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

glennmagusharvey

Open carry of swords: now legal in Texas.

lrdgck

Yeah, I'm kind of baffled you could openly carry a machine gun but not a sharpened iron rod.

Vorpy

WOOOOOOOOOOOO


WEABOO TEXAS LAND

glennmagusharvey

lrdgck wrote: »

Yeah, I'm kind of baffled you could openly carry a machine gun but not a sharpened iron rod.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to become a little baffled that you can openly carry a machine gun or a sharpened iron rod but not a penis.

Naas_Human

glennmagusharvey

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/us/politics/trump-transgender-military.html

1. The announcement was responded to by basically everyone going "WTF", including basically everyone in the military.
2. The cost -- financial (in healthcare) and combat readiness -- are minimal, but they merely serve as convenient excuses for religious nutcase conservatives.
3. Let's not forget that the Pentagon panicked for 9 minutes yesterday morning because Trump's first tweet (out of nowhere) basically said that a military decision was coming but didn't say what it was for 9 minutes: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-transgender-pentagon-fear-north-korea-declare-war-a7862091.html
4. So much for Trump being LGBTQ-friendly. Of course, given that he's a political novice, it seems to make complete sense that he'd be easily to influence...and conservative religious groups figured this out.

Stormtroper

2. The cost -- financial (in healthcare) and combat readiness -- are minimal, but they merely serve as convenient excuses for religious nutcase conservatives.

Something I've always noticed is that in politics quantities don't matter for PR, the amount could be $80 million or $80 billion but what most people will get from it is that it's greater than zero and is therefore a waste, well-invested-in or whatever the point being made is.

fourteenwings

So much for Trump being LGBTQ-friendly.

About that.

Stormtroper

The stuff about that nazi march thing has been talked about around the world, so bump I guess.

I thought this was nice:

glennmagusharvey

fourteenwings

I used to take Madam Secretary's portrayal of the State Department with my usual double layer reality screen but now it's kind of funny that if the show were based on this particular administration they wouldn't need to hire so many extras (or even have a main cast outside 3 people maybe) to give it that whole 'fully staffed government department' feel.

glennmagusharvey

Is a gigantic hurricane schmoozing up the entire state of Florida not enough Florida for you?

Fear not! The Broward County Republican Party just discovered that they'd elected an attempted murderer as their secretary, and now they have trouble getting him out.
http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/ent-columns-blogs/jose-lambiet/article171549182.html
http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/rupert-tarseys-past-ok-broward-republicans

*exits stage left to go to bathroom and cringe strongly in private*

glennmagusharvey

Also I was cleaning out some old junk in drawers and so I sorted through a pile of politics-related stuff I'd picked up over the years and noticed these mock dollar bills that I got from some random people because I was around Boston during the 2004 Democratic National Convention. These weren't actual money, of course, but slightly-oversized parodies of US$1 bills that instead said "9-11" and basically listed a bunch of website domain names and edited the designs to include faces of various people and logos of various companies, basically suggesting in a variety of ways that the "truth" about 9-11 wasn't being told.

At the time, I thought it meant to highlight how the George W. Bush administration went into Iraq on false pretenses of WMD and simply wanted Iraq's oil. Nowadays though, I'm now aware of the brand of crazy of so-called "9-11 truthers" who basically claim that the terrorist attack itself may have been orchestrated intentionally by government for nefarious purposes. I also now recognize one of those domain names, specifically Infowars, which and whose founder have in recent years become infamous for being, among other things, a leading voice among said crazy conspiracy theorist types, claiming that a wide variety of actual events were fake, from the relatively recent Sandy Hook school shooting all the way back to the moon landings, and fueling the recent rise of...well, as a general term, I guess I can call it "nihilistic" political sentiment, i.e. a hardcore anti-establishment sentiment that's so hardcore it outright suspects pretty much everything of being in league to screw it over.

It's still pretty clever design, I have to say, regardless of my opinion of its political positions.

Serocco

Trump made a debt deal that actually helps Republicans cause that means Republicans can't shut down the government again for a short while. Yet they say it's bad cause he's working with Democrats. And Ryan who opposes the deal is now a RINO.

