US Politics Thread |OT| SAD TRUMP

[team filler]

 

[team filler]

this is what we are reduced to in the absence of godtiolate 

[Stoney Mason]

Complete the purge of dumbasses.

Execute Order 66

[team filler]

 

[Stoney Mason]

baited.

[team filler]

[benjipwns]

drive us filler, follow in the steps of the master, show us what you've learned

[benjipwns]

Matt Taibbi (shut it Mandark, isn't one skull enough for today) investigates a New York House Democratic Primary, finds "everything was the 2016 primaries"

Beals points also to a document the DCCC sent him. They wanted him to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU), effectively outlining his contractual obligation to the DCCC, as a Democratic candidate for Congress.

Literally a form letter, the document read:

This Agreement is entered into on this ** day of December, 2017, between the DCCC and (candidate name) (hereafter referred to as the candidate).

Beals scanned the MOU and quickly saw that multiple obligations of "candidate name" were all about money.

Item one demanded that the candidate agree to "communicate with the DCCC on a regular basis regarding progress toward quarterly fundraising goals."

Item two would require Beals to share his budget and finance plan with the DCCC.

Item three was the one that really threw the 41 year-old teacher:

3. The Candidate agrees to have a campaign budget completed six months prior to the primary and to focus on preserving at least 75% of funds for paid communications.

...

It seemed that as far as the national party was concerned, the only question that mattered about Jeff Beals was: Could he be in position to spend $375,000 on paid media by March 31st?

Either way, the Democrats desperately need to win every swing district they can, and as time has gone on, more and more divisions have emerged within a party still finding its way after the great Hillary-Bernie schism of 2016. There have been numerous open battles between the national party and its more progressive, grassroots flank. The story about the DCCC dropping an opposition research memo on Texas progressive Laura Moser is only the best known of these increasingly bitter disputes.

A recent New York Times story described how the national party first urged physician Mai Khanh Tran to drop out of the California 39th district race on the grounds that she could not win, then openly backed former Republican Gil Cisneros when Tran refused to step aside. The same story talked about similar disputes in Arkansas and upstate New York.

Many of these stories tend to involve crowded primary fields in swing districts. The New York 19th, which features six Democratic candidates in addition to Beals, and is widely considered up for grabs, is just such a setting. And here, too, the divisions that threaten the party have come out in the open. Money is one dividing line. Another is residency.

...

In the case of the 19th, millions of dollars did indeed quickly pour into the primary race. As of May, north of $5 million has been raised for Democratic candidates. Both Beals and Clegg, along with an agronomist named Erin Collier, soon found themselves bringing up the rear financially against a gaggle of candidates who clearly did a better job of proving their "fundraising potential."

To Beals, his worst suspicions seemed confirmed when he learned that the top four Democrats in the field by fundraising turned out to be, in no particular order: a defense contractor, a health care executive, a partner at a famed lobbying firm and a former press aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. In Beals' mind, this lineup was like a Rogue's Gallery of centrist caricatures.

"You couldn't make this stuff up," he says.

Beals, like Clegg, insists most of these candidates are basically New Yorkers who have never voted in the district before this year. Of course, Beals himself has only been living and working in Woodstock since 2016.

Here's something that's far easier for voters to spot: On which side of the increasingly bitter schism within the party does the candidate reside?

The Great Democratic Divide that opened last election and has been widening ever since, and which seems on the surface to be a clash of two strident and intractable cult-of-personality movements – Bernie Bros vs. Hillbots – has really very little to do with personality at all. It is, for sure, about ideology. But it is also a prosaic argument about money and tactics.

The core Sanders argument was always that Democrats could never effectively represent people against corporate power while continuing to be sponsored by it.

The counter to that has been that Democrats can get more done working with business than against it, and moreover, they can't afford to cede the fundraising battle to Republicans (although the Democrats out-raised Trump nearly 2-to-1 in 2016, and still lost).

Democrats have been traveling in a furious circle for two years now, fighting tooth and nail over this question in the manner of all Internet arguments, i.e. pointlessly and without end. The schism has paralyzed the national party, which, heading into the 2018 elections, still hasn't developed anything like a coherent strategy for winning back places like the 19th.

