyone in the UK should be giving to the truly poor abroad; of course the UK housing should be sorted out... but I've yet to hear home owners advocating schemes that would impact on them.

~:smoking:

One obvious and immediate obstacle is that countries have no jurisdiction over one another. And services need local delivery for sanity and humanity. It's unavoidable that a true transnational framework is necessary to distribute resources between world regions, like... a commonwealth, yeah. I can't think of a way to bootstrap an incipient commonwealth except top-town by revisionist left-wing parties in power.

Globalism remains unfinished in the mirror of Wilsonian ideals. The fact is, in the short-term there are few laterally-cooperative ways for countries to harmonize interests that don't already exist. I do agree that all reformist political organizations should at least be hinting at the need for it, even if few can articulate much on the spot.

Social mobility hot take: no one deserves to be rich.

Social housing (https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf): The majority of Viennese live in housing built, owned, or maintained by the government. In the 1960s Sweden expanded its housing stock by 1/4 (net 1/5) as it embarked on the Million Home Program to construct 1 million units all around the country in 10 years (the US equivalent would be 50-million+ units in a decade). To this day there is a housing surplus in much of Sweden. Social housing must be for all citizens, not a dumping ground of the bottom income decile.

By the way, India is having another hundred-million-man strike (https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/online-pictures-largest-strike-history-happening-india-right-now). We need a billion striking worldwide somehow. While there are a billion to strike.

a completely inoffensive name

01-12-2019, 22:28

I'm tired of local newspapers being filled every week with right wing letters to the editor. Should I improve my writing skills by sending in my own letters and make the medium more competitive?

Husar

01-12-2019, 22:41

I'm tired of local newspapers being filled every week with right wing letters to the editor. Should I improve my writing skills by sending in my own letters and make the medium more competitive?

You can just copy passages from Das Kapital, no need to improve any skills. Competition is a tool of right wing politics.

Montmorency

01-12-2019, 22:52

I linked this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfZVu0alU0I) in one of the year's first posts here.

Today I heard the song playing in the supermarket.

I feel vindicated.

Social housing (https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf): The majority of Viennese live in housing built, owned, or maintained by the government. In the 1960s Sweden expanded its housing stock by 1/4 (net 1/5) as it embarked on the Million Home Program to construct 1 million units all around the country in 10 years (the US equivalent would be 50-million+ units in a decade). To this day there is a housing surplus in much of Sweden. Social housing must be for all citizens, not a dumping ground of the bottom income decile.

A correction here. I underestimated the Swedish population in the 1960s, which was up to 8 million. With a contemporary US population of ~330 million, the equivalent today would be 40+ million units. Or, if comparing 1968 Sweden to 1968 USA (200 mil ppl), 25 million units.

EDIT: And for further context, the US housing stock today is ~140 million units according to the Fed (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ETOTALUSQ176N). Proportionally, 1/4 of 140 million would be 35 million - compared to 40. The point is to emphasize the monumental nature of the Swedish program, and how replicating it in the US from Fairbanks, Alaska to Miami, Florida might as well count as a Wonder of the World, a boom of Chinese proportions. TBH we don't need to go that far with rampant construction, which of course is notorious for ecological and social externalities.

I'm tired of local newspapers being filled every week with right wing letters to the editor. Should I improve my writing skills by sending in my own letters and make the medium more competitive?

What if we all - chipped in? Collaborative letters are probably a real thing.

Montmorency

01-15-2019, 08:24

A correction here. I underestimated the Swedish population in the 1960s, which was up to 8 million. With a contemporary US population of ~330 million, the equivalent today would be 40+ million units. Or, if comparing 1968 Sweden to 1968 USA (200 mil ppl), 25 million units.

EDIT: And for further context, the US housing stock today is ~140 million units according to the Fed (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ETOTALUSQ176N). Proportionally, 1/4 of 140 million would be 35 million - compared to 40. The point is to emphasize the monumental nature of the Swedish program, and how replicating it in the US from Fairbanks, Alaska to Miami, Florida might as well count as a Wonder of the World, a boom of Chinese proportions. TBH we don't need to go that far with rampant construction, which of course is notorious for ecological and social externalities.

Jesus, with that sweeping analogy including Miami, Florida - did I somehow forget Puerto Rico existed? Where does a state program of social housing have more relevance in the Union? The bias is real.

And just for even more context on what a build of 40 million units would mean - China's housing stock (https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/2172413/fifth-chinas-urban-housing-supply-lies-empty-equivalent-50) is currently 'only' (not more than) 250 million units - against US 140 million. And think of how much Chinese stock is outright geographically mal-apportioned from the outset.

5-10 million would be an appropriate level over 10 years for actual policy IMO. Local implementation with federal funding and vigilant oversight. Hopefully also drives down market incentives to disproportionately invest in luxury/high-end development.

40 million. That's Вставай страна огромная-tier. If Sweden can into houses, don't let no mutha:daisy: tell you America can't.

What if we all - chipped in? Collaborative letters are probably a real thing.

I'm serious (https://www.cabrini.edu/about/departments/student-success/writing-center/peer-editing), btw.

Shaka_Khan

01-25-2019, 04:22

https://www.asbestos.com/news/2018/09/10/september-11-cancer-deaths-rise/
https://www.asbestos.com/news/2018/10/24/us-asbestos-imports-surge/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kxUyvkXjw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VbRR_bhlyk

Montmorency

01-25-2019, 22:10

LaGuardia Airport (https://www.rollcall.com/news/faa-halts-flights-to-laguardia-airport-due-to-air-traffic-control-staffing-issues) in New York stops flights (i.e. shuts down) for a short period, and Trump immediately caves (https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/25/politics/donald-trump-shutdown-border/index.html) and agrees to end the shutdown, which has lasted more than a month, brought economic deprivation to several millions, and could have sent our GDP growth negative (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/23/white-house-chief-economist-we-could-see-zero-growth-in-first-quarter-because-of-shutdown.html) had it continued to the end of winter (so what is that - maybe 0.5% shaved off the baseline already?). Trump still threatens to use emergency powers tho.

Also, a lot of other shit has been going on, but while we're on the topic of the shutdown - on why the shutdown (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-metzl-trump-voters-20190115-story.html?) would never hurt Trump's core support no matter what:

Ineffective government also played to long-held biases and anxieties about race. One white Kansas parent who identified as a GOP supporter insisted that school budget cuts were justified because “blacks just use school funds to rent party buses.” More frequent were vague concerns about ways that minorities or immigrants usurped undeserved resources, such as when one respondent claimed that, “the Mexicans, their food stamps, everything they want, we’re paying for it.”

Such concerns sometimes led to people standing on “principle” even when it harmed them. I’ll never forget how a man pulling an oxygen tank because of severe lung disease told me he would rather die (and soon did die) than receive benefits from the ACA because it used “my tax dollars” on “Mexicans and welfare queens.” Data that my research team amassed showed how these kinds of mortal trade-offs shortened lifespans, and sometimes disproportionately harmed white communities that form the core of GOP support.

This is the essence.

To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

Also, in good news for labor militancy, usually-conservative union leadership may be growing more open to fomenting the general strike in hard times. (To be clear, such a strike would be nominally illegal for federal and many state employees.)

President of Flight Attendants Union Suggests General Strike to End Government Shutdown (https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/airlines/a26009774/government-shutdown-general-strike/)

Federal workers here tonight - Stand Up.

Flight Attendants and aviation workers - Stand Up.

Nurses who count on the medicine we deliver on our planes - Stand Up.

Everyone who flew to this conference - Stand Up.

Anyone who believes it is a crime to make people work without pay - Stand Up.

Federal workers, We’ve got your back!

The country sees no solution in sight, but Labor can lead the way. Dr. King rallied us by reaching for the mountain top. He didn’t seek integration of just ONE school, he sought freedom in our schools for ALL children. He didn’t seek integration of just ONE lunch counter, he aspired to have us ALL “sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” And sisterhood, Dr. King!

Today, people are starving for this kind of leadership. They are hungry for answers where some would say there are none. Through our Labor Movement, we have the answers for them and together we can lead the way.

We need to follow Dr. King’s lead and think big. Think big like the hotel workers who took on the largest hotel chain the world and won. Think BIG, like the teachers in Los Angeles who this very minute are taking on powerful hedge funds to save public education for our children.

Dr. King said that “With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together.”

Now listen to me… We can end this Shutdown together.

Federal sector unions have their hands full caring for the 800,000 federal workers who are at the tip of the spear. Some would say the answer is for them to walk off the job. I say, “what are you willing to do? Their destiny IS tied up with our destiny – and they don’t even have time to ask us for help. Don’t wait for an invitation. Get engaged, join or plan a rally, get on a picket line, organize sit-ins at lawmakers’ offices.

Almost a million workers are locked out or being forced to work without pay. Others are going to work when our workspace is increasingly unsafe. What is the Labor Movement waiting for?

Go back with the Fierce Urgency of NOW to talk with your Locals and International unions about all workers joining together - To End this Shutdown with a General Strike.

We can do this. Together. Si se puede. Every gender, race, culture, and creed. The American Labor Movement. We have the power.

And to all Americans – We’ve Got Your Back!

Strike For The South

01-25-2019, 23:01

Strike For The South

01-26-2019, 00:16

Also the federal workers will get paid but the contractors apparently won't.

How on brand for this president.

Montmorency

01-28-2019, 04:39

I always strive to present high-quality auto-satire:

Trump ordered 15,000 new border and immigration officers — but got thousands of vacancies instead (https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-border-patrol-hiring-20190126-story.html)

Two years after President Trump signed orders to hire 15,000 new border agents and immigration officers, the administration has spent tens of millions of dollars in the effort — but has thousands more vacancies than when it began.

In a sign of the difficulties, Customs and Border Protection allocated $60.7 million to Accenture Federal Services, a management consulting firm, as part of a $297-million contract to recruit, vet and hire 7,500 border officers over five years, but the company has produced only 33 new hires so far.

The president’s promised hiring surge steadily lost ground even as he publicly hammered away at the need for stiffer border security, warned of a looming migrant invasion and shut down parts of the government for five weeks over his demands for $5.7 billion from Congress for a border wall.

The Border Patrol gained a total of 120 agents in 2018, the first net gain in five years.
Pannonian You have nothing on the US when it comes to shady government consulting contracts.

Officials could not “provide complete data to support the operational need or deployment strategies for the additional 15,000 additional agents and officers they were directed to hire,” the inspector general’s office wrote.

hee

Shaka_Khan

01-28-2019, 10:36

He could hire people who ironically want to immigrate to America, kind of like when the newly immigrated Irish were recruited for the Civil War.

Seamus Fermanagh

01-29-2019, 18:48

He could hire people who ironically want to immigrate to America, kind of like when the newly immigrated Irish were recruited for the Civil War.

The Irish brigade used the cry 'Faugh A Ballagh' in part because some of its members didn't have enough English to use instead. They were taken from the boat to a train depot, given the blue coat and shipped to war.

Seamus Fermanagh

01-29-2019, 18:54

The essence is racism which is cozily cloaked in a "personal freedoms" mantra.

It's one of the reasons I refuse to call the white supremacists who make up the backbone of Trumps coalition Nazis. Calling them Nazis takes the blame off of America. Nazi is something you can use to hand wave America homegrown white supremacy.

Good stance on the naming issue.

I am endlessly flabbergasted at how many Americans cling to white supremacy -- to racist concepts in general. They simply don't compute on anything resembling a rational level. And I am not setting a particularly high bar for rationality here. Ardent smokers who smoke despite the warnings figuring they can "get away with it for a few years then quit" are on steadier ground than racists with their misbeliefs. Saddening.

CrossLOPER

02-01-2019, 02:43

Good stance on the naming issue.

I am endlessly flabbergasted at how many Americans cling to white supremacy -- to racist concepts in general. They simply don't compute on anything resembling a rational level. And I am not setting a particularly high bar for rationality here. Ardent smokers who smoke despite the warnings figuring they can "get away with it for a few years then quit" are on steadier ground than racists with their misbeliefs. Saddening.

I like how they deny their racism now, and simply state "facts". That's my favorite.

Montmorency

02-02-2019, 04:19

dates

22183

CrossLOPER

02-03-2019, 02:58

dates

22183

I don't know what the strategy is called, but it exists, and it involves ignoring these hilarious lapses in memory. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say that the recent push for marijuana legality was part of a plot to destroy the public's short term memory capacity so that propagandists don't have to try as hard.

Montmorency

02-03-2019, 04:21

I don't know what the strategy is called, but it exists, and it involves ignoring these hilarious lapses in memory. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say that the recent push for marijuana legality was part of a plot to destroy the public's short term memory capacity so that propagandists don't have to try as hard.

It's a cheat code called "Repeat a lie often enough..."

Even better if it's a recurring event, like the Dow Jones oscillating, a brown person killing someone, the weather being cold.

Montmorency

02-14-2019, 02:30

"Execute the baby" is my core sense of humor.

CrossLOPER

02-15-2019, 01:00

US President Donald Trump will declare a national emergency to fund his planned border wall with Mexico, the White House says.

He is to sign a border security bill to avert a government shutdown - but also act to bypass Congress and use military funds for the wall, a statement said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47247726

I look forward to how this short-sighted political strategy will work out once a Democratic president with leanings towards gun-control and climate change aversion will take power.

Montmorency

02-15-2019, 02:36

So just to recap off the top of my head:

A year ago, Democrats were offering Trump wall funding (more than he was asking for recently) in exchange for backing off DACA.

In December, Democrats were offering $1.6 billion for general border security. Trump accepted, but backtracked and triggered shutdown when Fox News et al. got het up.

One month of shutdown and 3 weeks intermission later, Trump gets $1.3 billion (see above post) for border security, while backing himself into making an openly despotic declaration of emergency that will almost certainly be shattered in court.

Trump is like, an impossibly bad negotiator. He might literally be worse than Total War AI. Like game AI, he has no sense of strategy or even mammalian reciprocity.

Kagemusha

02-15-2019, 17:04

I hope this is the start of the end for the Trump presidency.

Montmorency

02-16-2019, 01:35

Trump (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/15/trumps-bewildering-national-emergency-press-conference-annotated/): " I could do the wall over a longer period of time - I didn't need to do this [declare an emergency] - but I'd rather do it much faster. And I don't have to do it for the election; I've already done a lot of wall for the election 2020. And the only reason we're up here talking about this is because of the election, because they want to try and win an election which it looks like they're not going to be able to do."

Also Trump: "And in the bill, by the way, they didn’t even fight us on most of the stuff—ports of entry—we have so much money, we don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know what to do with all the money they’re giving us."

Just locker-room talk.

Kagemusha

02-16-2019, 14:52

To me is it just ridiculous that the head of state of the most powerful country in the world declares state of national emergency because he did not get what he wanted....:end:

Beskar

02-16-2019, 19:48

To me is it just ridiculous that the head of state of the most powerful country in the world declares state of national emergency because he did not get what he wanted....:end:

That a head of state declared a national emergency because it wants to build a wall to a neighbouring country it supposed to be on good terms with.

Montmorency

02-23-2019, 04:50

Trump according to fired Deputy Director of FBI Andrew McCabe (https://www.vox.com/world/2019/2/20/18233394/mccabe-trump-venezuela-war-oil-lawrence):

Then Trump brought up Venezuela: “That’s the country we should be going to war with,” Trump said, according to McCabe’s recounting. “They have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.”

"kek (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php/152889-Trump-strategy-in-Afghanistan?p=2053788523&viewfull=1#post2053788523)"

Tuuvi

02-23-2019, 06:11

Husar

02-23-2019, 13:38

Just want to leave this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_nFI2Zb7qE

Seamus Fermanagh

02-23-2019, 16:41

And yet somehow Maduro is evil and bad for not wanting to accept US "aid", and ordinary Venezuelans are just begging for US troops to invade their country and restore democracy, like the Iraqis were back in 2003.

The petro-socialism of Chavez and Maduro has been only modestly better for the people of Venezuela than the preceding Kleptocracy.

They need a mixed economy and a middle class that is somewhat accessible and not closeted off in walled communities looking down over the fields of cardboard and tin homes.

They need a government that encourages foreign investment -- and I mean investment to build, not investments that are vampiric -- along with genuine efforts provide a business framework that encourages their 1% to invest in Venezuela rather than US stock portfolios and Cayman Island money markets.

They need a military that plays by "posse comitatus" rules and which does not intervene in internal politics.

The old government was horrid, the current regime is pretty bad, and their economy is tanking.

On the other hand, I am not seeing anything in the opposition that makes me think they'll stabilize as a moderate republic and successfully tackle their problems....pity.

Tuuvi

02-23-2019, 20:17

The petro-socialism of Chavez and Maduro has been only modestly better for the people of Venezuela than the preceding Kleptocracy.

They need a mixed economy and a middle class that is somewhat accessible and not closeted off in walled communities looking down over the fields of cardboard and tin homes.

They need a government that encourages foreign investment -- and I mean investment to build, not investments that are vampiric -- along with genuine efforts provide a business framework that encourages their 1% to invest in Venezuela rather than US stock portfolios and Cayman Island money markets.

They need a military that plays by "posse comitatus" rules and which does not intervene in internal politics.

The old government was horrid, the current regime is pretty bad, and their economy is tanking.

On the other hand, I am not seeing anything in the opposition that makes me think they'll stabilize as a moderate republic and successfully tackle their problems....pity.

I'm not in support of the Maduro government, I was just making a sarcastic remark about the way the media has been drumming up support for US intervention in Venezuela. I think the Venezuelan government has legitimate reasons for being suspicious of US aid shipments and the US military should just leave Venezuela alone.

Husar

02-23-2019, 20:55

I'm not in support of the Maduro government, I was just making a sarcastic remark about the way the media has been drumming up support for US intervention in Venezuela. I think the Venezuelan government has legitimate reasons for being suspicious of US aid shipments and the US military should just leave Venezuela alone.

Well, it's really hard wioth the intervention stuff. First people tell you to stay out and then, when there is a bloody civil war, they will tell you that you can't just watch and do nothing (bad things happen because good people do nothing) and then you intervene and then they blame you for atrocities and for having chosen the wrong side and for collateral damage, imperialism, etc.

To some extent I would say stay out though, let them sort it out themselves. But then you always have the global competitors who then go in, help one side and gain an ally for their scheming in your backyard. I mean as bad as the USA are in that sense, I don't think much better of Russia or China. Competition is a terrible thing in that sense.

On the bright side, once competition has killed us off through global warming, the planet will be more peaceful again. ~;)

Gilrandir

02-24-2019, 06:33

On the bright side, once competition has killed us off through global warming, the planet will be more peaceful again. ~;)

peaceful, rather pieceful.

Tuuvi

02-24-2019, 20:05

Well, it's really hard wioth the intervention stuff. First people tell you to stay out and then, when there is a bloody civil war, they will tell you that you can't just watch and do nothing (bad things happen because good people do nothing) and then you intervene and then they blame you for atrocities and for having chosen the wrong side and for collateral damage, imperialism, etc.

To some extent I would say stay out though, let them sort it out themselves. But then you always have the global competitors who then go in, help one side and gain an ally for their scheming in your backyard. I mean as bad as the USA are in that sense, I don't think much better of Russia or China. Competition is a terrible thing in that sense.

On the bright side, once competition has killed us off through global warming, the planet will be more peaceful again. ~;)

Elliot Abrams, Trump's envoy to Venezuela, used humanitarian aid shipments as a cover to ship weapons (https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/17/world/abrams-denies-wrongdoing-in-shipping-arms-to-contras.html) to the Contras back in the 80's, so it wouldn't be surprising if the US is again trying to smuggle weapons to the opposition in Venezuela. Aside from the army there's also armed citizen militias loyal to Maduro (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-venezuelas-chavistas-are-fiercely-loyal-to-maduro-despite-economic-crisis) in Venezuela, so it seems the US's actions risk starting a civil war.

Also, Venezuela accepted $9 million in aid from the UN back in November (https://www.dw.com/en/un-releases-emergency-aid-to-venezuela/a-46463279), so it's not as if Maduro is intentionally denying aid to his people. I think the US aid shipments are either an attempt to smuggle weapons to the opposition, or the US guessed in advance that Maduro wouldn't accept the aid after what Abrams did in Nicaragua and the aid shipments are just a ploy to make Maduro look bad.

Seamus Fermanagh

02-25-2019, 21:30

Elliot Abrams, Trump's envoy to Venezuela, used humanitarian aid shipments as a cover to ship weapons (https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/17/world/abrams-denies-wrongdoing-in-shipping-arms-to-contras.html) to the Contras back in the 80's, so it wouldn't be surprising if the US is again trying to smuggle weapons to the opposition in Venezuela. Aside from the army there's also armed citizen militias loyal to Maduro (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-venezuelas-chavistas-are-fiercely-loyal-to-maduro-despite-economic-crisis) in Venezuela, so it seems the US's actions risk starting a civil war.

Also, Venezuela accepted $9 million in aid from the UN back in November (https://www.dw.com/en/un-releases-emergency-aid-to-venezuela/a-46463279), so it's not as if Maduro is intentionally denying aid to his people. I think the US aid shipments are either an attempt to smuggle weapons to the opposition, or the US guessed in advance that Maduro wouldn't accept the aid after what Abrams did in Nicaragua and the aid shipments are just a ploy to make Maduro look bad.

