General politics thread (was: General U.S. politics thread)

fourteenwings

Isn't Japan the most politely xenophobic country ever.

yes Glorius Nippon

Earthlight_Ray

:,)

glennmagusharvey

Watch your account balances more closely.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/republicans-are-moving-to-scrap-rules-on-overdraft-charges?utm_term=.hrNbQGlXo#.arylDP8KV

glennmagusharvey

Hmm, look at what we haven't been paying attention to.  http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2017/02/microsoft-lawsuit-gag-orders-court-ruling-234855

TL;DR government law says it can demand info from internet service providers (ISPs) regarding their customers' activities, and ISPs can't tell their customers that the government is doing this.  Microsoft sued to object to this, on the grounds that this violates the ISPs' 1st Amendment rights.

Would be interesting to see how this develops.

glennmagusharvey

A US citizen and NASA JPL employee who went to Chile for solar car racing was detained by US CBP until he gave his work phone's PIN to CBP officers, which his work prohibits him from doing.
http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/12/14583124/nasa-sidd-bikkannavar-detained-cbp-phone-search-trump-travel-ban

According to this commentary, CBP isn't allowed to do this.  http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/13/1633215/-Border-agents-detained-a-U-S-born-NASA-scientist-until-he-unlocked-his-phone-Know-your-rights .  I don't know whether this is legally correct.
...unless you are using a fingerprint lock: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/iphone-fingerprint-search-warrant/480861/

More information (and tips/guides at the end): https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/law-enforcement-uses-border-search-exception-fourth-amendment-loophole

Meanwhile, if you're sad that you can't buy politically-charged celebrity products, Joe Biden's daughter, Ashley Biden, started a new line of them.  Apparently they benefit poor neighborhoods in Wilmington, Delaware, and Washington, DC.

glennmagusharvey

Enjoy some burns.

glennmagusharvey

Texas State Senator Charles Schwertner (R-SD5) literally broke a table
while trying to stop pro-choice testimony against his anti-abortion
bill.  (Despite letting other speakers go on for much longer.)

http://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2017/02/16/texas-senator-shatters-table-trying-to-silence-woman-testifying-against-anti-abortion-bill

(For
reference, senate district 5 is a large district covering such places
as Georgetown, College Station, Fairfield, and Madisonville.  It's a
roughly hammer-shaped district (heh) in the central eastern portion of
the state, as shown in the map here.  Romney won the district 63.3% to 34.5%.)

glennmagusharvey

There was a special election yesterday in Delaware, for a state senate
seat.  The previous occupant, Bethany Hall-Long, was elected lieutenant
governor of Delaware.

Control of the state senate was at stake. 
Not counting this empty seat, the state senate is currently at a 10-10
tie between Democrats and Republicans.  In 2014, this seat was held by
the Dems as follows:
* Bethany Hall-Long (D): 6,230 votes (51.1%)
* John Marino (R): 5,963 votes (48.9%)

The current ballot count right now, with 16 of 16 precincts reporting (unofficial results as reported by the state):
* Stephanie L. Hansen (D): 7,314 (58.13%)
* John Marino (R): 5,127 (40.75%)
* Joseph Lanzendorfer (L): 139 (1.12%)

In two days (on Tuesday), there will be three special elections in Connecticut's state legislatures:
*
Connecticut's 2nd senate district, previously D-held (incumbent
resigned to pursue a judicial appointment), where the 2016 result was an
83%-17% D win.
* Connecticut's 32nd senate district, previously
R-held (incumbent resigned to join the office of the Auditors of Public
Accounts), where the 2016 result was a 68%-32% R win.
* Connecticut's
115th house district, previously D-held (incumbent resigned to join
Connecticut's Board of Pardons and Paroles), where the 2016 result was a
69%-31% D win.

The Connecticut State Senate has 36 seats, and
the parties are currently tied in their number of seats, requiring the
lieutenant governor to break ties.  The LG is elected along with the
governor on "off" years, such as 2018.