What is happening.

glennmagusharvey

Serocco wrote: »

Trump made a debt deal that actually helps Republicans cause that means Republicans can't shut down the government again for a short while. Yet they say it's bad cause he's working with Democrats. And Ryan who opposes the deal is now a RINO.

What is happening.

Well, according to Trump's terms, he's denying Congressional Republicans a win, so it counts as a lose for them.

Not to mention, frankly, the way Republicans work these days is basically promising intentions and not really paying attention to results because the results they want are broadly impractical and not agreeable to a large number of people. They've been able to get away with this for so long by being out of power, but now that they're in power, all those intentions that their base wanted -- basically just to force a culture war against the modern world in general (referred to with a variety of terms including "multiculturalism", "globalism", "secularism", "liberalism", "feminism", "political correctness", etc. etc. etc.) for the sake of pride -- are running up against a harsh reality.

lrdgck

I have a question. Is 9/11 truthism a left-wing phenomenon, or a right-wing phenomenon? Both? Neither? On one hand, we get the ebul gubmint. On the other, it was a red-white-and-blue-blooded American values gubmint.

fourteenwings

I'm pretty sure conspiracy theories are bipartisan, but since (oh gods what am i doing) the media tends to lean more left they get othered to Republican madness.

I guess the right wing will be associated with like, hardcore stuff, whilst ebul gubmint people will be more free love hippy type deals (so like, there's clearly mind-control in GMOs or something).

Naas_Human

According to skeptoid, conspiracy theorists tend to be conservative, except Apollo truthers.

glennmagusharvey

Well, for what it's worth, on that "9-11 dollar bill" there is Infowars, and Infowars is very, very much related to the "alt-right" these days.

There's a semi-common criticism of the George W. Bush administration of at least thinking about the oil profits in choosing to invade Iraq, but that's a far cry from the far more extreme position of positing that they actually orchestrated 9/11 in order to get oil profits. (More reasonable might be conjecturing that they were negligent in dealing with intel that could have prevented 9/11.)

lrdgck

It's fascinating how conspiracy theories go in hand with the theorist's political views. One would imagine truth is apolitical, amirite?

glennmagusharvey

The truth may or may not be political, because "political" is a quality that people append to things based on how they think the world works and how they want it to work. And how many arguments they see or get themselves into over these things.

glennmagusharvey

http://www.kake.com/story/36316591/wichita-family-arrested-making-bank-deposit

How do you call Boise, Idaho instead of Dearborn, Michigan by accident?

Even the area codes are very different (208 vs. 313)!

glennmagusharvey

Also, speaking of Idaho:

https://amp.businessinsider.com/facebook-group-russia-texas-anti-immigrant-rallies-2017-9
http://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-russia-used-facebook-events-to-organize-anti-immigrant-rallies-on-us-soil

the second one is in Idaho

but srsly
"The corrupt media does not talk about the crimes committed by Killary Rotten Clinton, neither does it talk mention the leaked emails" you don't put "neither" there you idiot, you put "nor"
"IN LOVE WITH TEXAS SHAPE" lol
someone had to be drunk on nativism to not notice that, ESPECIALLY when they're nuts about dirty foreigners who speak English bad

glennmagusharvey

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-objective-reasons-ronald-reagan-was-our-worst-president/

glennmagusharvey

[analysis]
Potentially winnable districts in the Florida State Senate.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/16/1699101/-Florida-2018-An-In-Depth-Look-Flipping-The-Senate

glennmagusharvey

more depressing news

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/us/oklahoma-city-police-shooting-deaf.html?mtrref=undefined

Meanwhile, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) lies to both comedian Jimmy Kimmel and NPR about the healthcare coverage quality provisions of the bill with his name on it. (Hint: there are no such provisions, aside from telling the states to take care of adequacy and affordability.)

glennmagusharvey

on another note:

the state of fundraising in Virginia's 103 state races this November 2017: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/21/1700073/-Cash-Rules-Everything-Around-Me-Virginia-House-end-of-summer-edition

As you may know, Virginia votes for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general the odd year after every presidential year. Also all 100 members of the Virginia House of Delegates, every odd year. So that's 103 in total this year.