Embarrassing Maduro would, I suspect, be very much in tune with US hopes for Venezuela. I suspect you may well be correct about the 'offer aid which we are certain will be refused' ploy. As to shipping in weapons, we don't have any former OSS types in the administration as did Reagan. Without Casey, the Iran Contra thing just wouldn't have happened. Still, I cannot rule it our entirely.

As to starting a Civil War, I am not certain that it has not already begun.

a completely inoffensive name

02-27-2019, 01:45

Meanwhile domestically, Congressional Republicans are pushing for a system of government where the president has total control over the treasury...as long as he is Republican.

Our system of government is hanging on the edge. Mitch McConnell might be the worst thing to happen to American democracy.

Seamus Fermanagh

02-27-2019, 16:20

Strike For The South

02-27-2019, 16:56

You can oppose Maduro while also opposing US intervention.

Cohens testimony is confirming a lot of what we thought we knew. Gruby hands on cruel, stupid people. I'm sure the administration will hand wave all of this but I can't imagine who would believe them at this point.

Tuuvi

03-02-2019, 01:42

Life in “Mueller Time”: The Politics of Waiting and the Spectacle of Investigation (https://crimethinc.com/2019/02/26/life-in-mueller-time-the-politics-of-waiting-and-the-spectacle-of-investigation)

For almost two years now, faithful Democrats have waited for special counsel Robert Mueller to file his report about collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian attempts to interfere in the US election, not to mention Trump’s involvement in obstruction of justice. Whenever Trump’s activity provokes them or a subterranean rumbling within the Justice Department emboldens them, the faithful take to the streets and social media with hand-held cardboard signs and internet memes to proclaim that Mueller Time is close at hand. Yet even if the Mueller investigation concludes with Trump’s impeachment, the spectacle of the investigation has served to immobilize millions who have a stake in systemic social change, ensuring that what comes next in the United States will be politics as usual—not liberation.

Montmorency

03-02-2019, 02:23

I pretty confident there will be no final report any time soon, considering the huge amount of legal activity emanating from the special counsel just recently. Similar pronouncements have suffused the media like 10 times over the past year - actually, as far back as September 2017 IIRC. And every time, the sourcing seems to have been either Trump admin officials or Trump's own legal :daisy: counsels. It's bad enough for a professional organization to play along with the notion that a client's defense, legally obligated as they are to speak in their defense, counts as a valid source into the workings of the investigations into their client - but to make the same mistake over and over? Is our media learning? Unless a report claims that the Special Counsel office itself has offered a date, don't pay attention.

As to the substance of the article, bureaucracy and direct action both have roles to play, functions that each cannot replicate from the other and therefore complementary.

Montmorency

03-15-2019, 13:37

Trump escalates his removal-worthy rhetoric again:

1. (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-democrats-cannot-legitimately-win-2020-election)
The Democrats in Congress yesterday were vicious and totally showed their cards for everyone to see. When the Republicans had the Majority they never acted with such hatred and scorn! The Dems are trying to win an election in 2020 that they know they cannot legitimately win!

2. (https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/434110-trump-suggests-that-things-could-get-very-bad-if-military-police)
“You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny," Trump said in the interview with Breitbart published on Wednesday. "I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher."

"I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad," Trump said.

'My opponents are illegitimate, and I am willing to leverage my influence over the police and armed forces to hinder them', said not-Maduro.

Meanwhile in New Zealand (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12213039), a team of Anglo Breivik wannabees slaughtered 50 Muslims, citing Trump as "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose".

Strike For The South

03-16-2019, 03:13

Montmorency

03-16-2019, 04:43

I was just about to post the same thing Monty. It is a horrific example of his presidency.

The terrorist attack in NZ is beyond a tragedy and is an encapsulation of the radicalization of young white men in the west. His manifesto has been described as incoherent, it is only the sense that it lacks a structure. It certainly has a narrative and that narrative is white supremacy. That is something that should be stated unequivocally. This is a far right terror attack committed by a white supremacist. People should not be misled by his manifestos non sequiters or general lack of sense. His purpose was very clear.

Coming together is good but only means something if this kind of terror is named and persued with the same energy that Islamic terror is. Anything less is lip service meant to assuage valid anger. In fact it should be pursued with more vigor because it is the bigger threat with quasi state backing.

It doesn't lack a structure. It's structured like the kind of memes they post on the chans, including 8chan - the home base of at least one attacker, with all the injokes and the like. I like the phrase "Pepe with a gun (https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2019/03/pepe-with-a-gun-the-new-zealand-attack-was-in-a-wo.html)": IRL shitposting to confuse the liberal globalist cucks and redpill the normies. (The livestream attacker even tried to choreograph the attack according to meme meta.)

Anyway, right-wing Jews have a predictably genocide-ready response to the attack: 'When Muslims attack Jews, the media doesn't report it. Like all the times Palestinians stab Jews in synagogues, it's their favorite thing to do.'

a completely inoffensive name

03-23-2019, 00:13

The report has been submitted. We are in the endgame now.

Montmorency

03-23-2019, 00:54

The report has been submitted. We are in the endgame now.

Considering all the activity on the back-end, including ongoing cooperation from Rick Gates (Manafort's deputy) and cooperation from figures like Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn that has not been used in prosecutions yet (with the exception of the upcoming trial of Bijan Kian (https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/01/politics/michael-flynn-witness-lobbying-partner/index.html)), and the reports from 2 weeks ago that the Special Counsel has renewed its funding (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-budget-mueller/mueller-probe-already-financed-through-september-officials-idUSKBN1QS2QB) through September, I suspect there will be a lot more going on with the investigative side of things. This report should be fodder for further House investigations however.

a completely inoffensive name

03-23-2019, 01:40

Considering all the activity on the back-end, including ongoing cooperation from Rick Gates (Manafort's deputy) and cooperation from figures like Michael Cohen and Michael Flynn that has not been used in prosecutions yet (with the exception of the upcoming trial of Bijan Kian (https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/01/politics/michael-flynn-witness-lobbying-partner/index.html)), and the reports from 2 weeks ago that the Special Counsel has renewed its funding (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-budget-mueller/mueller-probe-already-financed-through-september-officials-idUSKBN1QS2QB) through September, I suspect there will be a lot more going on with the investigative side of things. This report should be fodder for further House investigations however.

My pessimism is coming out today, I think neither this nor any follow up investigations will have an impact unless the treason arguement is clear and made publicly available.

Election day 2020 is the repudiation of corrupt populism and a turn back towards a real experiment or we find ourselves in a fundamentally different country than we thought.

Montmorency

03-23-2019, 04:36

My pessimism is coming out today, I think neither this nor any follow up investigations will have an impact unless the treason arguement is clear and made publicly available.

Election day 2020 is the repudiation of corrupt populism and a turn back towards a real experiment or we find ourselves in a fundamentally different country than we thought.

Sure, but as a narrow procedural prediction I just want to caution that everything Trump-related is one big set of investigations permeating the whole federal apparatus responsible, the findings of the special counsel metastasized these, and they will continue long after Trump leaves office. The Roger Stone trial is in November, and multiple of the big names convicted so far (such as named above) will continue to cooperate on future prosecutions.

a completely inoffensive name

03-23-2019, 05:03

Sure, but as a narrow procedural prediction I just want to caution that everything Trump-related is one big set of investigations permeating the whole federal apparatus responsible, the findings of the special counsel metastasized these, and they will continue long after Trump leaves office. The Roger Stone trial is in November, and multiple of the big names convicted so far (such as named above) will continue to cooperate on future prosecutions.

In a sense you are correct. But this is a point with limited in value. Akin to saying about how well set up our defensive line up is for the next few plays when in the bigger picture it is 2nd and goal for the opposition.

The legal battles are only one front, and we must look at the bigger picture to determine if the momentum will be on our side or not. A second Trump term leaves us with a heavily compromised judiciary in 2024, backed by a chamber rigged for conservative states. It really doesn't matter if Trump gets 25 to life in the state of New York after leaving office, the corruption will be too far to extract out except with a tremendous degree of political engagement.

I see Brazil's judiciary sentencing big players on both sides on the aisle for a decade now, attempting to clean house. They're 3 for 4 on former Presidents in jail now? It doesn't seem to make a dent on the culture nor the behavior at this point because everyone is simply in on it now.

edyzmedieval

03-23-2019, 16:59

DC & pretty much all American politics are buzzing right now, and the networks are making super prime time money.

edyzmedieval

03-25-2019, 00:28

Long awaited, the Mueller Report has been given to the DOJ.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/24/us/politics/mueller-report-summary.html

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

03-25-2019, 00:46

And it looks like there's nothing fun in it.

Are we calling him Teflon Trump, yet?

Shaka_Khan

03-25-2019, 03:04

I'm not a Trump supporter, but I made this prediction last year. It's this feeling I get after witnessing investigations on different presidents in different countries. From what I've seen, when a president got impeached or arrested, the opposition and the investigators were more quicker and stronger in their actions. The feeling on the recent one felt very different.

Montmorency

03-25-2019, 04:12

Here is the summary (https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/r.njjovzDF.E/v0) of the report as offered by Attorney General Barr (and co-signed by Deputy AG Rosenstein). There are two (or moredepending on how you count) major points:

The report further explains that a primary consideration for the Special Counsel's investigation was whether any Americans – including individuals associated with the Trump campaign – joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election, which would be a federal crime. The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

The report's second part addresses a number of actions by the President – most of which have been the subject of public reporting – that the Special Counsel investigated as potentially raising obstruction-of-justice concerns. After making a “thorough factual investigation” into these matters, the Special Counsel considered whether to evaluate the conduct under Department standards governing prosecution and declination decisions but ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment. The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion - one way or the other – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction. Instead, for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as “difficult issues” of law and fact concerning whether the President's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. The Special Counsel states that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

[...] consulting with Department officials, including the Office of Legal Counsel; and applying the principles of federal prosecution that guide our charging decisions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.

In other words: Mueller did not find sufficient/threshold evidence that Trump and team coordinated with the Russian government (IRA or GRU) on either the hacking activities or the social media activities. Mueller did not make a decision on obstruction beyond weighing the arguments, but Barr/Rosenstein doesn't think Trump obstructed justice on the basis of the narrow findings they refer to (an obviously tendentious interposition between the investigation and Congress). Finally, Trump is not exonerated in any particular avenue of investigation.

(Barr/Rosenstein reasoning on not charging obstruction is wrong, but it's in Congress' hands now)

Infuriatingly narrow. All this tells us is that there is either no evidence or insufficient evidence that Trump and team went to Putin or Russian military intelligence and asked them to do hacking and the other things. But aiding and abetting computer crimes is not the crux of the issue, establishing a quid pro quo of selling policy for a foreign state's favor and financial inducements (i.e. bribery) is. We already know for a fact, all through merely public revelations, that numerous Trump campaign officials at all levels were coordinating with agents of the Russian (add the Saudis and Emiratis to the list) government throughout 2016, blandishing official policy (like sanctions relief) while attempting to engage with said governments' material support, and thereafter spent 2017 on lying about it after Trump's agenda was stalled in the first month. We just don't know for sure if it is because Trump himself sought and authorized some sort of corrupt bargain for personal gain. Either Mueller did not bother to investigate whether Trump made a corrupt bargain with Russia and other countries as being outside the scope of the investigation, or Barr failed to mention it in his summary - or Mueller just found there isn't enough evidence that it rises to the level of criminality (c.f. Rosenstein holding that it is inappropriate to reveal potentially derogatory information about individuals in the report who were not charged).

And it looks like there's nothing fun in it.

Are we calling him Teflon Trump, yet?

They were calling him Teflon Don since before the Republican nomination. My conclusion, assuming the report has not been badly misrepresented by Barr and Rosenstein, is that Mueller sadly took his remit very narrowly (contra those who thought he was on a "fishing expedition" or else going to "jail the Soviet cheeto"), and as a strict institutionalist did not have the audacity to pursue a maximal inquisition into the President himself. He was always on a fact-finding mission only and never intended to charge the President with anything regardless of the facts. Depending on the actual contents of the report - which we should hope are revealed to Congress/the public as far as is possible; they will also contribute to our understanding of the foreign actors' activities - at best the report was intended only as a reference guide for Congress, towards impeachment inquiry at their discretion, etc. That is, institutionally punting the ball.

Let's hope for the fact-finding in the report to get out, although it may take some time as Barr/Mueller indicate that certain grand jury deliberations, secret information and information pertaining to ongoing cases will be redacted. Much of it, especially the intelligence (i.e. espionage) facets we will probably never see.

a completely inoffensive name

03-25-2019, 05:05

Well, my pessimism proved correct.

Montmorency

03-25-2019, 05:12

Well, my pessimism proved correct.

I'm optimistic that Trump will eventually be condemned by history as everything we know he is (and definitely not rehabilitated as a brilliant and passionate conservative). :creep:

I'm optimistic that he at least finally goes away for tax crimes and bank fraud. Eventually.

Strike For The South

03-25-2019, 16:10

I'm optimistic that Trump will eventually be condemned by history as everything we know he is (and definitely not rehabilitated as a brilliant and passionate conservative). :creep:

I'm optimistic that he at least finally goes away for tax crimes and bank fraud. Eventually.

The money crimes are seemingly a slam dunk. New York city real estate is crime! ba dum tish.

The report is underwhelming but this in no way changes all the horrid stuff this administration has done so, we kind of where we were yesterday.

Seamus Fermanagh

03-25-2019, 17:40

I'm optimistic that Trump will eventually be condemned by history as everything we know he is (and definitely not rehabilitated as a brilliant and passionate conservative). :creep:...

To be rehabilitated as a passionate conservative it helps if you were actually a conservative, as opposed to a narcissistic opportunist ripping off the sincere efforts of Buchanan, dumping them into the intellectual echo-chamber fabricated by Limbaugh and Hannity and spicing that stew with rhetoric designed to send the White Supremacist loons into an onanistic frenzy.

a completely inoffensive name

03-26-2019, 02:39

I'm optimistic that Trump will eventually be condemned by history as everything we know he is (and definitely not rehabilitated as a brilliant and passionate conservative). :creep:

I'm optimistic that he at least finally goes away for tax crimes and bank fraud. Eventually.

Yes, but he is still just a symptom. The next one won't be as dumb as him.
Tell me how you feel on the odds of the US politics remaining:
* Democratic
* Inclusive
* Liberal

Montmorency

03-26-2019, 03:53

Yes, but he is still just a symptom. The next one won't be as dumb as him.
Tell me how you feel on the odds of the US politics remaining:
* Democratic
* Inclusive
* Liberal

Let's just add that insofar as our justice system might permit a man like Trump to die without having first spent time in prison is a failed system. Symptom indeed.

Well, in the long-term: "Socialism or barbarism." As always not because I'm sanguine on the chances for socialism, but because those are literally the only possibilities.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

03-26-2019, 16:09

Yes, but he is still just a symptom. The next one won't be as dumb as him.
Tell me how you feel on the odds of the US politics remaining:
* Democratic
* Inclusive
* Liberal

I think the US has only been these things a few times: During Reconstruction Post-Civil War and when the Democrats generally controlled the Government pre-Reagan.

Since Reagan the Congress has been increasingly Partisan whilst the Presidency has been increasingly captured via a cult of personality. Clinton and Obama both appealed to essentially the same hopeful and yourhful demographic using "Star Power" whilst Bush Jnr and Trump both appealed to an electorate frustrated by inequality and frightened of outside influence.

Montmorency

03-27-2019, 01:23

I think the US has only been these things a few times: During Reconstruction Post-Civil War and when the Democrats generally controlled the Government pre-Reagan.

Since Reagan the Congress has been increasingly Partisan whilst the Presidency has been increasingly captured via a cult of personality. Clinton and Obama both appealed to essentially the same hopeful and yourhful demographic using "Star Power" whilst Bush Jnr and Trump both appealed to an electorate frustrated by inequality and frightened of outside influence.

Bush Jr.'s appeal being on the basis of an electorate "frustrated by inequality and frightened of outside influence" sounds anachronistic. What makes you say this?

Speaking of Bush and anachronism, for Seamus: McCain ran against Bush in the GOP primaries in 2000. Bush's attacks on McCain were not much less intense and scurrilous than Trump's. What was the media's coverage of this at the time? Cuz there certainly was little evidence of institutional memory in scandalized coverage of Trump's whining and sniping. I guess McCain dropped the issue for the sake of internal politics and the team, so everyone stopped caring (assuming they ever cared)?

(Most notoriously (https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/11/mccain200411) the smear against McCain that he fathered a mulatto bastard, lol)

Also, Trump admin trying to kill (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/25/trump-obamacare-justice-department-1236116) ACA again, rejecting the Take Care ("that the laws shall be faithfully executed") clause of the Constitution.

Strike For The South

03-27-2019, 15:03

I mean wasn't Bush Jr. appeal "I'm going to cut taxes and expand medicaid" i.e. "compassionate conservatism".

The attacks seemingly get more bizzare each cycle. From inventing the internet, swiftboat, all the slander about, Obama, emails.

Greyblades

04-04-2019, 05:46

Do I get to say "I told you so" yet?

Montmorency

04-10-2019, 01:07

Seamus Fermanagh

04-10-2019, 17:39

Someone talk about purges

Funny is, Hitler purged the SA because leadership was unscrupulous and bad for PR among German public and elites. Trump on other hand cares least about PR, and always just wants to skip to the point where formal government institutions are replaced by personal fiat. Fortunately, it is further evidence that he is too stupid and inept to properly consolidate power to himself. (Miller is just a Himmler cosplayer.) Unfortunately, it is the new slippery normal. As always, things will only grow worse, and the worst outcome is the likeliest outcome.

Not really a "night of the long knives" thing, Monty. No murders, no show-trials, etc.

OTOH, it really does make this administration look like some kind of train wreck. We are more than two years into this administration and Trump still cannot find a full executive team who will continue to work with him and enable/work for his policy goals (in part because too many of his policy goals are out and out troll-like). There is a lesson in that. Most of the administrations in the developing world are currently more stable than ours. Sad.

Strike For The South

04-15-2019, 18:00

So I guess they have dropped the pretense of any sort of policy and goal. The administration has doubled down on lashing out to keep the base good and riled.

The proposal to "release" illegal immigrants into sanctuary cities is truly bizarre. I suppose, like everything else that comes out of the white house, it is a wink and a nod to Trump supporters rather than something coherent. These people would show up in these cities, pay more in taxes than they get in services, and commit less crimes than the natives. Generally speaking, sanctuary cities are sanctuary cities because of the high number of people living in them. Many of these places were probably destinations in the first place. Granted, if this comes to fruition, I hardly think the administration will ask them where they want to go.

The much more serious matter is the threats against Rep. Omar. The president juxtaposing her comments with the terror attacks is pretty much textbook incitement. I don't think it is a stretch to say it me be the most brazen thing he has ever done. The "milder" comments by Crenshaw are in a way, worse.

Omars comments are clearly a critique of the Islamophobia that has come out of 9/11. It is a critique of painting all of Islam with the same brush. You can not watch the (real) video and come away with any other conclusion. So Crenshaw is doing the same thing as Trump just in a more pernicious way. Unless of course he doesn't understand the video. If thats the case, he may have bigger problems.

Haberman pointed out that Trump and co. are centering Omar like they have with AOC. This attempt to paint them as leaders of the Ds is an effort to rile the base in the worst way possible. Desperation? Bigotry? Stupidity? Probably a combination of all thee.

Montmorency

04-17-2019, 00:25

Hey, did you know Trump's attorney general Bill Barr is a professional coverup artist going back to Iran-Contra? I'm not here to talk about that.

Instead, let me tell you a fantastical story of an earlier Republican generation:

John Mitchell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Mitchell) was Richard Nixon's friend, campaign manager (twice), and attorney general (first term). He believed civil rights, civil liberties, and the Constitution were a trick played upon patriotic Americans by Commies et al. He was one of the few to do time for the Watergate coverup, and was indeed one of those who supervised and authorized the original break-in by Libby and Hunt.

That's prefatory.

He ordered an ex-FBI agent to spy on his wife Martha, who knew something about the Watergate business and intended to disseminate her knowledge to, in her mind, keep Nixon from scapegoating her husband. One day, while his wife was attempting to contact a journalist, this ex-FBI guy broke into her house, destroyed her telephone, knocked her out, drugged her, and abducted her to a hotel room, where eventually she was abandoned when Batman heard her name.

Nixon responded to news of this by claiming Mitchell's wife had a "drinking problem". Mitchell approved.

This ex-FBI agent was Steve King.

In 2017, Trump appointed him ambassador (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_King_(ambassador)) to Czechia.

King's appointment was approved by the Senate without objection in a voice vote.

Ain't history fun? :freak:

Bonus: The long-serving white nationalist (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/us/politics/steve-king-offensive-quotes.html) Rep from Iowa, almost unseated in 2018, is also named Steve King (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_King).

edyzmedieval

04-18-2019, 22:44

No word on the Report? It's the biggest story right now in US.