So yeah.  Another tied chamber.

If
you're interested in following these "local" and state-level elections
-- which are often viewed as less "sexy" than higher-profile races but
can actually have major impacts in deciding the fate of local and state
legislation, and which often have fewer voters so it takes fewer
opinions to swing in order to swing the result -- check out this site: https://ready2vote.com/

Serocco

Never got a chance to say it before, so I'll say it now: that was the worst election I've ever seen in American history.



Now that he's won, he'll have eight years of one party rule, likely 12 if he gets that constitutional majority from the red states.



2018 is already mathematically impossible for the Democrats and I suspect Trump will cheat in 2020 (depriving felons of the right to vote Florida style, Voter ID laws, gerrymandering, intensified War on Drugs under Jeff Sessions).



But at least we have the Justice Democrats.

Serocco

Oh and Trump appointed Ajit Pai to destroy net neutrality. Pai has already removed transparency regulation for the smaller ISPs and accepted zero netting (where ISPs can charge you a fee to use a service that does not count data on your 4G).



Freedom of information under the age of the Internet, soon to be gone, probably irrevocably. Goddammit, America.

glennmagusharvey

^ If you meet anyone who is happy for the internet because Trump killed TPP, remind them of this.

glennmagusharvey

useful things:
* Flippable.org - general focus on state-level races
* Ready2Vote.com - a calendar of special elections
* SwingLeft.org - easy way to find ways to help with swing districts (site has some problems atm, such as telling you to look at NH-02 when you're in Boston, when NH-01 is way closer, strategically (as in margins and political landscape) and geographically)

Note: do not simply vote and then do nothing.
[commentary] http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/30/1627502/-Make-The-Resistance-Local
TL;DR contribute to your own community however you can.

Serocco

Mind you, we can still get net neutrality back or even keep it largely intact with enough activism, just like last time.



But many smaller sites will be hit hard by this and it could lead to blocking sites that criticize Trump.



The only way we win is to fight. Right now, TYT and Wold PAC just formed Justice Democrats to fight with other post Bernie groups like Brand New Congress and Our Revolution.

glennmagusharvey

[commentary]

Barbara Res, who was an executive vice president in the Trump
Organization for decades, said:
"He gets an idea in his head and just says: 'Do it.' There's no
direction. The idea isn't built up or fleshed out. He just says:
'Let's do this.'"
Louise Sunshine, who was also an executive vice president, had this to
say about how he is running the White House:
"Same management style. He's always created competition and chaos."
Artie Nusbaum, one of the heads of the construction company that built
Trump Tower, had this to say:
"I don't think he manages. I think he just lets it all happen."
Biographer Gwenda Blair wrote this about his projects:
"There was no formal business plan, no development strategy. Instead,
Donald would come up with ideas, do the preliminary calculations
in his head, then tell someone to get moving on it."

In short, he has always run a seat-of-the pants operation and
seems to be continuing in that style now. He will soon discover that
when he has some half-baked idea and tells Paul Ryan to go pass it, Ryan
will salute, ignore Trump's plan, and then later
present Trump with Ryan's own bill for his signature. Some presidents
(e.g., Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter) were micromanagers who studied
everything that came before them and then made decisions down to the
smallest details. Trump is the exact opposite. He studies nothing,
comes up with vague ideas, and tells other people to carry them out.
We'll know in a few months how well that works out for him. (V)

(from today's electoral-vote.com, some commentary about Trump's management style.)

Note that last paragraph.  I've talked to a Trump supporter, who, before the election, insisted that the government "runs itself".  That last paragraph is kinda akin to that -- the idea that someone else will take care of things and smooth them out, and thus it's not important that the head of state is a complete dunce.