Even one of Beals' more well-heeled opponents, the Iraq War vet and surveillance contractor Pat Ryan – whose past business practices earned the unwelcome attention of Intercept muckraker Lee Fang earlier this year – seems puzzled by the lack of direction from the party.

"I've been very disappointed in the lack of leadership, the lack of message," Ryan says.

Policy-wise, Beals is a Sanders doppelgänger. He preaches Medicare for all, forgiveness of student debt, free higher education and a guaranteed jobs program. Also, just like the Vermont senator, he frequently rails against the tepid incrementalism of centrist Democrats, for instance comparing their approach to health care to the famed Zeno's paradox of antiquity.

"You know, the one where if you go half the distance each time, you never actually reach your destination?" Beals says. "It's the same with Democrats and health care. It's like: 'We'll start with an opt-in, then we'll try this other thing…' But they never actually get there."
...
Where he differs from Sanders in the most extreme way is in his path to politics. While Sanders was an anti-war and civil rights activist practically in the womb, Beals began his professional life as a CIA intelligence officer and diplomat. He started off working in the West Bank and the Gaza strip, but ended up in the Iraqi War theater, working for a time out of Saddam Hussein's occupied palace and even helping American viceroys draft the Iraqi Constitution in the Bush years.

This part of his bio has been something of a millstone around Beals' neck, as Internet sleuths and opponents alike have used it to portray him as everything from a deep-state plant to an outright "manufactured, faux-progressive candidate" surreptitiously inserted into the race by forces loyal to Hillary Clinton.

According to a theory espoused in Counterpunch, Beals was designed to so perfectly imitate a progressive campaign that evil Clintonites are "using the Beals campaign as a laboratory for [a] strategy of winning elections without raising millions of dollars."

When asked about defeatist analyses that suggest Democrats either can't or shouldn't try to regain voters in areas like these, Beals shakes his head.

"I just think it's completely bullshit that we can't win those votes," he says. "First of all, what are you losing them to? You're losing them to an anger vote ... It's not even like you lost them to a Republican agenda."

He adds: "And then Trump comes along and wins votes on anger, and then partially steals your own script by offering them health care and draining the swamp."

Clegg agrees with Beals on this score. "Trump hit a new low in terms of the lizard-brain fear approach," he says. "It did actually work with some."

Beals goes on to suggest that there's an even more nefarious motive for the defeatist analyses. Successfully spreading the idea that the party can't reach certain voters not only absolves the national bureaucracy of any need to change, but reduces campaigning to a blunt-force fundraising contest, a place where they're comfortable.

"This is where things get dark, but I think there are a lot of people who want you to think we can't win those votes," he says. "They want us to just get back to focusing on the fundraising, and keep the cash cow going."

But even Schumer, himself an infamous hooverer of Wall Street money, mostly just suggested that the Democrats have done a bad job of conveying how much they have always been on the people's side, even though they've been sponsored by all those same special interests.

"We… failed to communicate our values to show that we were on the side of working people, not the special interests," he said. "We will not repeat the same mistake."

In other words: Apart from doing a better job of marketing themselves, the Democrats don't really need to change. From mental constructions like this, it's a short hop to a comment like the one offered recently by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, when asked by Face the Nation what the Democrats can do differently to regain lost ground.

"I don't think people want a new direction," she said.

Asked to elaborate, Pelosi echoed Schumer. She said we need a "better connection of our message."

Patrizia DiLucchio • 3 days ago
I'm a voter in New York's 19th Congressional District. Beals and Clegg are both strong candidates; Beals' advantage over Clegg is his youth.

Here's the deal. Every single 19th District voter I've talked to about the 2018 midterms has said. "I don't much like John Faso" (the incumbent) "and I _would_ vote for a Democrat EXCEPT... I don't want Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker again."

I mentioned this to various friends and acquaintances on a recent trip to California, and they all lashed back out, "SEXISM!" Shades of the knee-jerk Hillary defense, right?

[Rufus]

And frankly you can't possibly insinuate "this place" was the problem when he merely got a 2 day ban for posting NSFW content.