Montmorency

04-19-2019, 00:44

No word on the Report? It's the biggest story right now in US.

What is there to say? The report elaborates on many things we already knew. The government is straining under the thrashings of a relentlessly-criminal president and his goodfellas, but so far there is not enough evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to convict in a court of law (great campaign slogan that, "not enough evidence to convict").

Too many spent these years comparing the administration's controversies to Watergate (where the principals only mostly got away), and not enough to Iran-Contra (where the Republicans had learned their lesson to always double down, and the principals completely got away, and many of them remain in politics, even the Trump admin, to this day). Barr's reprisal of his lies over Iran-Contra were pitch-perfect from his confirmation on, for example. For 45 years the Right in America has been essentially oriented around preventing an epochal embarrassment like Watergate from dragging down its leadership ever again; their preparations bore fruit 30 years ago and we were complete fools to have let it slide down the memory hole.

Who's gonna do anything about it?

There are confirmed like 20 more investigations into Trump's personal, commercial, and political activities, so that might bear fruit once he's out of office. By now it's actually warranted for the House to begin impeachment inquiries at least on the basis of obstruction; these will fail, but despite that cost it is important to impress upon the public the gravity of Trump's offenses. If this report were the very first news we had of wrongdoing in the present administration, it alone would be damning. Under those much-theorized "normal" circumstances.

But in the end nothing really matters because the Republican Party is committed to overthrowing the rule of law in pursuit of impunity in this country. Our institutions have consistently failed to restrain bad actors outside the margins. There is no alternative to somehow building the next republic from as close to ground-up as we can.

EDIT: A lot of hard-leftists mock the very idea of institutions and rule of law, but I think they are mistaken - what they have identified are the insufficiencies themselves of our extant order, when properly-functioning institutions and rule of law naturally emerging in their ideal civil society would be precisely the bulwark against the perennial ills of oligarchic power and malgovernance that cripple ours and limit its correcting effect.

Greyblades

04-20-2019, 04:57

No word on the Report? It's the biggest story right now in US.

Two votes and one investigation, doo dah, doo dah...

I think the last three years will be taught alongside the episodes of the gracchi brothers and cataline as examples of how nation's political classes can work themselves into frenzy and debasement in the face of an agent of change they do not wish to succeed.

Though I must say the degree of self destructive behavior and psychotic delusion this era has seen among those established politicians and press seems unparalelled in history.

Seamus Fermanagh

04-20-2019, 05:59

Current info at 270 to win suggests only 5 swing states. AZ, FL, MI, OH, WI. Dems win any two and they get the White House. GOP has to win FL plus and two of MI, OH, WI.

That's actually pretty pro dem at this point

Greyblades

04-20-2019, 06:07

Whether they can keep things together over the next year is another matter; As it is there is no primary result for the dems that doesnt end with a section of the coalition severely disillusioned and thats best case scenario, this could get extremely ugly should we see a repeat of last time's underhandedness or if the #metoo intersectionality crowd are let off the leash.

Pannonian

04-20-2019, 15:03

Two votes and one investigation, doo dah, doo dah...

I think the last three years will be taught alongside the episodes of the gracchi brothers and cataline as examples of how nation's political classes can work themselves into frenzy and debasement in the face of an agent of change they do not wish to succeed.

Though I must say the degree of self destructive behavior and psychotic delusion this era has seen among those established politicians and press seems unparalelled in history.

Are you excusing Trump's activities?

Whether they can keep things together over the next year is another matter; As it is there is no primary result for the dems that doesnt end with a section of the coalition severely disillusioned and thats best case scenario, this could get extremely ugly should we see a repeat of last time's underhandedness or if the #metoo intersectionality crowd are let off the leash.

By underhandedness, are you talking about Dem activities or Reps?

Husar

04-20-2019, 15:43

I think the last three years will be taught alongside the episodes of the gracchi brothers and cataline as examples of how nation's political classes can work themselves into frenzy and debasement in the face of an agent of change they do not wish to succeed.

Well, there are good changes and then there are bad changes. I do agree though, that the "Russian collusion" was overhyped by quite a few "leftists", including ones I respect otherwise. Still doesn't mean that I see Trump as an agent of positive change, most of his ideas are terrible ideas and, I assume, some of them are good ideas.

rory_20_uk

04-20-2019, 20:53

Montmorency

04-20-2019, 20:58

What's remarkable to me is that the best case available from the evidence is that Trump and team colluded for nothing. That they were so essentially venal that they immediately moved to act favorably toward Russia from early 2016, after becoming aware of Russia's intent and efforts, in vague hope of ingratiating themselves to the Russian government and not by any specific plan. Even if for some reason you refuse to entertain the worse case, 5 years ago the very idea of what we know would have been obviously discrediting. Now we are taught that relentless malicious conduct triggers some kind of human glitch - continual transgression resets evaluation to the baseline.

Pannonian

04-20-2019, 21:09

I think that having every new President investigated by a Special Council routinely would be a good idea - at the very least it would discourage the hangers on. And the cost is negligible compared to what is at stake.

~:smoking:

You need a common value set first. Trumpists will freely admit to all the wrongdoings of their guy, but they deny they are wrongdoings, and deny all the evidential arguments at the same time. It is not a matter of whether Trump did this or that. It is a matter of Trump having done all this, and he has enough of a popular base that this does not matter a whit. It's the historical definition of a tyranny, an autocracy with popular and security backing. See Pesistratos of Athens, or Dionysios of Syracuse.

Greyblades

04-20-2019, 21:57

Are you excusing Trump's activities? Dumb question. Might as well ask if you are excusing the dems activities; it's about as cheap a deflection as the one you imagine I was making.

By underhandedness, are you talking about Dem activities or Reps? Dems, if sanders gets cheated a second time you will see at minimum mass defection if not outright schism.

Well, there are good changes and then there are bad changes. I do agree though, that the "Russian collusion" was overhyped by quite a few "leftists", including ones I respect otherwise. Still doesn't mean that I see Trump as an agent of positive change, most of his ideas are terrible ideas and, I assume, some of them are good ideas.

That was a mildly impressive attempt to portray the situation as less dire than it actually is. Now allow me to refute in what will inevitably be accused of doing the exact opposite.

The reality is that many vital government institutions that are supposed to be impartial went partisan; bought into fake op research, spent millions of dollars investigating a president for three years only to find nothing to substantiate the original claim while uncovering a level of unrelated corruption remarkably small compared to what could expected from the average presidential campaign. As the iraq WMDs were to the left a decade ago this is to the right in terms of destroying trust in the better judgement of thier security services.

The political class were worsely effected, the republicans were somewhat spared due to being host to Trump, being in effect neutered save for an increasingly irrelevant never-trump wing, the democrats however publically evacuated the moral high ground and shown themselves to be even worse than the admittedly low standards trump holds, both in terms of morals, credibility and even self control.

They pinned thier colours to the collusion mast, pushed it far beyond what was reasonable and had to watch said mast sink agonisingly slowly in full focus of the public eye. They nurtured the #metoo moral panic and tried to set it against a purposely inoffensive supreme court pick only to see it slip the leash; the dems lost control as the initial semi-credible accusation was swamped in fakery brought foward by cluless opportunists the party failed to hold back. Lies so blatant and foul against a candidate so milktoast; even the slowest of bystanders could see it for the farce it was and the attempted injustice served to break a oft-predicted blue wave upon the face of a republican base energized by righteous outrage.

Now the animal they raised in #metoo has turned to bite the hand that fed it; the greatest hope of the party now poised to become Creepy-Uncle Joe in the eyes of the same easily offended demographic he must win over. As for the runner ups the democrats have been forced into a particularly poor selection: we have the party outcast, an Obama wannabe tapping a questionably filled well and the national joke. If Bernie wins the neolibs dems are demoralized, Biden wins fairly the oft race baited segment of the dems will balk at electing a WASP and the pearl clutchers at a creep, an unfair win he loses the working class whites along with them, Harris wins and they have a handicap on regaining most of the rust belt and Warren winning is outright suicide.

As for the journalists; the long flagging illusion of press impartiality is truly dead, killed by arrogance complacency and a complete lack of control in the face of momentary profit. FOX, the former laughing stock who has never reformed by the way, simply for being the sole partisan in opposition now grows fat off the corpses of those companies that onced admonished them who went on to eclipse them chasing the ever profitable "Trump bump". The entire institution of journalism, a century and a half of built up public trust, spent and wrecked in three years.

So the intelligence agencies are seen as compromised, at best the established political class is regarded as pathetic, at worst outright malevolent, the mainstream press is distrusted if not downright vilified and the chances of there being a legitimate removal of trump next year is already approaching terminal. I have yet to read a more thorough self destruction of a democracy's established class that didnt involve a war.

Save for my own, of course.

What's remarkable to me is that the best case available from the evidence is that Trump and team colluded for nothing. That they were so essentially venal that they immediately moved to act favorably toward Russia from early 2016, after becoming aware of Russia's intent and efforts, in vague hope of ingratiating themselves to the Russian government and not by any specific plan. Even if for some reason you refuse to entertain the worse case, 5 years ago the very idea of what we know would have been obviously discrediting. Now we are taught that relentless malicious conduct triggers some kind of human glitch - continual transgression resets evaluation to the baseline. What is remarkable is that after all this you still think there was collusion at all.

I fear Trump Derangement Syndrome will be with us for generations, intelligence has been no vaccine.

Montmorency

04-20-2019, 22:58

Dumb question. Might as well ask if you are excusing the dems activities; it's about as cheap a deflection as the one you imagine I was making.

What Dem activities do you have in mind?

Dems, if sanders gets cheated a second time you will see at minimum mass defection if not outright schism.

When was Sanders ever cheated?

The reality is that many vital government institutions that are supposed to be impartial went partisan; bought into fake op research, spent millions of dollars investigating a president for three years only to find nothing to substantiate the original claim while uncovering a level of unrelated corruption remarkably small compared to what could expected from the average presidential campaign. As the iraq WMDs were to the left a decade ago this is to the right in terms of destroying trust in the better judgement of thier security services.

The political class were worsely effected, the republicans were somewhat spared due to being host to Trump, being in effect neutered save for an increasingly irrelevant never-trump wing, the democrats however publically evacuated the moral high ground and shown themselves to be even worse than the admittedly low standards trump holds, both in terms of morals, credibility and even self control.

Every proposition in that excerpt is false I'm afraid.

They pinned thier colours to the collusion mast, pushed it far beyond what was reasonable and had to watch said mast sink agonisingly slowly in full focus of the public eye.

Democratic elected officials have tended to comment very little on Russia throughout Trump's presidency.

They nurtured the #metoo moral panic and tried to set it against a purposely inoffensive supreme court pick only to see it slip the leash; the dems lost control as the initial semi-credible accusation was swamped in fakery brought foward by cluless opportunists the party failed to hold back.

What moral panic?

Why do you think the Kavanaugh pick was "purposely inoffensive"?

Why do you think the accusations were not credible, that they were brought by opportunists, or that the party tried to hold them back?

Lies so blatant and foul against a candidate so milktoast; even the slowest of bystanders could see it for the farce it was and the attempted injustice served to break a oft-predicted blue wave upon the face of a republican base energized by righteous outrage.

Again, why do you think the candidate was milquetoast? Did you ever bother to read anything about him?

The 2018 midterm was one of the biggest swings in American history.

Republican women broke with Republican men on Kavanaugh.

Now the animal they raised in #metoo has turned to bite the hand that fed it; the greatest hope of the party now poised to become Creepy-Uncle Joe in the eyes of the same easily offended demographic he must win over. As for the runner ups the democrats have been forced into a particularly poor selection: we have the party outcast, an Obama wannabe tapping a questionably filled well and the national joke. If Bernie wins the neolibs dems are demoralized, Biden wins fairly the oft race baited segment of the dems will balk at electing a WASP and the pearl clutchers at a creep, an unfair win he loses the working class whites along with them, Harris wins and they have a handicap on regaining most of the rust belt and Warren winning is outright suicide.

Why do you think it's bad to hold men to the standard of not abusing women?

Why do you think Joe Biden is the "greatest hope" for Democrats?

It is not clear on what information your judgements of individual candidates are based, or why you think there is not consensus within the Democratic Party satisfied with any of the major candidates.

As for the journalists; the long flagging illusion of press impartiality is truly dead, killed by arrogance complacency and a complete lack of control in the face of momentary profit. FOX, the former laughing stock who has never reformed by the way, simply for being the sole partisan in opposition now grows fat off the corpses of those companies that onced admonished them who went on to eclipse them chasing the ever profitable "Trump bump". The entire institution of journalism, a century and a half of built up public trust, spent and wrecked in three years.

Why do you think the press is less "impartial" now than in the past?

CNN and MSNBC have demonstrably profited off the Trump presidency.

So the intelligence agencies are seen as compromised,

By who?

at best the established political class is regarded as pathetic, at worst outright malevolent,

That's been appreciated for many years.

the mainstream press is distrusted if not downright vilified

By Trump and his base, sure.

the chances of there being a legitimate removal of trump next year is already approaching terminal.

What strikes me is that, aside from being apparently baseless, it is not even connected to all the preceding. If Greyblades were somehow accurate in all his observations, these would still not contribute to a theory of electoral performance in 2020.

I fear Trump Derangement Syndrome will be with us for generations, intelligence has been no vaccine.

Why do you think there was no collusion?

Trump Derangement is Trump apologism.

I have yet to read a more thorough self destruction of a democracy's established class that didnt involve a war.

It's disturbing how little understanding you show of current events.

Husar

04-21-2019, 02:23

That was a mildly impressive attempt to portray the situation as less dire than it actually is. Now allow me to refute in what will inevitably be accused of doing the exact opposite.

I'm not attempting anything, I'm giving you my point of view.

The reality is that many vital government institutions that are supposed to be impartial went partisan; bought into fake op research, spent millions of dollars investigating a president for three years only to find nothing to substantiate the original claim while uncovering a level of unrelated corruption remarkably small compared to what could expected from the average presidential campaign.

Well, hinsight is 20/20 as they say. That an investigation (partially) clears the person that was being investigated doesn't mean the investigation wasn't warranted when it started. And IIRC Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, who was himself appointed by Trump...

They pinned thier colours to the collusion mast, pushed it far beyond what was reasonable and had to watch said mast sink agonisingly slowly in full focus of the public eye.

Yes, it was so stupid to have one investigation that didn't lead anywhere, the other party would never do that 7 times over: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/12/hillary-clinton/clinton-there-have-been-7-benghazi-probes-so-far/

They nurtured the #metoo moral panic

You really seem to have some weird problem with the metoo thing, just because some prominent cases went too far. I don't believe it went too far with the Supreme Court guy, he seems like an entitled butthole to me given how he acted during his questioning sessions.
A few mistakes don't invalidate an entire movement, otherwise a few 4chan Anonymous hackers should result in everyone who ever looked at the site getting arrested.

As for the press impartiality, I never really believed that a privately owned press would be impartial. They will always lean towards what generates more money or is wanted by the owner. For impartiality, your best hope is the publicly owned press. The private ones can and do get some things right, but when in doubt I tend to go with the public ones.

Montmorency

04-21-2019, 04:42

Well, hinsight is 20/20 as they say. That an investigation (partially) clears the person that was being investigated doesn't mean the investigation wasn't warranted when it started. And IIRC Mueller was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, who was himself appointed by Trump...

Yes, it was so stupid to have one investigation that didn't lead anywhere, the other party would never do that 7 times over: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/12/hillary-clinton/clinton-there-have-been-7-benghazi-probes-so-far/

Would the thread like me to run down the highlights of the Mueller Report? I suspect most, in particular non-American patrons, have sufficed with the headlines to save time.

Mueller was careful to note that Trump could not be cleared in any particular respect, only that Mueller could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that any of Trump's or his campaign's activities in 2016 were criminal. I would go further in-depth on this point in a summary post, but here let's just indulge in an analogy to "money in politics". Many of you here I know are of the opinion that special interests, lobbying groups, big business and the wealthy have undue influence over our lawmakers. How does this influence manifest? Aside from supporting challengers to unfriendly politicians, or affording opportunities for sinecure post-government, the most obvious mechanism is campaign finance. If Industry X has its representatives give $50K to a politician's campaign, and that politician then affords special treatment to those representatives, takes the industry's advocacy materials and disseminates them on the record in Congress, adopts a regulatory posture friendly to that industry, brings industry associates to consult with or work for her office, and corresponds with industry representatives for feedback on performance and to solicit future contributions... we understand enough to be aware of the possibility that there is undue influence in the lawmaking process. BUT it is highly unlikely that any of these interactions in concrete form could be judged to rise to the level of illegality. Perhaps some of you find that unacceptable; regardless of how many politicians go to jail pursuant to their official conduct, we can get the big picture. Similarly, we can assess the public evidence on Trump for ourselves and try to determine what likelihood or what degree of corruption is too much.

(Fun side note: The SCOTUS, especially the Roberts Court, has consistently ruled to weaken campaign finance regulations - most notoriously Citizens United - and even bribery laws (https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/11/15/16656784/menendez-corruption-supreme-court). So it's pretty hard these days to convict anyone of much. Fun!)

Just a couple other notes:

Trump was being investigated before Mueller, and Russian interference was being investigated before Mueller. These were just partially consolidated under the Special Counsel. Since the Special Counsel ceased operations, prior investigations have continued, others have popped up in the meantime, and IIRC Mueller identified ~14 ongoing investigations that arose from material the Special Counsel directly referred to DOJ and elsewhere (almost all redacted).

When evidence of wrongdoing presents itself, especially by state actors, to investigate is just the government doing its job properly. Thanks to these, we have learned a great deal about Trump and about Russian interference - the appropriate and desired outcome. Failure to investigate would be a scandal. It is more than suspicious to condemn the normal operation of government while excusing pretentious partisan subversions (e.g. Republican Congressional investigators colluding with the White House on their activities, White House messaging, and confidential FBI/DOJ materials).

BTW (https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/18/bangladesh-girl-set-on-fire-harassment-nusrat-jahan-rafi), here's an instance of #Me Too going too far:

A teenage Bangladeshi girl who reported being sexually harassed has died after being set on fire at school. Police and school authorities had ignored her complaints.

In the ambulance, fearing she might not survive, she recorded a statement on her brother’s mobile phone.

“The teacher touched me. I will fight this crime till my last breath,” you can hear her say.

[Those Muslims and their martyrdoms smh!]

Two young men have confessed to involvement in Nusrat’s killing. They include a man who admitted to having a grudge against her for refusing his own advances.

The results of an inquiry by the National Human Rights Commission, published on Tuesday, disclosed that the headteacher involved had been accused of sexual harassment before, and blamed police for their handling of her complaint.

Husar

04-22-2019, 12:33

Next Wek Yesterday has also summarized the Müller report:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMBj_tU7HRU

Montmorency

04-23-2019, 01:45

Next Wek Yesterday has also summarized the Müller report:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMBj_tU7HRU

Ok. I'll make mine even more streamlined and opinionated. By tonight or tomorrow.

Here are some useful references meanwhile:

Searchable report pdf (https://viewfromll2.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/mueller-report.pdf) (the original was delivered by Barr on CD, non-searchable lol)
Lawfare overview (https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-mueller-found-russia-and-obstruction-first-analysis)
Lawfare obstruction analysis (https://www.lawfareblog.com/obstruction-justice-mueller-report-heat-map)
NYT excerpts and analysis (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/politics/the-mueller-report-excerpts.html?)
Thumbnail view (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/19/us/politics/redacted-mueller-report.html) of report showing scale of redactions (seemingly mostly related to Manafort, Roger Stone and Wikileaks)

In other (slightly stale?) news about dangerous collusion:

Strike, this one seems up your alley.

NYT headline: Militia in New Mexico Detains Asylum Seekers at Gunpoint (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/new-mexico-militia.html)
Alternative headline: Freikorps activity in the borderlands, families held hostage, escalation to pogroms feared

A right-wing militia group operating in southern New Mexico has begun stopping groups of migrant families and detaining them at gunpoint before handing them over to Border Patrol agents, raising tension over the tactics of armed vigilantes along the
border between the United States and Mexico. Members of the group, which calls itself the United Constitutional Patriots, filmed several of their actions in recent days, including the detention this week of a group of about 200 migrants who had recently crossed the border near Sunland Park, N.M., with the intention of seeking asylum. They uploaded videos to social media of exhausted looking migrant families, blinking in the darkness in the glare of what appeared to be the militia’s spotlights.

Strike For The South

04-23-2019, 18:27

Strike, this one seems up your alley.

NYT headline: Militia in New Mexico Detains Asylum Seekers at Gunpoint (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/new-mexico-militia.html)
Alternative headline: Freikorps activity in the borderlands, families held hostage, escalation to pogroms feared

A literal illegal militia (terrorist group) and the federal government doesn't care. Part of their duty on the border is to secure, that goes both ways. Dissapointed but not surprised.

It's insane and in a just world there would be a swift federal response to these terroristic exercises of power(to put it mildly). From the article it seems like the New Mexico state government has a very restrained response. That's pretty standard issue with these types of groups, typically they fizzle out and go home. Granted, no one has ever inflamed them like this before, maybe their deranged moral mission will sustain them. I would hope not.