Ironically, such people also often hate the bureaucracy that does said smoothing things out.

glennmagusharvey

Democrats won the CT state house special election and one of two CT state senate special elections yesterday.  Republicans won the other, though by a noticeably smaller margin -- 9,931 to 8,131, or about 55%-45% not including an independent -- than they're used to (previous win was like 66%-34%).  CT state senate stays tied.

glennmagusharvey

Former congressional aide and investigative film exec Jon Ossoff is the leading Dem candidate running in the special election for Georgia's 6th congressional district.  He has the endorsement of Rep. John Lewis (GA-05), the famous civil rights leader.  For reference, here is Ossoff's campaign website: https://electjon.com/ (yes, it really does look like "election" but with a j instead of the i, and I didn't notice this until I looked at the URL)

GA-06 was vacated by Tom Price who became Donald Trump's HHS secretary.  The district is, politically, very notable as one that Romney won by a double-digit margin but then Trump only barely won.  It includes some of the northern suburbs of Atlanta, which contain relatively wealthy and well-educated voters who may be historically Republican but turned against Trump, if I recall correctly.  As a result, the special -- and the Ossoff campaign -- have caught the attention of various Democratic/liberal/progressive activists, including Daily Kos folks who have been strongly encouraging donations to his campaign.  (Daily Kos has helped raise for his campaign about $1M so far, about half of his total fundraising.)

Of course, raising a lot of money for what's likely to be a key swing district race is not going to go unnoticed by the other side.  So, Republicans are preparing to...flame him for cosplaying as Han Solo, and pay $1.1M to do it.

The special election dates are April 18th for the all-candidate primary (which currently has 18 candidates), and June 20th for the runoff election if no one gets >50% of the vote (which seems likely).  A recent poll has put him at 32%, former GA secretary of state and Republican candidate Karen Handel at 25%, "not sure" at 18%, and Republican Bob Gray at 11%.

glennmagusharvey

Meanwhile, this story just broke: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/iowa-pol-s-bio-changed-after-sizzler-u-discrepancy-emerges-n726961?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

TL;DR - state senator Mark Chelgren (R), who introduced bill to cap the number of Democrats on university faculties, turns out to have falsified his resume, saying he got a "degree" after just taking a management course with a company that operates a Sizzler restaurant.  (Could be a good course, and the restaurant has tasty food IIRC, but that's still not a degree.)

FYI, Chelgren holds Iowa State Senate District 41, which is one where Obama got 54% of the two-party vote in 2012 and which Chelgren won in 2014 with just 50.8% of the total vote.  This is totally a winnable district for Team Blue.

Incidentally now I'm hungry for Sizzler.  lol

Serocco

This is a weird new comment system.

Jeff Sessions recused himself from investigating Trump's Russian ties

glennmagusharvey

Serocco wrote: »

This is a weird new comment system.

hm?

glennmagusharvey

a flamewar over a painting

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/313506-dem-lawmaker-re-hangs-painting-depicting-cops-as-pigs-in-capitol

bonus find: Duncan Hunter's pet rabbit's airfare

Serocco

Andrew Gillum, progressive Tallahassee mayor, at the ripe old age of 37, has announced he will run for Governor of Florida in 2018. He's my first pick; I recommended him to the Justice Democrats.

glennmagusharvey

Georgia election database hacked: http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/breaking-fbi-investigating-hack-of-ksu-server/499353979

Wherein by "hacked" I mean that security measures (if any) were somehow defeated and confidential voter data may have been accessed.  Can't seem to find more info at this point, including any info on who did it.

This is actually quite urgent because this may affect the upcoming special election in Georgia's 6th congressional district, a special election that's already drawn major national attention.

glennmagusharvey

oh hey IJBM now has Twitter embedding so i can do this

https://twitter.com/D1ffl/status/838083538763182080

in case that ever gets taken down: it's a tweet that says "Here's Trump's and Pruitt's vision for US" and then links a picture of smog, captioned with the text "MAKE AMERICA GRAY AGAIN"

glennmagusharvey

Montana musician Rob Quist has been nominated by the Democrats to fill Montana's at-large congressional seat.  The special election will take place on May 25.

glennmagusharvey

A lawsuit over twelve Virginia state legislature districts reached the Supreme Court.  The suit is called Bethune-Hill et al. v. Virginia State Board of Elections et al., in case you want to look up more info about this.  The reasoning was that the twelve districts basically were used to pack minority voters in order to dilute their voting power, by misapplying a 55% minority voting-age population requirement, based on my understanding of this (they're always arcane and down-in-the-weeds like this, but this is where stuff actually happens).