Quick primer on how fundraising reports are analyzed: fundraising gets reported over some period of time, depending i think on state or federal rules depending on the election. so each candidate has a total 'cash on hand' (how much they have in their campaign account) and also how much they raised in the most recent reporting period (for these races it's july 1 to august 31).

TL;DR Dems are doing relatively well in fundraising in Virginia gubernatorial and House of Delegates races. Click the link to find lists of Dems who outraised and/or held more CoH than their Republican opponents.

background info: the VA HoD (100 single-member districts) currently has 66 Republicans and 34 Democrats. Clinton actually won 51 of the districts. Democrats are challenging 54 of 66 R-held districts; Republicans are challenging 6 of 33 D-held districts.

glennmagusharvey

Next week’s special elections — all Tuesday, September 26.

OFFENSE

FL-SD40 — Central/eastern Miami-Dade County: Miami (various parts), Fontainebleau, Westchester, Sunset, Kendall, South Miami, Coral Terrace, West Miami, Coral Gables (part), Little Havana, Coral Way. Clinton 58% Trump 40%, incumbent resigned due to scandal. Annette Taddeo (D) vs. Jose Felix Diaz (R) vs. Christian “He-Man” Schlaerth (i).

FL Senate current stats: D 15, R 24, vacant 1.

FL-HD116 — Western/central Miami-Dade County: Doral, Fontainebleau, Westchester, University Park, Olympia Heights, Westwood Lakes, part of Kendall. Clinton 51% Trump 46%, incumbent running for FL-SD40. Gabriela Mayaudon (D) vs. Daniel Anthony Perez (R)

FL House current stats: D 41, R 76, vacant 3.

NH-HD Rockingham 4 — Auburn, Chester, other areas east of Manchester. Clinton 36% Trump 59%, incumbent passed away due to cancer. 5 seat district (all four others R). Kari Lerner (D) vs. James Headd (R) vs. James Jarvis (L)

NH House of Representatives current stats: D 171, R 220, L 3, vacant 6.

DEFENSE

SC-HD31 — Spartanburg. Clinton 72% Trump 24%, incumbent resigned due to health issues. Rosalyn Henderson Myers (D) vs. Michael Fowler (R)

SC House of Representatives current stats: D 42, R 78, vacant 4.

glennmagusharvey

meanwhile, in lighter -- but perhaps more characteristically Florida -- Florida news:

the Broward County Republican Party is...sort of a mess at the moment, with a civil war rocking the leadership, and on top of that they discover that the party secretary was once known under a different name and beat a girl a claw-hammer in California.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-sb-broward-republican-party-turmoil-20170921-story.html

glennmagusharvey

From today's Electoral-vote.com:

The removal of Sudan, by contrast, is rather a mystery. A major justification for the new travel ban is that it's being targeted at countries that do not do a good job of vetting people who depart for trips abroad. With that argument in mind, the inclusion of Chad, Somalia, and Yemen makes some amount of sense, since they have three of the most ineffective governments in the world. But so does Sudan, so why do they skate this time, when other countries at the top (or bottom?) of the list do not? To put a finer point on it, why are visitors from "most fragile" governments #2 (Somalia), #4 (Yemen), #6 (Syria), and #8 (Chad) banned, but those from #1 (South Sudan), #3 (Central African Republica), #5 (Sudan), and #7 (Democratic Republic of the Congo) are not? It's true that there's nasty stuff going on in Somalia (piracy, civil war), Yemen and Syria (civil wars), and Chad (Boko Haram), but if that's the standard, then why not Niger and Cameroon (also Boko Haram), or Nigeria (Boko Haram and civil war), or Afghanistan (Al-Qaeda and civil war), or Central African Republic (civil war)? Of course, if the real goal is to stop terrorists, then why isn't Saudi Arabia—home of the great majority of the 9/11 attackers—on the list?

No, the real reason is that he hates even numbers.