They have crossed the Rubicon. The people crossing the border are the Hegelian other. They are not a group of people but rather a philosophical threat. They represent tiny tears at these peoples identity. We are witnessing an othering in real time. The scariest part is that we have an administration feeding this from the bottom up.

These groups in the interior are often more numerous and much better armed than the local and state LEOs that they are often pitted against. What kind of polity can hope to sustain itself when it can not enforce itself? What do you do as an LEO when you are the weaker party and the citizens won't listen to the literal rule of law?

Just a total humanitarian disaster.

Pannonian

04-23-2019, 19:21

A literal illegal militia (terrorist group) and the federal government doesn't care. Part of their duty on the border is to secure, that goes both ways. Dissapointed but not surprised.

It's insane and in a just world there would be a swift federal response to these terroristic exercises of power(to put it mildly). From the article it seems like the New Mexico state government has a very restrained response. That's pretty standard issue with these types of groups, typically they fizzle out and go home. Granted, no one has ever inflamed them like this before, maybe their deranged moral mission will sustain them. I would hope not.

They have crossed the Rubicon. The people crossing the border are the Hegelian other. They are not a group of people but rather a philosophical threat. They represent tiny tears at these peoples identity. We are witnessing an othering in real time. The scariest part is that we have an administration feeding this from the bottom up.

These groups in the interior are often more numerous and much better armed than the local and state LEOs that they are often pitted against. What kind of polity can hope to sustain itself when it can not enforce itself? What do you do as an LEO when you are the weaker party and the citizens won't listen to the literal rule of law?

Just a total humanitarian disaster.

It's one of the consequences of the Second Amendment. Organised armed folks are a law unto themselves. Literally. With no constitution to govern their command of force, but the amount of force they can command. And identity politics means that a sizeable rump will defend them simply because they're not Dems.

Strike For The South

04-23-2019, 22:54

It's one of the consequences of the Second Amendment. Organised armed folks are a law unto themselves. Literally. With no constitution to govern their command of force, but the amount of force they can command. And identity politics means that a sizeable rump will defend them simply because they're not Dems.

I would say we have let the "well regulated" clause fall by the wayside but that is another thread.

These people are a literal terrorist organization.

Pannonian

04-23-2019, 23:07

I would say we have let the "well organized" clause fall by the wayside but that is another thread.

These people are a literal terrorist organization.

They are organised. They just don't answer to constitutional authority. Call them terrorists, gangs, whatever. Trumpists would still excuse them for not being Democrats or liberals. Over here, we have the same identity politics, but minus the Second Amendment, which means things play out differently.

Montmorency

04-25-2019, 08:37

Preface : I have a hunch this post may be a failure of formatting, and I stopped short of covering all the beats because of time constraints, but an attempt was made. I made a public commitment, where “more streamlined” became mission creep. Try reading this plus the Lawfare article I linked earlier, and you will be in decent stead. I do hope to impress upon the reader the importance of setting the record straight on this topic when (a) it has become so salient in the public discourse and (b) there is a concerted effort to deceive the public about its contents and significance.

Introduction : From what I have seen up to now, the Mueller Special Counsel investigation has been exemplary as one of the most complex and most professionally-conducted investigations in American history. That's something to be glad of in a way. I had hoped that Mueller would be particularly aggressive in pushing the boundaries of his office's authority (which has been circumscribed since the time of the 20th century "independent counsel"), but in the end he narrowly tailored his scope and procedure and did it by the book, without excess or grandstanding. Figures that the Clintons get to deal with individuals like Ken Starr and James Comey, whereas Donald Trump gets Bob Mueller.

I have not read more than 10% 20% 30% of the report myself, because it’s a novel-length legal document. All my understanding of what the report itself says comes from reading the report executive summaries (not Barr's!), key subsections, knowledgeable commentary and analysis of the report contents from a variety of sources, and reference against contents excerpted in news and commentary. If you found something interesting in the meat of the report, or think my claims or assessments are affected by something within the report not mentioned, feel free to comment.

There are many funny parts in the report, such as when Trump is reported to have declared "I'm fucked!" upon learning of the special counsel's commission, or the stark jurisprudential notice that it’s "well-settled principle that false exculpatory statements are evidence-often strong evidence-of guilt". Others cohere to develop the narrative of the 2016 campaign. I’m attempting to streamline things however. I won’t be discussing findings (mostly heretofore publicized) about the mechanics of Russia’s election interference. I won’t give a thorough rundown of individuals in the campaign or their histories and roles (some individuals who figure heavily are Flynn, Cohen, Page, Papadopoulos, and Nader). I won't be discussing peripheral matters such as Barr's deceptive conduct (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/19/us/politics/mueller-report-william-barr-excerpts.html) and modified limited hangout (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited hangout) either.

What follows are some key elements (not comprehensive!) of the report that in elucidation hopefully accomplish my two goals of giving people without much familiarity a feel for the major findings of the investigation while also bringing attention to matters that in my opinion don’t often receive proper attention or context. Accompanied by some editorializing and split, as is the report, between Russia and Obstruction sections.

Update: This Vox article (https://www.vox.com/2019/4/19/18485535/mueller-report-redactions-data-chart) specifies all the redactions by type and location, which is helpful. Almost all grand jury and ongoing matter related, and as I judged at a glance they’re concentrated on Wikileaks and Roger Stone. What redactions may mean, what redactions are appropriate, and what the President’s or Barr’s motivations may have been in selecting them is covered well by other writers.

Russia

What is NOT in the report: Most of the broad strokes of the report are or have been public knowledge (including, of course, revelations from Special Counsel indictments).
There is a common misinformed framing in much coverage of the report rollout that Mueller “cleared” Trump of conspiracy/collusion, or “found no” such, “rejected”, etc. Here is the primary conclusion of the report, which logically does not in itself either confirm or disconfirm any particular formulation of the Trump campaign’s postures or intent. Anyone who claims that ‘The report agrees/disagrees Trump was X with/to/by Russia’ is mistaken or lying. Same thing with obstruction, as we will see.

As set forth in detail in this report, the Special Counsel's investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working on the Clinton Campaign and then released stolen documents. The investigation also identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign. Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

As far as the report goes, all that is available to the reader is to study the history of the campaign and Trump’s behavior and develop one’s own interpretation. In fact there is plenty to see, some of which will be reviewed later. Legally-speaking, the only surface-level determinations contained in the text are where prosecutors determined there was not enough evidence to convict over campaign activities – or that the prosecution does not meet DOJ guidelines that “the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.” Nothing more or less. To be clear, interpret “the investigation did not establish” as meaning ‘the investigation did not prove’, whereas “the investigation did not identify evidence” is juxtaposed in other areas and probably does mean ‘zero/close-to-zero evidence’ where it appears.

A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

Mueller explicitly lays out that he is not using the popular framing of "collusion", but coordination underlying criminal conspiracy. We've known that for 2 years, but you have to work with the narratives you're given. Crucially, Mueller judged that to be justiciable under conspiracy laws campaign activities must involve a concrete agreement.

In evaluating whether evidence about collective action of multiple individuals constituted a crime, we applied the framework of conspiracy law, not the concept of "collusion."
[...]
In connection with that analysis, we addressed the factual question whether members of the Trump Campaign "coordinat[ed]"-a term that appears in the appointment order-with Russian election interference activities. Like collusion, "coordination" does not have a settled definition in federal criminal law. We understood coordination to require an agreement-tacit or express- between the Trump Campaign and the Russian government on election interference. That requires more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other's actions or interests. We applied the term coordination in that sense when stating in the report that the investigation did not establish that the Trump Campaign coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.

There's a reason Trump and mass media adopted the term collusion, without really bothering to define it: it shifts and dilutes expectations and is accessible to laymen. Insofar as no one who applied “collusion” was really applying it in a rigorous sense synonymous with criminal conspiracy or some other offense, I’m not interested in policing that fence. A safe assumption would be that it was applied with the vague sense of 'working together'. With that sense, let’s outline: Russia was doing hacks and funneling the documents through Wikileaks to harm Trump’s opponent, while Trump aimed to optimize leaks with Wikileaks to manipulate the public discourse, in public lying about it and deflecting responsibility from Russia. It is indisputably established in that chain that Trump colluded with Wikileaks, and that Wikileaks colluded with Russia. It is reasonable to ponder what more direct associations may have developed. What an investigation aims to discover in the contacts and the collusion is how, why, to what extent, and finally whether there is criminal liability. All the decisions on liability are purported to be fleshed out, yet the formal posture of the report on these other questions should be understood as: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. A theory of the exact nature of conscious mutual cooperation between Trump and the Russian government thus remains up to our own interpretation, just as the case was before the report was submitted.

The report as a document is doggedly focused on prosecutorial aspects of the case. AFAIK it contains zero classified information (which by regulation is specially marked, distinct from redaction). Without speculating too much about what may lie beneath the redactions or with spinoff investigations, it is notable that in the visible report Mueller says nothing or almost nothing about the counterintelligence investigation against Russia in the context of Trump. There is the major indictment against the hack/leak from the GRU, and the Internet operations of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), but practically nothing about the Russian side of the Trump-Russia nexus. It would seem obvious, for example, that the various Trump-Putin meetings are of relevance. I am not aware if anywhere in the report Mueller describes how he assessed the prospect of any specific planned or executed (post-inauguration) Trump policy being on the basis of a deal with Russia - or other scenarios of compromise. But in the next section of this post I quote him referencing awareness of the possibility of such a pillar of interference, and we do know (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/11/us/politics/fbi-trump-russia-inquiry.html) from reporting in January there is some sort of counterintelligence investigation into Trump personally, opened post-Comey firing. It (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/counterintelligence-investigation-trump-team-russia-hasn-t-stopped-n996486) is ongoing.[/I] Topics such as the NRA and Cambridge Analytica are not mentioned at all in the public report, even though we know Mueller turned his attention to both (https://www.businessinsider.com/second-ex-cambridge-analytica-employee-subpoenaed-by-mueller-report-2019-2) organizations (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mueller-russia-nra-trump-784002/).

If any of this is acknowledged by Mueller, it is done obliquely such as in this passage labeling the Special Counsel’s Russia volume a summary (the Obstruction volume is not labeled a summary):

Those communications [summaries of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information to FBIHQ and FBI Field Offices] and other correspondence between the Office and the FBI contain information derived from the investigation, not all of which is contained in this Volume. This Volume is a summary. It contains, in the Office's judgment, that information necessary to account for the Special Counsel's prosecution and declination decisions and to describe the investigation's main factual results.

What Mueller looked for: Mueller narrowly tailored his investigation to the mandate he was given by Rod Rosenstein, and assessed links between the Trump campaign and Russian efforts with regard to "election interference with the 2016 presidential election and related matters" specifically as the locus of potential wrongdoing.

Despite the original appointment order allowing a broader interpretation in my opinion:

(i) any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump; and
(ii) any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; and
(iii) any other matters within the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a).

(One thing I don’t recall and am unclear on Is how “Russian government” was defined for this purpose, whether it only included formal employees or also some other agentive relationship.)

Therefore Mueller was looking through the lens of Russian “active measures”: the hack/leak by GRU and the social media influence operation by IRA. In other words the object of investigation was, did Trump or his campaign make an agreement to coordinate with the Russian government on hacking, leaking, or trolling, and did they materially follow through on such an agreement? Though the phrase does not appear with regard to Russia (see below on “exchange”), one should be aware that frequently a conspiracy is conducted in furtherance or pursuit of a quid pro quo bargain.

From the Executive Summary, Mueller outlines the patterns he observed on the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia-linked persons. Russian outreach consisted of “business connections, offers of assistance to the Campaign, invitations for candidate Trump and Putin to meet in person, invitations for Campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government to meet, and policy positions seeking improved U.S.-Russian relations”, but no crime with respect to interference was established.

The social media campaign and the GRU hacking operations coincided with a series of
contacts between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government.
The Office investigated whether those contacts reflected or resulted in the Campaign conspiring
or coordinating with Russia in its election-interference activities. Although the investigation
established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and
worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from
information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that
members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its
election interference activities.

The whole outline of 3-4 pages is reproduced below. Highlights (including some details pulled from outside the summary) are:

Trump tower, not in my post.

Foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos (who had been specialized (https://www.thenationalherald.com/117942/trumps-foreign-policy-team-includes-a-greek/) in Middle East energy policy) in March 2016 had joined the Trump campaign and met Joseph Mifsud, who in a later meeting approached Papadopoulos about arranging a Trump-Putin meeting. In April, Mifsud traveled to Moscow and upon his return revealed to Papadopoulos that the Russian government possessed Clinton-related emails, which could be released anonymously to damage the Clinton campaign. (Neither Papadopoulos nor anyone else in the campaign could say if they remembered whether he shared the email revelations with the campaign.) Papadopoulos spent months trying to arrange a Trump-Putin meeting, but no meeting took place. The report mirrors others in characterizing the investigation into Russian coordination with the Trump campaign as beginning on July 31, after Papadopoulos spilled some of these details to a “representative of a foreign government” (known to be Australia) and after the Wikileaks leaks of the DNC emails. (Searching "July 31" in the report reveals other interesting correspondences...)

June 9 Trump Tower meeting, see below in-depth.

Carter Page, a Russia foreign policy advisor on the Trump campaign (for years identified by the FBI as a probable foreign agent) traveled to Moscow in July 2016 during the course of the campaign. Page delivered foreign policy speeches there, and met with a business contact and others linked/part of the Russian government. Following a grand-jury related redaction the report reads “The Office was unable to obtain additional evidence or testimony about who Page may have met or communicated with in Moscow; thus, Page's activities in Russia-as described in his emails with the Campaign-were not fully explained.“ Page formally parted with the campaign in September.

Wikileaks, see below in-depth.
Manafort, see below in-depth.
Post-election meetings and Seychelles meeting, not in my post.

Mueller finally synopsizes the post-inauguration period, passing the advent of the Congressional investigations into Trump-Russia up to the Comey firing and Special Counsel appointment.

2015. Some of the earliest contacts were made in connection with a Trump Organization
real-estate project in Russia known as Trump Tower Moscow. Candidate Trump signed a Letter
of lntent for Trump Tower Moscow by November 2015, and in January 2016 Trump Organization
executive Michael Cohen emailed and spoke about the project with the office of Russian
government press secretary Dmitry Peskov. The Trump Organization pursued the project through
at least June 2016, including by considering travel to Russia by Cohen and candidate Trump.

Spring 2016. Campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos made early contact
with Joseph Mifsud, a London-based professor who had connections to Russia and traveled to
Moscow in April 2016. Immediately upon his return to London from that trip, Mifsud told
Papadopoulos that the Russian government had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands
of emails. One week later, in the first week of May 2016, Papadopoulos suggested to a
representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from
the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of
information damaging to candidate Clinton. Throughout that period of time and for several months
thereafter, Papadopoulos worked with Mifsud and two Russian nationals to arrange a meeting
between the Campaign and the Russian government. No meeting took place.

Summer 2016. Russian outreach to the Trump Campaign continued into the summer of
2016, as candidate Trump was becoming the presumptive Republican nominee for President. On
June 9, 2016, for example, a Russian lawyer met with senior Trump Campaign officials Donald
Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and campaign chairman Paul Manafort to deliver what the email
proposing the meeting had described as "official documents and information that would
incriminate Hillary." The materials were offered to Trump Jr. as "part of Russia and its
government's support for Mr. Trump." The written communications setting up the meeting
showed that the Campaign anticipated receiving information from Russia that could assist
candidate Trump's electoral prospects, but the Russian lawyer's presentation did not provide such
information.
Days after the June 9 meeting, on June 14, 2016, a cybersecurity firm and the DNC
announced that Russian government hackers had infiltrated the DNC and obtained access to
opposition research on candidate Trump, among other documents.
In July 2016, Campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page traveled in his personal capacity
to Moscow and gave the keynote address at the New Economic School. Page had lived and worked
in Russia between 2003 and 2007. After returning to the United States, Page became acquainted
with at least two Russian intelligence officers, one of whom was later charged in 2015 with
conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of Russia. Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow and his
advocacy for pro-Russian foreign policy drew media attention. The Campaign then distanced itself
from Page and, by late September 2016, removed him from the Campaign.
July 2016 was also the month WikiLeaks first released emails stolen by the GRU from the
DNC. On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of internal DNC documents revealing
information about the Clinton Campaign. Within days, there was public reporting that U.S.
intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that the Russian government was.behind the theft of
emails and documents from the DNC. And within a week of the release, a foreign government
informed the FBI about its May 2016 interaction with Papadopoulos and his statement that the
Russian government could assist the Trump Campaign. On July 31, 2016, based on the foreign
government reporting, the FBI opened an investigation into potential coordination between the
Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign.
Separately, on August 2, 2016, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met in New York
City with his long-time business associate Konstantin Kilimnik, who the FBI assesses to have ties
to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik requested the meeting to deliver in person a peace plan for
Ukraine that Manafort acknowledged to the Special Counsel's Office was a "backdoor" way for
Russia to control part of eastern Ukraine; both men believed the plan would require candidate
Trump's assent to succeed (were he to be elected President). They also discussed the status of the
Trump Campaign and Manafort's strategy for winning Democratic votes in Midwestern states.
Months before that meeting, Manafort had caused internal polling data to be shared with Kilimnik,
and the sharing continued for some period of time after their August meeting.

Fall 2016. On October 7, 2016, the media released video of candidate Trump speaking in
graphic terms about women years earlier, which was considered damaging to his candidacy. Less
than an hour later, WikiLeaks made its second release: thousands of John Podesta's emails that
had been stolen by the GRU in late March 2016. The FBI and other U.S. government institutions
were at the time continuing their investigation of suspected Russian government efforts to interfere
in the presidential election. That same day, October 7, the Department of Homeland Security and
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint public statement "that the Russian
Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions,
including from US political organizations." Those "thefts" and the "disclosures" of the hacked
materials through online platforms such as WikiLeaks, the statement continued, "are intended to
interfere with the US election process."

Post-2016 Election. Immediately after the November 8 election, Russian government
officials and prominent Russian businessmen began trying to make inroads into the new
administration. The most senior levels of the Russian government encouraged these efforts. The
Russian Embassy made contact hours after the election to congratulate the President-Elect and to
arrange a call with President Putin. Several Russian businessmen picked up the effort from there.
Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive officer of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, was among
the Russians who tried to make contact with the incoming administration. In early December, a
business associate steered Dmitriev to Erik Prince, a supporter of the Trump Campaign and an
associate of senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Dmitriev and Prince later met face-to-face in
January 2017 in the Seychelles and discussed U.S.-Russia relations. During the same period,
another business associate introduced Dmitriev to a friend of Jared Kushner who had not served
on the Campaign or the Transition Team. Dmitriev and Kushner's friend collaborated on a short
written reconciliation plan for the United States and Russia, which Dmitriev implied had been
cleared through Putin. The friend gave that proposal to Kushner before the inauguration, and
Kushner later gave copies to Bannon and incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
On December 29, 2016, then-President Obama imposed sanctions on Russia for having
interfered in the election. Incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn called Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and asked Russia not to escalate the situation in response to the
sanctions. The following day, Putin announced that Russia would not take retaliatory measures in
response to the sanctions at that time. Hours later, President-Elect Trump tweeted, "Great move
on delay (by V. Putin)." The next day, on December 31 , 2016, Kislyak called Flynn and told him
the request had been received at the highest levels and Russia had chosen not to retaliate as a result
of Flynn's request.

On January 6, 2017, members of the intelligence community briefed President-Elect Trump
on a joint assessment-drafted and coordinated among the Central Intelligence Agency, FBI, and
National Security Agency-that concluded with high confidence that Russia had intervened in the
election through a variety of means to assist Trump's candidacy and harm Clinton's. A
declassified version of the assessment was publicly released that same day.
Between mid-January 2017 and early February 2017, three congressional committees-the
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence (SSCI), and the Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC)-announced that they would
conduct inquiries, or had already been conducting inquiries, into Russian interference in the
election. Then-FBI Director James Corney later confirmed to Congress the existence of the FBI's
investigation into Russian interference that had begun before the election. On March 20, 2017, in
open-session testimony before HPSCI, Corney stated:
I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part
of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts
to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, and that includes investigating the
nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and
the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the
campaign and Russia's efforts .... As with any counterintelligence investigation,
this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.
The investigation continued under then-Director Corney for the next seven weeks until May 9,
2017, when President Trump fired Comey as FBI Director-an action which is analyzed in
Volume II of the report.
On May 17, 2017, Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed the Special Counsel
and authorized him to conduct the investigation that Corney had confirmed in his congressional
testimony, as well as matters arising directly from the investigation, and any other matters within
the scope of 28 C.F.R. § 600.4(a), which generally covers efforts to interfere with or obstruct the
investigation.
President Trump reacted negatively to the Special Counsel's appointment. He told advisors
that it was the end of his presidency, sought to have Attorney General Jefferson (Jeff) Sessions
unrecuse from the Russia investigation and to have the Special Counsel removed, and engaged in
efforts to curtail the Special Counsel's investigation and prevent the disclosure of evidence to it,
including through public and private contacts with potential witnesses. Those and related actions
are described and analyzed in Volume II of the report.