It wasn't so much that he posted NSFW content [if he wants to post some pictures of dead/starving Soviet children to further his argument against communism, fine whatever, at worst I'd just clip the pictures if people had a problem with it], it's that he spammed multiple pictures across multiple threads [some entirely unrelated], including a few posts that were the same image posted 20 times. And he was making no effort to actually form a coherent argument other than "COMMUNISM BAD!!" and just making a mess for the sake of making a mess. I gave him a two day break, assuming that maybe his outburst was the result of the being under the influence of alcohol, but within just a few hours of his ban ending he was back to doing the exact same thing as before [he even spammed the music thread!]. So...yeah...I'm content with him not coming back.

This was his justification:

As for the images, they do several things: Apply a serious topic at a visceral level for a community of people who can't handle serious topics. They then repeat over and over, making it feel cheap because that's what happens to serious topics in the hands of jackasses., they get cheapened. They also hold the forum up, hostage-like, in  way that represents Soviet interrogations. Let's call it the gun pointed at you on the table.

 

[Nintex]

Donald Trump is president (LOL lmao) and his goons tell everyone he's untouchable like Al Capone.
He wants to take out Iran, make out with Putin, make peace with the last Dictator on Earth, trade wars with China and arm school teachers.
At the same time his creepy son in law is making god knows what type of sleazy deals overseas so his children can open embassies and profit from his presidency.
Since he got elected he's replaced nearly half his staff. Either because of scandals, bribery, corruption or because they called him an idiot.

But whatever it's more important to educate the masses about the Holomodor. An event that happened over 80 years ago in a country currently split in half by Neo Nazi's and Russian nationalists.

And if you think that spamming images of dead and starving children is a bad communications strategy for this seemingly important cause you are soft.

Did I get everything right?

 

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And for the record, I post images of the Soviet Union in agony and poverty because I think COMMUNISM is fucked up

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[agrajag]

You forgot to mention how important it is to clean your room to make sure there aren't any dragons hiding under your bed, buckaroo.

[kingv]

The only solution, holodomor autocorrects to Homodomor. Any image etiolate posts from now on gets autocorrected to a picture of Hillary Clinton with the caption My Abuela.

[Assimilate]

What's going to be interested about this place now? Just a bunch of soft ass pussies wishing they could still be posting on the REE.

This site existed long before REE  did you stupid mother fucker.

Ok? You stupid motherfucker most people here jumped right into REE when it went up. You had people here all exciting doing a circlejerk thinking it was going to be such an amazing restart, a totally new place where they'd be accepted and the discussions would flow because they thought GAF's problem was Evillore and not simply the fact that 99% of the community were a bunch of toxic softboy round faces.

This place going downhill fast... even benji lost his grip after being dick slapped by Cindi. No one is left with any balls around here 

[benjipwns]

You had people here all exciting doing a circlejerk thinking it was going to be such an amazing restart, a totally new place where they'd be accepted and the discussions would flow

That was pretty much Cindi.

And a few other people had a "let's wait and see at least" attitude. And a few just wanted a forum that collected all the gaming news in thread titles again and had OTs with answers to crap.

But most of us who had been around GAF prior to, say, 2012, were pretty openly mocking them for the unforced errors and self-seriousness of it all. And people who had been around GAF for even longer were rising from the dead just to mock the whole affair.

Though I don't even know what any of this has to do with the politics thread. Anything by etoliate and calling people ree-tards wasn't exactly the predominant content of it, well, ever.

[agrajag]

calling people ree-tards

You think you're so cute skirting by ToS forbidden words with coded language, go ahead, call me what you really want!

Mods halp

[Human Snorenado]

What's going to be interested about this place now? Just a bunch of soft ass pussies wishing they could still be posting on the REE.

This site existed long before REE  did you stupid mother fucker.

Ok? You stupid motherfucker most people here jumped right into REE when it went up. You had people here all exciting doing a circlejerk thinking it was going to be such an amazing restart, a totally new place where they'd be accepted and the discussions would flow because they thought GAF's problem was Evillore and not simply the fact that 99% of the community were a bunch of toxic softboy round faces.

This place going downhill fast... even benji lost his grip after being dick slapped by Cindi. No one is left with any balls around here 

Bruh... how the fuck long have you been here? This place was founded on gay subtext and video games. If there's anything softer than that, it's only Drake. So gtfo with your schtick, it's tired and getting in the way of talking about which Trump son is gonna make a better bitch in gen pop.