A three-judge panel for the Eastern District of Virginia disagreed 2-1, and upheld the district map.  The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, and oral arguments were heard last December.

The Supreme Court ruled that eleven of the twelve districts were unconstitutional, and to remand the case to the lower court for further proceedings.

The vote on SCOTUS was 6-1-1 (8-0 to vacate and remand, 7-1 to affirm the exception):
* Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the opinion of the court.
* Justice Samuel Alito concurred but wrote his own opinion.
* Justice Clarence Thomas concurred in part and dissented in part -- and his dissent, surprisingly, was to go further, saying that even the twelfth district considered might be unconstitutional.

Serocco

Thomas would've never struck down gerrymandered districts with Scalia in his ear.

glennmagusharvey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_State_Leadership_Committee

The RSLC is also the sponsoring organization of the .gop top-level Internet domain.^[4][5]

Dafuq?  They have their own TLD now?

Serocco

What the fuck is going on. Are they trying to Trumpify the Internet?

glennmagusharvey

http://www.newsweek.com/house-republicans-buck-trump-climate-change-568267

Seventeen Republican members of Congress from diverse
districts—including representatives from coastal Southeastern states,
Nevada, Utah, upstate New York and Pennsylvania—submitted a resolution
in the House Wednesday acknowledging that “human activities” have had an
impact on global climate and resolving to create and support
“economically viable” mitigation efforts.

FYI the signatories include:
Elise Stefanik (NY-21) - large district covering northeastern upstate New York, incl. Albany, Schenectady, Troy; even PVI
Carlos Curbelo (FL-26) - southwest Miami-Dade County, all the keys, and a bit of southwest Florida; even PVI
Ryan Costello (PA-06) - northwestern Philadelphia suburbs/exurbs; R+2 PVI
Mark Sanford (SC-01) - large extent of southeastern coastal South Carolina; R+11 PVI
Barbara Comstock (VA-10) - northern Virginia district incl. Loudoun County and Manassas; even PVI (and went by a 10%pt margin for Hillary Clinton)
Don Bacon (NE-02) - Omaha and suburbs; R+4 PVI and famously went for Obama in 2008
John Faso (NY-19) - southern upstate New York, basically the area between NYC and Albany; D+1 PVI
Frank LoBiondo (NJ-02) - southern 1/4 of New Jersey; D+1 PVI
Tom Reed (NY-) - upstate New York, basically southern half of the western "arm", includes Ithaca and Corning but mostly rural; R+3 PVI
Mark Amodei (NV-02) - huge northern Nevada district, including Carson City and Reno; R+5 PVI
Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-08) - northeastern Philadelphia suburbs/exurbs; R+1 PVI
Mia Love (UT-04) - part of Salt Lake City plus areas to the south; R+14 PVI (bluest district in Utah)
Pat Meehan (PA-07) - strangely-shaped district west of Philadelphia; R+1 PVI
Brian Mast (FL-18) - "Treasure Coast" area north of Palm Beach plus a bit of that; R+3 PVI
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-27) - southeastern Miami-Dade county; R+1 PVI

That's only 15 so I dunno who the other two are.

And apparently Ivanka Trump may be on the good guys' side on this issue?

fourteenwings

by the new right being actively malicious nazis rather than oblivious religious fanatics.

 It feels kind of strange how quickly the power-structure shifted there,
but I guess the power-mongers who were never actually religious fanatics
just go after who seems most rabidly loyal at the time.

I watched a bit that Samantha Bee did the other day about how despite how all the liberals were out protesting, voter turnout was still dismal and the same people won over and over, which surprised me because I really didn't want to believe fear/hate is a much stronger motivator than like, everything that's not fear/hate.