Mueller explained the prosecutorial standard he adheres to, which can be abbreviated as three stages in (1) Criminality, (2) Sustainability, and (3) Necessity:

In reaching the charging decisions described in Volume 1 of the report, the Office
determined whether the conduct it found amounted to a violation of federal criminal law
chargeable under the Principles of Federal Prosecution. See Justice Manual § 9-27.000 et seq.
(2018). The standard set forth in the Justice Manual is whether the conduct constitutes a crime; if
so, whether admissible evidence would probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction;
and whether prosecution would serve a substantial federal interest that could not be adequately
served by prosecution elsewhere or through non-criminal alternatives.

Mueller lists the charges already delivered to the Russian organizations and individuals, but repeats that there was not sufficient evidence to charge Trump campaign individuals for the eligible crimes (described below), except for the various charges for lying to materially impair the investigation (Flynn, Papadopoulos, Cohen, Manafort).

Miscellaneously, Mueller established that Jeff Sessions’ campaign meetings with the Russian ambassador were of no account, and did not find a connection between a GOP platform change on Ukraine assistance was directed by Trump or Russia.

The Office investigated several other events that have been publicly reported to involve potential Russia-related contacts. For example, the investigation established that interactions between Russian Ambassador Kislyak and Trump Campaign officials both at the candidate’s April 2016 foreign policy speech in Washington, D.C., and during the week of the Republican National Convention were brief, public, and non-substantive. And the investigation did not establish that one Campaign official’s efforts to dilute a portion of the Republican Party platform on providing assistance to Ukraine were undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia.

Mueller identified several possible statutory offenses that could plausibly apply within the scope or theory he adopted:

18 U.S. Code § 1349 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-63). Attempt and conspiracy [to commit fraud]
18 U.S. Code § 1951 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1951). Interference with commerce by threats or violence

Mueller never mentions these two again.

18 U.S. Code § 371 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371). Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States

If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

Mueller terms this the "general" conspiracy clause. Consistent with what I said previously, because Mueller could not identify a concrete agreement by any actor in connection with the "active measures", or active participation therein, he did not charge anyone with a conspiracy statute related to Russia.

The Office considered in particular whether contacts between Trump Campaign officials and Russia-linked individuals could trigger liability for the crime of conspiracy-either under statutes that have their own conspiracy language (e.g. , 18 U.S.C. §§ 1349, 195l(a)), or under the general conspiracy statute (18 U.S.C. § 371). The investigation did not establish that the contacts described in Volume I, Section IV, supra, amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal criminal law- including foreign-influence and campaign-finance laws, both of which are discussed further below. The Office therefore did not charge any individual associated with the Trump Campaign with conspiracy to commit a federal offense arising from Russia contacts, either under a specific statute or under Section 371 's offenses clause. The Office also did not charge any campaign official or associate with a conspiracy under Section 371 's defraud clause. That clause criminalizes participating in an agreement to obstruct a lawful function of the U.S. government or its agencies through deceitful or dishonest means. See Dennis v. United States, 384 U.S. 855, 861 (1966); Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182, 188 (1924); see also United States v. Concord Mgmt. & Consulting LLC, 34 7 F. Supp. 3d 38, 46 (D.D.C.2018). The investigation did not establish any agreement among Campaign officials or between such officials and Russia-linked individuals-to interfere with or obstruct a lawful function of a government agency during the campaign or transition period. And, as discussed in Volume I, Section V.A, supra, the investigation did not identify evidence that any Campaign official or associate knowingly and intentionally participated in the conspiracy to defraud that the Office charged, namely, the active-measures conspiracy described in Volume I, Section II, supra.
Accordingly, the Office did not charge any Campaign associate or other U.S. person with conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the Russia-related contacts described in Section IV above.

18 U.S. Code § 951 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/951). Agents of foreign governments

Mueller lists the triggering conditions of being a "foreign agent", per the crime of acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Manafort/Gates had violated FARA while working in Ukraine prior to the Trump campaign, and Flynn was charged and confessed to violating FARA while working as a Turkish agent, but Mueller could not establish that the actions of any Trump campaign member met the criteria to be considered a Russian agent.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) generally makes it illegal to act as an agent
of a foreign principal by engaging in certain (largely political) activities in the United States
without registering with the Attorney General. 22 U.S.C. §§ 611-621. The triggering agency
relationship must be with a foreign principal or "a person any of whose activities are directly or
indirectly supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a
foreign principal." 22 U.S.C. § 61 l(c)(l). That includes a foreign government or political party
and various foreign individuals and entities. 22 U.S.C. § 611(6). A covered relationship exists if
a person "acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant" or "in any other capacity at the
order, request, or under the [foreign principal's] direction or control." 22 U.S.C. § 61 l(c)(l). It
is sufficient if the person "agrees, consents, assumes or purports to act as, or who is or holds
himself out to be, whether or not pursuant to contractual relationship, an agent of a foreign
principal." 22 U.S.C. § 61 l(c)(2).
The triggering activity is that the agent "directly or through any other person" in the United
States (1) engages in "political activities for or in the interests of [the] foreign principal," which
includes attempts to influence federal officials or the public; (2) acts as "public relations counsel,
publicity agent, information-service employee or political consultant for or in the interests of such
foreign principal"; (3) " solicits, collects, disburses, or dispenses contributions, loans, money, or
other things of value for or in the interest of such foreign principal"; or ( 4) "represents the interests
of such foreign principal" before any federal agency or official. 22 U .S.C. § 611 ( c )(1 ).

The investigation uncovered extensive evidence that Paul Manafort's and Richard Oates's
pre-campaign work for the government of Ukraine violated FARA. Manafort and Gates were
charged for that conduct and admitted to it when they pleaded guilty to superseding criminal
informations in the District of Columbia prosecution.
[...]
In addition, the investigation produced evidence of FARA violations involving Michael
Flynn. Those potential violations, however, concerned a country other than Russia (i.e., Turkey)
and were resolved when Flynn admitted to the underlying facts in the Statement of Offense that
accompanied his guilty plea to a false-statements charge.

In particular, the Office did not find evidence likely to prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that Campaign officials such as Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos,
and Carter Page acted as agents of the Russian government-or at its direction control, or
request-during the relevant time period.

Campaign finance laws

Relevant to June 9 Trump Tower meeting and Wikileaks activities. I will address this topic later.

Mueller intimates that a potential broader conspiracy involving quid pro quo exchange was assessed in the course of the investigation, but failed to establish any such. AFAICT this is another cryptic passage that hints at inquiries beyond strict election interference but doesn't seem to correspond to any treatment within the report.

The Office identified multiple contacts-"links," in the words of the Appointment Order between Trump Campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government. The Office investigated whether those contacts constituted a third avenue of attempted Russian interference with or influence on the 2016 presidential election. In particular, the investigation examined whether these contacts involved or resulted in coordination or a conspiracy with the Trump Campaign and Russia, including with respect to Russia providing assistance to the Campaign in exchange for any sort of favorable treatment in the future. Based on the available information, the investigation did not establish such coordination.

I will provide these later.

Wikileaks and Trump’s hunt for emails:

Russian contacts:

Evidentiary problems:

Mueller explaining information-gathering and evidence:

The report describes actions and events that the Special Counsel's Office found to be supported by the evidence collected in our investigation. In some instances, the report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the evidence about a particular fact or event. In other instances, when substantial, credible evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence, the report states that the investigation established that certain actions or events occurred. A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.

The standard used to “establish” something is naturally enough “proof beyond a reasonable doubt”, or “certainty”.

One of the most disheartening aspects of the report is its revelation that the Special Counsel, and by extension the feds, are not omniscient after all. When people lied or withheld information, this was to the detriment of the investigation – it turns out getting people to talk is a big part of it. On the other hand, when the only information available is based on someone’s account to you, that is also a limitation when establishing facts. Taking the 5th to avoid divulging self-incriminatory information is a Constitutional right, but deleting, destroying, or concealing evidence is a little more shady. Moreover, much documentary material could not be accessed having been transmitted through secure/encrypted means, or simply by existing outside the United States beyond the jurisdiction of the feds.

The investigation did not always yield admissible information or testimony, or a complete picture of the activities undertaken by subjects of the investigation. Some individuals invoked their Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination and were not, in the Office's judgment, appropriate candidates for grants of immunity. The Office limited its pursuit of other witnesses and information-such as information known to attorneys or individuals claiming to be members of the media-in light of internal Department of Justice policies.
[...]
Some of the information obtained via court process, moreover, was presumptively covered by legal privilege and was screened from investigators by a filter ( or "taint") team. Even when individuals testified or agreed to be interviewed, they sometimes provided information that was false or incomplete, leading to some of the false-statements charges described above. And the Office faced practical limits on its ability to access relevant evidence as well-numerous witnesses and subjects lived abroad, and documents were held outside the United States.

Further, the Office learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated-including some associated with the Trump Campaign---deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long-term retention of data or communications records. In such cases, the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with other known facts.

Mueller warns that he cannot guarantee the completeness of the report's determinations taking into account potentially-insufficient evidence.

Accordingly, while this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these identified gaps,
the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.

Relevant note on Trump vis-à-vis Manafort’s prosecution: “The President said that flipping was "not fair" and "almost ought to be outlawed."” And as reported in an NBC article (https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2018-state-of-the-union-address/state-donald-trump-he-thinks-it-couldn-t-be-better-n842501) from January 2018, “Donald Trump is telling friends and aides in private that things are going great — for him. Some reasons: He's decided that a key witness in the Russia probe, Paul Manafort, isn't going to "flip" and sell him out, friends and aides say. He believes Robert Mueller, who heads the investigation, can be crushed, if necessary, without being fired.”

One may reflect, as Mueller did, on the difference in Trump’s messaging between Manafort (who never “flipped”) and Cohen (who very vocally did). Manafort appears to have been one of the most important witnesses as to the events of the 2016 campaign, but he was one of the most uncooperative, what with violating the cooperation agreement by lying, colluding against the investigation with the President, etc. I imagine his anti-cooperation was singularly damaging to the investigation. Elsewhere in the report (reaching into Obstruction) Mueller concludes that Trump had intended for Manafort to believe that a pardon would be forthcoming, which would calibrate cooperativeness vs. mendacity.

With respect to Manafort, there is evidence that the President's actions had the potential to influence Manafort's decision whether to cooperate with the government. The President and his personal counsel made repeated statements suggesting that a pardon was a possibility for Mana fort, while also making it clear that the President did not want Manafort to "flip" and cooperate with the government.

Evidence concerning the President's conduct towards Manafort indicates that the President intended to encourage Manafort to not cooperate with the government.
[…]
In light of the President's counsel's previous statements that the investigations "might get cleaned up with some presidential pardons" and that a pardon would be possible if the President "come[s] to the conclusion that you have been treated unfairly," the evidence supports the inference that the President intended Manafort to believe that he could receive a pardon, which would make cooperation with the government as a means of obtaining a lesser sentence unnecessary.
Donald Trump and Donald Jr. both refused to be interviewed in person or to submit grand jury testimony. There are relatively few redactions in the Obstruction volume of the report, but one redaction appears to cover details of the refusal. Trump did submit written answers to some questions, but most of it was not addressed or Trump’s response was ‘don’t know, don’t remember’. Mueller “viewed the written answers to be inadequate.” Two very important questions that went unanswered:

II h. Did you have any discussions prior to January 20, 2017, regarding a potential pardon or other action to benefit Julian Assange? If yes, describe who you had the discussion(s) with, when, and the content of the discussion(s).

IV i. What consideration did you give to lifting sanctions and/or recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea if you were elected? Describe who you spoke with about this topic, when, the substance of the discussion(s).

My Internet Lawyer hat on evidentiary problems:
Let’s say, as part of an investigation, you assume the targets have some sort of quid pro quo, a corrupt bargain, and that this leads them to break laws that invoke conspiracy. How does one go about establishing quid pro quo? One needs the pro – the “for”, the agreement to exchange. You could have favorable actions taken on both ends, but there must be a bridge between them. Otherwise it could conceivably be a coincidence, however outlandish. If you don’t have a deal, you don’t have a crime. There’s the rub. So how does one uncover an agreement in the process of investigating? There are some three main evidentiary modes: witness testimony/suspect confession; documentary; signals intelligence.

Witness testimony is fallible because the witness or subject can lie, and you need another witness or a different mode of evidence that contradicts or corroborates them to advance the case ifthere is any level of complexity. This is what’s behind the principle of “rolling” witnesses, nailing a lower-level witness and inducing them through lenience to cooperate by confessing to lesser crimes and providing documents and testimony – ideally like dropping a row of dominoes.

But again, individuals have different levels of knowledge, and they may lie or obstruct. That’s where documents are helpful. Documents can build case knowledge and help catch witnesses on peripheral lies or distortions, leading them to clean up their testimony. A written agreement, or individuals corresponding in a way that implies, references, or acknowledges a written agreement, is ideal. But this is hard to identify if you can’t get access to sources, or if witnesses destroy or conceal evidence. (Recall here that both Manafort and Stone’s properties were subjected to unannounced FBI raids to prevent evidence loss.) A textual agreement may not even exist if you aren’t investigating two large organizations who might be expected to create more institutional records of such things, or if the targets just weren’t stupid enough to take notes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGo5bxWy21g) on a "criminal :daisy: conspiracy".

That’s why signals intelligence is a great thing, in an age where so much is exchanged through the Internet, or over telephone. Obtaining technical records or intercepted communications allowing comfortable cross-checking of facts and testimony enables the investigator to box suspects in. The USA famously has a world-beating sigint apparatus. However this too has limitations. If connections or communications are encrypted, and the content is not intercepted for decryption, it may be impossible to learn even whether communication took place. Disposable written communications are immune to sig-int. Face-to-face conversations, especially those involving intermediaries or taking place overseas, are immune to sigint (unless the subjects were being monitored beforehand). Moreover, because sigint is so potent and intensive, the investigator may not wish to proceed in a way that exposes means and methods, or that exposes friendly facilitators (i.e. informants or spies) to repercussions.

Imagine that at the June 9 Trump Tower meeting the highest campaign officials below Trump himself heard from the Russians details of the hacks and emails and the potential for the Trump brand in Russia, and they replied with an examination of policy changes that could ‘advance the US-Russia relationship.’ Assume sigint has not been withheld for secrecy concerns (though I wouldn’t be surprised). The principals having given their side of the story with protestation that nothing of substance occurred, how would an investigator go about proving this culpable coordination? Much less when Mike Flynn personally met Putin in December 2015 (when he was already (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mike-flynn-s-rt-headache-won-t-go-away-n752216) unofficially working with Trump), how would an investigator prove what, if anything, was exchanged or communicated between the two? Trump is very much in the position of an insulated mob boss here.

Obstruction of Justice

The first thing you should read about obstruction is that Mueller refuses to make any formal conclusion other than ‘make up your own damn mind’:

Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President's conduct. The evidence we obtained about the President's actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment. At the same time, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.

The above paragraph appears in core form 3 times in the report, so it must be pretty important: the end of the introduction to the Obstruction volume, as the conclusion of the Executive Summary of the volume, and as the conclusion to the whole volume. *Hmmm.jpg*

Obstruction is the less interesting and more straightforward part of the report for me in doing an overview – despite it holding so many damning details, I am nevertheless largely putting those details outside the scope of this post - but it appears to have been Mueller's priority in making an end of the Special Counsel investigation when he did. That is, we know Mueller wanted to prioritize the obstruction matter because in explaining why he did not pursue subpoenas of the President and others (Trump and Don Jr. refused to testify), or wait for further discovery in other matters, it’s revealed he felt the obstruction material was already substantial enough that it would be undesirable to delay presenting the results to Congress.

We also sought a voluntary interview with the President. After more discussion, the President declined to be interviewed.
[REDACTED]
During the course of our discussions, the President did agree to answer written questions on certain Russia-related topics, and he provided us with answers. He did not similarly agree to provide written answers to questions on obstruction topics or questions on events during the transition. Ultimately, while we believed that we had the authority and legal justification to issue a grand jury subpoena to obtain the President's testimony, we chose not to do so. We made that decision in view of the substantial delay that such an investigative step would likely produce at a late stage in our investigation. We also assessed that based on the significant body of evidence we had already obtained of the President's actions and his public and private statements describing or explaining those actions, we had sufficient evidence to understand relevant events and to make certain assessments without the President's testimony.

We thus weighed the costs of potentially lengthy constitutional litigation, with resulting delay in finishing our investigation, against the anticipated benefits for our investigation and report.

(Of course he could hypothetically have broken off obstruction from the rest of the report and continued investigating other matters, but the Special Counsel rules only mention that "[a]t the conclusion of the Special Counsel's work, he ... shall provide the Attorney General a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions", and as noted above Mueller was very by-the-book.)

Mueller spends a good deal of the report explaining his legal theories of investigating, reporting on, and/or charging the President. Much of it functions as a pre-emptive takedown of Barr's narratives, laying out judicial precedent on separation of powers doctrines and other matters. A good place to start would be the Summary subsection “STATUTORY AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEFENSES”, it’s of a subtle mordancy apt to give the British a run for their money. Indeed, there is a marked shift in the language of sufficiency to reach certain conclusions between the Russia volume and the Obstruction volume. One example is when, discussing executive powers:

A general ban on corrupt action does not unduly intrude on the President's responsibility to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." U.S. CONST. ART IT, §§ 3. 1090 To the contrary, the concept of "faithful execution" connotes the use of power in the interest of the public, not in the office holder's personal interests.

Mueller iterates and analyzes numerous potential episodes of obstruction. I don't want to present a paraphrase that erases the nuance and style of Mueller's thorough analyses, but the spoiler is that there's a lot of obstructive conduct, yes. To establish obstruction under the statute Mueller references one needs to identify the obstructive act(us rea), intent (mens rea), and a nexus between obstructive act and official proceeding. Here are two handy tables offering an overview of the findings. (be aware that the episode related to Roger Stone is too redacted to glean much.)

https://i.imgur.com/stoWx4I.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/KwPPQW5.png

Interesting tidbit: When Trump was trying to get Attorney General Sessions to unrecuse and take control of the investigations in early 2017, his official instructions would likely have had the effect of stopping investigation not only into the Trump campaign and Trump himself, but broadly into Russian espionage and interference related to the election. Though as mentioned Mueller never comes out to say such things directly, commentary on the obstruction report tends to observe that the effort to get Sessions to unrecuse was one of the most substantially obstructive episodes that Mueller reviewed.

The message said that Sessions should publicly announce that, notwithstanding his recusal from the Russia investigation, the investigation was "very unfair" to the President, the President had done nothing wrong, and Sessions planned to meet with the Special Counsel and "let [him] move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections." Lewandowski said he understood what the President wanted Sessions to do.
[…]
The dictated message went on to state that Sessions would meet with the Special Counsel to limit his jurisdiction to future election interference: Now a group of people want to subvert the Constitution of the United States. T am going to meet with the Special Prosecutor to explain this is very unfair and let the Special Prosecutor move forward with investigating election meddling for future elections so that nothing can happen in future elections.

Mueller concludes that obstructive conduct may or may not implicate underlying crimes – “The injury to the integrity of the justice system is the same regardless of whether a person committed an underlying wrong.” (Though Trump is widely understood to have committed an underlying crime (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/12/12/cohen-sentencing-donald-trump-co-conspirator-222938) with respect to Cohen and campaign finance.) On suggested motives, he muses:

As described in Volume I, the evidence uncovered in the investigation did not establish that the President or those close to him were involved in the charged Russian computer-hacking or active-measure conspiracies, or that the President otherwise had an unlawful relationship with any Russian official. But the evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns. Although the President publicly stated during and after the election that he had no connection to Russia, the Trump Organization, through Michael Cohen, was pursuing the proposed Trump Tower Moscow project through June 2016 and candidate Trump was repeatedly briefed on the progress of those efforts.498 In addition, some witnesses said that Trump aware that [REDACTED] at a time when public reports stated that Russian intelligence officials were behind the hacks, and that Trump privately sought information about future WikiLeaks releases.499 More broadly, multiple witnesses described the President's preoccupation with press coverage of the Russia investigation and his persistent concern that it raised questions about the legitimacy of his election.5

In this investigation, the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference. But the evidence does point to a range of other possible personal motives animating the President's conduct. These include concerns that continued investigation would call into question the legitimacy of his election and potential uncertainty about whether certain events-such as advance notice of WikiLeaks's release of hacked information or the June 9, 2016 meeting between senior campaign officials and Russians could be seen as criminal activity by the President, his campaign, or his family

Money shot on obstruction:

Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations.
[…]
The President's efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.