[agrajag]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mariachi-band-protests-outside-apartment-182516449.html

[Broseidon]

Is etoilet getting himself permabanned his greatest L-dump yet?

[Joe Molotov]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/998256454590193665

And also HER EMAILS.

[Assimilate]

This place was founded on gay subtext and video games.

 

[team filler]

 

[Nola]

This place was founded on gay subtext and video games.

 

Don’t be such a soft bitch about it

[Mandark]

So... hereby, but not really.

[Nintex]

It feels like we're coming close to some kind of end game.
This is such a mess, jesus christ. 

[Phoenix Dark]

Wonder if Rosenstein or (head of the FBI) Wray will threaten to resign if Trump actually does that.

[kingv]

I just saw on the twitter that it looks like the DOJ IG is expanding the already existing FISA probe to see if there was any “political reasoning” to th FISA warrant.

Once again, smart people are saving Donald from himself by taking a half measure that sort of addresses his demands, but functionally doesn’t really do anything.

[Nola]

I just saw on the twitter that it looks like the DOJ IG is expanding the already existing FISA probe to see if there was any “political reasoning” to th FISA warrant.

Once again, smart people are saving Donald from himself by taking a half measure that sort of addresses his demands, but functionally doesn’t really do anything.

Though if like last time, and I suspect it will go down similarly, what is going to get uncovered is the FBI/DOJ having even more legitimate reason to go down these paths than we had initially assumed....Though I suspect much like memo-gate, the narrative of malfeasance is already rooted in the Trump echo chamber by now since it's been all that anyone has talked about for the last day, and that alone is probably a win.

[Brehvolution]

And frankly you can't possibly insinuate "this place" was the problem when he merely got a 2 day ban for posting NSFW content.

It wasn't so much that he posted NSFW content [if he wants to post some pictures of dead/starving Soviet children to further his argument against communism, fine whatever, at worst I'd just clip the pictures if people had a problem with it], it's that he spammed multiple pictures across multiple threads [some entirely unrelated], including a few posts that were the same image posted 20 times. And he was making no effort to actually form a coherent argument other than "COMMUNISM BAD!!" and just making a mess for the sake of making a mess. I gave him a two day break, assuming that maybe his outburst was the result of the being under the influence of alcohol, but within just a few hours of his ban ending he was back to doing the exact same thing as before [he even spammed the music thread!]. So...yeah...I'm content with him not coming back.

[I'm a Puppy!]

aw man, I was gonna start posting starving children from captialist countries as a counter argument.

[Nintex]

The Trump admin has just requested the complete and unconditional surrender of Iran

[Kara]

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/605012795/supreme-court-decision-delivers-blow-to-workers-rights

[kingv]

The Trump admin has just requested the complete and unconditional surrender of Iran

(Image removed from quote.)

(Image removed from quote.)

So wait, the new conditions include stop threatening the countries that conspired together to illegally cheat in Donald Trumps favor in the election.

I hope we sanction all of those countries after DT is gone.

 

[Phoenix Dark]

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/605012795/supreme-court-decision-delivers-blow-to-workers-rights

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said


i guess elections matter huh

[Nintex]

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/605012795/supreme-court-decision-delivers-blow-to-workers-rights

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said


i guess elections matter huh

Not as much as promoting Mass Effect. 

[Joe Molotov]

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/605012795/supreme-court-decision-delivers-blow-to-workers-rights

Wait, workers have rights?

[Kara]

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said


i guess elections matter huh

If the liberals had any hope, it looked as though it likely was dashed when Justice Anthony Kennedy repeatedly opined that employees with similar problems could all go to the same lawyer, and that he saw no problem with any excessive costs created by requiring multiple separate individual hearings.

[I'm a Puppy!]

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/605012795/supreme-court-decision-delivers-blow-to-workers-rights

Wait, workers have rights?

not anymore.

[Phoenix Dark]

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said


i guess elections matter huh

If the liberals had any hope, it looked as though it likely was dashed when Justice Anthony Kennedy repeatedly opined that employees with similar problems could all go to the same lawyer, and that he saw no problem with any excessive costs created by requiring multiple separate individual hearings.

It would have been 5-4 in Ginsburg's favor if not for Gorsuch 

[shosta]

NYT headline made me laugh: "Trump’s Charm and Threats May Not Be Working on China."
 

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/998619627700805633
They already have a coin.

[TakingBackSunday]

good lord

[Boredfrom]

https://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/998619627700805633
They already have a coin.

Where is Moon?

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/998622323480686597

 

Anything can happen

[shosta]

Where is Moon?

I want to point out that ignoring South Korean agency didn't start with Trump. The American view of South Korea has always been as a military base for American troops on China's border first and an independent country with unique politics and culture second.

[kingv]

Making a coin for this seems incredibly dumb.

Trump is kissing Kim Jong Uns fat ass and is likely to walk away empty handed. Making these coins and adding this whole pageantry to it just makes him (us) look even worse.

[Nintex]

*Trump sits down*

"Well, this can only end two ways Mr. Supreme leader. My son in law will hand you a document showing what you should say and do during our photo op and conference. Also you will find $100 million in cash in a bank account in Zurich. All you have to do is sign a document that you will give up your nuclear weapons in exchange for economic aid and the construction of a Trump Tower in Pyongyang. You should also grant McDonalds a license to open franchises in North Korea. Your people will never be starving again and you will save a great American enterprise. I've talked to Xi and he's willing to hide your existing nukes for you near the border as long as you don't tell anyone about our deal. Also you may keep your shithole country. For optics it would be nice if you would visit the Mar-a-lago once a year for progress reports, access to the best prostitutes and golf. CNN would hate it believe me."

"And if I refuse to participate in this nonsense and claim my right as a nuclear power Mr. President?"

"In that case I will do whatever John Bolton tells me to do in the next 24 hours"

 


I follow a bunch of North Korea experts on Twitter and I like how the coin announcement alone got a collective "gasp"

[Mandark]

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/21/605012795/supreme-court-decision-delivers-blow-to-workers-rights

Waiting for the other shoe to drop with Janus v AFSCME. 

[kingv]

I am curious if the “no class actions” will end up as a case of “be careful what you wish for”,

I can foresee a future when an enterprising law firm figures out how to collectively file many substantially similar lawsuits in multiple jurisdictions, yet bill collectively. What happens when a company is faced with 5,000 small law suits for wage theft, each of which is too small to fight cost effectively instead of one big one?

A company caught in that situation might come back begging to combine the suits into a class action.

Edit: this is basically the inverse of the DMCA porno lawsuits. It’s not clear to me that a company is always going to end up better off under this arrangement.

[Nintex]

https://twitter.com/gregorykorte/status/998662792583499777
What is this nonsense Rudy

https://twitter.com/gregorykorte/status/998674373455306752

Ya think man?


https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/21/mueller-investigation-trump-meets-rosenstein-fbis-wray-coats/629608002/

The episode underscores the unique position Trump finds himself in: As president, he has the constitutional power to give orders to officials overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election — even though his own campaign is the subject of that investigation.

I guess no one thought of this 

[agrajag]

keep digging that obstruction hole deeper Donny

[Nola]

[Boogie]

What's going to be interested about this place now? Just a bunch of soft ass pussies wishing they could still be posting on the REE.

Among other things, I literally kick in doors to meth labs for a living.

Tell me what you do that warrants you calling me soft.

[team filler]

 

[Boogie]

Hey, could be worse, we could still have Mr. Super-Woke, The Business around, throwing his soft-ass tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan at Mr. Badass here...

[Nola]

Watch out Boogie, Assimilate runs with a tough crowd on this internet, that have zero hesitation in calling feminists cunts directly to their social media handle behind their anonymous avatars, or pulling a "Ted Danson" out of his stunted vocabulary of insults from the glory days of the PC-less late 90's.

[El Babua]

I think filler's just dejected you're fucking with his supply Boogie.

[team filler]

war on drugs 

[agrajag]

First they came for our meth and we were silent, then they came for our backpage..

[zomgee]

Then I will come for your back doors.

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on

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in

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[Nola]

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/998616962065367040

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/998619468430565377

https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/998681314588004352

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Yep, it's real

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