On impeachment and indictment Mueller crucially says (to be read in full):

First, a traditional prosecution or declination decision entails a binary determination to initiate or decline a prosecution, but we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment. The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) has issued an opinion finding that "the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions" in violation of "the constitutional separation of powers."1 Given the role of the Special Counsel as an attorney in the Department of Justice and the framework of the Special Counsel regulations, see 28 U.S.C. § 515; 28 C.F.R. § 600.7(a), this Office accepted OLC's legal conclusion for the purpose of exercising prosecutorial jurisdiction. And apart from OLC's constitutional view, we recognized that a federal criminal accusation against a sitting President would place burdens on the President's capacity to govern and potentially preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct.2

As for constitutional defenses arising from the President's status as the head of the Executive Branch, we recognized that the Department of Justice and the courts have not definitively resolved these issues. We therefore examined those issues through the framework established by Supreme Court precedent governing separation-of-powers issues. The Department of Justice and the President's personal counsel have recognized that the President is subject to statutes that prohibit obstruction of justice by bribing a witness or suborning perjury because that conduct does not implicate his constitutional authority. With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has authority to prohibit a President's corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice. Under applicable Supreme Court precedent, the Constitution does not categorically and permanently immunize a President for obstructing justice through the use of his Article II powers. The separation-of-powers doctrine authorizes Congress to protect official proceedings, including those of courts and grand juries, from corrupt, obstructive acts regard less of their source. We also concluded that any inroad on presidential authority that would occur from prohibiting corrupt acts does not undermine the President's ability to fulfill his constitutional mission. The term "corruptly" sets a demanding standard. It requires a concrete showing that a person acted with an intent to obtain an improper advantage for himself or someone else, inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others. A preclusion of "corrupt" official action does not diminish the President's ability to exercise Article II powers. For example, the proper supervision of criminal law does not demand freedom for the President to act with a corrupt intention of shielding himself from criminal punishment, avoiding financial liability, or preventing personal embarrassment. To the contrary, a statute that prohibits official action undertaken for such corrupt purposes furthers, rather than hinders, the impartial and evenhanded administration of the law. It also aligns with the President's constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws. Finally, we concluded that in the rare case in which a criminal investigation of the President's conduct is justified, inquiries to determine whether the President acted for a corrupt motive should not impermissibly chill his performance of his constitutionally assigned duties. The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President's corrupt exercise of the powers of office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

A possible remedy through impeachment for abuses of power would not substitute for potential criminal liability after a President leaves office. Impeachment would remove a President from office, but would not address the underlying culpability of the conduct or serve the usual purposes of the criminal law. Indeed, the Impeachment Judgment Clause recognizes that criminal law plays an independent role in addressing an official's conduct, distinct from the political remedy of impeachment. See U.S. CONST. ART. l, § 3, cl. 7. Impeachment is also a drastic and rarely invoked remedy, and Congress is not restricted to relying only on impeachment, rather than making criminal law applicable to a former President, as OLC has recognized. A Sitting President's Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution, 24 Op. O.L.C. at 255 ("Recognizing an immunity from prosecution for a sitting President would not preclude such prosecution once the President's term is over or he is otherwise removed from office by resignation or impeachment.").

On why Mueller did not want to explicitly conclude that the President committed a crime without charging that crime (because irremediable disparagement):

Third, we considered whether to evaluate the conduct we investigated under the Justice Manual standards governing prosecution and declination decisions, but we determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes. The threshold step under the Justice Manual standards is to assess whether a person's conduct "constitutes a federal offense." U.S. Dep't of Justice, Justice Manual§ 9-27.220 (2018) (Justice Manual). Fairness concerns counseled against potentially reaching that judgment when no charges can be brought. The ordinary means for an individual to respond to an accusation is through a speedy and public trial, with all the procedural protections that surround a criminal case. An individual who believes he was wrongly accused can use that process to seek to clear his name. In contrast, a prosecutor's judgment that crimes were committed, but that no charges will be brought, affords no such adversarial opportunity for public name-clearing before an impartial adjudicator.5

All that reads (not just) to me like lawyer-talk for:

'I don't want to tie this up on the whim of the Supreme Court, so I'm hewing to department regulations on not indicting a sitting President. Congress, here are my referrals on obstruction. For any malfeasance not to be resolved through the political, constitutional process, after the President leaves office it's open season on the Trump family for state and federal prosecutors.'

Montmorency

04-25-2019, 08:43

I'll finish it tomorrow.

A literal illegal militia (terrorist group) and the federal government doesn't care. Part of their duty on the border is to secure, that goes both ways. Dissapointed but not surprised.

It's insane and in a just world there would be a swift federal response to these terroristic exercises of power(to put it mildly). From the article it seems like the New Mexico state government has a very restrained response. That's pretty standard issue with these types of groups, typically they fizzle out and go home. Granted, no one has ever inflamed them like this before, maybe their deranged moral mission will sustain them. I would hope not.

They have crossed the Rubicon. The people crossing the border are the Hegelian other. They are not a group of people but rather a philosophical threat. They represent tiny tears at these peoples identity. We are witnessing an othering in real time. The scariest part is that we have an administration feeding this from the bottom up.

These groups in the interior are often more numerous and much better armed than the local and state LEOs that they are often pitted against. What kind of polity can hope to sustain itself when it can not enforce itself? What do you do as an LEO when you are the weaker party and the citizens won't listen to the literal rule of law?

Just a total humanitarian disaster.

A book (https://www.amazon.com/House-Pain-Others-Chronicle-Genocide/dp/1555978371) just came out, The House of the Pain of Others: Chronicle of a Small Genocide, about a pogrom a hundred years in Mexico against Chinese laborers. Also sounds up your alley.

Hatred and resentment were fomented per all the pretexts used against Mexicans and Latinos in America today, that they don't integrate, that they steal jobs, etc.

300 Celestials (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre%C3%B3n_massacre) were struck down by roving revolutionaries in 1911, in self-defense the Mexicans claimed.

Montmorency

05-04-2019, 23:17

No one's paying attention, huh? Ah well.

So Rod Rosenstein. And Barr lying some more. When will we learn to stop giving these people the benefit of the doubt? I'm including myself. It's incredible credulousness.

"The raspberry road that led to Abu Ghraib was paved with bland assumptions that people who had repeatedly proved their untrustworthiness, could be trusted. There is much made by people who long for the days of their fourth form debating society about the fallacy of "argumentum ad hominem". There is, as I have mentioned in the past, no fancy Latin term for the fallacy of "giving known liars the benefit of the doubt", but it is in my view a much greater source of avoidable error in the world." - This quote (https://blog.danieldavies.com/2004_05_23_d-squareddigest_archive.html) will be even more relevant below

And I was wrong to present this as something novel, it is indeed stale news.

In other (slightly stale?) news about dangerous collusion:

Strike, this one seems up your alley.

NYT headline: Militia in New Mexico Detains Asylum Seekers at Gunpoint (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/us/new-mexico-militia.html)
Alternative headline: Freikorps activity in the borderlands, families held hostage, escalation to pogroms feared

It turns out the Border Patrol (https://theintercept.com/2019/01/12/border-patrol-history/) has always (https://theintercept.com/2019/04/23/border-militia-migrants/) worked with racist private militias. In fact, the whole premise of the Border Patrol's founding in 1924 was as a white supremacist paramilitary to rationalize the long-standing white settler violence in the southwest under auspices of government. This was the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution and the height of the national Ku Klux Klan and the same year of the legislative closing of America (National Origins Act) to pretty much all Eastern European and Asian immigration on the basis of eugenic theories. Being very politically active, the Border Patrol (at first) opposed the interest of agribusinesses in the movement of Mexican labor, participated in CIA training of brutal Latin American security forces during the Cold War, and engaged in systematic campaigns of crimes against humanity throughout the 20th century along the border, where no (other) law exists. Remind one of anything?

John Crewdson, for instance, won a Pulitzer in 1980 for a series of articles published in the New York Times, including one titled “Border Sweeps of Illegal Aliens Leave Scores of Children in Jails,” yet his 1983 book based on the series, “The Tarnished Door,” is out of print. Crewdson’s reporting on the Border Patrol and the immigration system deserves a revival, for it provides an important back-history to the horrors we are witnessing today.

Patrollers, he reported, regularly engaged in beatings, murder, torture, and rape, including the rape of girls as young as 12. Some patrollers ran their own in-house “outlaw” vigilante groups. Others maintained ties with groups like the Klan. Border Patrol agents also used the children of migrants, either as bait or as a pressure tactic to force confessions. When coming upon a family, agents usually tried to apprehend the youngest member first, with the idea that relatives would give themselves up so as not to be separated. “It may sound cruel,” one patroller said, but it often worked.

Separating migrant families was not official government policy in the years Crewdson was reporting on abuses. But left to their own devices, Border Patrol agents regularly took children from parents, threatening that they would be separated “forever” unless one of them confessed that they had entered the country illegally. Mothers especially, an agent said, “would always break.” Once a confession was extracted, children might be placed in foster care or left to languish in federal jails. Others were released into Mexico alone, far from their homes — forced to survive, according to public defenders, by “garbage-can scrounging, living on rooftops and whatever.” Ten-year-old Sylvia Alvarado, separated from her grandmother as they crossed into Texas, was kept in a small cinderblock cell for more than three months. In California, 13-year-old Julia Pérez, threatened with being arrested and denied food, broke down and told her interrogator that she was Mexican, even though she was a U.S. citizen. The Border Patrol released Pérez into Mexico with no money or way to contact her U.S. family. Such cruelties weren’t one-offs, but part of a pattern, encouraged and committed by officers up the chain of command. The violence was both gratuitous and systemic, including “stress” techniques later associated with the war in Iraq.

The practice, for instance, as recently reported, of placing migrants in extremely cold rooms — called hieleras, or “ice boxes” — goes back decades, at least to the early 1980s, with Crewdson writing that it was a common procedure. Agents reminded captives that they were subject to their will: “In this place, you have no rights.”

Some migrants, being sent back to Mexico, were handcuffed to cars and made to run alongside them to the border. Patrollers pushed “illegals off cliffs,” a patrol agent told Crewdson, “so it would look like an accident.” Officers in the patrol’s parent agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, traded young Mexican women they caught at the border to the Los Angeles Rams in exchange for season tickets, and supplied Mexican prostitutes to U.S. congressmen and judges, paying for them out of funds the service used to compensate informants. Agents also worked closely with Texas agriculturalists, delivering workers to their ranches (including to one owned by Lyndon B. Johnson when he was in the White House), then raiding the ranches just before payday and deporting the workers. “The ranchers got their crops harvested for free, the INS men got fishing and hunting privileges on the ranches, and the Mexicans got nothing,” Crewdson reported.

Something else I learned this week? The Bush-era formula of "enhanced interrogation" is actually a direct English translation and implementation of the Nazi concept of "Verschärfte Vernehmung (https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/05/-versch-auml-rfte-vernehmung/228158/)":

The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their "enhanced interrogation techniques" would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.

Also: the use of hypothermia, authorized by Bush and Rumsfeld, was initially forbidden. 'Waterboarding" was forbidden too, unlike that authorized by Bush. As time went on, historians have found that all the bureaucratic restrictions were eventually broken or abridged. Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own. The "cold bath" technique - the same as that used by Bush against al-Qahtani in Guantanamo - was, according to professor Darius Rejali of Reed College,

pioneered by a member of the French Gestapo by the pseudonym Masuy about 1943.
[...]
The Nazi defense of the techniques is almost verbatim that of the Bush administration...
[...]
Freezing prisoners to near-death, repeated beatings, long forced-standing, waterboarding, cold showers in air-conditioned rooms, stress positions [Arrest mit Verschaerfung], withholding of medicine and leaving wounded or sick prisoners alone in cells for days on end - all these have occurred at US detention camps under the command of president George W. Bush. Over a hundred documented deaths have occurred in these interrogation sessions.
[...]
What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture - "enhanced interrogation techniques" - is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

Was this ever brought up on the Org, before my time, that America tried the Nazis at Nuremburg for what the Bush administration did in Iraq?

This old quote from Mein Kampf (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200601h.html) never stops giving:

At present there exists one State which manifests at least some modest attempts that show a better appreciation of how things ought to be done in this matter. It is not, however, in our model German Republic but in the U.S.A. that efforts are made to conform at least partly to the counsels of commonsense. By refusing immigrants to enter there if they are in a bad state of health, and by excluding certain races from the right to become naturalized as citizens, they have begun to introduce principles similar to those on which we wish to ground the People's State.

Back in Europe, Hungary's Orban has reacted to a critical labor shortage not by easing off the ethnonationalism but by taking strides back toward slave labor (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/03/business/hungary-slave-law.html).

“Budapest is almost empty of workers,” he said.
[...]
...Laszlo Parragh, the president of Hungary’s chamber of commerce, lamented last year that the country lacked “white-skinned workers with Christian roots.”
[...]
The labor shortage has grown so acute that the government recently pushed through a contentious bill to address it. Widely referred to as the slave law, it allows employers to require up to 400 hours of overtime annually from its workers, while delaying compensation for up to three years. Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party promoted the measure as good for workers, saying it would let “those who want to work more earn more.”

Maybe we can discuss another time how in America, the government and the courts view being a unionist as worse than being a fascist...

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." - Frank Wilhoit

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.

No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:

The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

a completely inoffensive name

05-05-2019, 02:35

They have crossed the Rubicon. The people crossing the border are the Hegelian other. They are not a group of people but rather a philosophical threat. They represent tiny tears at these peoples identity.

Replace Rubicon for Colorado and this is the motivation for the villain in Fallout: New Vegas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyeTaXv6o4Y

rory_20_uk

05-06-2019, 10:49

Looks like Donald has started the narrative he should have 2 extra years on his first term. Doesn't bode well.

~:smoking:

Montmorency

05-08-2019, 05:27

Hm. Well, as newly-revealed tax returns (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/07/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage) from 1985-1994 show, Trump's businesses were an even bigger failure than the near-total failure that was publicly known. He appears to have lost more money in those years than almost any single American known to the IRS. No kidding.

The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.

Over all, Mr. Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years. It is not known whether the I.R.S. later required changes after audits.

https://i.imgur.com/4WyRc6D.png

But like with the Mueller Report, we've known most of this for a long time.

The first of the two previous glimpses of the president’s tax returns came from his 1995 filings, pages of which were anonymously mailed to The Times in 2016. They showed that Mr. Trump had declared losses of $915.7 million, giving him a tax deduction so substantial that it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying federal income taxes on hundreds of millions of dollars of income for almost two decades.

Unfortunately, we still don't have the more recent tax returns he is unlawfully ordering withheld from Congress.

Please keep in mind, there is no such thing as 'too stupid to be a fascist.'

:coffeenews:

By the way, just, can we get rid of this shit please, free money for being bad at being rich?

giving him a tax deduction so substantial that it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying federal income taxes on hundreds of millions of dollars of income for almost two decades.

Jog on.

Strike For The South

05-09-2019, 18:19

I'll finish it tomorrow.

A book (https://www.amazon.com/House-Pain-Others-Chronicle-Genocide/dp/1555978371) just came out, The House of the Pain of Others: Chronicle of a Small Genocide, about a pogrom a hundred years in Mexico against Chinese laborers. Also sounds up your alley.

Hatred and resentment were fomented per all the pretexts used against Mexicans and Latinos in America today, that they don't integrate, that they steal jobs, etc.

300 Celestials (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre%C3%B3n_massacre) were struck down by roving revolutionaries in 1911, in self-defense the Mexicans claimed.

Mexico has its own interesting history of enforcing its brand of Nationalism. I'll have to pick those up.

As for the rest you posted. Yea that's pretty much true. I would only say that these paramilitaries see themselves as more of a supplemental rather than a synthesis. A point that doesn't really change anything but interesting none the less. The border patrol is also 3x the size it was in 1996.

So many Texas statutes have been overturned (by the courts) that denied Migrant workers everything from medical advice to schooling for their children. Political consciousness in the Rio Grande Valley comes out of Ag workers rights. The state is always trying to pull some type of shenanigan to make these people as invisible as possible. Exploiting labor and the State of Texas, name a more iconic duo. The old let them work and snag them before pay day is the dirtiest trick in the horrible book.

Strike For The South

05-09-2019, 18:23

Seamus Fermanagh

05-10-2019, 15:55

...A celebrity with a bizarrely opaque centrist stance on most issue with no record? People painted on him what the wished....
Quite the pithiest summary of Trump's 2016 success I have read.

Strike For The South

05-10-2019, 16:30

Quite the pithiest summary of Trump's 201 success I have read.

Never confuse my brevity with intellect.

a completely inoffensive name

05-18-2019, 02:05

By the way, just, can we get rid of this shit please, free money for being bad at being rich?

Deferred taxes due to heavy losses seems on its face to be a fair rule to prevent kicking those who are already down.

I don't have an issue if Trump legit lost the money, because the rule probably helps others who simply had a bad year.

If Trump abused the rule to run up losses for evading taxes, the issue isn't the rule but the lack of resources at the IRS to investigate fraud.

Husar

05-18-2019, 14:38

If Trump abused the rule to run up losses for evading taxes, the issue isn't the rule but the lack of resources at the IRS to investigate fraud.

Is that even fraud? Plenty of companies have subsidiaries in tax havens that own all their patents and then they pay them for the patents until no taxable income is left outside the tax haven, where the tax on the income is minimal or nonexistent. AFAIK this is public knowledge and not fraud because paying a company abroad for using their patents isn't fraud, it's a legitimate business transaction. :shrug:

Many tax codes simply don't consider international relations in that sense. Nike uses some loophole where the US law says their subsidiary in the Netherlands has to pay the taxes but the dutch law says the mother corp in the US needs to be taxed. Neither country demands taxes from them as long as all their profit happens in the Netherlands and their HQ is in the US.

A more appropriate question might be why no politicians seriously want to close such loopholes or why there is no international cooperation to make sure all countries get their taxes. Surely Furunculus would be against it, because in "classical liberalism", "libertarianism" or "neoliberalism" the idea that countries compete against one another to grant anyone lower taxes is a great idea and makes everyone more free. Except that Jose the plumber can't just leave Mexico to pay lower taxes in the US, but Antonio the (inherited) billionaire can. That's freedom and equality of opportunity. :shrug:

Seamus Fermanagh

05-19-2019, 04:49

Is that even fraud? Plenty of companies have subsidiaries in tax havens that own all their patents and then they pay them for the patents until no taxable income is left outside the tax haven, where the tax on the income is minimal or nonexistent. AFAIK this is public knowledge and not fraud because paying a company abroad for using their patents isn't fraud, it's a legitimate business transaction. :shrug:

Many tax codes simply don't consider international relations in that sense. Nike uses some loophole where the US law says their subsidiary in the Netherlands has to pay the taxes but the dutch law says the mother corp in the US needs to be taxed. Neither country demands taxes from them as long as all their profit happens in the Netherlands and their HQ is in the US.

A more appropriate question might be why no politicians seriously want to close such loopholes or why there is no international cooperation to make sure all countries get their taxes. Surely Furunculus would be against it, because in "classical liberalism", "libertarianism" or "neoliberalism" the idea that countries compete against one another to grant anyone lower taxes is a great idea and makes everyone more free. Except that Jose the plumber can't just leave Mexico to pay lower taxes in the US, but Antonio the (inherited) billionaire can. That's freedom and equality of opportunity. :shrug:

The US tax system is a byzantine thing, designed by special interests and tax accounts/attorneys so that there are any number of ways to legally 'game' the system. Trump almost certainly did nothing illegal with his taxes -- but paid fair money to reasonable shysters to insure that he did not have to pay much if anything.

All taxes are paid by individuals. The only thing various tax laws determine is who is responsible for collecting those taxes. The government collects some, but lets businesses collect even more on its behalf.

a completely inoffensive name

05-19-2019, 06:17

Legally, I guess you are right it isn't fraud.

But common sense tells us this is all a rigged game to simply move and hide money that otherwise should be going back to the state. And we all know it. Every dollar moved out of the country through these means is a dollar stolen from a hungry mouth on SNAP or from a sick person on Medicare or from a research grant.
Guess that makes me a dumb lefty, but whatever.

The argument that "he did nothing wrong...legally" gets more and more tenuous when the law clearly doesn't bind everyone together but partitions people apart. Ahhh fuck I became Monty.

Husar

05-19-2019, 13:26

The US tax system is a byzantine thing, designed by special interests and tax accounts/attorneys so that there are any number of ways to legally 'game' the system. Trump almost certainly did nothing illegal with his taxes -- but paid fair money to reasonable shysters to insure that he did not have to pay much if anything.

All taxes are paid by individuals. The only thing various tax laws determine is who is responsible for collecting those taxes. The government collects some, but lets businesses collect even more on its behalf.

I don't think this is in any way special in the US. Maybe a little worse, but other countries' tax codes are just as weird and partially written by lobbyists.
As for the last part, technically yes, but that doesn't make the effect the same, because there is a difference in which individuals pay more. When a corporation has to pay(collect) more taxes, it cuts into the profits, profits which would otherwise go to wealthy investors. It's more of a wealthy people tax than, say, an income tax that only applies to wages and not capital income. The argument that the big business will then create fewer jobs is invalid, because by taxing the little man less, he can start more smaller companies that also create jobs. If only billionaire investors can create jobs anymore, you did something else wrong and have basically made them your inofficial rulers who you depend on.

Legally, I guess you are right it isn't fraud.

But common sense tells us this is all a rigged game to simply move and hide money that otherwise should be going back to the state. And we all know it. Every dollar moved out of the country through these means is a dollar stolen from a hungry mouth on SNAP or from a sick person on Medicare or from a research grant.
Guess that makes me a dumb lefty, but whatever.

The argument that "he did nothing wrong...legally" gets more and more tenuous when the law clearly doesn't bind everyone together but partitions people apart. Ahhh fuck I became Monty.

I wasn't making a moral argument, if you were going to prosecute moral fraud and/or adjust the laws accordingly, two thirds or more of your billionaire class would probably be in jail. Though to be actually moral (throwing everybody in jail for revenge is a bad idea), you'd just nationalize most of their assets. :sweatdrop:
Then again nationalizing assets they have in Caribbean states might cause some moral issues again (invasion? bullying?).

Montmorency

05-19-2019, 17:59

I'm not sure where the thread's focus on international tax evasion is coming from. Maybe this deserves a fuller explication, but briefly to understand what was going on with Trump, we have to think about how income is defined and treated in the tax code. Crucial concepts are adjusted gross income (AGI) and business income.

Trump's businesses were typically structured as partnerships (1065 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1065.pdf)) and S-corporations (1120S (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1120s.pdf)), so he ultimately calculated and reported business income taxes as personal taxes (1040) on pass-through income. This is distinct from any capital gains income such as stocks and dividends, as well as other earned income such as his own salary. The concept of income for tax purposes, especially as you get richer, tends to have little to do with income in the vernacular sense of 'money I made'. There's financial income and losses (such as the money Trump spends and the salary he pays himself, or revenue vs. expenses), and non-financial income and losses (typically capital assets such as buildings and equipment). You add them up on the tax form and apply certain deductions, credits, exemptions, allowances, etc. This is roughly analogous to "taxable income" (though there are further deductions applied to AGI to get the true taxable income).

If business losses are high enough you can shelter future income from tax, which is ideally intended as a boost for struggling companies.The concept of depreciation applies to the value of capital - it "depreciates" over time. This gradual loss of value of operating capital is counted like a business expense and can be deducted from income. The question is, what is the nature of Trump's reported losses, which in some years nudged 10 figures? Were they financial in nature such as in his expenses exceeding the revenues of his holdings, or was Trump reporting a loss of value in his buildings and casinos? But Trump's declared negative income was too astronomical to be explained fully by legitimate depreciation, like trying to obfuscate a missing pallet of grocery wholesale items by claiming you ate it all. It was likely a combination of both financial and non-financial losses reinforcing each other, but mostly the former - just with borrowed money. Trump's properties lose money and value operating even as he spends on them and buys other unproductive assets or launches unproductive ventures, he covers it up by over-leveraging his properties by taking out loans against their value to increase his cash flow, he can't pay back the principal on the loans (presumably he stretches to qualify for deductions on interest) and so bluffs into more debt while reporting further income losses based on negative equity and all the borrowed money he's spending, his insolvent business entities default on loans, Trump liquidates the relevant entities and capital with a tax advantage and suffers no liability for his business losses nor incurs net tax burden and gets to move on to the next grift, such as convincing people he's a brilliant salesman and securing no-risk branding deals for steady income. And that's the straightforward bit.

Where Trump possibly broke the law is in the case where much of the losses claimed were probably unpaid loans, that he claimed as losses what the IRS counts as gains. If you default on debt or have it forgiven, the cancelled debt counts as taxable income. If you invert income you should be paying taxes on into losses that further trigger an IRS-sponsored tax shelter, swindle creditors of millions to plug your business negative cash flow and tax burden, that's pretty bad. It is also conceivable (https://www.businessinsider.com/why-did-trump-pay-so-little-tax-2016-10) he could have accomplished in a legally-grey way by taking advantage of the Gitlitz Loophole, closed by Congress in 2002.

The telling closing paragraph in the NYT article:

While Donald Trump reported hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for 1990 and 1991, Fred Trump’s [Donald's father] returns showed a positive income of $53.9 million, with only one major loss: $15 million invested in his son’s latest apartment project.

Telling quote from an interview (https://slate.com/culture/2017/01/the-2003-documentary-born-rich-has-a-lot-to-tell-us-about-ivanka-trump.html) with Ivanka Trump:

She tells a story—which may also feel familiar at this point—about walking down Fifth Avenue with her father around the time of his divorce from her mother, when Ivanka was 9 or 10 years old. They saw a homeless man sitting outside Trump Tower. “I remember my father pointing to him and saying ‘You know, that guy has 8 billion dollars more than me,’ because he was in such extreme debt at that point,” she recalls. “It makes me all the more proud of my parents, that they got through that.” It’s remarkable that Trump père was so frank with his very young daughter about his financial problems; it’s clear that he has always trusted her. Even a decade later, however, it does not seem to occur to Ivanka that her father was not actually poorer than the homeless man sitting outside the building with her last name on it. [lol] Instead, she frames the story as a revelation, using it as a canny opportunity to reflect on her father’s strength, resilience, and insight.

To be scrupulous one can't be confident what actually constituted Trump's reported losses without more tax and financial information. But look, Trump is a known tax fraud and a failed businessman. He is a tax fraud because that's how he and his family have always lived, as career criminals (established in so much reporting), and he is a failed businessman because his ventures routinely lost money and had to be liquidated or closed while Trump stiffed creditors of billions, all while hardly even growing his own personal fortune.

ACIN what I don't like is rich people shuffling their liabilities onto the government or other people. "Incentives" nothing, let them pay for their gambles.

Montmorency

05-22-2019, 11:36

You know how we talk about how immigrant scapegoating is suicidally short-sighted, because employers want to treat citizens just like they treat desperate immigrants?

Here's (https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/20/trump_interview_immigration_reform_china_trade_iran_terror_tax_cuts_2020.html#!) Trump making the quiet part a little louder:

HILTON: And one thing that people have speculated about was that it might include E-Verify. Is that going to be in the --

TRUMP: So E-Verify is going to be possibly a part of it. The one problem is E-Verify is so tough that in some cases, like farmers, they’re not – they’re not equipped for E-Verify. I mean I’d say that’s against Republicans. A lot of the Republicans say you go through an E-Verify. I used it when I built the hotel down the road on Pennsylvania Avenue. I use a very strong E-Verify system. And we would go through 28 people – 29, 30 people before we found one that qualified.

EDIT: Supporting docs (https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/federal-reserve-interest-rate-increase-janet-yellen-inflation-unemployment/) for the more general problem in capitalism:

Indeed, inflation targeting has always been coupled with a strong commitment to restraining the claims of workers. Paul Volcker is now widely admired as the hero who slew the inflation dragon, but as Fed chair in the 1980s, he considered rolling back the power of organized labor — in terms of both working conditions and wages — to be his number one problem.

As one of Volcker’s colleagues argued, the fundamental goal of high rates was that

labor begins to get the point that if they get too much in wages they won’t have a business to work for. I think that really is beginning to happen now and that’s why I’m more optimistic. . . . When Pan Am workers are willing to take 10 percent wage cuts because the airlines are in trouble, I think those are signs that we’re at the point where something can really start to happen.

Volcker’s successors at the Fed approached the inflation problem similarly. Alan Greenspan saw the fight against rising prices as, at its essence, a project of promoting weakness and insecurity among workers; he famously claimed that “traumatized workers” were the reason strong growth with low inflation was possible in the 1990s, unlike in previous decades.

Testifying before Congress in 1997, Greenspan attributed the “extraordinary’” and “exceptional” performance of the nineties economy to “a heightened sense of job insecurity” among workers “and, as a consequence, subdued wages.”

Hey Husar, you're right, they - neoliberals and conservatives both - want to reduce us to peonage (maybe more applicable than "serfhood").

Strike For The South

05-23-2019, 14:33

Strike For The South

05-23-2019, 14:40

More Avenatti shenanigans:https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/22/michael-avenatti-stormy-daniels-1340074

It is worth noting that this man had an undercurrent of "extremely online" support as someone who would fight back against Trump. People were looking to draft him into the DNC. The lesson we should be taking from Trump is that sometimes, spectacle is just that, spectacle. Unfortunately people seem to be taking the opposite lesson.

rory_20_uk

05-23-2019, 16:52

The e-verify thing is illustrative because it is an intuitive solution that the vast middle ground of people would support but is opposed by nearly all the special interest groups.

These employers want to pay low wages, want workers who can't organize, and want workers who can be easily "otherized" by the wider populace. They already do the whole repugnant dog and pony show where they try to deny them legal services. They want and underclass.

It seems that the USA grudgingly freed the slaves - as long as they can have people they can basically treat the same way and keep down as effectively.

I have to say the design of the system is magnificent in its malignancy where so many separate laws come together to restrict both access to justice and in many cases access to voting, education and healthcare. And the cycle is designed to self perpetuate where from the great morass a few are given slight powers and who hate those without all the more because they realise how close they in fact are - and all but ignoring their "betters" who have done an amazing job of ensuring nothing really changes.

~:smoking:

Montmorency

05-31-2019, 02:53

On June 10th (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1134240653926232064), the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP. The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied,..
....at which time the Tariffs will be removed. Details from the White House to follow.

Looks like he doesn't want to renegotiate NAFTA (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/10/04/the-renegotiation-of-nafta-is-a-relief-but-it-is-not-a-success) after all.

Key words this week according to the White House:

Natural gas = "freedom gas" (https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-authorizes-additional-lng-exports-freeport-lng)
Carbon dioxide = "molecules of U.S. freedom (https://www.energy.gov/articles/department-energy-authorizes-additional-lng-exports-freeport-lng)"
John McCain = unperson (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uss-john-mccain-during-president-trump-japan-visit-officers-were-told-to-keep-warship-from-trumps-view/)

:sleepy:

Strike For The South

06-07-2019, 17:12

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/immigration-detention-ice-us-homeland-security-california-colorado-inspection-a8948201.html?utm_source=reddit.com

Just another in a long line of abuses levied against a group who has been otherized for the sake of profits and racism. Crazy how the cavarns never seem to wash over American cities but these people do seem to be held in squalor and contempt. Almost like its all fear mongering.

Tuuvi

06-08-2019, 01:07

Montmorency

06-08-2019, 02:09

My boss was watching Fox News in the office today and infuriatingly they blame the whole situation on Democrats for not wanting to pass tougher immigration and asylum laws.

What anti-immigrant conservatives refuse to understand is that the migrants coming from Central America have already been through hell just to make it to the Mexican/American border, they are desperate and no amount of border security, detainment and family separation is going to dissuade people from making the journey.

The humane way to stop immigration would be to stabilize the situation in Central America through humanitarian aid but of course big-brained Trump did the opposite and cut foreign aid because Guatemala won't recreate the Berlin Wall and stop their citizens from fleeing endemic poverty and gang violence. It really gives the lie to the anti-immigrant claim that they're not racist and they just want the border to be enforced.

The president is known to believe (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/watch-trump-rally-shoot-migrants-panhandle-militia-detained.html) that shooting people at the border would be an effective deterrent.

We don't do like other countries. Other countries stand there with machine guns ready to fire. We can't do that and I wouldn't want to do that, OK? It's a very effective way of doing it and I wouldn't want to do it. We can't do it. But - we do, if we have barriers, we have the walls like we're building now, and - and building a lot - a lot of people don't think we're building walls, we're building massive, many many many miles of walls - right now.

Even more interesting when combined with his prior sentiments that rock-throwing should be treated as a lethal threat, and that federal border agents who violate the law can expect the President's support. But I'm sure it's nothing. But we do need to do something about these "swarms" of "invaders" "infesting" our country...

Montmorency

06-08-2019, 22:25

I can't not update this from earlier:

22636

The Dow Jones hit 25,000 again this Tuesday.

Dow Jones (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1137112921991983105) has best week of the year!

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

Literally every half-year.

Tuuvi

06-09-2019, 05:18

I'm a believer in the theory that Trump probably has some form of dementia.

Seamus Fermanagh

06-09-2019, 16:26

I'm a believer in the theory that Trump probably has some form of dementia.

They progressives say that of all of our conservative pols. It is easier to assume that someone who does not view the world as you do, while looking at the same data, is mentally off kilter in some way.

In "The Donald's" case, I think any claim of dementia is just trying to be 'nice.' In point of fact, he really IS an asshat, and of his own free will.

Tuuvi

06-10-2019, 03:08

They progressives say that of all of our conservative pols. It is easier to assume that someone who does not view the world as you do, while looking at the same data, is mentally off kilter in some way.

In "The Donald's" case, I think any claim of dementia is just trying to be 'nice.' In point of fact, he really IS an asshat, and of his own free will.

For me it's not his conservative politics that lead me to think he has dementia but rather the fact that he's in old age and has a tendency to ramble incoherently and post incredibly dumb tweets like the ones in Monty's post above. He just seems like someone who's easily confused and is mentally deteriorating. He's both an asshat and a sundowning old man.

For what it's worth I actually think his dementia is a godsend in some ways, I shudder to think what would happen if we had a president with Trump's views on immigrants, Muslims, the press, and the political opposition who was actually competent, or in other words was devious enough to put his policies into place without getting shot down by the courts and congress.

Montmorency

06-10-2019, 05:04

Gilrandir

06-10-2019, 15:14

What can we say of a nation if a person like that will get elected again (as likely as not)?

a completely inoffensive name

06-11-2019, 05:29

What can we say of a nation if a person like that will get elected again (as likely as not)?

Nothing without taking into context the electoral system of that nation.

Husar

06-11-2019, 14:52

Nothing without taking into context the electoral system of that nation.

What can we say about a nation that has an electoral system that enables such a person to get elected?

Strike For The South

06-11-2019, 16:37

brink·man·ship
/ˈbriNGkmənˌSHip/
noun
the art or practice of pursuing a dangerous policy to the limits of safety before stopping, especially in politics.
"in any game of brinkmanship, it is possible that one side will collapse suddenly"

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/10/trump-impeachment-nixon-1359209

Just another inch, Just another inch, Just another inch

Gilrandir

06-11-2019, 16:38

Nothing without taking into context the electoral system of that nation.

Then change it, for God's sake.

Seamus Fermanagh

06-17-2019, 03:42

Then change it, for God's sake.

Process already exists to change it. Most of the powers that be are happy with the current system.

Gilrandir

06-17-2019, 19:18

Process already exists to change it. Most of the powers that be are happy with the current system.

What abour rank and file? It is from them that the initiative should come.

Seamus Fermanagh

06-17-2019, 21:30

What abour rank and file? It is from them that the initiative should come.

Process Source (https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution)

Difficult to 'grass roots' this. Proposed amendment must come from Congress on a 2/3 supermajority in both OR from a Convention called by 2/3 or the legislatures (the same percentage required to ratify). So sidestepping the party leadership is functionally undoable. Would require a 'sea change' level shift in the rank and file support that convinced the powers that be that they would be tossed out of office if they did not vote to amend.

Gilrandir

06-18-2019, 15:00

Process Source (https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution)

Difficult to 'grass roots' this. Proposed amendment must come from Congress on a 2/3 supermajority in both OR from a Convention called by 2/3 or the legislatures (the same percentage required to ratify). So sidestepping the party leadership is functionally undoable. Would require a 'sea change' level shift in the rank and file support that convinced the powers that be that they would be tossed out of office if they did not vote to amend.

Then you are doomed.

Montmorency

07-04-2019, 01:19

Alright, :daisy: it, I'll be using "evil" to describe the troglodytic fascist goblins in this world. I can be obdurate to the news, but to directly hear such vile, destructive drivel enough to ban everyone left in the Backroom multiple times over never fails to set me on edge. If I were to reveal myself an enemy to these scum...

Pannonian

07-10-2019, 22:52

What is the history on foreign governments wanting British diplomats replaced for reasons other than misconduct? Have British governments acceded to these demands in the past?

Montmorency

07-11-2019, 07:02

What is the history on foreign governments wanting British diplomats replaced for reasons other than misconduct? Have British governments acceded to these demands in the past?

When studying history, avoid using modern norms to assess historical practice. :eyebrows:

Pannonian

07-11-2019, 07:43

When studying history, avoid using modern norms to assess historical practice. :eyebrows:

Are you trying to be clever? I'm asking for historical precedence and normal practice, which is how common law and diplomacy works.

Tuuvi

07-14-2019, 18:29

Welp, Trump just told Ilhan Omar to "go back to Africa" (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381394234941448?s=19).

Pannonian

07-14-2019, 21:26

Welp, Trump just told Ilhan Omar to "go back to Africa" (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381394234941448?s=19).

TBF, Omar's ancestors did originate in Africa. So did mine. And Trump's.

Don Corleone

07-16-2019, 14:12

Then you are doomed.

Indeed. The United States is rapidly devolving into a dystopian fusion of plutocracy/theocracy. By my count, we are about 3 months out from the Reichstag fire.

It's not just Trump.

-After World War II, the United States led the world on international agreement for the treatment of refugees. We are now leading the world in terms of destroying those norms and dehumanizing people who seek our aid.

-We talk about "America First", but we then turn around and proudly proclaim any aid to veterans, the elderly, our youth, etc. to be a Socialist evil and must be eliminated. Meanwhile, subsidies and payouts to corporations are at an all time high. To even question such disparity leads to branding as a marxist rabble rouser (rather amusing in my slightly right of center case).

-Our education, patheticly mediocre to begin with, is in a race to the bottom. Evangelical Christians are now allowed to introduce bible study classes (under the guise of literature studies). Science has become a perverse joke... objective, researched and peer-reviewed studies are shelved, in the interest of not wishing to offend the Luddites at the helm.

-Probably more concerning than anything else, we have a stacked court that just enshrined Gerrymandering into law. Citizens v. United was a mortal blow, but this decision will be the coup d' grace of American Democracy.

-Not true... the most concerning of all is how the racism and xenophobia have stripped the veneer off of my friends and family.

We are truly living in an Orwellian nightmare over here.

Don Corleone

07-16-2019, 14:14

TBF, Omar's ancestors did originate in Africa. So did mine. And Trump's.

You are giving the 40% FAR too much credit my friend. Remember, roughly 1/3 of the USA holds firm to the assertiation that the Earth is less than 6000 years old, and their ranks are swelling.

Don Corleone

07-16-2019, 14:54

rory_20_uk

07-16-2019, 17:32

Our only hope is that Johnson realises that flattering Trump is the way forward and for 2-6 years that is the way it has to be; whether this changes with the next President - that's going to be the determinant. Small powers have to play nice. And the UK is at best a middle power and if the UK is not prepared to pay protection money to be part of one cartel then one cost is a more pliable external face.

~:smoking:

Montmorency

07-16-2019, 23:49

The world is endlessly (https://www.npr.org/2019/07/15/741721660/follow-up-what-happened-after-a-border-agent-asked-toddler-to-pick-a-parent) funny.

At a Border Patrol holding facility in El Paso, Texas, an agent told a Honduran family that one parent would be sent to Mexico while the other parent and their three children could stay in the United States, according to the family. The agent turned to the couple's youngest daughter — 3-year-old Sofia, whom they call Sofi — and asked her to make a choice.

"The agent asked her who she wanted to go with, mom or dad," her mother, Tania, told NPR through an interpreter. "And the girl, because she is more attached to me, she said mom. But when they started to take [my husband] away, the girl started to cry. The officer said, 'You said [you want to go] with mom.' "

So, the armed G-men had little Sofi... make a little choice (https://slate.com/culture/2011/07/what-s-a-sophie-s-choice-what-about-a-hobson-s-choice.html)?

Sophie’s Choice is the title of a 1979 novel by William Styron, about a Polish woman in a Nazi concentration camp who is forced to decide which of her two children will live and which will die. (Meryl Streep nabbed an Oscar for her starring role in the 1982 film version.)

Seamus Fermanagh

07-17-2019, 07:25

TBF, Omar's ancestors did originate in Africa. So did mine. And Trump's.

Lol

'Lucy' was a total badass too.

Seamus Fermanagh

07-17-2019, 07:27

You are giving the 40% FAR too much credit my friend. Remember, roughly 1/3 of the USA holds firm to the assertiation that the Earth is less than 6000 years old, and their ranks are swelling.
Sort of. There is slightly more than that who take the 'creationist' stance, but the strict dating version may be less numerous. source (https://news.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-humans-new-low.aspx)

Montmorency

07-17-2019, 20:26

Sofi up there should get more attention, but

Sort of. There is slightly more than that who take the 'creationist' stance, but the strict dating version may be less numerous. source (https://news.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-humans-new-low.aspx)

22744

22745

These figures feel grudgingly acceptable circa 1925, but glancing at global polling on the issue it appears only half the world, tops, is even nominally evolutionist, so America isn't exceptionally bad in this regard.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

07-17-2019, 23:08

From what I can tell, it seems that the United Kingdom is about to join us on the path to destruction. Bring Boris Johnson in and I all but guarantee you'll be joining us in the surreal world of WTAF... I would have thought Trump's support to be the kiss of death for his campaign, but sadly, Johnson appears poised to win out and destroy the UK to boot. Putin must be laughing his ass off.

Boris is not an existential threat - Corbyn on the other hand...

In regards to gerrymandering, we've been gerrymandered for a decade and it's Labour who are refusing the necessary re-drawing.

Not to highjack this American thread - but remember, danger comes from both Left AND Right.

Pannonian

07-17-2019, 23:56

Boris is not an existential threat - Corbyn on the other hand...

In regards to gerrymandering, we've been gerrymandered for a decade and it's Labour who are refusing the necessary re-drawing.

Not to highjack this American thread - but remember, danger comes from both Left AND Right.

Steve Bannon is the existential threat. Corbyn may become a threat, but his support for Brexit means he won't reach power. Bannon and his acolytes, OTOH, combines all the worst aspects of Corbyn and amplifies them. As much as I despise Corbyn, Farage and Johnson and all the rest of the Brexit bunch abuse democracy far more in pursuit of far right goals, and they are trying their hand in other countries as well. Brexit by itself is disastrous for Britain, but it's the gang who are pushing it who are the real danger. Trump and Brexit are just two arms of Bannon's far right international project.

Montmorency

07-18-2019, 00:35

Boris is not an existential threat - Corbyn on the other hand...

Brexit isn't an existential threat, but public ownership of railways is?

In regards to gerrymandering, we've been gerrymandered for a decade and it's Labour who are refusing the necessary re-drawing.

What has Labour done, what power has it used to do it, and what are they preventing from being done now?

From a quick search, UK politicians are not directly responsible for districting in the first place, and:

2001 paper (https://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/transformations/gis/papers/dannydorling_publication_id1322.pdf) on UK apportionment having always been biased in connection to the political geography, Tories benefiting from "cracked" districts with small majorities, and Labour from "stacked" districts with large majorities (the paper argues Labour triumphed in 1997 because factors like targeted campaigning and strategic voting broke the ceiling of safe majorities in cracked Tory districts)
More recent article (https://medium.com/@georgetaitedwards/is-britain-now-too-gerrymandered-to-be-a-genuine-democracy-fe2fcbd95d14) on Conservative gerrymandering policies (though I would understand this as closer to voter suppression, not gerrymandering)

Sounds like UK districting committees haven't heard of the "efficiency gap", but it's not clear to me that there is actually any active political gerrymandering going on in the UK as opposed to other techniques of electoral advantage-seeking. Also, FPTP is always a wrecker. A system where this can happen:

In 1979, the Conservative
party won 43.9 per cent of the votes cast and 53.4 per cent of the seats. Four years
later, it won 42.4 per cent of the votes but 61.1 per cent of the seats. In 1987, its
shares of the votes and seats were 43.4 and 57.8 per cent respectively, and then in
1992 its vote share fell slightly, to 42.3 per cent, but its share of the seats fell more
sharply – to 51.6 per cent. Labour won in 1997, with 43.3 per cent of the votes and
63.6 per cent of the seats. Thus over five elections, whereas the leading party’s share
of the votes only ranged between 42.3 and 43.9 per cent its share of the seats varied
more, from 51.6 to 63.6 per cent. With virtually the same share of the votes at four
successive elections the Conservatives won very different shares of the seats, and then
when Labour won with the same vote percentage its share of the seats was larger than
the Conservatives ever achieved.

is real dumb.

Can you give your sources on UK gerrymandering?

Not to highjack this American thread - but remember, danger comes from both Left AND Right.

It's really the Right.

a completely inoffensive name

07-18-2019, 01:38

I don't know how you can walk away from the policies presented by the two sides and think that the 'left' is just as bad as the right.

Montmorency

07-18-2019, 02:32

I don't know how you can walk away from the policies presented by the two sides and think that the 'left' is just as bad as the right.

You know, pro-Republican media bias here has asserted itself into my awareness many times over the past couple years, but DAMN - here's Jake Tapper (https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1151265079461142528) justifying CNN (https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/07/16/white-nationalists-celebrate-trump-racist-tweets-sidner-pkg-lead-vpx.cnn) bringing on Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer to talk about Trump's 'racially-sauteed/marinated (https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1150792521641058311)' tweets and how Trump doesn't go far enough in securing the white homeland or whatever.

a completely inoffensive name

07-18-2019, 03:24

You know, pro-Republican media bias here has asserted itself into my awareness many times over the past couple years, but DAMN - here's Jake Tapper (https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1151265079461142528) justifying CNN (https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/07/16/white-nationalists-celebrate-trump-racist-tweets-sidner-pkg-lead-vpx.cnn) bringing on Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer to talk about Trump's 'racially-sauteed/marinated (https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1150792521641058311)' tweets and how Trump doesn't go far enough in securing the white homeland or whatever.

It's not pro-Republican, it's 'enlightened centrist'.

Strike For The South

07-18-2019, 14:20

CrossLOPER

07-18-2019, 16:43

It's not pro-Republican, it's 'enlightened centrist'.

"I'm not a Nazi; I'm an enlightened, cultured tribalist."

Don Corleone

07-18-2019, 21:16

Imagine telling someone who was born here to go back where the came from lmao. My 4d chess take on this is that Epstien represents a real and palpable threat to Trump in a way his Russian financiers do not.

Of course, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Give the man a cigar. This is Trump brokering a contract with his base... forgive me my Epstein ties and my illegal electoral payments to my mistresses (which testimony was released today, btw) and I will go full Archie Bunker for your hateful asses. Based on last night's rally, the offer was accepted.

I don't know if Trump is thinking that with 35%/40% he can seize power regardless of the election results or if he thinks he can hate-monger in just the right places to thread the needle on electoral votes. His "Go back where you came from" campaign appears to have gained him an additional 3% support from his base, lost him 10% support from moderate right and Indepdendents. But polls these days are so fickle, it's pointless to read any tea leaves.

Sadly, and I'm embarrassed as an American to admit this, Trump is not wrong... He definitely benefits from the Wallace effect... nobody in polite society wants to sign on for this crap, but inside they are thrilled and in the privacy of the voting booth reward him.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

07-18-2019, 22:08

Brexit isn't an existential threat, but public ownership of railways is?

What has Labour done, what power has it used to do it, and what are they preventing from being done now?

From a quick search, UK politicians are not directly responsible for districting in the first place, and:

2001 paper (https://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/research/transformations/gis/papers/dannydorling_publication_id1322.pdf) on UK apportionment having always been biased in connection to the political geography, Tories benefiting from "cracked" districts with small majorities, and Labour from "stacked" districts with large majorities (the paper argues Labour triumphed in 1997 because factors like targeted campaigning and strategic voting broke the ceiling of safe majorities in cracked Tory districts)
More recent article (https://medium.com/@georgetaitedwards/is-britain-now-too-gerrymandered-to-be-a-genuine-democracy-fe2fcbd95d14) on Conservative gerrymandering policies (though I would understand this as closer to voter suppression, not gerrymandering)

Sounds like UK districting committees haven't heard of the "efficiency gap", but it's not clear to me that there is actually any active political gerrymandering going on in the UK as opposed to other techniques of electoral advantage-seeking. Also, FPTP is always a wrecker. A system where this can happen:

is real dumb.

Can you give your sources on UK gerrymandering?

It's really the Right.

I don't know how you can walk away from the policies presented by the two sides and think that the 'left' is just as bad as the right.

I respectfully submit that there is nothing that resembles an organised and politically effective Left in the US at present.

If you want to see what dangers the Left presents... well... The Labour Party is currently being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights commission over accusations of an endemic culture of Antisemitism.

Tuuvi

07-18-2019, 22:35

Pannonian

07-18-2019, 22:42

Are they really antisemitic though or did they just have the audacity to criticize Israel's treatment of the Palestinians?

Watch the first episode of West Wing. Right at the end you see Toby get riled when a right wing fundie references something that he recognises as a Jewish trope. The current Labour party are far further along that road than what that right winger says. And, this is important, the party institutionally reinforces this. Supposedly independent bodies that are supposed to deal impartially with these things are beholden to the political wing, and there is evidence of the political wing interfering in these processes.

Pannonian

07-18-2019, 22:47

I respectfully submit that there is nothing that resembles an organised and politically effective Left in the US at present.

If you want to see what dangers the Left presents... well... The Labour Party is currently being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights commission over accusations of an endemic culture of Antisemitism.

And if you want to see what dangers the Right present, see the Bannon-directed Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK. Trump, Brexit, Corbyn: all present the same antithesis to moderate politics that used to be the accepted norm. All of them see rules not as guidelines for what they should do and how they should conduct themselves, but as legal boundaries where they see if they will be materially punished for what they want to do. I'd also recommend reading on how classical tyrannies came about.

Montmorency

07-18-2019, 23:44

I respectfully submit that there is nothing that resembles an organised and politically effective Left in the US at present.

If you want to see what dangers the Left presents... well... The Labour Party is currently being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights commission over accusations of an endemic culture of Antisemitism.

If one were to accept the wildest accusations against the Corbynite leadership of the Labour Party with regard to anti-Semtisim, the "existential threat" would still not appear to be within the same order of magnitude as that posed by Brexit alone.

Pannonian

07-18-2019, 23:56

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

07-19-2019, 00:00

If one were to accept the wildest accusations against the Corbynite leadership of the Labour Party with regard to anti-Semtisim, the "existential threat" would still not appear to be within the same order of magnitude as that posed by Brexit alone.

I'm sorry, no. Brexit itself is a political inevitability - at some point the UK was going to leave the EU when certain members opted for a real political union. We could have left earlier to later, but it was going to happen. Brexit will (note I say will) damage the UK economy, how much remains to be seen. Brexit will also likely hasten the inevitable breakup of the United Kingdom which began a century ago with Southern Ireland.

None of these things represent an existential threat to our democracy. A Party which entrenches Antisemitism and conflates it with what has become known as "banker bashing" whilst lending tacit support to domestic and foreign terrorists with a leader who is convinced of his own moral goodness... That is a greater threat.

Coybyn reminds me of the Ayatollah of Iran when he lived in exile. Everyone said how piously, how simply, he lived and that therefore he would make a better ruler than the Shah. Likewise, Corbyn has one of the smallest expenses claims of any MP - yet he makes undeclared trips to countries ruled by dictators in order to meet with groups actively supporting terrorism.

The man said that "Zionists" "don't understand English irony" "despite probably having lived her all their lives" (emphasis added)! Before that he wrote a new forward to Imperialism: A Study in which he described the book as "basically right". Well, that book is quite literally part of the academic milieu used to justify the Holocaust.

So, you know what, he's a darn sight more dangerous than Boris - even if Boris has flirted with Bannonism (something he now vehemently denies).

My take on that, btw, is that Boris met Bannon as a political operator when Boris was sort of "in the wilderness" (i.e. not about to become PM) and this is now something he regrets. That speaks to Boris' poor judgement but not, I think, to his actual beliefs. Farage is a different matter, whilst I would describe his as "far right" he's about as close as you can get without actually tripping over into that definition.

Pannonian

07-19-2019, 00:10

I'm sorry, no. Brexit itself is a political inevitability - at some point the UK was going to leave the EU when certain members opted for a real political union. We could have left earlier to later, but it was going to happen. Brexit will (note I say will) damage the UK economy, how much remains to be seen. Brexit will also likely hasten the inevitable breakup of the United Kingdom which began a century ago with Southern Ireland.

None of these things represent an existential threat to our democracy. A Party which entrenches Antisemitism and conflates it with what has become known as "banker bashing" whilst lending tacit support to domestic and foreign terrorists with a leader who is convinced of his own moral goodness... That is a greater threat.

Coybyn reminds me of the Ayatollah of Iran when he lived in exile. Everyone said how piously, how simply, he lived and that therefore he would make a better ruler than the Shah. Likewise, Corbyn has one of the smallest expenses claims of any MP - yet he makes undeclared trips to countries ruled by dictators in order to meet with groups actively supporting terrorism.

The man said that "Zionists" "don't understand English irony" "despite probably having lived her all their lives" (emphasis added)! Before that he wrote a new forward to Imperialism: A Study in which he described the book as "basically right". Well, that book is quite literally part of the academic milieu used to justify the Holocaust.

So, you know what, he's a darn sight more dangerous than Boris - even if Boris has flirted with Bannonism (something he now vehemently denies).

My take on that, btw, is that Boris met Bannon as a political operator when Boris was sort of "in the wilderness" (i.e. not about to become PM) and this is now something he regrets. That speaks to Boris' poor judgement but not, I think, to his actual beliefs. Farage is a different matter, whilst I would describe his as "far right" he's about as close as you can get without actually tripping over into that definition.

I was taught at school that the expansion of democratic rights went hand in hand with the expansion of education, with the corollary that education was crucial in making democracy work. Politicians need to be assessed on what they say, and they need to held accountable for what they do. Reasoning and the examination of evidence and consistent arguments is necessary for democracy to work.

Now compare with what Brexiteers have been doing.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

07-19-2019, 00:46

And if you want to see what dangers the Right present, see the Bannon-directed Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK. Trump, Brexit, Corbyn: all present the same antithesis to moderate politics that used to be the accepted norm. All of them see rules not as guidelines for what they should do and how they should conduct themselves, but as legal boundaries where they see if they will be materially punished for what they want to do. I'd also recommend reading on how classical tyrannies came about.

I feel the need to point out that I'm probably the one in the Backroom most familiar with the development of Tyrannies. The first point to remember is that the first Tyrant of the three is usually deemed necessary, the second autocratic and the third despotic.

Essential to the theory is the proposition that the Tyrant arises out of a failed democratic system, rather than fulling the system down.

I was taught at school that the expansion of democratic rights went hand in hand with the expansion of education, with the corollary that education was crucial in making democracy work. Politicians need to be assessed on what they say, and they need to held accountable for what they do. Reasoning and the examination of evidence and consistent arguments is necessary for democracy to work.

Now compare with what Brexiteers have been doing.

I have to say, I went through New Labour's education system, that was pretty terrible.

Pannonian

07-19-2019, 01:17

I feel the need to point out that I'm probably the one in the Backroom most familiar with the development of Tyrannies. The first point to remember is that the first Tyrant of the three is usually deemed necessary, the second autocratic and the third despotic.

Essential to the theory is the proposition that the Tyrant arises out of a failed democratic system, rather than fulling the system down.

I have to say, I went through New Labour's education system, that was pretty terrible.

Your description of successions of tyrannies is a truism. What's more instructive is how tyrannies come to be, and how they develop. A strong man rises to power in response to a perceived need. They usually have popular support. They then cement their power with a monopoly of the organs of power; in ancient times, this means a professional military, preferably mercenary. They then reinforce this with a campaign against a chosen "other".

Modern day nations have professional militaries separate from the ruler in power. However, there are other organs of power, ranging from the executive (the most important in this context) to the lawmakers and the courts and the media. In modern extremist politics, the executive and the media are what is important, as one does the work while the other suppresses dissent. The campaign is for some kind of identity, with any dissenters dubbed traitors.

Trump followers, Brexit followers, Corbyn followers all follow this blueprint.

Corbyn's anti-semitism stems from his Marcist readings, which themselves were reflective of Marx's times. That he's enabled it in the Labour party is because he's used to the workings of the fringes, and institutionalised everything is how they work. He is unpleasant, but his anti-semitism is not an existential threat to the UK. The abuse of democracy by Corbyn on the one hand, but far more so by Bannon's Trump and Brexit brigades on the other, is an existential threat to the UK. I described what I deem to be moderate politics from the voter's perspective. Do you agree with it? Or are you going to handwave it with "I have to say, I went through New Labour's education system, that was pretty terrible." NB. I didn't describe any political position. I described the necessary environment for reasonable politics to exist.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

07-19-2019, 01:25

Pannonian

07-19-2019, 02:54

I'm not comfortable with Boris being PM at this point, a couple of years ago I would have shrugged and moved on - now I'm not really very happy.

Having said that, I'm not especially worried about Boris himself so much as the likes of Jacob Reese-Mogg.

The "Brexit Brigade" is not in charge of the education system, the Conservative Government is. I suffered through the National Curriculum in the early 2000's, it taught me I was bad at languages. The idea of Academies is quite clearly a means of establishing a sort of pseudo-Grammar system instead of an actual Grammar System.

Something needs to be done with our education system, it has been deteriorating for decades.

IA's education goes back way before New Labour and Cameron's Tories, and his recent posts are an illustration of the deterioration of democratic debate. "You lost, get over it." "The MPs (also traitors) will get what's coming to them." "Nigel Farage represents everything that I support, except when you show him to be a hypocrite, when I'll excuse myself by saying that I don't need to support everything he says." Politicians are allowed to lie as much as they like and their supporters will excuse them everything, as what matters is that their side won and the opposition lost. Where is the accountability?

I believe that governments do not succeed by winning elections. Once they win an election, they are given a go at government, but they're expected to be held accountable for their promises, and they have to continue to present the argument for how what they are doing is good for the country. "Because we won" is not a good enough argument. Am I being unreasonable?

Tuuvi

07-19-2019, 03:51

Corbyn's anti-semitism stems from his Marcist readings, which themselves were reflective of Marx's times.

Wasn't Karl Marx Jewish? I find the idea that Marxism made Corbyn antisemitic laughable.

Gilrandir

07-19-2019, 04:48

Is there any thread brexiters and antibrexiters can't turn to discussing their problem?

Pannonian

07-19-2019, 08:16

Wasn't Karl Marx Jewish? I find the idea that Marxism made Corbyn antisemitic laughable.

You mean that Marx was divorced from the trope of Jews as part of a cabal of bankers controlling the world? Marx wasn't especially anti-semitic, but he was somewhat, like just about everyone back in those days, in today's terms. More relevantly, Corbyn is unimaginative enough that he believes in the validity of the past to overrule the present, eg. he recently overruled the decision of the Labour conference because he'd read a biography of Wilson. Corbyn takes in these 19th century tropes unquestioningly, while others in his inner circle are known to believe the more developed forms of these tropes. Hooked nosed bankers controlling the world's economy? It's one of the far left's canonic myths, and that image is known to Corbyn and approved of.

Pannonian

07-19-2019, 09:11

Is there any thread brexiters and antibrexiters can't turn to discussing their problem?

Look up Steve Bannon.

Beskar

07-19-2019, 11:52

"Send her back" - Insight to 21st century Fascism.

Beskar

07-20-2019, 23:39

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Rho9tvpNM

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

07-21-2019, 03:36

"Send her back" - Insight to 21st century Fascism.

Racism =/= Fascism.

Teach children to confuse the two and they won't recognise real Fascism when it comes knocking.

We need to start asking, seriously, why the Western World is collapsing - the social, cultural, political, economic, military... It's all falling apart.

Montmorency

07-21-2019, 04:39

Racism =/= Fascism.

Sure, but in this case the criteria are met.

Tangential to the above, but a thought to tweak the "culturalists" racists out there: Aren't Latin Americans, and especially Mexicans, more culturally compatible in the United States than "white" Europeans are?

I've said it before, including with respect to Muslim-restrictionism, but it really needs to be hammered home that it's the reactionaries who are incompatible with most American cultures and they're the ones who need to buzz off. (Maybe Rod Dreher (https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/benedict-option-faq/) could still be taken up on shipping the jacobites to the rez? :eyebrows:)

Also, a crack about Trump I'm stealing: Dr. Frankenstein is operating a secret program to genetically engineer the most perfect refutation of the concept of meritocracy. Journal entry dated 11/8/16: "I've worked on this project my whole career...and...HE...he just tweeted his way up.'

Pannonian

07-21-2019, 05:17

Racism =/= Fascism.

Teach children to confuse the two and they won't recognise real Fascism when it comes knocking.

We need to start asking, seriously, why the Western World is collapsing - the social, cultural, political, economic, military... It's all falling apart.

Backing Bannon's projects certainly doesn't help. If not fully functional, the US was not yet collapsing pre-Trump, nor the UK pre-Brexit. You yourself cited, as an argument for Brexit, taking away the scapegoat for the rulers so that they would be forced to confront their own mistakes. May I present to you the possibility that revolution for the sake of revolution, without anything else in its place, as you've suggested, is the reason for this accelerated collapse. May I present to you the corollary argument that stability is good, and that it is possible to address imperfections in the politic without resorting to revolution.

The US is having it a tad better than the UK in the Great Bannon Experiment though. The US is a more coherent state than the UK, is big enough to absorb changes, and is likely to retain the U in US, unlike the eastern Atlantic edition of the Experiment, where its followers seem content to jettison the U in UK. Still, look on the bright side. Revolution is the thing, eh.

Don Corleone

07-21-2019, 17:17

The sad fact is that while Trump is incredibly racist, this whole past week has been a diversion.

He's trying to lay some cover down for his Epstein escapades and that while we were debating whether or not "Go Back Where you Came From" to a native born African American or Latina is racist...the SDNY released evidence that Trump was intimiately involved in the actions to subvert election laws in Oct 2016.

Beskar

07-22-2019, 12:13

Racism =/= Fascism.

Teach children to confuse the two and they won't recognise real Fascism when it comes knocking.

So chanting, calling for exile of democratically elected senators who are in the opposing party simply because they are critical of your policies and direction is not fascism?

As Montmorency said, in this circumstance, the criteria was met.